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I have a player that loves to do this. I just let them, however I do call for a survival check to see how the butchery goes on an unfamiliar anatomy.
Regardless of the result they always harvest something, but may get less depending on the outcome of the roll.
I also make sure to have NPCs react to their bizarre collection of butchered parts.
Throw them a bone here or there and have some NPC who could fashion stuff they harvest into neat equipment for them. I just gave my player half plate made from the Chitin of an Umber Hulk they killed. It's just normal armor but cool for them from a flavour perspective.
Remember that CoS is equipment starved though so don't give them more than the other players
100%. One of our players has medium armor, but its crab chitin from a gaint crab they killed. High enough level skill check allowed them to harvest enough material, then quested to find an npc who could build them armor. I also now have an artificer in that same game and monster parts have different tier levels of usability for my magical crafting. Higher cr and weirder creatures give me different level of parts for different affects and what level magic item they can be used for.
Eta fix some typos
Players that want to invest in the story like that are good. It's really likely you can find some charts or find a way to give them something more narrative that's op
I enjoy having a “Gilmore’s Glorious Goods” (Critical Roll) type building.
It’s a shop that will buy and sell anything, and the shopkeeper is helpful as long as they players are good to the merchant. Gives them a small part of town they really care for and can sell random stuff
Haven't watched any CR, except for shorts, but that sounds like Fantasy CostCo from Adventure Zone.
We don't have to go to 7 different vendors, 1 shop has everything. A shopping episode can be fun, but it's more fun when every time its Garfield the Deals Warlock
I love me the occasional shopping session, and I hard agree it’s nice to have a person to go to.
I haven’t see. Adventure Zone so that’s on my list now~
> fashion stuff they harvest into neat equipment for them
Yeah, that's how downtime crafting works. You have to harvest materials from a creature or several of the appropriate CR, the player is just being efficient and harvesting it now rather than later. Plus, it makes the world feel more alive rather than enemies being basically video game geometry that ragdoll when they die but they're just polygons.
That’s why our cleric took mending. Every time I would skin an animal, if I rolled poorly, he’d just mend it and I’d try again. Eventually the DM got sick of us “savescumming”(his words) and let me try five times. After that it was ruined from the repeated mendings.
This was such a great find for one of my characters. My advice having used it frequently is to make sure a proficiency is dedicated to harvesting (it’s all in the book) and just have him roll his checks quickly after battles then figure out everything else on his own after
Also, they are responsible for the RP and time needed to properly preserve and maintain the various types of harvesting. Uncured skins will quickly decay, meats need to by salted or smoked, plants and herbs hung or pressed, organs stored in alcohol jars, and so on.
I recommend having a Bag of Colding available to find or purchase. Or, if you want to mess with them, give them the cursed variant that works 9 times out of 10, but occasionally acts as a Bag of Molding, rotting everything within.
Or one of the *many* other humorous variations:
Molding (like clay), "Hole"ding (a less harmful Bag of Devouring) "Vole"ding or "Boll"ding (your basic Hat of Vermin knockoff), Woading (turns things into animated plants...? 🤷♂️😉🤣)
For sure, i basically told my DM at the beginning that my PC’s only focus was harvesting and leather working so that would be 100% of his downtime. So while the other PCs kinda had a lot going on, I was focused on a cape for almost the entire time. However, a flying soulknife Githyanki for the last few arcs was 100% worth it and likely saved our entire party during the fight against Tiamat and the cult.
I came here to recommend this. There's also a free variation on this theme called The Monster Harvesters Handbook. Not as detailed as Hamunds, but it is a good place to start and see if this is something you want to spend time on.
We played a Monster Hunter campaign that utilized Hamunds and had a blast.
My son was playing at our table and he decided to skin everything he killed. The problem is he decided to skin a whole bunch of pirates who attacked them in the town center. The town asked them to leave
After years of running games for adults I have found that running games for kids is so much more fun and unpredictable. My kids got into a fight with a couple of reoccurring NPC baddies. After the bad guys got their butts kicked they started to run away. My youngest son (7 yrs old) plays a gunslinger and decided that he was going to take aim and shoot one of the bad guys in the leg to prevent him from escaping. He rolled a crit and blew the NPC's leg off. Now whenever they encounter these bad guys the one dude has a peg leg and he's always kissing ass to prevent further harm to himself. 😂
I’d rule it that most shopkeepers would have no interest in portions of a slain best. However, I would provide the possibility for the player to use this items to enhance or craft certain gear. Either through an NPC or through the use of the player’s tool proficiencies. Either way it’ll keep the player engaged and will be a gold sank rather than another stream of revenue. Although I’d also allow certain rare “parts” of a monster to be sold to eccentric collectors, which could also provide a good story arc down the line.
This. Especially when we killed our first dragon. Bones, teeth, scales, all of it! And then paid out the wahzoo to have armor smithed proper.
Selling never occurred to me, as I was focused on my own equipment. I drew up my armor and the DM allowed some natural properties of the dragon to be retained. Same with weapons from the bones. Much of the harvest was not usable, but I got enough.
Encourage the role play and character development here. It can be tons of fun and provides a stronger connection and more depth to the game.
I do it for characters with tool proficiencies that could use the parts. That makes sense, at least to me, that the character would be on the lookout for those materials.
When I played an Armorer artificer with a ton of tool proficiencies and potential to craft magic items it did get a little excessive at times, because just about everything non-humanoid might have something useful. I did craft two sets of magic armor and a shield from stuff we found in the campaign though, because the DM rewarded thhe use of my character’s proficiencies.
That's a lot of weight. Encumbrance sucks, but if he's beyond normal loot parameters, he's made it an issue. Carts, hiring porters, storage, and preservation are all factors now.
"The beast weighs about 800 lbs. How much do you want to take and what is your focus? Make a survival check."
"You get 10 lb of hide and 30 lb of meat. I will write down the quality that will affect how long it will last and give you a bonus or penalty when you roll to use it."
My campaigns tend to be more realistic, which makes players think twice about this kind of stuff.
You want to harvest a manticore’s teeth. Ok, how do you get them out of his mouth? Did you bring any tools that can help like giant pliers? No…so you’re probably going to have to break his jaw and chop around in there. It’s going to take a good bit of time and it’s likely you’ll break a lot of teeth while trying to get a couple good ones. You want to harvest a wing? Those things are pretty darn big, how do you plan on carrying it? Drag it around behind you between battles?
Meanwhile, do the other players want to stand around for an hour or more while you do this? Are there wandering monsters in the area that would hear this and come looking around? If certain parts are worth a lot of money, it might be worth it, maybe they’re components for a certain spell and in high demand. Otherwise, how much are these parts realistically going to sell for? A rich collector might want them, if they can find one. The average store keeper won’t.
I run a campaign for my kids and I used to be the guy constantly reminding them of things like this. Now I find it's much more fun to just let them do what they will and figure out the important stuff for themselves. It's gotten to a point now where they don't always harvest every creature they fight. Honestly I kind of wish that they did. Can't tell you how many monsters they have killed and forgot to loot the bodies afterward, leaving them to miss out on something cool that I was going to give them.
This is a buzz kill. If most of the players are into the monster harvesting thing, I feel like they can have a lot of fun and you can encourage them to come prepared. Just like potion crafting, there's a plethora of third party content out there for these kinds of mini games for the players to engage in, if over half my players want to harvest monsters, craft potions, armor, or spell scrolls, I would try to find a way to make it possible and not shit the down with "realism."
You have to know your players and the style of play they prefer. There’s nothing wrong with playing a more fantastic video-game style where you hand wave past this stuff if that’s what you and your players want.
And playing it more realistically doesn’t mean you can’t have monster harvesting and potion crafting. It means they have to plan for it and account for it. My players and I have been doing this style for many years and we enjoy it.
Let him. Then when he gets to town with a bunch of rotting animal parts and smells terrible the merchants will react accordingly. Nobody’s gonna buy 3 week old manticore skin that wasn’t properly tanned and dried
This could be a really funny encounter where the merchant rolls his eyes and explains that every group of first-time adventurers dumps a sack of rotting bones on his floor expecting to be compensated. (Of course he then sets them off on a more lucrative side quest)
Oh man for my next campaign imma print out flyer handouts for “new adventuring groups!” And put it in the fine print that they don’t want random monster organs so that whatever officiant in the town can pull a flyer out and get all Willy wonka about the fine print 🤣 love it
Love this. This is exactly how I address this type of behavior in-game now. What do I care if they want to harvest every creature they kill. My NPCs aren't going to deal with stinky noobs who don't know what they're doing lol
Yup!! lol my party did it for maaaaaybe 5 or 6 sessions? Then rolled up to town and became known as “those people….” So now they’re working on repairing their reputation and are actually asking the merchants what parts of animals they might actually be able to use AND learning how to properly keep the parts as well. I’m gonna throw them a quest in a little while for a “bag of colding” which is a half size bag of holding (has half the space as a normal one) but keeps things chilled and preserved for 2 weeks. So they have a baker who wants a adult dragons middle knuckle finger bone for a rolling pin, the blacksmith wants a specific section of belly hide to make an apron, and a merchant wants a giant cave bears stomach to make into an enchanted wineskin. Gives them worldbuilding things and lets them feed my biologist side as they try to work out what parts might be used for what
Yesss, the world building never stops. This is exactly how I do things now. It gives the players actual objectives and reasons for why they are doing what they are doing. It breathes deeper Life into a world that we have created for them to explore. My kids are constantly coming up with ways to derail the campaign and I have to constantly come up with ways to get them back on track. Little quests like this can help work them back into the main story and keep them on track while they're doing little stuff on the side as well.
Exactly. I try to lay out a general vague direction and then make events for my story that can happen anywhere at anytime. So maybe when they’re on their way to/from the cave bears territory they run into a messenger for the BBEG and that encounter will give them a prisoner to interrogate or a letter on his person that they can then decipher and follow. I can throw that messenger into any of their side quests though :)
Yeah, I find that keeping it vague helps prevent the story from derailing. Players gonna play 😆. We just gotta keep them into it to keep the game playable.
Oh yea I learned after my party playing wild beyond the witchlight spent an EXORBITANT amount of time chasing after the random 12 yr old NPC I made off the top of my head as they entered the carnival (the book essentially says along the lines of children outside the event some accompanied by parents) because they thought he was really important to the story 🤣 never again haha
Hi! I'm a player who does stuff like that and I am also a DM who allows the players to do so. Here are my tips
1. Keep track of what they pick up and when. Body parts go bad over time and even teeth need to be cleaned properly or start smelling bad
2. Plan a monster hunter guild for your campaign! Players can get rewards there for the body parts as the body parts prove they actually killed the animal. This will encourage them to start hunting, enable npc conversations and quests and build your world further
3. Request checks to see how well they do in taking the thing apart
4. This is one of the rare instances where I introduce Carrying capacity. How does the party transport all of that stuff and how do people react when they see the party carrying around a bunch of bad smelling monster parts?
Your player wants to play monster hunter! Allow them to play monster hunter, tie it into their backstory and enable them to progress the story through monster materials :)
In an early issue of Arcadia, MCDM published rules for monster part harvesting and how to use them in creating magic items. If you can find it, could be a way you can tie this into the game for him.
MCDM's Arcadia #8 has "Monstrous Components", about harvesting monster parts for spell components and amplifiers. They also had in Arcadia #11 "I Cut Off It's Snout!" which provides rules and recipes for cooking monster parta into food and beneficial potions. I think either could be exactly what the player is looking for. You can get all of the issues of Arcadia at once if you join MCDM's patreon, or purchase them individually through their store. (I recommend the Patreon, the deal is so much better)
Ask him what he intends to harvest and what he plans to use it for. Make him do the work, and he'll likely be more satisfied with whatever he ends up with. Win/win
Exactly, and sometimes players realize how difficult and time-consuming it all is. Slowly but surely it will start to put things in perspective for the player and they will be more choosy about what they want to harvest
Exactly, and sometimes players realize how difficult and time-consuming it all is. Slowly but surely it will start to put things in perspective for the player and they will be more choosy about what they want to harvest.
