Calculating Gem Values

[sennahoi]

This is a rules clarification question. Forgive me if this information is already easily found elsewhere.
On p. 40 of M&T we have:

The base value for gems is determined by percentile dice:

01-10    10 Gold Pieces
11-25    50
26-75    100
76-90    500
91-00    1000

Roll a six-sided die for every gem (or group of 5 or 10 gems where large numbers are involved); each roll of 1 indicates the gem is of the next higher category.
Categories above 1000 are:

5000;     10,000;    25,000;    50,000;    100,000;    500,000

My reading of this text has me do the following to determine the value of gems:

1. Determine how many gems are present.
2. Determine the "base value" (for all gems) with one percentile dice roll.
3. Check each gem or group of gems with a d6 to determine if it belongs to the next highest category.

So if I have 5 gems, roll to determine the base value and get 100gp per gem, then check each gem to see if it belongs in the higher category, the result is that some gems (1 out of every 6, on average) will be 500gp gems.

So my question is how do we get 500,000gp gems? Why include categories above 5000? Do we keep checking 3) to increase value until the check fails? Or is there some other process I'm missing.

[waysoftheearth]

Yes, keep checking 3 until it doesn't come up. In theory, this could continue indefinitely, but in practice you'll rarely throw any more than 3 or 4 1s in a row.

FWIW, there is a detailed post on calculating gem values at the bottom of this old topic: odd74.proboards.com/thread/7606/analysis-od-treasure-types

[sennahoi]

Sept 12, 2023 17:04:13 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Yes, keep checking 3 until it doesn't come up. In theory, this could continue indefinitely, but in practice you'll rarely throw any more than 3 or 4 1s in a row.

FWIW, there is a detailed post on calculating gem values at the bottom of this old topic: odd74.proboards.com/thread/7606/analysis-od-treasure-types

Aha! Perfect, thank you.