Stripping a Golem for Parts

[kevin video]

I can't seem to find it, but after every fight one of my PCs is wanting to take the hide of animals or peel the metal off of golems and sell it for scrap and profit. He's really big into MMOs, and says if you can do it in those, you should surely be able to do it in table top games. I can't really disagree with that. For the animal pelts I had him do survival checks, and take a rank in Profession (taxidermy) so he'd know how to properly skin them, smoke them, etc. Would that work for golems too? Maybe a knowledge check? And even when that's done, what about prices? It's pretty damaged when you defeat them, so maybe half the cost it takes to build it? It would essentially be scrap.

[SneeR]

Don't let him walk all over you!

He will need Knowledge (arcana) to know how the golems are put together. Also, he will need tools that can reliably shave a golem... Adamant hunting knife and crowbar? Seems unwieldy...

Also, how do you know that golems are made in homogeneous layers that are easily separated and looted like animals? For all you know, an Iron golem has wood magically growing through the iron to provide flexibility and simultaneously make the iron itself useless! Seems presumptuous to assume you can salvage anything that has been royally borked by magic as to get up and walk on its own...

[sirpercival]

Also, he needs the Trophy Collector feat.  That will solve all problems.

[Unbeliever]

Don't let him walk all over you!

+1!

I can't really grok your gaming group.  Unless there are multiple groups you're involved in.  In one thread, you're really concerned with pricing magic items by RAW.  But, here you're asking about something that, to my knowledge, there is absolutely no D&D rules basis for.  Barring a few niche uses like Trophy Collector, which is more about a game bonus than wealth. 

I don't mean this as an insult in any way.  I think some level of consistency, even just in the sense of the amount of willingness you're willing to wing it as a DM, would make your life easier.  If they know you're going to make off the cuff rulings on such things, then everyone knows that, and won't worry too much about finding particular rules basis for it. 

There's no reason, RAW, and arguably by common sense that he'd be able to scavenge a whole lot from an iron golem.  It's (a) just a hunk of iron, not the most valuable material in D&D's game worlds, and (b) presumably beaten to hell.  That being said, it depends how much of a plot point you want to emphasize with this.  I could see it being very fun to hunt down and harvest various components so that magic items can be made.  It could be nice character flair, or it could be a total pain, depending.

Alternately, you are well within your DM rights to fold this scavenging into the wealth rewards for a monster.  Rather than getting a random cloak with griffin feather trim (or whatever is on those silly charts) you can say that he scavenges some rune-scribed iron that was not damaged by the battle worth the same amount of gp to an interested arcanist or collector.  Easy.

As a side note, the argument that b/c you can do it in an MMO you should be able to do it in a table-top game is bullshit.  We don't typically sit around in tabletop sessions for 4 hours while people grind through smithing 600 iron daggers, nor do we waste each other's time with having people walk for minutes or hours to get to the next plot point.  We just fast forward.  They are radically different mediums.  And, it's not like you're saying he can't scavenge things, the question is what benefit to get from it. 

[kevin video]

I do have multiple groups. Couple I play in, couple I DM. That being said, different PCs need different things.

The argument is that golems never give you treasure despite them being so expensive to build. So when they face up against one chances are they're not going to get anything for profit. They're just going to get a kick in the head or possibly worse. I don't purpose have them face off against golems regularly, but this particular campaign does have a fair number. When one of the final bosses is a corpsecrafter, chances are you're going to find a lot of undead and constructs.

What one PC was getting uppity about was lack of wealth (even though I make sure to stay true to the table and everyone's equal). Stating that golems, being as expensive as they are, especially mithral and adamantine, should be capable of getting harvested and various parts sellable to mercanes and other people who wish to build golems at a price.

[Unbeliever]

Yeah, I find it silly that some monsters give you treasure and others don't.  I usually find an excuse to put CR-appropriate treasure nearby, and, as I suggested, you could use harvesting as a similar excuse. 

[kevin video]

Yeah, I find it silly that some monsters give you treasure and others don't.  I usually find an excuse to put CR-appropriate treasure nearby, and, as I suggested, you could use harvesting as a similar excuse.

And it's a suggestion that I'll be using. The only problem is value. I was thinking half the value of what it costs to make so long as you can make the appropriate check. Considering he's a wizard with a very respectable Int score, and all knowledges, I don't really see that being much of a problem for him. This'll change my golems treasure from "none" to "incidental".

[Amadi]

A fairly simple explanation to give in situations like that is that magically enchanted golem-bodies are going to be really difficult to work with, and it would require a lot of dispelling magic to get them back to the point where they can be easily recycled. As such, enchanted materials are much cheaper than "raw" stuff.

I replied this to some of my players when asked. Of course, being the adventurous chaotic-neutral bunch of rascals that they are, they obviously didn't oblige to my excuses. Instead, the wizard opened Player's Handbook and pulled out Nystul's Magic Aura: "Nope, the mithril in that golem's body is clearly not enchanted.". Some bluff checks later, and..

Of course, I played it through. I had said that trying to re-enchant enchanted goods without dispelling the magic on them first was dangerous, and damn me if I wasn't going to stick to my word. The merchant they pawned the materials to then sold them forward, causing a few explosions around the town (Which the players naturally investigated, because they failed to put 1+1 together.), and some very pissed wizards at the merchants' doorstep requesting compensation for exploded laboratories.. And then the second wave of thiefs doing the same, because they realized that it would be a great opportunity to drop the blame on the people who originally pulled this off.

Lessons of the story: Enchanting is dangerous business, Nystul's Magic Aura is a tool for terrorism.  Mad wizards are mad.

P.S: If someone wants to run a 1% of Wizards make 99% of the magic items-campaigns based off this, feel free, but send me a message about how it went.

[Prime32]

I'd say the golem's body would be mostly useless unless melted down. There might be some internal components related to the bound earth elemental (in Eberron these would be Khyber dragonshards), but they'd be damaged when the golem was destroyed - maybe you could use the fragments as raw materials when crafting a weapon with the corrosive property or something.

[veekie]

Yeah, I find it silly that some monsters give you treasure and others don't.  I usually find an excuse to put CR-appropriate treasure nearby, and, as I suggested, you could use harvesting as a similar excuse.

And it's a suggestion that I'll be using. The only problem is value. I was thinking half the value of what it costs to make so long as you can make the appropriate check. Considering he's a wizard with a very respectable Int score, and all knowledges, I don't really see that being much of a problem for him. This'll change my golems treasure from "none" to "incidental".

Have their value be approximately equivalent to the expected treasure of an encounter that CR, with a small bonus for the extra work he needs to extract it then.

Emphasis, it has no relation on the costs of creation. Consider the following things, a sword and a car.

The sword is worth much more than than the raw material in iron. It is a complex mix and carefully distributed balance of alloy types and shaping. A broken sword is worth only the raw materials, you can't forge it together again to get the same quality. Heck you can't even recycle all the raw materials, you'd have to melt it down completely to iron, burn off the carbon(can't be recovered except at the level of the lowest carbon level in the steel), and slag off the various inclusions that make microalloys. Maybe you can distill the inclusions back out again.

A car is even worse, the raw material value of the car is possibly 10% or less of its total value, and it is more similar to a golem, as a complex mechanism composes of a wide variety of materials. A car pancaked in an accident would be unlikely to recover the circuits of its onboard computer(an analogy for the magic components in the golem) in a usable shape, and all the layered and shaped metal is a mess.

So...just ignore the creation cost and focus on what amount of treasure they SHOULD be getting out of the encounter. And give that.