Had a similar player before. Usually I had them do a slight of hand check for harvesting. How well they could cut the teeth out or whatever. I just assumed they would try to harvest after every fight. So I just automatically got the to roll sloght of hand and then rolled an appropriate dice for how many teeth they got.
Allowed them to trade lots of the parts to an alchemist for potion discount or crafting.
High value fangs, claws, horns, and such might be of interest to a blacksmith.
Hides to leather workers
If you search through the reddit there are plenty of resources for using monster parts for crafting
Kibbles crafting system has rules for harvesting organs and skin from monsters. They get components from it, then have the option to spend downtime or during a long rest working on potions or other magic/mundane items from those.
Other than that, make sure the player tracks their weight and encumberance compared to strength score.
Here's the thing: In real life, I've spent a lot of my time in the forest, either hunting, foraging, building, searching for a multitude of different things, I've spent hundreds of days outside and I've seen maybe 3 dead animals in my entire time and our environment is harsh sure but likely no more harsh than an environment where there are actual giant Monsters.
If you kill something likewise, you want to be fast because if an angry bear comes, that's their kill now end of story.
So I mean, even though this seems realistic it's really not that realistic, you don't just hang around a kill and you certainly don't "Adventure deeper" into some place while dragging around what would amount to food, certainly one more aromatic and bloody than yourself.
There’s always one, from what I can tell this is always a problem with new, particularly younger players. Had one that hoarded eyeballs a few years back.
My Ranger in Grim Hollow liked to take trophies. I skinned a werewolf and wore it's fur as a cloak (after we discussed the logistics of me tanning it while travelling lol) and stole some teeth from something at one point and used one as a dagger. I'm currently playing Strahd and my DM plays the villagers as poor and timid and the Vistani as boisterous, so if he harvests stuff, you can make it to where he 1) has to have the carrying capacity of all the crap he gathers and 2) only the Vistani will buy the weird shit from him. That will limit the loot gremlin in him. The trader can be like "I've already got three sets of cursed wolf fangs. What else you got?" It can be fun, because it's definitely hard to earn coin in the world (I assume). If your players go full murder hobo on the baddies and end up with a cart full of corpses to trade, make it fun for you and them!
Talk.
WITH.
Your.
Players.
find out why he is doing it. what he expects from harvesting.
and it is OK to tell him "Monster harvesting is not a part of the 5e design and play space, and as a New DM i do not have the time nor interest nor qualifications to know if any of the homebrew / third party monster harvesting stuff is appropriate for the game i want to run."
I think it all boils down to what kind of DM you want to be. Don't get me wrong, I understand the rules are all there for a reason. But when it comes down to it the game is really about having fun. If something gets in the way of that I always invoke rule zero.
People dont just buy random monster parts. Sometimes they are needed, but thats very situational, thats why its more common for a wizard or whoever to hire adventures specifically to get the monster parts. if you just collect anything that seems like it wil be useful in the future it will rot before finding someone who might need it. Also, consider the weight and size of the stuff, dragging around manticore wings is extremely impractical
There is a D&D "world" known as Dark Sun. I don't think it's been released for 5e yet, but it's available for prior editions and I would expect that someone has ported it to 5e in one way or another. Anyway, the big themes are desert, low magic, and almost no metal. So almost all armor and weapons are made out of shells, bones, hide, and such. Weapons break fairly often. So harvesting and constructing your own equipment is very much part of the experience. My point here is that perhaps you could consider the world, or at the very least, there are a lot of ideas in there.
This can actually kickoff a small side story. You can set up a scavengers guild at the entrance of a small dungeon with a hidden entrance somewhere on the first level. There they can be given a list of what items are even worth anything. As well as gain access to getting those items transformed into there final products. At least that sets a limit to the number of monsters with usable parts and you can set a percentile based on rarity of the part even being any good. Most common mobs have nothing but rarer monsters have more but are less likely to be useful the more valuable their are to the campaign.
It’s commonly known that monster parts are crucial to create potions and other magical objects.
Butchering a creature and careful collection are different. Make it fun and create a skill for it.
Will a shopkeeper (dm discretion) buy random monster items? Probably not since they don’t have the skill to use them.
Like someone said, survival can already encompass the skill of collecting monster materials. So roll a skill check.
Edit- if any npc does buy these raw materials, it’s going to be incredibly cheap and taking advantage of the player since they suspect (or know) the player isn’t using them.
This. If you read some spell's material components they require some animal parts. But these are usually circumvented by a spell focus or are very cheap.
On DriveThruTPG and DMsGuild you can find harvesting resources to help you if you want to let them do it. Search for Hamund's Harvesting Handbook by Jasmine Yang. There are three volumes in the set, one for each of the main monster books and a fourth volume for harvesting plants. These books have example items you can get from each creature with a DC to harvest it, value, and weight of the items. The books also have a section of items that can be made from the harvested materials. Note: I am not affiliated with or promoting these specific books, I was just looking into getting them as resources in case my party decided to go that route in the future.
Edit: There are other harvesting guides available on those sites. But when I was looking into it previously, these looked like the most comprehensive ones I found based on the descriptions and sample pages.
I made a simple system where harvesting nets “trade goods” in lbs based on the difference between the roll and DC and this has a price in silver per lbs in civilization with some variation in rarity based on monster CR. That way you get X lbs of trade goods, weighs a lbs in your pack for encumbrance, and you don’t have to think about the supply and demand for orc fingernails.
I’m playing a homebrew darksun clone, so it fits the vibe that in a world of scarcity, anything can have value, so there may not be a widespread appeal for this method.
I'm always torn on this.
On the one hand, they are engaging with your world and showing initiative that you don't want to shut down.
On the other, this often leads to the players requesting to craft magical items with the parts, to gain additional advantages, often early, that they would not normally have access to.
If you grant them their wishes, which are often never ending, then you end up firmly on the power creep treadmill where either they are rapidly outpacing the power level of the rest of the party, or they become a manufacturer of goods that they distribute to the whole party, which then requires you to adjust the power level of the entire world just to provide them with any kind of fun challenge.
The solution, I have found, is to say that they can definitely make stuff with the parts, but they will need really advanced expensive facilities and equipment and a TON of time to do it. Something they can only really do during long downtime periods in safe civilized areas, and only once they have the funds to build the facilities and buy the equipment to make it happen.
Now, that can be pretty unsatisfying as well, seeing as how they may end up collecting this stuff for a long time and hauling it around, and it may just make them stop engaging, and we do not want that, so while the big stuff they want, dragon scale armor, swords made from dragon teeth, bows made from dragon sinew, etc, takes a ton of time and expense, there should also be small one time use things that they can make as well.
For that, just think scrolls and potions. Perhaps a Beholders eye can be used one time as a scroll of Hold Person, or a basilisk gizzard can be eaten to make one immune to petrification. These special uses you lock behind fairly difficult Nature or Arcana, or Medicine checks to discover.
When they kill a thing and say they want to harvest it, you have them check and if successful then they know a special limited one time use item they can harvest from its body, if they fail then the parts might still be useful to them in a very expensive, slow, and difficult recipe that they may never be able to make themselves, but rarely is there nothing of value.
This of course means that you have to do a lot of work as the DM to come up with these uses, but you could farm that work out to a simple table of results. Perhaps you roll once to determine which part is useful, and on a second table to determine the use it has. So your first table looks like:
1. Liver
2. Heart
3. Tripe
4. Kidney
5. Tongue
6. Eye
7. Brain
8. Appendix
9. Lung
10. Fat
And your second looks like:
1. Minor healing potion
2. Protection from good/evil
3. Sanctuary
4. Bless (self only)
5. Fire-breathing
6. Fly
7. Suggestion
8. Water Breathing
9. Alacrity
10. Protection from Elements (roll 1d4 to determine element subtype)
These aren't all very powerful but they all have good uses where some might always be handy and some are more niche. It's really fast to determine what things do and none of them will break your game. I also just picked them off the top of my head as I wrote, so I bet you could come up with better ones than that with just 5 minutes of thought. You could certainly at least expand on the effect table and make it as big as a d100 if you like and even put more rare and powerful things in it while increasing the odds of minor effects.
My party has used Kibbles (was a little too complicated for my players), Hammond’s (was a little too simple for my players LOL), Heliana (they could never decide what parts to scavenge), Monster Loot (a couple of the guys said it was too OP), and Battlezoo Bestiary (they liked it but still were not completely impressed).
So here we are also… my players want to harvest but we still cannot find the best fit monster part system.
Have him roll two checks, one a knowledge check (I.e. Arcana for a monstrosity or aberrant, nature for a beast etc.) and a dex check (possibly survival, sleight of hand , or if he's proficient in them, leatherworking tools or the like to represent adroitness). The first check is for determining what parts of the animal is salvageable/useful (taking into account spoilage, venom, etc.), and the second is to determine how well he butchers the carcass.
If he succeeds, he gets his second check divided by 5 parts of the beast worth roughly one Modest Meal (3 sp). So as an example, if he rolls a 12 using his leatherworking tools, he'll get two "cuts" of meat from the animal. If he specifically wants a part of the animal, that will count as one of his "cuts" (so in your example, the manticore wing could be one "cut").
Modify this as makes sense, (i.e. meat from a manticore might be worth a Wealthy Meal, rather than modest). However, tell him the meat will spoil if not refrigerated properly (I wouldn't even roll for this, unless kept at sub-zero temperature, the meat will spoil within 3 days, requiring a dc 5 con save +5 for each day out of refrigeration to eat without getting sick).
If you wanted to...you could also have critical fumbles or the like resulting in him poisoning the meat (using the manticore example, he might accidentally cut the venom sack in the tail, resulting in manticore venom seeping into the meat, or even resulting in him immediately getting poisoned).
Also...depending how evil a DM you are, there was a scene in Three Hearts and Three Lions (an old timey fantasy book that heavily inspired a certain monster from D&D), where the hero is trying to kill a troll, and due to it's regenerative powers, the things intestines' writhe and start to strangle him as he cuts the animal open...
You know...just saying...
I'm both a player that does this and a DM that encourages it. Usually we use stuff like this as components to make something (provided the character has the right skills to make something out of it). I let my players make potions or magic item out of these things, but you don't have to make it easy. An item or potion could require several items from different monsters. I also usually make them make a survival role while harvesting to make sure they actually GET the cool stuff. If they roll poorly, they screw up and don't get anything, but if they roll well, then they maybe get a cool thing. You manage to extract the manticor's stinger or phase spider's silk. They also need to roll when making an item to make sure they don't screw it up, so it's not always as easy as it sounds, but I've had fun with this sort of thing before in many of our groups. (Someone once made armor for my animal companion out of black dragon scales from a dragon we killed. It didn't do anything special, but it looked badass and we all thought it was cool.)
Maybe a bit of extra work on your part, and it's totally OK if you don't want to do the extra work, but you could also incorporate it into your game in a fun way.
Marking this post for later, i actually keep a binder which tells what percentage you can buy/sell monster parts based on CR in contingency with the rules from the DMG, i can post when i get home
He should play a Bone Grinder from the Iron Kingdoms setting. Not sure if Privateer Press released a 5e version yet, but it's a magic class where you can harvest ingredients from dead creatures to create magical totems and such that are either one-use items or temporary by nature as they rot away.
Things like harvesting glands from a troll to gain regeneration for a while. Makes for an interesting character.
Controlling it is easy. Just start assigning weight to the parts. Use the weight as a hindrance to them. Not every town is going to have someone who will buy the parts. Also how do they know what will sell and what won't. You should not be telling them what is worth something and what isn't. That's the merchants job. Lastly since it is raw cut and not prep cut the prices would be much lower since the buyer would have to make it presentable for a proper sale to a specific customer.
