Tool Review: Random Treasure Generator | DM's Blog

Review of a Random Treasure Generator for Dungeons and Dragons

I found this random treasure generator on a site that is just chalk full of tools to use for a Dungeon Master to help automate some of your work. In this case, you can take the classes of treasure detailed in the monstrous manual for any encounter you make, and then just run it through this tool to get exactly what is detailed in the DMG treasure tables. No more calculating percentages, no more looking up values, no more anything. Just punch in your numbers and go.

Cool Random Treasure Generation Features

This tool does some cool stuff. First and foremost, it allows you to stack your "hordes." Whether you are looking at looting the corpses of 40 individual goblins (so you need to multiply their individual treasure by 40), or you have a dungeon with a pile of different monsters and you need them all detailed out, this tool can do it for you.

Another good option is to combine your hordes into one. I like this if you threw some random stuff at people, but I always like to have my treasure hordes for planned encounters ahead of time (for reasons I may explain later), so this isn't perfect for me, but makes a single, simple file for you to use instead of jotting down thirty different sets of results when you need them.

Mundane Treasure in Dungeons and Dragons

Possibly my favorite part is translating the treasure down to what this tool calls "salvage." I always found it odd when playing dungeons and dragons that there was really that much coinage laying around. Certainly, in the money and equipment part of the PHB, it did discuss that players might choose to carry their wealth in other ways, like wearing jewelry or investing it in merchants' ships or something, but what I love about this feature is that it adds flavor to your campaign. A warband of bugbears has been raiding a popular trade route? Check out what this tool came up with for the loot taken from merchant caravans:

1. 50 x Artisan's Tools (5 gp, 5 lb)
2. 13 x Cart (15 gp, 200 lb)
3. 9 x Chair (10 gp)
4. 44 x Explorer's Outfit (10 gp, 8 lb)
5. 3 x Siege Ram (1000 gp)
6. 17 x Wagon Wheels (35 gp, 400 lb)
7. 8 x Wardrobe (30 gp)

Yeah, I would much rather give my characters 8 wardrobes, 9 chairs and 13 rickety carts than a pile of cash. Not only does it make it more interesting to say that there is a fine furniture maker in one of the neighboring towns, but also, now the players don't just walk out with cash. A paladin in the group might say that they have to return the goods. Or, if nobody wants to take the bait on that, they at least have to figure out how to get to a place where they can sell 8 chests of drawers without drawing suspicion. And, they have to figure out how to move the goods from the bugbears' hideout without being that one guy that's always on the interstate with the extra pile of furniture very precariously tied down to his truck bed. So yes, it makes the dolling out of loot that much more interesting.

Overall Review of the Random Treasure Generator

All in all I couldn't be more pleased. It does get a little buggy, and honestly, you wouldn't always want to give your players a pair of heavy catapults, and honestly, how did 3 bugbears capture that, after all? But, with a little bit of creativity, you can knock all of that out in short order, and replace it with a bale of beaver furs, or something of similar value to 800 GP's.

In the end, there's only one response to have to something that saves you time as the DM: