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Included in the Tales from the Yawning Portal, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan adventure has some Cursed Treasure in area 29: "The Tomb of Pelota" (pg. 78)

Cursed Treasure. If any treasure is removed from the pit, a curse will fall upon its bearer 1 hour later. The victim must succeed on a DC 15 saving throw, or it has disadvantage on Strength and Dexterity ability checks and saving throws until the curse is dispelled.

What kind of saving throw is needed, by which I mean what ability does it use? The adventure text doesn't say.

Can the PCs make either Strength or Dexterity saving throws because those are the abilities affected by the curse? That doesn't make much sense, since usually curses are resisted by mental stats...

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    \$\begingroup\$ Might be worth tweeting Crawford to ask. (I googled to see if TFTYP had any errata, but it seems even the "fan-made errata"/lists of errors noted by others didn't catch this one.) \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast
    Oct 18, 2018 at 19:46

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We don't know

Unfortunately, I have not found any errata, official or otherwise, that addresses this issue. That said, we can look at other similar curses to make a DM ruling.

IMO, based on the spell Bestow Curse, the best choice seems to be a Wisdom Save.

You touch a creature, and that creature must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become cursed for the duration of the spell. When you cast this spell, choose the nature of the curse from the following options:

  • Choose one ability score. While cursed, the target has disadvantage on ability checks and saving throws made with that ability score.
  • etc..

The only other curse with a save that I could find was Mummy Rot, which requires a Constitution Save, but the cursed treasure's wording is closer in nature to one of the options presented by Bestow Curse (disadvantage on ability checks).

Note that The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan was originally published for AD&D 1st Edition, and thus just required a save vs. spells, which was predefined by character class and level.

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