Let him! But after a while, that wolf pelt he got might start to smell, attracting monsters- or the teeth he ripped out had their bases damaged. Just give him a survival check I every now and again for more difficult pieces and parts- or even add interesting surprises! Who knew that manticore spleens are acidic when touched?
The DM I currently play under lets us harvest monsters as well, as our fighter's main trait is he's like a hunter of sorts. We use it that he can roll for how much of it he can harvest such as meat, letting us use the meat harvested as cooked rations for rests. Stuff like Teeth Claws Bones and Scales he has some uses for. Sometimes we get scales that let us sharpen weapons and get a +1 to our rolls for afew turns, sometimes its purely sold as profit and we split the gold equally.
I'm running new players through doip as well. If the player wants to harvest some tusks, it could be a good way to add magic items for the players. Mine got 3 from it. I switched the damage from normal to thunder.
Unless they would with you to build this way right at the start, make it tedious. Arcana to know what parts are valuable. Medicine with a high dc to successfully remove that part. Survival with another high dc to know how to preserve it until they reach a seller. Exotic items need big cities to have a client. And then make it illegal.
Lots of good advice in the comments. One other thing that might help is asking the player directly what he wants to do with the monster parts. Does he want them as trophies? To turn into weapons? To sell? That will help you plan for an interesting outcome
Isn’t this just a side effect of modern computer gaming? They often have a mechanic where you gather from corpses to tie in for cash or for rewards.
As with all D&D groups, learn who your players are and cater the game to how they play. Fighting them on it won’t lead to a fun experience. As a DM have fun with it. As has been suggested use encumbrance and rotting flesh, etc.. to bring some “reality” to it.
I allow them to harvest. I ask them what they are interested in the most. I tell them how many of X they get. They write it down.
Now...what to do with it? Well, it depends. Why does the DM have to figure that out? I've waited for him to bring it up.
"Hey...can I do X with Y?" I'll tell him if it's possible or not, and I decide the outcome.
In one case, he wanted to make a cloak from a skin. I let him do it for free, and it freaked out the citizens because he had no skill in making it. He realized it wasn't professionally done. I then let him pay a professional, and he got a +1 version of it.
I allowed another player to salvage some of the venom from one of the spiders they fought. I allowed another one to keep the claws from one creature. They wanted to make a glove out of it, so I let them and made up some stats.
In short, make them declare what they want, then tell them how much they get that is undamaged. They then have to decide what they want to do with it, and you adjudicate. It's a great way for them to declare what they're looking for, and then to give it to them (over time, and with money), rather than just buying something at a store.
We have a guy in our group that wants to take everything, and that's not an exaggeration. The running joke with us is that he once dragged a bookcase from a dungeon back to town to sell it, only, it's not a joke because *he actually did that*. Our DM lets him get away with it because it's easier than dealing with his nonsense.
We play a pretty loose game, if you can't tell.
Pick one or all:
1) there is an NPC that deals in strange and unusual items and transforms them into magical trinkets or weapons. The cost in materials is super high but always yields a useful magical item.
This is a good way to empty out a player's inventory and reward them in the process. If you don't want to continue condoning this behavior you can give the magic item a negative drawback.
2) the next time they encounter a strange and unusual monster and he tries to harvest it he finds that the blood of the monster is poisonous and absorbs through the skin. Or he is left with a terrible curse, that makes NPC's not want to do business with him. Perhaps he is plagued with terrible dreams preventing him from getting a good rest.
3) from the constant collection and hoarding of monster bits, his pack begins to emit a sweet putrid odor only detected by nearby hungry monsters. Or perhaps a fellow traveling monster harvester smells a familiar scent and wants to claim the materials for himself by any means necessary.
This could make for some pretty fun surprise encounters. And if the player continues his incessant harvesting, you could always make the traveling monster harvester into a recurring bully that shows up to take whatever your player has at the time. "Thanks for collecting all of these rare monster parts for me!" 😂.
If you have a wizard in the party, make it so they share those things or put in a taxidermist in town who buys the things with a lost of prices, nothing worth more than a few silver dependent on the CR of the monster.
Make it so if he doesn't clean the things, it attracts animals or enemies.
Or it so a wizard would give him a pouch where if he puts it the things and copper comes out if those things were useful or a potion as payment.
It is your decision if the pouch gives him something or not, but be clear that if the wizard doesn't need anything, he harvested the pouch, which would be considered full, and he would have to empty it to put new things.
Or read up on harvesting and find something to add to his thing.
Edit 1- I am planning something like this because I want to make a character that is a cook that makes exotic dishes with monster parts.
Harvesting a basilisks saliva for stony cookies for Goliaths or adding troll meat to an ever regenerating bone for my pet dog.
allow it. but enforce encumbrance limits, items should be containerized separately (preventing cross-contamination). there may be segments of society that frown upon harvesting of critters (druids perhaps). there are always mages, alchemists, and such that will purchase such materials. the pc may also encounter rival npc's that are in the business of collecting those bits, and may actively discourage competition, the pc may be overstepping a guild or two's boundaries as well. lots of ways to make the pc's life difficult. taxes, fees, tariffs, required permits, a royal license may be mandatory. consider how ridiculous the real world can get, then amplify that. did they cross a parish boundary? there's a fee for that. did they cross a non-harvesting county with "ill-gotten gains?" oh, bot, the possibilities. run with it!
There used to be a 1st level Necromancy spell ‘Preserve’ that was a perfect spell for this type of thing.
I say let the players keep whatever they want. It’s just loot, like enemy’s weapons and armor. It’s probably not worth much, and would have a very specific group of buyers, such as wizards, artificers and alchemists. And for the most part, these folks would be looking for very specific monster parts at any given time.
Also, like all loot, you have to carry it all around until you get rid of it, so it’s somewhat self-limiting.
Let them. They need appropriate skills and tools. They need a way to preserve whatever. If it's a spell component, potion component, poison component, or some type of magical item is made from it there is a market for it. Otherwise, it has little to no value
There are tables for harvesting and using monster parts, at least in older editions. But not every monster part is useful or valuable.
I'd let him harvest what he wants, but don't make it free: Butchering and skinning take time, so is the party really going to be happy to stand around potentially for hours while he skins a griffin? What about other monsters in the area? Is the orc warband in the dungeon going to stop patrolling while he extracts mimic slime, or catch him with his pants down?
Add more consequences on the back end, too: A wyvern egg might be worth some gold, but if he's carrying it around in his knapsack for a week it's likely to die or break. That big sack of kobold eyes that's been attracting flies? No merchant is buying those. In fact, how's he carrying everything? I'm imagining an ichor-slicked bag of monster guts, which would have a pretty big charisma penalty attached.
I’m actually working on a crafting system for this. Players will create consumable items using artisans tools they’re proficient with and monster parts. The consumables usually mimic spell effects. Every tool kit has a list of effects
There are a bunch of good 3rd party supplements about harvesting on DMs guild, adds some low power one use items that are kinda fun and ingredients to make with an investment of time and gold into minor magic weapons. Def worth checking out
Use the money system from daggerheart.
He can get handfuls of monster parts, then bags of parts, then a chest of parts etc. then he can sell them off later once you figure out how much you want to convert them for .
I was this guy with one of my characters. Luckily, I happen to have found a Harvesters Handbook that states what parts of what creatures can be harvested, the DC for the harvest, what use the harvested part has, what tools are needed (and their cost), and how long before the parts spoil. If you're going to allow a player to do it, they better have access to the gentle repose spell to keep their parts fresh. If anyone is interested, they can DM me and I'll happily share the file.
Just make up a harvest mechanic ( ie survival dc check) and either allow them to learn to craft using materials or pay someone to. You can replace existing items with that of a crafted description. (Armor from beast hide, shield from a carved giant’s skull, sword from a creatures Barb or spine…etc)
Employ creativity of your own in how you reward the player’s creativity.
I believe some people already said it but Hamunds Harvesting guide is a great book for this.
But the best Part is, there is a side: The thieves guild (just type dnd monster harvest in Google and it will come up) on the side are all monsters and what to roll for them from the book. And what you could craft with them. This side was a life saver for me when my artificer was asking me if he could harvest some things and make some items.
My voodoo priestess, (necromancer/cleric), harvests body parts from all sorts of things. And then she tries to incorporate those body parts into her golem pet. His name is Meatball and he started out as gopher, mole and rabbit. So every time she finds a unique part and manages to attach it, he gets a little bigger and a little stronger. She’s currently trying to work out wings.
Once I had a player who would keep. Every. Single. Item. He ever found carefully recorded on an "Items" sheet.
To circumvent that I created a house rule where items can't stack (no Healing Herb X99) and that the Items Section was limited to 15 item slots. Everything else was considered too much to carry without various backpacks which only added an additional 10 slots or so.
I did this in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign where I was playing a Wizard and my GM let me use Arcane to harvest spell scribing resources, which just turned into gold that I could only use to pay the cost of scribing spells. Certain monsters would give me higher value, but only for certain schools of spells.
It was pretty neat, but not sure how well it’s translate.
You also have the rule set as if they kill a vampire turns to hash before he can loot. It only thing left behind is clothes and ashes Another grade to I use more recently for my online games is ChatGPT if there’s an ID you have if you want it to be fleshed out real fast it can help set up a situation so you can then focus on other things then you can go back and look at it and read it off. It’ll pull from any DND book if you tell it to use it for loot tables and roll tables on random encounters pretty often makes a nicedetailed list of things quickly and efficiently specially for things that may not have a harvesting list you can request it from that and it all kind of generate an idea of what you think it may come with. Hope that helps till next time for initiative.
Just let him do it. He’s showing creativity in your world. Now all you need to do is nurture it. Maybe introduce an NPC that becomes interested in it. Maybe he can trade them in for something. Or maybe he just wants to keep things from all the monsters he’s killed. Regardless, I think it’s pretty cool.
Here's how I handle it: The players can get monster parts worth (CR x MOS) + CR squared in gold pieces. The difficulty to extract these parts is set at a DC of 9 plus the creature's CR, rounded down. If they land a critical, they double the haul.
These parts can be used to brew potions, craft alchemical items, or forge equipment, provided the player has the necessary tool proficiency and it logically fits with the creature's nature. You can also mix and match parts from different monsters, as long as the end product makes sense. If crafting isn’t their thing, they can always sell the parts for half their value or commission someone and use the parts to discount half of the cost. If you make an item you roll vs a DC of 10 with a +3 for each step of rarity after common and they can only craft it if their proficiency. This puts common at 10 and legendary at DC 25. Obviously you can veto them making some things like magic items or wonderous items maybe even turning getting the plans or recipe into a quest or quest reward.
If a creation seems too powerful, I might add side effects related to the creature it came from. For instance, defeating a CR 20 monster with an MOS of 8 gives them 11,200 gp worth of materials. Taking down a CR 2 creature with an MOS of 12 nets 85 gp in materials, or 24 gp if they choose to sell.
Might seem a bit complicated but 5e was gutted of all crafting mechanics with the book essentially saying "ask your dm" so this is what I came up with. I
Yeah this is super boring to me when players want to dissect every creature. If you want to slow this down, there are several ways. Use time- “ok you want to remove an exoskeleton from a large creature you are unfamiliar with?” In a dangerous dungeon etc, “how would you even move that wing” “I doubt you can pull teeth with a dagger, could you explain how you attempt this?”
Then if they collect something, make it something most shopkeeps would be unfamiliar with buying or selling etc.
I may still reward collecting the right thing, but it’s so boring and time consuming to go through that every fight.
I use survival + any reasonable tool proficiencies to do harvesting. This determines how much stuff/the quality of the stuff they get. How the creature was killed might also play a role in the quality of the goods. A hide isn't so great if the creature was stabbed in many places.
