Final treasure tables post?
These posts somehow fell out of sequence when I was bringing them over from Cohost and I'm not sure what order they're meant to be in. Largely though it doesn't matter.
I think this is the final treasure table post, because I think I've got a handle on this now. This one is a long one and if you need context you're going to want to read the others that are on this blog.
So, long story short, I collated all the monsters in Holmes Basic and worked out the value of an average treasure hoard at any given hit dice. I put it all together into this table. I hope the headers are self explanatory, because I've been doing this for hours at this point and if I have to explain it all in very fine detail I may lose the will to live.
Hit Dice|Average Value|Most Common Type|Most Valuable Type|Least Valuable Type|Variance Between High & Low|Types Used|Notes ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|--- 1-2|13.5 cp|J|J|nil|N/A|J, nil|Two|1-2HD creatures, only 1 has treasure 1-1|4|L|L|L|N/A|L|Only 1 entry. 1|46,753|No repeats|R + S|C|185,725|A,B,C,D,G,Q,R+S|Pixies have treasure "R + S". R is an individual treasure counted mainly in platinum pieces and is hugely valuable. 1+1|7,417|No repeats|E|J|12,835|D,E,J|Biggest is E. Smallest is J. 2|7,215|B|B|nil|N/A|B, nil|Four 2HD creatures, only one has treasure. 2+1|9,415|D|D|D|N/A|D|Only 1 entry. 2+2|36,525|F|F|nil|N/A|F, nil|Two creatures, only 1 with treasure 3|3,465|C|B|nil|3,750|B, C, nil| 3+1|4,810|B|B|nil|N/A|B, nil|2 creatures use type B, one gives nil, hence difference between average and most popular 4|9,723|C|F|nil|32,000|B, C, E, F, nil| 4+1|5,025|C|C + 1000|C|1,000|C, C +1000 | 5|3,832|C|D|nil|4,890|C, D, nil | 5+1|9,415|D|D|D|0|D|Only 1 creature 6|7,165|C|E|C|8,310|C, D, E| 6+1|22,970|No repeats|F|D|27,110|D, F | 6+3|9,415|D|D|D|N/A|D|Only 1 creature 7|17,962|No repeats|F|C|32,000|C, E, F | 7+1|0|nil|nil|nil|N/A|nil|Only one monster, with no treasure (Djinni) 8|27,180|No repeats|F|E + 5000|18,690|E + 5000, F| 9|30,295|F|F|E + 5000|18,690|E + 5000, F| 10|17,835|No repeats|E + 5000|nil|N/A|E + 5000, nil|Only 2 creatures 11|17,835|E + 5000|E + 5000|E + 5000|0|E + 5000|Only 1 creature 12|17,835|E + 5000|E + 5000|E + 5000|0|E + 5000|Only 1 creature 15|9,415|D|D|D|0|D|Only 1 creature
I do have a few clarifying notes about the data in this table, mostly about monsters with hit dice ranges that are accounted for on multiple rows:
- Giants appear on 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 and use treasure type "E + 5000gp"
- Hell Hounds appear on 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and use type C
- Hydra uses type B but doesn't appear on the chart as the hit dice depends on number of heads
- Vampires appear on 7, 8, 9 and use type F
- Creatures with treasure type "nil" are counted when calculating average treasure values (i.e. I add up all the values and divide by the number of monsters of that HD) but not included in the calculation between the highest and lowest treasure type, because that would just give us the value of the highest treasure type.
The main omission from this table, though, are dragons. They range in HD from 5 to 11, and they all use the same treasure type: H. They're the only creature that uses this type and it's ludicrously valuable, so I can only assume the H stands for "Horde". And once I added dragons into the tables and saw how it impacted the numbers, I started to be able to make a bit more sense of how these things are constructed.
First, let's look at this information in a way that's a bit easier to parse. I've condensed the table down to just the base Hit Dice (so for example any monsters who have HD of "6+3" get rolled into the 6 HD row) and recalculated the average hoard values.
| Hit Dice (Condensed) | Average Value |
|---|---|
| 1 | 26,887 |
| 2 | 7594 |
| 3 | 3913 |
| 4 | 8869 |
| 5 | 4629 |
| 6 | 11681 |
| 7 | 13471 |
| 8 | 27180 |
| 9 | 30295 |
| 10 | 17835 |
| 11 | 17835 |
| 12 | 17835 |
| 15 | 9415 |
Much easier to read. And much like the tables I looked at for Rules Cyclopedia, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Why are we giving SO MUCH XP at first level followed by a relative drought?
