In this series on gems (four years in the making!) I’ve talked about how to set up gem types for a dungeon and how to assign gems to treasure. But how do the players find out what those gems are worth? How do you determine the actual value of the gems brought back from an adventure?
It’s best to postpone this assessment until the end of an adventure.
Gem Appraisal
The main reason it’s best to wait until the end to identify gems and appraise their value is: the PCs have to find someone who’s able to do it. Gem appraisal is a job for an expert, and usually PCs don’t have the skill to do it themselves. So, they bring their treasure finds back from the dungeon to town and show the gems to a jeweler or someone else with the appraisal skill.
Finding an Appraiser
If the PC home base is a fairly large town or city, there’s really not that much effort needed to find an appraiser: just go to the Street of Jewelers or maybe even any merchant and ask “Can you tell me how much these gems are worth?” If you really need to know how long it takes to find someone like that, decide first if it’s going to take at least a turn (ten minutes) or an hour, then roll a d6: on 5+, it takes exactly one turn or one hour, while on a 1 to 4, it takes that many extra turns or hours.
If there’s some reason why it’s not obvious where the merchants and jewelers hang out, like “gems are outlawed” or “we don’t speak the language or understand the local customs, so we can’t tell who the jewelers are”, you might want to make the process of finding an appraiser more difficult, like requiring a reaction roll to see how well things go. On a Good or better reaction, the PCs find an expert. On a Normal reaction, the “expert” isn’t that good and takes much longer for an accurate appraisal. On a Bad reaction or worse, the PCs will need to look somewhere else.
Making an Appraisal
Even a beginner at appraising who’s no expert can tell the PCs the names of any gems found after about a minute of examination, but it takes 1 to 5 minutes for an expert or 10 to 50 minutes for someone less skilled to determine the actual value. This part doesn’t normally require a roll if the appraiser has plenty of time to use their skills and no outside stress to mess things up. If the GM or players needs to know how long the appraisal takes, a d6 roll like the one described for finding an appraiser will do the job. In many cases, you can make this roll after giving the appraisal.
There’s only one or two rolls that are absolutely needed:
- A reaction roll (maybe) to see if the appraiser is honest, shorts the PCs a little, or straight up lies. This is usually only rolled once, with the first reaction carrying over for all future interactions unless the PCs take actions that warrant a reroll.
- The actual value adjustment roll for each gem involved. The basic roll is a d6 adjustment roll, which I’ve described before.
| d6 roll | adjustment |
|---|---|
| 1 | halve the gem’s value |
| 2-5 | no adjustment |
| 6 | double the gem’s value |
If there are 1 to 5 gems being appraised, roll 1d6 for each gem. If there are more, split the gems into 2 to 5 groups (whatever works best) and roll 2d6 to 5d6, reading each d6 result individually, left to right. If you need to roll the reaction roll and you use a d6-based reaction roll, you can roll all these dice at once, although that means you might be rolling 7d6 in some cases.
(The reason I cap the number of dice rolled at five is because I think rolling too many dice at once actually slows things down. Plus, if you are using these “literal” dice rolls read left to right, rolling more dice can make things harder to interpret and may even cause dice to ricochet off each other, maybe sending one or two dice flying off the table. If you’re one of those people who likes the excitement of rolling huge handfuls of dice, though, you can go another way with this.)
DIY Appraisals
Some PCs may have an appraisal skill, or may train to become experts at appraisal. I’m one of those people who assumes dwarves and gnomes are experts at appraising gems, Some people assume thieves know how to appraise the value of “found” goods like gems as well. Personally, I think I’d allow most thieves to make amateur appraisals (taking 1 to 5 turns for appraisals,) but thieves with Int 16+ would be experts, taking only 1 to 5 minutes. I might even allow PCs in general to be amateur gem appraisers if their Int is 16+. You might want to check out my pamphlet on Liber Zero Adventurer Skills for more information on backgrounds, previous professions, and training in new skills.
Do It in a Dungeon, Save Time
If the PCs wait until they are back at home base, or at least until they reach some kind of safe zone, before they make any gem appraisals, there’s no need to roll for time. Just make the 1d6 to 5d6 appraisal roll to find the adjusted values of each gem.
If, however, there’s a chance of being interrupted, make the 1d6 situation roll to see how quickly the appraisal can be done: 5+ means it takes only one minute for an expert or one turn for an amateur to make an appraisal, while a roll of 1 to 4 adds an additional 1 to 4 minutes or turns.
It only takes 1 minute for either an expert or an amateur to identify what kind of gems they’ve found (the in-world names of the gem types.) The d6 roll only determines how long it takes to work out the actual value of each gem. If the whole appraisal takes more than one minute and wandering monster rolls are applicable, an expert might be interrupted by a monster arriving, and an amateur might never make it all the way through the appraisal.
Adverse Appraisal Conditions
I’m assuming here that the appraisal is happening in steady, bright light and the appraiser is using a jeweler’s loop or some other magnifier. An expert can skip using the jeweler’s loop as long as there are no other adverse conditions.
Adverse conditions make appraisals harder. If there is at least one adverse condition, roll 2d6 vs. Int. If the roll fails (higher than Int,) look up the result on this modified reaction roll table.
Appraisal Skill Failure
| 2d6 Roll | Appraisal Skill Result |
|---|---|
| 2 | appraisal fails |
| 3-5 | amateur appraisal fails, otherwise time x5 |
| 6-8 | multiply time needed x5 |
| 9-11 | triple time needed |
| 12 | double time needed |
If there are two adverse conditions, halve the appraiser’s Int score before comparing the result. If there are more than two, halve Int again and treat everyone as an amateur.
Adverse conditions include:
- Dim or unstable light (very dim counts as two adverse conditions)
- amateur without a magnifier
- expert without a magnifier and at least one other adverse condition
- sleepy or fatigued
- mist or haze
- watery eyes
- distractions
And anything else that reduces vision or affects the ability to focus.
Summary
The short version of this series on gems is: reduce the number of gem types for a location to just three or four, optionally rolling to set the base types if you don’t already have a concept, then figure out which treasures include gems in what proportions. Give players simple visual descriptions, but save space in your own notes by using gem type codes. When the players are ready to sell, appraise the gems to find out the real values.
Series Index
- Gems Intro
- Gems I : Types
- Gems II : Quantities
- Gems III : Assessments (this post)
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