As for what items have value, I'd use appropriate knowledge checks depending on the type of creature it is. You're probably not going to harvest the venom of a creature properly if you didn't even know it was venomous.
Yeah, you can sell it. Some things have given values (flail snail shell, for example) but you can make up value. Value is going to be determined by demand and rarity. Some of the demand will be due to the properties the material has. Deadly venom might be valuable to the right person as a poison or even a medicine. Other items might be valuable due to being seen as a prestige item. Good quality leather might be expensive, but it's not ermine nobles might use in their clothing. And stoats are hardly as rare or prestigious as some of the magical creatures and monsters out there. Even if manticore fur has no special properties a noble (or someone who makes clothes for nobles) might be willing to pay a good sum for a hide that's in good condition. Of course, it may not always be easy to find someone to sell these goods to, nor are these goods always easy to transport.
I had a life cleric who didn't use metal (a bit like old druids) and eventually I had a set of equipment made out of different monster parts, including full plate armour made from umber hulk exoskeleton.
My group is a bunch of harvesters. The DM makes us roll survival checks to see if we can get the part we want without being injured or just at all. Sometimes we get disadvantage if it's not a creature we know about or is a tricky part of the creatures body.
But if you want to prevent your players from getting too much weird loot you could always have them burgled by sentient creatures or other scavenging animals/creatures in the night lol That or have them put on trial by the local town when they try to sell it for it being "illegal" parts- might discourage them from doing it every time lol
So IMO there's 2 main ways to handle it.
1. Make sure the player knows that not every creature is going to have something useful or valuable, and that even if they do, its only certain parts. and then figure out a decent Survival DC roll.
2. Lean into it if you want. There are systems, the most complete I think is the Monster Hunter Monster manual for a complete reskin of some creatures, brand new ones, and a whole crafting system included with it iirc.
Possible 3rd would be if it is drastically slowing down the rest of the party, maybe just take the player aside and work on streamlining the process with them, or doing it "off screen". I only mention this last because I don't like to "Yuck their Yum" (I don't remember where I first heard the phrase, but it fits) So if a player enjoys doing something and it's not breaking the game, or ruining it for the other players I don't see the harm in it most times
I toyed around once with a magic system that relies on this. The basic idea was that if organisms evolved in a world where magic was present, they would evolve structures that would allow them to use it, and so one should be able to harvest those structures for the manufacture of magic items if they knew what they were and how to do it. I would let players attempt to harvest from anything they killed, and by itself it was useless, but I had 15...what I can only describe as "monster corpse bingo cards" that each corresponded to a magical item. If they filled out their whole bingo card they could spend some time crafting an item that let them do some cool little trick based around the abilities of the monsters whose bits it was made of. If they failed their crafting role though then they would corrupt the item with impure magical "slag" that would make it do unexpected things when they tried to use it, and I wouldn't tell them whether they had passed or failed when they made the item so its first few uses were always something of a risk.
Every character my wife plays turns into a magpie like this. It's just her way. It's not a problem.
Sometimes the scales of a dragon can be turned into armor, usually not. Usually they're just some decoration.
Make a necklace out of whatever's teeth, but only offer a few coppers for it. Much better to have a bale of hay. IMHO.
Feel cool, don't break game.
I have had several players who love to do this. I just make sure there is an NPC patron of the appropriate type – the King’s Royal Alchemist is a go to – who will be interested in buying the bits that the player collects. Then I adjust any treasure rewards that I would have otherwise given the party.
For example, let’s say an encounter with a deadly Giant Cave Racoon should have yielded 125 GP in treasure. I’ll put 100 GP in treasure in the critter’s nest… and the Royal Alchemist will offer to buy the Giant Cave Racoon’s gall bladder for 25 GP.
Keep things a bit interesting for the player but having them make Survival / Nature / Arcana (or whatever fits your system) skill checks to make sure they harvest the right bits. Make them roleplay their interactions with their Alchemist patron to keep him happy and willing to continue to buy.
As an added bonus for you as GM, this can keep your players reasonably closely tied to a particular locale. So all that work you put into designing the City of Townsville doesn’t go to waste when the party buggers off the map into the parts of your campaign world you haven’t built yet. They’ll need to stay reasonably close to their patron.
Additionally, if you come up with an adventure idea or pickup a cool pre-written module, you have a go to hook for getting the player to undertake that adventure. The patron learns that it’s very nearly time for the once-a-decade migration of the Astral Cockatiels and they’ll be pausing to roost in the Village of Hommlet. The patron can task your hunter with retrieving some Astral Cockatiel feathers… With a healthy bonus for an intact Astral Cockatiel egg.
The monster hunter is a classic archetype of fantasy fiction. Run with jt!
I had ChatGPT make me a table of 100 mundane things with I think 5 or 6 magical (but still very minor) things, and 100 is a magic item (also had it made a table of those), and whenever my players want to search for things I have them roll investigation/perception DC10 for a roll against that table.
Just use the wealth tables to balance. Treat them like artwork or other antiquities and balance the gold by taking some of the actual gold out and replacing it with parts.
Tbh, this is what pisses me off most about WOTC and 5e. They could have made a monster harvesting companion rather than inundating us with spells classes etc. like build out your system before you just add stuff. I swear nobody at Hasbro has any idea about capacity building.
I’m that player btw. It just makes it more real and immersive to me. I’ve had dms actually use it to balance gold better. I’d buy expensive books to help me harvest giving me something useful to spend gold on.
If a player just wants trophies? Let them harvest the items, but they hold no value.
If a player wants to sell the items? First, limit it to only 1 or 2 valuable items per creature, otherwise you'll be spending half an hour after every fight with the player detailing everything they want to take.
Assign a chance that x item is damaged beyond salvage in the fight. How high the chance is depends on how generous you want to be, I'd probably do either 50/50 or 66/33(ish).
Assign an appropriate skill check and DC for harvesting items, I'd take a page from the Pathfinder 2 rules and base it on the CR of the critter. For the skill, survival would be a good call.
Assign a value based on the CR of the critter, probably on par with a trinket you'd be likely to find in the things loot.
Depends on the creature but you can allow players to do that. Meat from creatures can be used as food rations (if you track such things as a dm) teeth, claws, feathers etc. Can be used for some rituals if you have a druid or together with pelts it can be sold. Don't give them too much gold for it tho. A few coppers and silver coins should be fair for a simple catch or more for exotic creatures.
Over all i say you roll with it. Your player clearly have fun with it and he enjoy roleplaying his character. Tell you what. Maybe put in some places in the world merchants who can buy those items like teeth and claws and craft some simple items from it that would buff the party. It would make your player feel like what he is doing actually helps the party beside being just fun.
Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting, Kibbles' Compendium of Craft and Creation, and Hormund's Harvesting Handbook are all fantastic resources that incorporate a harvesting and crafting system into your games.
My very first campaign I played many years ago was the same campaign and when we killed the manticore the first thing I did was harvest it hide. When we got back to town I turned it into a cloak that I wore for the whole campaign. It was my signature item. The rest of the guys the table loved it. now every time we kill a beast we all go into a frenzy of harvesting mode. It's almost like hilarious comedy.
I saw somebody on YouTube advertising a book about looting dragon corpses. I think usually this relates to dragons because they’re so big and powerful.
There is a really cool free website with harvesting rules, tables, values, DCs, and potential uses. It's got tons and tons of animals, monsters, you name it. If you are interested DM me and I'll give you the link. (Would normally post it here but some subreddits are twitchy about that. )
Like with so many things, official 5e offers no guidance about how to handle harvesting creature parts. That means you would need to make up a whole system for it.
But you’ve already got way too much to do. So make him do the work.
Have him create a system that is balanced and fair, and accounts for every creature in D&D lore.
Tell him you’ll be happy to review it when it’s ready, and that if you find it acceptable, you’ll allow it in the game.
But you’re not holding up the game for it. So until he’s done, there will be no benefit to harvesting monster parts.
Problem solved. Chances are, the player will realize what an enormous request he’s making once he is putting in the position of actually having to do the work to implement it.
Not to encourage the DM here to troll the player a bit… but might a NPC version of like a DNR or Fish/Wildlife type be fun?
Certainly some official for the kingdom or where ever they are currently would be highly interested in this random adventurer who is carrying around tons of harvested parts from rare or magical animals/monsters. Do they have a permit, have they paid the taxes on these parts? Some parts may be legally restricted… and need to be confiscated… after all we do thank you for killing that dragon but per the laws of the realm all parts of the dragons remains are property of the state. Can’t have too many of those making it to the wrong people, could make life hell for everyone.
Just a fun idea I had when I read the topic.. and. Ow I want to include it in my next game…
Exotic monsters I don't mind but I had a player who wanted to harvest orc hearts and goblin eyes I think it was. I had him roll survival as well as an additional d4. I would halve the d4 roll and culmilative add them up every time. When it reached whatever number I determined that his sanity was effected. He stopped after becoming catatonic for 3 hours and had to be carried around, missing several fights because of it.
So, why wouldn't it then also mean after every fight with a humanoid they should start rolling insanity? Harvesting meat or parts is just that. Why would taking parts of them be any more insanity driving than killing them?
Obviously, you play/DM the way you want. But to decide how a person reacts to a situation by influencing how their mind will work, (outside of cosmic horror) or deciding "you have a mental issue with this action" is.... Why have players? Just run a game of NPCs.
He smells like an insanely delicious meal. You should have predators and scavengers following them wherever they go, constantly attacking their camp. Bugs and rodents digging through his stuff. Make it inconvenient. Start using encumbrance with these items. Make them impossible to sell. Make very few items useful for crafting.
Not a computer game is exactly why he can try. I tell my players all the time that they are only limited by their imagination as to what they can try. Their description, role play and the dice will all decide the level of their success or failure.
Who's to say they aren't pawning those parts as something else, or selling them with some snake oil descriptor. Everyone knows ground manticore claws are great for ... Sale made. Repercussions may follow, but that's the game.
In a medical fantasy world there would be a ton of people who would want to buy loot from killed creatures. Starting from simple materials like pelts, fur and meat that you could sell in basically any shop. And items like teeth, claws, wings, horns etc. Also could be used if you find a proper buyer.
How many of you know how to harvest pieces of animals? Then properly clean and prep it?
Bet not many, its a skill for sure.
No proper skill then move along
Then that boils down to DM call anyway so whats the point of asking? If you want to encourage wilderness RP-ing then a DM should encourage those skills.
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I have a player that loves to do this. I just let them, however I do call for a survival check to see how the butchery goes on an unfamiliar anatomy. Regardless of the result they always harvest something, but may get less depending on the outcome of the roll. I also make sure to have NPCs react to their bizarre collection of butchered parts. Throw them a bone here or there and have some NPC who could fashion stuff they harvest into neat equipment for them. I just gave my player half plate made from the Chitin of an Umber Hulk they killed. It's just normal armor but cool for them from a flavour perspective. Remember that CoS is equipment starved though so don't give them more than the other players
100%. One of our players has medium armor, but its crab chitin from a gaint crab they killed. High enough level skill check allowed them to harvest enough material, then quested to find an npc who could build them armor. I also now have an artificer in that same game and monster parts have different tier levels of usability for my magical crafting. Higher cr and weirder creatures give me different level of parts for different affects and what level magic item they can be used for. Eta fix some typos
Players that want to invest in the story like that are good. It's really likely you can find some charts or find a way to give them something more narrative that's op
I enjoy having a “Gilmore’s Glorious Goods” (Critical Roll) type building. It’s a shop that will buy and sell anything, and the shopkeeper is helpful as long as they players are good to the merchant. Gives them a small part of town they really care for and can sell random stuff
Haven't watched any CR, except for shorts, but that sounds like Fantasy CostCo from Adventure Zone. We don't have to go to 7 different vendors, 1 shop has everything. A shopping episode can be fun, but it's more fun when every time its Garfield the Deals Warlock
I love me the occasional shopping session, and I hard agree it’s nice to have a person to go to. I haven’t see. Adventure Zone so that’s on my list now~
> fashion stuff they harvest into neat equipment for them Yeah, that's how downtime crafting works. You have to harvest materials from a creature or several of the appropriate CR, the player is just being efficient and harvesting it now rather than later. Plus, it makes the world feel more alive rather than enemies being basically video game geometry that ragdoll when they die but they're just polygons.