Well, let's see what happens when we add the dragons in from 5 to 11.
| Hit Dice (condensed) | Value | Types Used |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 26887 | A, B, C, D, E, G, J, L, Q, R, S |
| 2 | 7594 | B, D, F |
| 3 | 3913 | B, C |
| 4 | 8869 | B, C, C + 1000, E, F |
| 5 | 30197 | C, D, H |
| 6 | 33372 | C, D, E, F, H |
| 7 | 52611 | C, E, F, H |
| 8 | 87843 | E (+5000), F, H |
| 9 | 75013 | E (+5000), F, H |
| 10 | 75668 | E (+5000), H |
| 11 | 113502 | E (+5000), H |
| 12 | 17835 | E + 5000 |
| 15 | 9415 | D |
We still have that comparative GP/XP drought from levels 2 to 4, but once the dragons appear at 5HD we start looking at real money again. And seeing this, I started to think about my hypothesis that this might be about campaign pacing.
To test it, I decided we needed to look at how this interacts with characters levelling up. That required me to look at XP thresholds, and I figured (maybe incorrectly, who knows) that the best way to look at this would be to get as close to replicating the conditions of play as possible. These XP values get divided among characters, and without knowing how many characters we're talking about it's hard to know what impact it's going to have. So I had to make some decisions.
These decisions were, necessarily, fairly arbitrary. You may disagree with these decisions, as is your right. If you feel you've got a better methodology for this and want to replicate this work yourself then by all means, be my guest. I'd love to hear about it.
These are the assumptions I'm working on for this exercise, and form the basis of the tenuous conclusions I'm going to draw:
- This is a party of four characters comprised of a Fighting Man, a Magic-User, a Cleric, and a Thief.
- They explore the dungeon without the aid of any hirelings etc.
- None of the characters gains any bonus to earned experience due to high scores in Prime Requisites etc.
- The dungeon is a "perfectly designed" dungeon. All creatures on the 1st level are 1HD creatures, all on the 2nd level are 2HD creatures, and so on.
- The characters do all of their adventuring on a level appropriate to their class level. In a real game they would level at different rates due to different XP thresholds. For the purposes of this exercise, I'm adding their XP thresholds together to form a Group XP Threshold that tells us how much total XP needs to be gained for the party as a whole to have levelled up.
I've done this up to the XP thresholds for level 6, using the numbers from Holmes for levels 1-3 and then from the Holmes/Cook Expert bridge tables reference sheet for the later levels because it's past midnight and that was what I had to hand without getting up to dig out a copy of AD&D. Here's what those XP thresholds look like when placed next to the average hoard values for matching monster hit dice.
| Enemy Hit Dice (condensed) | Average Hoard GP Value | Party Level | Group XP To Next Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 26887 | 1 | 7200 |
| 2 | 7594 | 2 | 14400 |
| 3 | 3913 | 3 | 28800 |
| 4 | 8869 | 4 | 57600 |
| 5 | 30197 | 5 | 117000 |
As you can see, the first level of the dungeon yields much more gold than we actually need to hit second level. And remember that this is the average of just one 1HD treasure hoard.
To careen wildly into the modern game for a second, the guidelines in 5e say that 1st level should last for a single session. Players grab their characters, learn the game, and then level up to 2nd level to start playing properly. None of the earlier editions say this explicitly - or if they do, then I've missed it - but that's what I'm getting from the treasure tables here. I don't think 1st level is meant to last all that long at all, even though the way we as modern OSR players approach these games tends (in my experience) to be a lot slower. (There is also the caveat that group sizes were likely intended to be much larger in the era we're talking about, but whatever).
After that first level, though, the treasure drops off significantly. You need two hoards of average value at 2nd level to advance, and at 3rd level you're looking at needing 3 or 4 average value hoards. The 2nd and 3rd experience levels are much slower, much more of a grind than first level. You're doing multiple delves into the dungeon, probably overextending yourself and going to deeper levels in search of a big payday that matches that first hit. The game wants you to stick here for a while, where you're weak and vulnerable but not as likely to die to one bad hit from a goblin as you were at 1st level.
And then level 5 comes, and I think the game changes fundamentally. From level 5 onwards, Holmes says with his treasure tables, your goal is to kill dragons. Because Holmes isn't a coward.
I could be wildly wrong here. Maybe I'm missing something obvious (like the aforementioned group size stuff). But having done this, and looking back at the distribution of RC's table with this in mind, I'm fairly confident that these tables are about the pacing of the game. And that's very useful information to have, because that's something I can take into the way that I design my tables.
Either way, I feel like I understand these a little better now. Whether the hours I spent on this instead of actually productive things was a waste of time or not is not a question I'd like to entertain right now, frankly. Instead I'm just going to go to bed.