Talking about Treasure Types

 For most of my D&D-playing life, I've given very little thought to the Treasure Type tables. You just roll the percentile dice against a creature's listed type and cobble together its treasure hoard, and that's that. Easy-peasy. I never considered whether or not there were reasons behind those numbers in the table, why some types had larger or smaller chances for larger or smaller amounts of particular kinds of coins, why so many entries in the table were "Nil," or why some seemed not to be used at all. If tedious minutiae are your jam, then join me now on a deep dive into the B/X Treasure Type tables!

The first thing I did in my analysis was to calculate the average value of each Treasure Type. I had finished this step before I realized the books provide average values already, and I'm glad I did, because the book values seem a bit... wonky. Some of them are right in the same ballpark as my calculations, and could simply be the result of different rounding choices, but others vary significantly, and Type M is just completely bonkers wrong.

Treasure Type	Average Value (in gp, rounded to nearest 100th) (my calculations)	Average Value (book)	Monster Entries with this type	Average Monster HD	Notes
A	28,781.00	17,000	9	1.5	30% chance any 3 magic items
B	2,011.44	2,000	9	3	10% chance magic sword, armor, or weapon
C	990.81	1,000	19	4	10% chance any 2 magic items
D	3,882.08	4,000	11	4.5	15% any 2 magic items + potion
E	2,319.73	2,500	15	8.5	25% any 3 magic items + scroll
F	7,574.20	5,000	6	6	30% any 3 magic items except weapons + potion & scroll
G	23,204.31	25,000	1	1	35% any 4 magic items + 1 scroll
H	59,969.88	50,000	8	11	15% any 4 magic items + potion & scroll
I	11,105.75	8,000	3	18	15% any 1 magic item
J	20.00	25	1	0.5	No magic
K	180.00	125	0	n/a	No magic
L	243.13	250	2	1	Gems only
M	50,394.69	15,000	0	n/a	No magic
N	0.00	n/a	0	n/a	Potions only
O	0.00	n/a	0	n/a	Scrolls only
P	0.13	n/a	2	1	Copper only
Q	1.0	n/a	0	n/a	Silver only
R	3.5	n/a	2	1	Electrum only
S	5.0	n/a	1	0.5	Gold only
T	17.5	n/a	0	n/a	Platinum only
U	158.67	n/a	24		2% chance of a magic item; Average value heavily influenced by small chance of jewelry
V	329.49	n/a	16		5% chance of a magic item; Average value heavily influenced by 5% chance of jewelry
Vx3	992.28* 2,976.84**	n/a	2	11.5	*Percentages tripled OR amounts tripled **Both percentages and amounts tripled

Treasure Types A through O are lair types, intended to be held collectively by an entire lair of monsters, with coins in increments of 1,000. Types P through V are for each individual monsters, with coins in increments of 1. P through T don't have percentages at all, but automatic chances of a dice range of a particular type of coin. (Oddly enough, these are the only types guaranteed never to yield no treasure at all, though the amount is pretty paltry.) U and V use the percentage chance/dice range of units format, with coins in increments of 1 as per other individual treasure. 

There are some serious oddities with this table and how it's used in the Basic and Expert rulebooks. For starters, several treasure types are not used at all. No monster in the rules has Type M, N, O, Q, or T. Several types are only given to one or two monsters. Some monsters have both an individual and lair type listed, while other very similar monsters have only a lair type. Goblins, for instance, have Type R (C) and kobolds have P (J) but no other humanoids, including orcs, hobgoblins, and gnolls, lizard men, and troglodytes, have an individual Treasure Type. It's unclear whether this is a deliberate design choice or a careless oversight, but I lean toward the latter explanation. 

The types themselves seem quite arbitrary, and are listed in an apparently arbitrary order as well. One might suppose to find them listed in ascending or descending order of value, but no. The first four types listed in the table happen to be the most commonly assigned of the lair types, and they seem to be the most general assortments (as opposed to some of the very niche types farther down) but this could easily be an effect of the table being written first, and then the authors tended to choose from those nearest the top of the list when assigning Treasure Types to monsters. There is likewise no apparent logic to which monsters receive which treasures. There's no clear correlation between value and monster Hit Dice, and no obvious in-fiction rationale either. Lycanthropes, from weakest to greatest, are all tagged with the very mediocre Type C, which tends to consist (if it consists of anything at all) primarily of silver, a substance universally acknowledged as baneful to them!

There are some tendencies, and even a few hard and fast rules, though. Type H is exclusively used for dragons, the six color-coded types in the Basic Set, and the dragon turtle and sea dragon from Expert. Type A is used mainly for large groups of humans, and types B and C tend to go to monsters that are not normally encountered in large groups. Beyond that, it's all a bit murky. 

If anybody knows anything about the origins of the treasure tables and why they took the form they do, quirks and all, please feel free to enlighten me in the comments! 

Whether or not there's a method to the madness, it's not at all clear how the tables fit with different monster types, or if anything but personal whim should guide a DM creating new monsters in picking their Treasure Type. In a future post, I plan on looking at some ways we might overhaul the treasure tables to be more intuitive and more useful.