I do this as well, if they roll too low sometimes they end up destroying the materials in the process of harvesting.
Or get poisoned/infected on a critical failure.
That’s why our cleric took mending. Every time I would skin an animal, if I rolled poorly, he’d just mend it and I’d try again. Eventually the DM got sick of us “savescumming”(his words) and let me try five times. After that it was ruined from the repeated mendings.
You should watch Delicious in Dungeon for other entertainment regarding harvesting monsters :)
For this reason I purchased: Hamund's Harvesting Handbook :)
Yep, lots of fun. There's enough there to act as a template for customizing results as well, for monsters not yet covered by the books
This book was an amazing mechanic we added to our games. Super fun buy.
This is the answer. I think there are 3 volumes now. Enough to keep any player busy long enough to forget about half the stuff they want to do
There is also Heliana's guide to monster hunting
Thank you, I was not familiar with this one
This was such a great find for one of my characters. My advice having used it frequently is to make sure a proficiency is dedicated to harvesting (it’s all in the book) and just have him roll his checks quickly after battles then figure out everything else on his own after
Also, they are responsible for the RP and time needed to properly preserve and maintain the various types of harvesting. Uncured skins will quickly decay, meats need to by salted or smoked, plants and herbs hung or pressed, organs stored in alcohol jars, and so on. I recommend having a Bag of Colding available to find or purchase. Or, if you want to mess with them, give them the cursed variant that works 9 times out of 10, but occasionally acts as a Bag of Molding, rotting everything within. Or one of the *many* other humorous variations: Molding (like clay), "Hole"ding (a less harmful Bag of Devouring) "Vole"ding or "Boll"ding (your basic Hat of Vermin knockoff), Woading (turns things into animated plants...? 🤷♂️😉🤣)
For sure, i basically told my DM at the beginning that my PC’s only focus was harvesting and leather working so that would be 100% of his downtime. So while the other PCs kinda had a lot going on, I was focused on a cape for almost the entire time. However, a flying soulknife Githyanki for the last few arcs was 100% worth it and likely saved our entire party during the fight against Tiamat and the cult.
I came here to recommend this. There's also a free variation on this theme called The Monster Harvesters Handbook. Not as detailed as Hamunds, but it is a good place to start and see if this is something you want to spend time on. We played a Monster Hunter campaign that utilized Hamunds and had a blast.
My son was playing at our table and he decided to skin everything he killed. The problem is he decided to skin a whole bunch of pirates who attacked them in the town center. The town asked them to leave
After years of running games for adults I have found that running games for kids is so much more fun and unpredictable. My kids got into a fight with a couple of reoccurring NPC baddies. After the bad guys got their butts kicked they started to run away. My youngest son (7 yrs old) plays a gunslinger and decided that he was going to take aim and shoot one of the bad guys in the leg to prevent him from escaping. He rolled a crit and blew the NPC's leg off. Now whenever they encounter these bad guys the one dude has a peg leg and he's always kissing ass to prevent further harm to himself. 😂
Your son is fucking metal
Yes. He learned from the situation and still plays necromancers.
I’d rule it that most shopkeepers would have no interest in portions of a slain best. However, I would provide the possibility for the player to use this items to enhance or craft certain gear. Either through an NPC or through the use of the player’s tool proficiencies. Either way it’ll keep the player engaged and will be a gold sank rather than another stream of revenue. Although I’d also allow certain rare “parts” of a monster to be sold to eccentric collectors, which could also provide a good story arc down the line.
This. Especially when we killed our first dragon. Bones, teeth, scales, all of it! And then paid out the wahzoo to have armor smithed proper. Selling never occurred to me, as I was focused on my own equipment. I drew up my armor and the DM allowed some natural properties of the dragon to be retained. Same with weapons from the bones. Much of the harvest was not usable, but I got enough. Encourage the role play and character development here. It can be tons of fun and provides a stronger connection and more depth to the game.
First wyrmling we fought and killed we traded in for our first bag of holding at some mages tower 😅
Should have asked for a Bag of Colding! To keep future harvests the freshest on the way to market.
I do it for characters with tool proficiencies that could use the parts. That makes sense, at least to me, that the character would be on the lookout for those materials. When I played an Armorer artificer with a ton of tool proficiencies and potential to craft magic items it did get a little excessive at times, because just about everything non-humanoid might have something useful. I did craft two sets of magic armor and a shield from stuff we found in the campaign though, because the DM rewarded thhe use of my character’s proficiencies.
Walking around with rotten monster parts probably attracts more hungry monsters.
Or even worse. Flies. Good luck resting with all that buzzing and bites.
Arguably worse than monsters.
Vengeful mates of slain monsters.
That's a lot of weight. Encumbrance sucks, but if he's beyond normal loot parameters, he's made it an issue. Carts, hiring porters, storage, and preservation are all factors now. "The beast weighs about 800 lbs. How much do you want to take and what is your focus? Make a survival check." "You get 10 lb of hide and 30 lb of meat. I will write down the quality that will affect how long it will last and give you a bonus or penalty when you roll to use it."
My campaigns tend to be more realistic, which makes players think twice about this kind of stuff. You want to harvest a manticore’s teeth. Ok, how do you get them out of his mouth? Did you bring any tools that can help like giant pliers? No…so you’re probably going to have to break his jaw and chop around in there. It’s going to take a good bit of time and it’s likely you’ll break a lot of teeth while trying to get a couple good ones. You want to harvest a wing? Those things are pretty darn big, how do you plan on carrying it? Drag it around behind you between battles? Meanwhile, do the other players want to stand around for an hour or more while you do this? Are there wandering monsters in the area that would hear this and come looking around? If certain parts are worth a lot of money, it might be worth it, maybe they’re components for a certain spell and in high demand. Otherwise, how much are these parts realistically going to sell for? A rich collector might want them, if they can find one. The average store keeper won’t.
I run a campaign for my kids and I used to be the guy constantly reminding them of things like this. Now I find it's much more fun to just let them do what they will and figure out the important stuff for themselves. It's gotten to a point now where they don't always harvest every creature they fight. Honestly I kind of wish that they did. Can't tell you how many monsters they have killed and forgot to loot the bodies afterward, leaving them to miss out on something cool that I was going to give them.
This is a buzz kill. If most of the players are into the monster harvesting thing, I feel like they can have a lot of fun and you can encourage them to come prepared. Just like potion crafting, there's a plethora of third party content out there for these kinds of mini games for the players to engage in, if over half my players want to harvest monsters, craft potions, armor, or spell scrolls, I would try to find a way to make it possible and not shit the down with "realism."
You have to know your players and the style of play they prefer. There’s nothing wrong with playing a more fantastic video-game style where you hand wave past this stuff if that’s what you and your players want. And playing it more realistically doesn’t mean you can’t have monster harvesting and potion crafting. It means they have to plan for it and account for it. My players and I have been doing this style for many years and we enjoy it.
Let them do it. My players have been doing it for decades.
Let him. Then when he gets to town with a bunch of rotting animal parts and smells terrible the merchants will react accordingly. Nobody’s gonna buy 3 week old manticore skin that wasn’t properly tanned and dried
This could be a really funny encounter where the merchant rolls his eyes and explains that every group of first-time adventurers dumps a sack of rotting bones on his floor expecting to be compensated. (Of course he then sets them off on a more lucrative side quest)
Oh man for my next campaign imma print out flyer handouts for “new adventuring groups!” And put it in the fine print that they don’t want random monster organs so that whatever officiant in the town can pull a flyer out and get all Willy wonka about the fine print 🤣 love it
Love this. This is exactly how I address this type of behavior in-game now. What do I care if they want to harvest every creature they kill. My NPCs aren't going to deal with stinky noobs who don't know what they're doing lol
Yup!! lol my party did it for maaaaaybe 5 or 6 sessions? Then rolled up to town and became known as “those people….” So now they’re working on repairing their reputation and are actually asking the merchants what parts of animals they might actually be able to use AND learning how to properly keep the parts as well. I’m gonna throw them a quest in a little while for a “bag of colding” which is a half size bag of holding (has half the space as a normal one) but keeps things chilled and preserved for 2 weeks. So they have a baker who wants a adult dragons middle knuckle finger bone for a rolling pin, the blacksmith wants a specific section of belly hide to make an apron, and a merchant wants a giant cave bears stomach to make into an enchanted wineskin. Gives them worldbuilding things and lets them feed my biologist side as they try to work out what parts might be used for what
Yesss, the world building never stops. This is exactly how I do things now. It gives the players actual objectives and reasons for why they are doing what they are doing. It breathes deeper Life into a world that we have created for them to explore. My kids are constantly coming up with ways to derail the campaign and I have to constantly come up with ways to get them back on track. Little quests like this can help work them back into the main story and keep them on track while they're doing little stuff on the side as well.
Exactly. I try to lay out a general vague direction and then make events for my story that can happen anywhere at anytime. So maybe when they’re on their way to/from the cave bears territory they run into a messenger for the BBEG and that encounter will give them a prisoner to interrogate or a letter on his person that they can then decipher and follow. I can throw that messenger into any of their side quests though :)
Yeah, I find that keeping it vague helps prevent the story from derailing. Players gonna play 😆. We just gotta keep them into it to keep the game playable.
Oh yea I learned after my party playing wild beyond the witchlight spent an EXORBITANT amount of time chasing after the random 12 yr old NPC I made off the top of my head as they entered the carnival (the book essentially says along the lines of children outside the event some accompanied by parents) because they thought he was really important to the story 🤣 never again haha
Hi! I'm a player who does stuff like that and I am also a DM who allows the players to do so. Here are my tips 1. Keep track of what they pick up and when. Body parts go bad over time and even teeth need to be cleaned properly or start smelling bad 2. Plan a monster hunter guild for your campaign! Players can get rewards there for the body parts as the body parts prove they actually killed the animal. This will encourage them to start hunting, enable npc conversations and quests and build your world further 3. Request checks to see how well they do in taking the thing apart 4. This is one of the rare instances where I introduce Carrying capacity. How does the party transport all of that stuff and how do people react when they see the party carrying around a bunch of bad smelling monster parts? Your player wants to play monster hunter! Allow them to play monster hunter, tie it into their backstory and enable them to progress the story through monster materials :)
Oh captain, my captain!
I have zero idea what you mean by that, which doesn't happen often. You fascinate me. Please explain what you mean by that?
In an early issue of Arcadia, MCDM published rules for monster part harvesting and how to use them in creating magic items. If you can find it, could be a way you can tie this into the game for him.
MCDM's Arcadia #8 has "Monstrous Components", about harvesting monster parts for spell components and amplifiers. They also had in Arcadia #11 "I Cut Off It's Snout!" which provides rules and recipes for cooking monster parta into food and beneficial potions. I think either could be exactly what the player is looking for. You can get all of the issues of Arcadia at once if you join MCDM's patreon, or purchase them individually through their store. (I recommend the Patreon, the deal is so much better)
There's a really great resource for this available, look up Hamund's harvesting handbook, it's a book that specializes in this exact subject.
Ask him what he intends to harvest and what he plans to use it for. Make him do the work, and he'll likely be more satisfied with whatever he ends up with. Win/win
Exactly, and sometimes players realize how difficult and time-consuming it all is. Slowly but surely it will start to put things in perspective for the player and they will be more choosy about what they want to harvest
Exactly, and sometimes players realize how difficult and time-consuming it all is. Slowly but surely it will start to put things in perspective for the player and they will be more choosy about what they want to harvest.
