Hunting Lists- My "Job Board"
- awildchicken77
- Apr 10, 2019
- 3 min read
Within my world of Eblon, there is a city called Caput. Just outside of the city is a local Adventure's/Hunter's Guild. The guild leaders created five different lists of beasts and monsters found within the forest surrounding Caput. To keep the druids happy, they rotate the lists so that no one creature is being hunted to extinction. The theory is to keep the populations in check so they won't be a major bother to the growing society.
So I created this for three level one players. I wanted to show them the monsters in the area that they could encounter while exploring the forest. I also hoped that it would get them more excited for various "random" encounters and that any "random" encounters would no longer be random. The idea is what Matt Colville talks about in Running the Game #2 (and others) about trying to create the world to be a dangerous and mysterious place. And because I have a ranger, I wanted to give the group the ability to track certain monsters if they wanted to chase a certain bounty.
Below is the system I used as well as the calculations and gold values for each creature on the first hunting list. This is just an example of something that you could use in your own games. I used Goblinist rough calculations of the different encounters and The Monster Harvester's Handbook for estimations of monster pieces in my world.
I did not tell my players about the alchemical properties of certain creatures. However, if they had asked for the prices per kill to be raised the guild would have instead offered to buy the pieces with alchemical properties and then sold them later. I left other ways for them to do research and learn the value of some of these creature products as well.
Hunting/Tracking the monsters:
- DC 8 to find random creature/random difficulty
- DC 13 to find a random creature/players choose the difficulty
- DC 18 to find one creature/random difficulty
- DC 20+ specific creature/choose difficulty
Constrictor snake (CR 1/4 & CR 2)- 2 gp per kill (skull for proof)
Very Easy: 1
Easy: 2
Medium: 4
Hard: 5
Deadly: 2 regular, 1 giant
Black bear (CR 1/2)- 4 gp per kill (hide for proof, extra 2 gp for good hide, 1 sp per claw w/ possibility of 20)
Very Easy: 1
Medium: 3
Deadly: 5
Blink dog (CR 1/4)- 2 gp per kill (hide for proof, extra 5 sp for good hide)
Very Easy: 1
Easy: 2
Medium: 4
Hard: 5
Deadly: 9
Ape (CR 1/2)- 2 gp per kill (hide for proof, extra 4 gp for good hide, 2 sp per paw)
Very Easy: 1
Medium: 3
Deadly: 5
Giant spider (CR 1 & 0)- 8 gp per kill (head for proof, 3 gp for silk, 10 gp for poison sack)
Easy: 1
Hard: 1 and 4 spiders
Deadly: 2
Harpy (CR 1)- 8 gp per kill (*head for proof, 10 gp for tongue)
*This, of course, assumes there is something different about harpy heads than other humanoids.
Easy: 1
Hard: 2
Deadly: 3
Conclusion
I only ran with these rules once, but it seemed to work pretty well. Well enough that I would give it another go at least. This is the only list that I took the time to calculate everything for at this time. If you would like to see others just let me know!
As normal, if you have questions or suggestions for improvement, let me know down in the comments.
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