I had quickly adapted treasure simply to Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, back before it had a fairly comprehensive monster and spell list. It was really a conversion table, keeping things simple:

To convert a monster’s “treasure type”, instead assign the appropriate treasure type (with their rough equivalencies):
• Leavings for monsters who simply leave a pile of their victims, equivalent to Types A to F.
• Belongings for large groups of humanoids, largely consisting of their everyday livings. Equivalent to Types G, I , O, P, R, or W.
• Hordes for dragons and other similar creatures, equivalent to Type H.
• Collections for creatures who collect sparkly things, equivalent to Type Q.
• Incidental for stuff found on odd bodies, equivalent to Types J to N.
• Bosses for unique, high-level monsters, equivalent to type U.
• Magical for creatures that possess magical items, equivalent to Types S, T, and V.

It doesn’t really feel sufficient, any more, but I loathe writing treasure tables (although I love creating simple treasure) and I’ve already provided advice for the nature of treasures found in the Running the Game section of the book.

Now, we’ve drifted away in 2nd Edition from xp-for-gold, that applying only to the thief class here. In AFD I’ve done away with it altogether, although you can still be awarded XP for gold if your ethos rewards it and you take risk to retrieve the gold. It makes sense to me, if I were to want to avoid treasure tables, but provide clearer guidance, to base treasure amounts off the XP progressions as if you were building a dungeon in an earlier, XP for gold edition. It then makes more sense to me, for thief XP progression rather than warrior to determine how much treasure you might have, given the changes to 2nd edition. This also is a little neater: Thieves level up more quickly in 2nd edition than warriors do, on the surface (as per the PHB). In 2nd edition, monster level is in the DMG, and roughly equates to HD with some exceptions (annoyingly as per MC1 rather than the MM), but it means I don’t have to do calculating. The DMG gives us number of XP/creature on each level, so we can calculate the number of creatures expected at various levels.

Our table then looks like this, if I do a very broad interpretation of the treasure tables for the purposes of averages (I don’t know how to calculate it accurately, and I don’t think it really matters). I just took an exemplar (like owlbear at 5HD, orc at 1HD) and took their average treasure on the treasure table. These were literally all over the place; I avoided horde creatures, but some levels had no examples with treasure or without hordes, that’s why there are blanks (yes, there are examples somewhere, my patience is not limitless).

Interesting takeaways: Gold is more generous at level 1by far, but then seems to have an upwards curve, at a little more than 10 gold per HD. Number of creatures at a certain level by XP is also higher at level 1, meaning a long time intended there, but it really evens out at around 80 creatures for most of the levelling up. What we have, though is for 2e, a rough average for gold per HD based on dungeon level (cool!), which means for AFD, we can transmute that to a rough gold per HP, which will be 6 gp / HP.

Ok, back to Hordes. Some of the treasure types are exceptional, namely hordes and magical items. With the roughest of math, the average horde is well over 15 000gp worth of gems and gold, plus an average of 3.3 magical items. Looking at the large variation in levelling up, and ignoring that average for a moment, it looks like a horde is basically meant to level up a thief if they manage to get it all home and laundered. We’ll back-track from there to the value of the average horde, which is about 3540gp per HD.

Now we can write our new clearer rule:

To assign a monster treasure,

Firstly, assign a treasure type according to its kind (equivalencies to advanced adventure games are in parentheses):

Leavings for monsters who simply leave a pile of their victims (Types A to F)
Belongings for large groups of humanoids, largely consisting of their everyday livings (Types G, I , O, P, R, or W)
Hordes for dragons and other similar creatures (Type H)
Collections for creatures who collect sparkly things (Type Q)
Incidental for stuff found on odd bodies (Types J to N)
Bosses for unique, high-level monsters (Type U)
Add magical for creatures that possess magical items (Types S, T, and V)

Secondly, calculate the value of its treasure, which is equal to 6gp per HP, or 3540gp if their treasure is in a horde.

Thirdly, ascertain magical items. If it is a horde, the creature’s treasure will have 1d6 magical items in it. If an individual has magical treasure type, roll 2d6 and take the lowest for the number of magical items it possesses. The roll taken, if it’s 3 or less, will consist of consumable magical items such as potions or scrolls. If it is 4 or higher, any additional magical items will be permanent

Finally, assign a third of its total value to coins, a third to gems and a third to art objects. Detail the treasure as per the Treasure section. Create any magical items that make sense in the context of this creature.

For any of these steps, disregard these rules if it makes more sense for any given monster to have a different kind of treasure.

There we have it. Monster treasure, whilst avoiding writing treasure tables.

Advanced Fantasy Dungeons is coming soon!

Idle Cartulary

Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.