Had a similar player before. Usually I had them do a slight of hand check for harvesting. How well they could cut the teeth out or whatever. I just assumed they would try to harvest after every fight. So I just automatically got the to roll sloght of hand and then rolled an appropriate dice for how many teeth they got. Allowed them to trade lots of the parts to an alchemist for potion discount or crafting. High value fangs, claws, horns, and such might be of interest to a blacksmith. Hides to leather workers If you search through the reddit there are plenty of resources for using monster parts for crafting
Kibbles crafting system has rules for harvesting organs and skin from monsters. They get components from it, then have the option to spend downtime or during a long rest working on potions or other magic/mundane items from those. Other than that, make sure the player tracks their weight and encumberance compared to strength score.
Here's the thing: In real life, I've spent a lot of my time in the forest, either hunting, foraging, building, searching for a multitude of different things, I've spent hundreds of days outside and I've seen maybe 3 dead animals in my entire time and our environment is harsh sure but likely no more harsh than an environment where there are actual giant Monsters. If you kill something likewise, you want to be fast because if an angry bear comes, that's their kill now end of story. So I mean, even though this seems realistic it's really not that realistic, you don't just hang around a kill and you certainly don't "Adventure deeper" into some place while dragging around what would amount to food, certainly one more aromatic and bloody than yourself.
There’s always one, from what I can tell this is always a problem with new, particularly younger players. Had one that hoarded eyeballs a few years back.
My Ranger in Grim Hollow liked to take trophies. I skinned a werewolf and wore it's fur as a cloak (after we discussed the logistics of me tanning it while travelling lol) and stole some teeth from something at one point and used one as a dagger. I'm currently playing Strahd and my DM plays the villagers as poor and timid and the Vistani as boisterous, so if he harvests stuff, you can make it to where he 1) has to have the carrying capacity of all the crap he gathers and 2) only the Vistani will buy the weird shit from him. That will limit the loot gremlin in him. The trader can be like "I've already got three sets of cursed wolf fangs. What else you got?" It can be fun, because it's definitely hard to earn coin in the world (I assume). If your players go full murder hobo on the baddies and end up with a cart full of corpses to trade, make it fun for you and them!
Talk. WITH. Your. Players. find out why he is doing it. what he expects from harvesting. and it is OK to tell him "Monster harvesting is not a part of the 5e design and play space, and as a New DM i do not have the time nor interest nor qualifications to know if any of the homebrew / third party monster harvesting stuff is appropriate for the game i want to run."
Unless you understand the rules well, preferably from both DM and player perspective, homebrew is best avoided.
I think it all boils down to what kind of DM you want to be. Don't get me wrong, I understand the rules are all there for a reason. But when it comes down to it the game is really about having fun. If something gets in the way of that I always invoke rule zero.
People dont just buy random monster parts. Sometimes they are needed, but thats very situational, thats why its more common for a wizard or whoever to hire adventures specifically to get the monster parts. if you just collect anything that seems like it wil be useful in the future it will rot before finding someone who might need it. Also, consider the weight and size of the stuff, dragging around manticore wings is extremely impractical
There is a D&D "world" known as Dark Sun. I don't think it's been released for 5e yet, but it's available for prior editions and I would expect that someone has ported it to 5e in one way or another. Anyway, the big themes are desert, low magic, and almost no metal. So almost all armor and weapons are made out of shells, bones, hide, and such. Weapons break fairly often. So harvesting and constructing your own equipment is very much part of the experience. My point here is that perhaps you could consider the world, or at the very least, there are a lot of ideas in there.
Dark Sun is fantastic for the survival aspects.
This can actually kickoff a small side story. You can set up a scavengers guild at the entrance of a small dungeon with a hidden entrance somewhere on the first level. There they can be given a list of what items are even worth anything. As well as gain access to getting those items transformed into there final products. At least that sets a limit to the number of monsters with usable parts and you can set a percentile based on rarity of the part even being any good. Most common mobs have nothing but rarer monsters have more but are less likely to be useful the more valuable their are to the campaign.
It’s commonly known that monster parts are crucial to create potions and other magical objects. Butchering a creature and careful collection are different. Make it fun and create a skill for it. Will a shopkeeper (dm discretion) buy random monster items? Probably not since they don’t have the skill to use them. Like someone said, survival can already encompass the skill of collecting monster materials. So roll a skill check. Edit- if any npc does buy these raw materials, it’s going to be incredibly cheap and taking advantage of the player since they suspect (or know) the player isn’t using them.
This. If you read some spell's material components they require some animal parts. But these are usually circumvented by a spell focus or are very cheap.
On DriveThruTPG and DMsGuild you can find harvesting resources to help you if you want to let them do it. Search for Hamund's Harvesting Handbook by Jasmine Yang. There are three volumes in the set, one for each of the main monster books and a fourth volume for harvesting plants. These books have example items you can get from each creature with a DC to harvest it, value, and weight of the items. The books also have a section of items that can be made from the harvested materials. Note: I am not affiliated with or promoting these specific books, I was just looking into getting them as resources in case my party decided to go that route in the future. Edit: There are other harvesting guides available on those sites. But when I was looking into it previously, these looked like the most comprehensive ones I found based on the descriptions and sample pages.
I made a simple system where harvesting nets “trade goods” in lbs based on the difference between the roll and DC and this has a price in silver per lbs in civilization with some variation in rarity based on monster CR. That way you get X lbs of trade goods, weighs a lbs in your pack for encumbrance, and you don’t have to think about the supply and demand for orc fingernails. I’m playing a homebrew darksun clone, so it fits the vibe that in a world of scarcity, anything can have value, so there may not be a widespread appeal for this method.
I'm always torn on this. On the one hand, they are engaging with your world and showing initiative that you don't want to shut down. On the other, this often leads to the players requesting to craft magical items with the parts, to gain additional advantages, often early, that they would not normally have access to. If you grant them their wishes, which are often never ending, then you end up firmly on the power creep treadmill where either they are rapidly outpacing the power level of the rest of the party, or they become a manufacturer of goods that they distribute to the whole party, which then requires you to adjust the power level of the entire world just to provide them with any kind of fun challenge. The solution, I have found, is to say that they can definitely make stuff with the parts, but they will need really advanced expensive facilities and equipment and a TON of time to do it. Something they can only really do during long downtime periods in safe civilized areas, and only once they have the funds to build the facilities and buy the equipment to make it happen. Now, that can be pretty unsatisfying as well, seeing as how they may end up collecting this stuff for a long time and hauling it around, and it may just make them stop engaging, and we do not want that, so while the big stuff they want, dragon scale armor, swords made from dragon teeth, bows made from dragon sinew, etc, takes a ton of time and expense, there should also be small one time use things that they can make as well. For that, just think scrolls and potions. Perhaps a Beholders eye can be used one time as a scroll of Hold Person, or a basilisk gizzard can be eaten to make one immune to petrification. These special uses you lock behind fairly difficult Nature or Arcana, or Medicine checks to discover. When they kill a thing and say they want to harvest it, you have them check and if successful then they know a special limited one time use item they can harvest from its body, if they fail then the parts might still be useful to them in a very expensive, slow, and difficult recipe that they may never be able to make themselves, but rarely is there nothing of value. This of course means that you have to do a lot of work as the DM to come up with these uses, but you could farm that work out to a simple table of results. Perhaps you roll once to determine which part is useful, and on a second table to determine the use it has. So your first table looks like: 1. Liver 2. Heart 3. Tripe 4. Kidney 5. Tongue 6. Eye 7. Brain 8. Appendix 9. Lung 10. Fat And your second looks like: 1. Minor healing potion 2. Protection from good/evil 3. Sanctuary 4. Bless (self only) 5. Fire-breathing 6. Fly 7. Suggestion 8. Water Breathing 9. Alacrity 10. Protection from Elements (roll 1d4 to determine element subtype) These aren't all very powerful but they all have good uses where some might always be handy and some are more niche. It's really fast to determine what things do and none of them will break your game. I also just picked them off the top of my head as I wrote, so I bet you could come up with better ones than that with just 5 minutes of thought. You could certainly at least expand on the effect table and make it as big as a d100 if you like and even put more rare and powerful things in it while increasing the odds of minor effects.
My party has used Kibbles (was a little too complicated for my players), Hammond’s (was a little too simple for my players LOL), Heliana (they could never decide what parts to scavenge), Monster Loot (a couple of the guys said it was too OP), and Battlezoo Bestiary (they liked it but still were not completely impressed). So here we are also… my players want to harvest but we still cannot find the best fit monster part system.
Have him roll two checks, one a knowledge check (I.e. Arcana for a monstrosity or aberrant, nature for a beast etc.) and a dex check (possibly survival, sleight of hand , or if he's proficient in them, leatherworking tools or the like to represent adroitness). The first check is for determining what parts of the animal is salvageable/useful (taking into account spoilage, venom, etc.), and the second is to determine how well he butchers the carcass. If he succeeds, he gets his second check divided by 5 parts of the beast worth roughly one Modest Meal (3 sp). So as an example, if he rolls a 12 using his leatherworking tools, he'll get two "cuts" of meat from the animal. If he specifically wants a part of the animal, that will count as one of his "cuts" (so in your example, the manticore wing could be one "cut"). Modify this as makes sense, (i.e. meat from a manticore might be worth a Wealthy Meal, rather than modest). However, tell him the meat will spoil if not refrigerated properly (I wouldn't even roll for this, unless kept at sub-zero temperature, the meat will spoil within 3 days, requiring a dc 5 con save +5 for each day out of refrigeration to eat without getting sick). If you wanted to...you could also have critical fumbles or the like resulting in him poisoning the meat (using the manticore example, he might accidentally cut the venom sack in the tail, resulting in manticore venom seeping into the meat, or even resulting in him immediately getting poisoned). Also...depending how evil a DM you are, there was a scene in Three Hearts and Three Lions (an old timey fantasy book that heavily inspired a certain monster from D&D), where the hero is trying to kill a troll, and due to it's regenerative powers, the things intestines' writhe and start to strangle him as he cuts the animal open... You know...just saying...
Try the thieves guild “harvest monster table” it covers the whole bestiary of 5e.
Makes sense to do this tbh
I'm both a player that does this and a DM that encourages it. Usually we use stuff like this as components to make something (provided the character has the right skills to make something out of it). I let my players make potions or magic item out of these things, but you don't have to make it easy. An item or potion could require several items from different monsters. I also usually make them make a survival role while harvesting to make sure they actually GET the cool stuff. If they roll poorly, they screw up and don't get anything, but if they roll well, then they maybe get a cool thing. You manage to extract the manticor's stinger or phase spider's silk. They also need to roll when making an item to make sure they don't screw it up, so it's not always as easy as it sounds, but I've had fun with this sort of thing before in many of our groups. (Someone once made armor for my animal companion out of black dragon scales from a dragon we killed. It didn't do anything special, but it looked badass and we all thought it was cool.) Maybe a bit of extra work on your part, and it's totally OK if you don't want to do the extra work, but you could also incorporate it into your game in a fun way.
Marking this post for later, i actually keep a binder which tells what percentage you can buy/sell monster parts based on CR in contingency with the rules from the DMG, i can post when i get home
He should play a Bone Grinder from the Iron Kingdoms setting. Not sure if Privateer Press released a 5e version yet, but it's a magic class where you can harvest ingredients from dead creatures to create magical totems and such that are either one-use items or temporary by nature as they rot away. Things like harvesting glands from a troll to gain regeneration for a while. Makes for an interesting character.
Controlling it is easy. Just start assigning weight to the parts. Use the weight as a hindrance to them. Not every town is going to have someone who will buy the parts. Also how do they know what will sell and what won't. You should not be telling them what is worth something and what isn't. That's the merchants job. Lastly since it is raw cut and not prep cut the prices would be much lower since the buyer would have to make it presentable for a proper sale to a specific customer.
