Heroic Treasure Tables: Legendary Item values and/or % seem to be off by a factor of 10

General ACKS Forums Ask the Autarchs
1

I suspect the Legendary Item probability should per read as per mille (‰) rather than as percent (%). Either that, or the expected total value of magic items has been calculated using a value of 30k for Legendary Items rather than 300k.

What I’ve done:

  1. I’ve created a spreadsheet for the Heroic Treasure tables, copying the data from JJ page 126.
  2. I’ve tried to recalculate the stated Magic Item Value (very last number in parentheses).
  3. To do this, I’ve used the values for magic items listed on JJ page 249, NPC Wealth Table: Common = 500 gp, Uncommon = 2,500 gp, Rare = 12,500 gp, Very Rare = 60,000 gp, Legendary 300,000 gp.

What I’ve found:

All the results are as expected except for treasures containing Legendary items. It’s as if the total value had been calculated using a value for Legendary items of 30k, but that doesn’t make sense since it would make them cheaper than Very Rare items. If I instead cut down the % of Legendary items being present by a factor of 10, reading % as ‰, I get the listed totals.

2

You are correct! The Treasure Type tables in the “Heroic” section offer more legendary items than they ought to by the numbers. Unfortunately, the “real” numbers yielded almost no legendary items for any treasure types.

The tables were originally designed for use in the Heroic Fantasy Handbook, which simulates literary fantasy. I noticed that “legendary” items seemed to appear more often in the lore of heroic fantasy than rare or uncommon items - e.g. Conan encounters more named super-items (“Heart of Ahriman” etc) then he does medium-tier magic weapons. Same is true in LOTR. I never really explained this in the rules.

In the upcoming Treasure Tome we might offer the “real” numbers for people who want a lower-magic alternative, but it’s TBD. Everyone seems to love the HFH / Heroic tables.

1 Like