D&D: Five Treasures More Valuable Than Gold
There are many treasures in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, but not all that glitters is gold. Sometimes you find something better.
Gold. Dragons covet it, adventurers grossly underappreciate how heavy it is, and there’s almost never enough to buy what you really want anyway. Still it’s one of the most common treasures in D&D.
Over the course of an adventure, you’ll hurl yourself into unimaginable danger, get brusied, stabbed, slashed, and worse, all in the pursuit of the shiny metal.
But why throw yourself heedlessly at something so (relatively) common? Some treasure is worth far more than gold… treasures like these.
Decanter of Endless Water
As an uncommon magic item, the Decanter of Endless Water might be worth around 500 gold pieces or so. But if you stop and think about what it does: producing, as the name suggests, an endless amount of fresh or salt water (your choice), you can quickly see how it’s worth so much more. You can create up to 30 gallons of water at a time as a single action, and there’s no limit to how often you can do this.
Suddenly you can bring relief for a drought-stricken land, you can irrigate fields, you can, in time, change the face of the planet if you so desired. With an item like this, you can ensure that water is an unending resource, providing water enough for “the average American family” to use in a day over the course of a minute. And that’s just with one of these. Let’s see your gold do that.
Wings of Flying
While wearing this cloak you gain the ability to fly. According to the book’s estimation this magic cloak is worth about 5,000gp, but for the ability to soar through the air like an eagle or a majestic bird? I know I’d pay a great deal more.
Silver
At least it would be if the disparate nations had decided to stick to the silver standard. L. Frank Baum tried to warn us, but all we learned was that sometimes you have to drop a house on a witch to get her cool shoes.
An Ability Score Increasing Book
D&D gold pieces come and go, but ability score increases are forever. Ask any adventurer you meet whether they’d rather have enough gold to retire for a thousand years or a book that gives them +2 to one of their stats while also raising the cap of that stat by +2 and watch what happens.
The Real D&D Gold is the Friends We Made Along the Way
Sometimes the real treasure really is the friends we made along the way.
Happy Adventuring!