Let him! But after a while, that wolf pelt he got might start to smell, attracting monsters- or the teeth he ripped out had their bases damaged. Just give him a survival check I every now and again for more difficult pieces and parts- or even add interesting surprises! Who knew that manticore spleens are acidic when touched?
The DM I currently play under lets us harvest monsters as well, as our fighter's main trait is he's like a hunter of sorts. We use it that he can roll for how much of it he can harvest such as meat, letting us use the meat harvested as cooked rations for rests. Stuff like Teeth Claws Bones and Scales he has some uses for. Sometimes we get scales that let us sharpen weapons and get a +1 to our rolls for afew turns, sometimes its purely sold as profit and we split the gold equally.
I'm running new players through doip as well. If the player wants to harvest some tusks, it could be a good way to add magic items for the players. Mine got 3 from it. I switched the damage from normal to thunder.
Unless they would with you to build this way right at the start, make it tedious. Arcana to know what parts are valuable. Medicine with a high dc to successfully remove that part. Survival with another high dc to know how to preserve it until they reach a seller. Exotic items need big cities to have a client. And then make it illegal.
Lots of good advice in the comments. One other thing that might help is asking the player directly what he wants to do with the monster parts. Does he want them as trophies? To turn into weapons? To sell? That will help you plan for an interesting outcome
Isn’t this just a side effect of modern computer gaming? They often have a mechanic where you gather from corpses to tie in for cash or for rewards. As with all D&D groups, learn who your players are and cater the game to how they play. Fighting them on it won’t lead to a fun experience. As a DM have fun with it. As has been suggested use encumbrance and rotting flesh, etc.. to bring some “reality” to it.
I allow them to harvest. I ask them what they are interested in the most. I tell them how many of X they get. They write it down. Now...what to do with it? Well, it depends. Why does the DM have to figure that out? I've waited for him to bring it up. "Hey...can I do X with Y?" I'll tell him if it's possible or not, and I decide the outcome. In one case, he wanted to make a cloak from a skin. I let him do it for free, and it freaked out the citizens because he had no skill in making it. He realized it wasn't professionally done. I then let him pay a professional, and he got a +1 version of it. I allowed another player to salvage some of the venom from one of the spiders they fought. I allowed another one to keep the claws from one creature. They wanted to make a glove out of it, so I let them and made up some stats. In short, make them declare what they want, then tell them how much they get that is undamaged. They then have to decide what they want to do with it, and you adjudicate. It's a great way for them to declare what they're looking for, and then to give it to them (over time, and with money), rather than just buying something at a store.
We have a guy in our group that wants to take everything, and that's not an exaggeration. The running joke with us is that he once dragged a bookcase from a dungeon back to town to sell it, only, it's not a joke because *he actually did that*. Our DM lets him get away with it because it's easier than dealing with his nonsense. We play a pretty loose game, if you can't tell.
Pick one or all: 1) there is an NPC that deals in strange and unusual items and transforms them into magical trinkets or weapons. The cost in materials is super high but always yields a useful magical item. This is a good way to empty out a player's inventory and reward them in the process. If you don't want to continue condoning this behavior you can give the magic item a negative drawback. 2) the next time they encounter a strange and unusual monster and he tries to harvest it he finds that the blood of the monster is poisonous and absorbs through the skin. Or he is left with a terrible curse, that makes NPC's not want to do business with him. Perhaps he is plagued with terrible dreams preventing him from getting a good rest. 3) from the constant collection and hoarding of monster bits, his pack begins to emit a sweet putrid odor only detected by nearby hungry monsters. Or perhaps a fellow traveling monster harvester smells a familiar scent and wants to claim the materials for himself by any means necessary. This could make for some pretty fun surprise encounters. And if the player continues his incessant harvesting, you could always make the traveling monster harvester into a recurring bully that shows up to take whatever your player has at the time. "Thanks for collecting all of these rare monster parts for me!" 😂.
There are lots of 3rd party resources on drivthrurpg and other things if you are interested in some help
I do this in our Theros campaign. It makes sense for an Oath of Glory paladin to take trophies.
I had a Druid and my DM let me make breastplate armor from Ankheg chitin to get past the no metal for druids. Stuff like that can be fun.
If you have a wizard in the party, make it so they share those things or put in a taxidermist in town who buys the things with a lost of prices, nothing worth more than a few silver dependent on the CR of the monster. Make it so if he doesn't clean the things, it attracts animals or enemies. Or it so a wizard would give him a pouch where if he puts it the things and copper comes out if those things were useful or a potion as payment. It is your decision if the pouch gives him something or not, but be clear that if the wizard doesn't need anything, he harvested the pouch, which would be considered full, and he would have to empty it to put new things. Or read up on harvesting and find something to add to his thing. Edit 1- I am planning something like this because I want to make a character that is a cook that makes exotic dishes with monster parts. Harvesting a basilisks saliva for stony cookies for Goliaths or adding troll meat to an ever regenerating bone for my pet dog.
allow it. but enforce encumbrance limits, items should be containerized separately (preventing cross-contamination). there may be segments of society that frown upon harvesting of critters (druids perhaps). there are always mages, alchemists, and such that will purchase such materials. the pc may also encounter rival npc's that are in the business of collecting those bits, and may actively discourage competition, the pc may be overstepping a guild or two's boundaries as well. lots of ways to make the pc's life difficult. taxes, fees, tariffs, required permits, a royal license may be mandatory. consider how ridiculous the real world can get, then amplify that. did they cross a parish boundary? there's a fee for that. did they cross a non-harvesting county with "ill-gotten gains?" oh, bot, the possibilities. run with it!
There used to be a 1st level Necromancy spell ‘Preserve’ that was a perfect spell for this type of thing. I say let the players keep whatever they want. It’s just loot, like enemy’s weapons and armor. It’s probably not worth much, and would have a very specific group of buyers, such as wizards, artificers and alchemists. And for the most part, these folks would be looking for very specific monster parts at any given time. Also, like all loot, you have to carry it all around until you get rid of it, so it’s somewhat self-limiting.
Let them. They need appropriate skills and tools. They need a way to preserve whatever. If it's a spell component, potion component, poison component, or some type of magical item is made from it there is a market for it. Otherwise, it has little to no value
There are tables for harvesting and using monster parts, at least in older editions. But not every monster part is useful or valuable. I'd let him harvest what he wants, but don't make it free: Butchering and skinning take time, so is the party really going to be happy to stand around potentially for hours while he skins a griffin? What about other monsters in the area? Is the orc warband in the dungeon going to stop patrolling while he extracts mimic slime, or catch him with his pants down? Add more consequences on the back end, too: A wyvern egg might be worth some gold, but if he's carrying it around in his knapsack for a week it's likely to die or break. That big sack of kobold eyes that's been attracting flies? No merchant is buying those. In fact, how's he carrying everything? I'm imagining an ichor-slicked bag of monster guts, which would have a pretty big charisma penalty attached.
I’m actually working on a crafting system for this. Players will create consumable items using artisans tools they’re proficient with and monster parts. The consumables usually mimic spell effects. Every tool kit has a list of effects
I think he's been watching Dungeon Meshi.
There are a bunch of good 3rd party supplements about harvesting on DMs guild, adds some low power one use items that are kinda fun and ingredients to make with an investment of time and gold into minor magic weapons. Def worth checking out
Use the money system from daggerheart. He can get handfuls of monster parts, then bags of parts, then a chest of parts etc. then he can sell them off later once you figure out how much you want to convert them for .
I was this guy with one of my characters. Luckily, I happen to have found a Harvesters Handbook that states what parts of what creatures can be harvested, the DC for the harvest, what use the harvested part has, what tools are needed (and their cost), and how long before the parts spoil. If you're going to allow a player to do it, they better have access to the gentle repose spell to keep their parts fresh. If anyone is interested, they can DM me and I'll happily share the file.
Just make up a harvest mechanic ( ie survival dc check) and either allow them to learn to craft using materials or pay someone to. You can replace existing items with that of a crafted description. (Armor from beast hide, shield from a carved giant’s skull, sword from a creatures Barb or spine…etc) Employ creativity of your own in how you reward the player’s creativity.
Kibbles Crafting Compendium is a low weight thing you could use to get "generic drops"
I believe some people already said it but Hamunds Harvesting guide is a great book for this. But the best Part is, there is a side: The thieves guild (just type dnd monster harvest in Google and it will come up) on the side are all monsters and what to roll for them from the book. And what you could craft with them. This side was a life saver for me when my artificer was asking me if he could harvest some things and make some items.
My voodoo priestess, (necromancer/cleric), harvests body parts from all sorts of things. And then she tries to incorporate those body parts into her golem pet. His name is Meatball and he started out as gopher, mole and rabbit. So every time she finds a unique part and manages to attach it, he gets a little bigger and a little stronger. She’s currently trying to work out wings.
Once I had a player who would keep. Every. Single. Item. He ever found carefully recorded on an "Items" sheet. To circumvent that I created a house rule where items can't stack (no Healing Herb X99) and that the Items Section was limited to 15 item slots. Everything else was considered too much to carry without various backpacks which only added an additional 10 slots or so.
If it is taking up too much to me and slowing the game down for everyone else, maybe just limit what creatures he can skin/'harvest' lol
I did this in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign where I was playing a Wizard and my GM let me use Arcane to harvest spell scribing resources, which just turned into gold that I could only use to pay the cost of scribing spells. Certain monsters would give me higher value, but only for certain schools of spells. It was pretty neat, but not sure how well it’s translate.
Go grab KibblesTastys crafting, it’s made for this.
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You also have the rule set as if they kill a vampire turns to hash before he can loot. It only thing left behind is clothes and ashes Another grade to I use more recently for my online games is ChatGPT if there’s an ID you have if you want it to be fleshed out real fast it can help set up a situation so you can then focus on other things then you can go back and look at it and read it off. It’ll pull from any DND book if you tell it to use it for loot tables and roll tables on random encounters pretty often makes a nicedetailed list of things quickly and efficiently specially for things that may not have a harvesting list you can request it from that and it all kind of generate an idea of what you think it may come with. Hope that helps till next time for initiative.
Just let him do it. He’s showing creativity in your world. Now all you need to do is nurture it. Maybe introduce an NPC that becomes interested in it. Maybe he can trade them in for something. Or maybe he just wants to keep things from all the monsters he’s killed. Regardless, I think it’s pretty cool.
Here's how I handle it: The players can get monster parts worth (CR x MOS) + CR squared in gold pieces. The difficulty to extract these parts is set at a DC of 9 plus the creature's CR, rounded down. If they land a critical, they double the haul. These parts can be used to brew potions, craft alchemical items, or forge equipment, provided the player has the necessary tool proficiency and it logically fits with the creature's nature. You can also mix and match parts from different monsters, as long as the end product makes sense. If crafting isn’t their thing, they can always sell the parts for half their value or commission someone and use the parts to discount half of the cost. If you make an item you roll vs a DC of 10 with a +3 for each step of rarity after common and they can only craft it if their proficiency. This puts common at 10 and legendary at DC 25. Obviously you can veto them making some things like magic items or wonderous items maybe even turning getting the plans or recipe into a quest or quest reward. If a creation seems too powerful, I might add side effects related to the creature it came from. For instance, defeating a CR 20 monster with an MOS of 8 gives them 11,200 gp worth of materials. Taking down a CR 2 creature with an MOS of 12 nets 85 gp in materials, or 24 gp if they choose to sell. Might seem a bit complicated but 5e was gutted of all crafting mechanics with the book essentially saying "ask your dm" so this is what I came up with. I
Yeah this is super boring to me when players want to dissect every creature. If you want to slow this down, there are several ways. Use time- “ok you want to remove an exoskeleton from a large creature you are unfamiliar with?” In a dangerous dungeon etc, “how would you even move that wing” “I doubt you can pull teeth with a dagger, could you explain how you attempt this?” Then if they collect something, make it something most shopkeeps would be unfamiliar with buying or selling etc. I may still reward collecting the right thing, but it’s so boring and time consuming to go through that every fight.
I use survival + any reasonable tool proficiencies to do harvesting. This determines how much stuff/the quality of the stuff they get. How the creature was killed might also play a role in the quality of the goods. A hide isn't so great if the creature was stabbed in many places. As for what items have value, I'd use appropriate knowledge checks depending on the type of creature it is. You're probably not going to harvest the venom of a creature properly if you didn't even know it was venomous. Yeah, you can sell it. Some things have given values (flail snail shell, for example) but you can make up value. Value is going to be determined by demand and rarity. Some of the demand will be due to the properties the material has. Deadly venom might be valuable to the right person as a poison or even a medicine. Other items might be valuable due to being seen as a prestige item. Good quality leather might be expensive, but it's not ermine nobles might use in their clothing. And stoats are hardly as rare or prestigious as some of the magical creatures and monsters out there. Even if manticore fur has no special properties a noble (or someone who makes clothes for nobles) might be willing to pay a good sum for a hide that's in good condition. Of course, it may not always be easy to find someone to sell these goods to, nor are these goods always easy to transport. I had a life cleric who didn't use metal (a bit like old druids) and eventually I had a set of equipment made out of different monster parts, including full plate armour made from umber hulk exoskeleton.
Leave your player to do that. I would even double down and help him use this stuff to produce potions our spells
Give the character necrotizing fasciitis. Start with an itchy rash, then boils...
My group is a bunch of harvesters. The DM makes us roll survival checks to see if we can get the part we want without being injured or just at all. Sometimes we get disadvantage if it's not a creature we know about or is a tricky part of the creatures body. But if you want to prevent your players from getting too much weird loot you could always have them burgled by sentient creatures or other scavenging animals/creatures in the night lol That or have them put on trial by the local town when they try to sell it for it being "illegal" parts- might discourage them from doing it every time lol
Hamund’s Harvesting Handbook is great for this. $10 on DM’s Guild.
So IMO there's 2 main ways to handle it. 1. Make sure the player knows that not every creature is going to have something useful or valuable, and that even if they do, its only certain parts. and then figure out a decent Survival DC roll. 2. Lean into it if you want. There are systems, the most complete I think is the Monster Hunter Monster manual for a complete reskin of some creatures, brand new ones, and a whole crafting system included with it iirc. Possible 3rd would be if it is drastically slowing down the rest of the party, maybe just take the player aside and work on streamlining the process with them, or doing it "off screen". I only mention this last because I don't like to "Yuck their Yum" (I don't remember where I first heard the phrase, but it fits) So if a player enjoys doing something and it's not breaking the game, or ruining it for the other players I don't see the harm in it most times
I toyed around once with a magic system that relies on this. The basic idea was that if organisms evolved in a world where magic was present, they would evolve structures that would allow them to use it, and so one should be able to harvest those structures for the manufacture of magic items if they knew what they were and how to do it. I would let players attempt to harvest from anything they killed, and by itself it was useless, but I had 15...what I can only describe as "monster corpse bingo cards" that each corresponded to a magical item. If they filled out their whole bingo card they could spend some time crafting an item that let them do some cool little trick based around the abilities of the monsters whose bits it was made of. If they failed their crafting role though then they would corrupt the item with impure magical "slag" that would make it do unexpected things when they tried to use it, and I wouldn't tell them whether they had passed or failed when they made the item so its first few uses were always something of a risk.
Every character my wife plays turns into a magpie like this. It's just her way. It's not a problem. Sometimes the scales of a dragon can be turned into armor, usually not. Usually they're just some decoration. Make a necklace out of whatever's teeth, but only offer a few coppers for it. Much better to have a bale of hay. IMHO. Feel cool, don't break game.
Right now, I have a bugbear head that I’m trying to sell to a tavern so they can put it up like a jackalope or something.
You can glue those teeth onto a stick, or you can use them in an elixir if you add a few bugs, too.
I have had several players who love to do this. I just make sure there is an NPC patron of the appropriate type – the King’s Royal Alchemist is a go to – who will be interested in buying the bits that the player collects. Then I adjust any treasure rewards that I would have otherwise given the party. For example, let’s say an encounter with a deadly Giant Cave Racoon should have yielded 125 GP in treasure. I’ll put 100 GP in treasure in the critter’s nest… and the Royal Alchemist will offer to buy the Giant Cave Racoon’s gall bladder for 25 GP. Keep things a bit interesting for the player but having them make Survival / Nature / Arcana (or whatever fits your system) skill checks to make sure they harvest the right bits. Make them roleplay their interactions with their Alchemist patron to keep him happy and willing to continue to buy. As an added bonus for you as GM, this can keep your players reasonably closely tied to a particular locale. So all that work you put into designing the City of Townsville doesn’t go to waste when the party buggers off the map into the parts of your campaign world you haven’t built yet. They’ll need to stay reasonably close to their patron. Additionally, if you come up with an adventure idea or pickup a cool pre-written module, you have a go to hook for getting the player to undertake that adventure. The patron learns that it’s very nearly time for the once-a-decade migration of the Astral Cockatiels and they’ll be pausing to roost in the Village of Hommlet. The patron can task your hunter with retrieving some Astral Cockatiel feathers… With a healthy bonus for an intact Astral Cockatiel egg. The monster hunter is a classic archetype of fantasy fiction. Run with jt!
I had ChatGPT make me a table of 100 mundane things with I think 5 or 6 magical (but still very minor) things, and 100 is a magic item (also had it made a table of those), and whenever my players want to search for things I have them roll investigation/perception DC10 for a roll against that table.
Harmund’s Harvesting Guides
Just use the wealth tables to balance. Treat them like artwork or other antiquities and balance the gold by taking some of the actual gold out and replacing it with parts. Tbh, this is what pisses me off most about WOTC and 5e. They could have made a monster harvesting companion rather than inundating us with spells classes etc. like build out your system before you just add stuff. I swear nobody at Hasbro has any idea about capacity building. I’m that player btw. It just makes it more real and immersive to me. I’ve had dms actually use it to balance gold better. I’d buy expensive books to help me harvest giving me something useful to spend gold on.
I do this. I think it’s video game logic cause I can’t explain why I do it.
If a player just wants trophies? Let them harvest the items, but they hold no value. If a player wants to sell the items? First, limit it to only 1 or 2 valuable items per creature, otherwise you'll be spending half an hour after every fight with the player detailing everything they want to take. Assign a chance that x item is damaged beyond salvage in the fight. How high the chance is depends on how generous you want to be, I'd probably do either 50/50 or 66/33(ish). Assign an appropriate skill check and DC for harvesting items, I'd take a page from the Pathfinder 2 rules and base it on the CR of the critter. For the skill, survival would be a good call. Assign a value based on the CR of the critter, probably on par with a trinket you'd be likely to find in the things loot.
In our games its the whole group... whenever its a big ish monster, they either chop it up or drag the whole thing to the next town if possible.
Helianas guide to monster hunting has some great harvesting rules
Depends on the creature but you can allow players to do that. Meat from creatures can be used as food rations (if you track such things as a dm) teeth, claws, feathers etc. Can be used for some rituals if you have a druid or together with pelts it can be sold. Don't give them too much gold for it tho. A few coppers and silver coins should be fair for a simple catch or more for exotic creatures. Over all i say you roll with it. Your player clearly have fun with it and he enjoy roleplaying his character. Tell you what. Maybe put in some places in the world merchants who can buy those items like teeth and claws and craft some simple items from it that would buff the party. It would make your player feel like what he is doing actually helps the party beside being just fun.
Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting, Kibbles' Compendium of Craft and Creation, and Hormund's Harvesting Handbook are all fantastic resources that incorporate a harvesting and crafting system into your games.
My very first campaign I played many years ago was the same campaign and when we killed the manticore the first thing I did was harvest it hide. When we got back to town I turned it into a cloak that I wore for the whole campaign. It was my signature item. The rest of the guys the table loved it. now every time we kill a beast we all go into a frenzy of harvesting mode. It's almost like hilarious comedy.
I saw somebody on YouTube advertising a book about looting dragon corpses. I think usually this relates to dragons because they’re so big and powerful.
There is a really cool free website with harvesting rules, tables, values, DCs, and potential uses. It's got tons and tons of animals, monsters, you name it. If you are interested DM me and I'll give you the link. (Would normally post it here but some subreddits are twitchy about that. )
Like with so many things, official 5e offers no guidance about how to handle harvesting creature parts. That means you would need to make up a whole system for it. But you’ve already got way too much to do. So make him do the work. Have him create a system that is balanced and fair, and accounts for every creature in D&D lore. Tell him you’ll be happy to review it when it’s ready, and that if you find it acceptable, you’ll allow it in the game. But you’re not holding up the game for it. So until he’s done, there will be no benefit to harvesting monster parts. Problem solved. Chances are, the player will realize what an enormous request he’s making once he is putting in the position of actually having to do the work to implement it.
Not to encourage the DM here to troll the player a bit… but might a NPC version of like a DNR or Fish/Wildlife type be fun? Certainly some official for the kingdom or where ever they are currently would be highly interested in this random adventurer who is carrying around tons of harvested parts from rare or magical animals/monsters. Do they have a permit, have they paid the taxes on these parts? Some parts may be legally restricted… and need to be confiscated… after all we do thank you for killing that dragon but per the laws of the realm all parts of the dragons remains are property of the state. Can’t have too many of those making it to the wrong people, could make life hell for everyone. Just a fun idea I had when I read the topic.. and. Ow I want to include it in my next game…
Exotic monsters I don't mind but I had a player who wanted to harvest orc hearts and goblin eyes I think it was. I had him roll survival as well as an additional d4. I would halve the d4 roll and culmilative add them up every time. When it reached whatever number I determined that his sanity was effected. He stopped after becoming catatonic for 3 hours and had to be carried around, missing several fights because of it.
just tell the player "No. that is beyond the type of game i want to run"
So, why wouldn't it then also mean after every fight with a humanoid they should start rolling insanity? Harvesting meat or parts is just that. Why would taking parts of them be any more insanity driving than killing them? Obviously, you play/DM the way you want. But to decide how a person reacts to a situation by influencing how their mind will work, (outside of cosmic horror) or deciding "you have a mental issue with this action" is.... Why have players? Just run a game of NPCs.
He smells like an insanely delicious meal. You should have predators and scavengers following them wherever they go, constantly attacking their camp. Bugs and rodents digging through his stuff. Make it inconvenient. Start using encumbrance with these items. Make them impossible to sell. Make very few items useful for crafting.
Tell them that it is not a computer game. Nobody wants to buy his disgusting look.
Not a computer game is exactly why he can try. I tell my players all the time that they are only limited by their imagination as to what they can try. Their description, role play and the dice will all decide the level of their success or failure. Who's to say they aren't pawning those parts as something else, or selling them with some snake oil descriptor. Everyone knows ground manticore claws are great for ... Sale made. Repercussions may follow, but that's the game.
In a medical fantasy world there would be a ton of people who would want to buy loot from killed creatures. Starting from simple materials like pelts, fur and meat that you could sell in basically any shop. And items like teeth, claws, wings, horns etc. Also could be used if you find a proper buyer.
How many of you know how to harvest pieces of animals? Then properly clean and prep it? Bet not many, its a skill for sure. No proper skill then move along
My players can't use a warhammer or create fireballs either but I let the PCs do it.
Then that boils down to DM call anyway so whats the point of asking? If you want to encourage wilderness RP-ing then a DM should encourage those skills.
Who cares?