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View Full Version : (DnD 3.5) Cash Crop as alternate Crafting XP.



Coidzor
2009-06-17, 03:47 AM
So I was thinking about what sort of cash crops would be good for DnD in setting up a sort of Carribbean-esque situation of colonization, land-grabbing, and y'know conflict for a naval campaign/setting I've been tinkering with.

I've seen suggestions of costly material components as a supplement to the XP expenditure of characters on magical items, and I figured that any power that found out about such things would be eager to get their hands on a supply as well as helping provide a sort of foundation for a more magically rich setting.

What sort of price per 1 XP's worth would you say would be a good "base" price? What would be a more "upper limit" figure so that it's valuable but not so valuable that a crafter is better off getting all of the XP the old fashioned way?

Would requiring that 10% or 1/5 (rounded up) of the XP cost be paid out of the craft reserve or actual XP of the crafter be a fair measure to curb potential abuse?

AslanCross
2009-06-17, 04:27 AM
Not exactly sure about the Carribean, but I know Central American civilizations depended a lot on corn, and I think also sweet potatoes.

bosssmiley
2009-06-17, 04:55 AM
Cinchona (for quinine)
Sugar
Spices
Cochineal
Tobacco
Coca
Tea
Exotic fruits
Exotic animals - live, skins, bushmeat
Bird feathers (parrot, bird of paradise)

(I've mixed some Caribbean littoral and SEAsian products in with the traditional Carib' island crops)

IIRC the power component gp:XP exchange rate is about 12:1. Just go with this as a baseline and explore the many complexities and implications of a resource rush. The life of Cecil Rhodes (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rhodes-Race-Africa-Antony-Thomas/dp/0563387424) is a classic case study.

As for balance issues; coal is cheap at the minehead, and a compact, readily available source of power changes the state of play. Embrace the chaos. That should keep you in gaming fodder for a year or so. :smallwink:

Coidzor
2009-06-17, 05:42 AM
Cinchona (for quinine)
Sugar
Spices
Cochineal
Tobacco
Coca
Tea
Exotic fruits
Exotic animals - live, skins, bushmeat
Bird feathers (parrot, bird of paradise)

(I've mixed some Caribbean littoral and SEAsian products in with the traditional Carib' island crops)

IIRC the power component gp:XP exchange rate is about 12:1. Just go with this as a baseline and explore the many complexities and implications of a resource rush. The life of Cecil Rhodes (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rhodes-Race-Africa-Antony-Thomas/dp/0563387424) is a classic case study.

As for balance issues; coal is cheap at the minehead, and a compact, readily available source of power changes the state of play. Embrace the chaos. That should keep you in gaming fodder for a year or so. :smallwink:

Indeed. I'd almost forgotten about Rhodesia...

Where do you get that 12:1 exchange rate from/what's your rationale? It seems like a good idea to me, but I'm a curious fellow...

I'm currently thinking of some kind of extract, somewhere inbetween liquid pain and vanilla that grows best in magic/sunlight-rich environments (which is where it "evolved"... magic-rich sort of being like an idea of magical radiation ala Discworld). Not sure if I want it to be flowers, roots, or fruit... Might just flip a coin...

Growing it is fairly cheap and easy though extraction is a bit more of a hassle what with needing a mill of some sort.

Hmm, maybe a xendrick/America/SEAsia/Africa blended continent would make for a good "exploration" aside from the dungeon-poor islands...

I kinda see the overall effect of being an immediate explosion in crafting and a related shift in increased demand/access to magical education (maybe another part of the plant or another plant makes for a "general purpose" spell reagent) and competition between merchants, wizards, and missionaries along with piracy and privateering on the trade routes. Lots of new artificers, magewrights, and nova magi in the old countries, both under the thumb of the government and in it for themselves for a certain amount of paradigm shifting.

Heh... might make a plot hook to have to go back and fix something that the general exodus of adventurers to explore/rape the new continent/islands allowed to happen.

Fishy
2009-06-17, 06:03 AM
Oh, I love this idea so very much. I might have to steal it.

You know the moment this was discovered, they would convert all of the fields over to manaleaf, causing food shortages and unrest in the lower classes. Then they'd start leveling the forests for farmland, and piss off the elves...

MickJay
2009-06-17, 07:25 AM
This is actually a great idea for making an evil artificer enemy: the guy just drains whole area (or even country) of food and other precious materials just to fuel some mad crafting scheme (like a monstrous flying fortress with which he wants to conquer the world).

Douglas
2009-06-17, 08:17 AM
A price of 12.5 gp/xp would make crafting a typical item with all xp substituted cost exactly the same as buying it at the listed price. Considering that people generally want to make a profit when they make things for sale, I'd say that's the upper limit and the actual price should be significantly lower.

Items that cost additional xp to make on top of the base crafting cost, such as scrolls of Wish, officially cost an extra 5 gp/xp for the extra xp. This is also the official rate for hiring someone to cast a spell with an xp cost. Setting this as the equivalence rate for your xp alternative would allow crafters to make magic items for 70% list price with no xp expenditure, which would give them a very worthwhile profit for their time and highly skilled labor, and would be enough of a savings to grab the government interest you seem to want. Whether this is an excessive margin or not is debatable, but I think it's reasonable as is.

Depending on the campaign, just enforcing the downtime requirements of crafting may be enough to prevent excessive PC abuse of this. Even with large amounts of crafting time available, it's still only a 43% increase in WBL even if they craft absolutely all of their equipment, and it shouldn't be terribly difficult to compensate for the extra gear. Plus, it costs multiple feats to do all of that, so the extra equipment (however much of it they manage to get) is in place of extra feats.

Coidzor
2009-06-17, 08:24 AM
Hmm... I'm liking the idea of manaleaf as a sort of cabbagey plant that collects magic and uses it to do things like create water for itself during droughts... and in its dried form is a universal spell component.

But what to make wizards' spell component pouches (and thus the wizards themselves if they don't cover it up/change it with prestidigation) smell like? Hemp? Incense?

What's the stereotypical wizard smell description? :smallconfused:

I'm glad this is giving you all some ideas. I'm thinking of something like a planar sea connecting various material worlds and some of the outer planes, so that the islands where this stuff is native/grows best would either have an advantage in growing it or just that they haven't figured out how to get it to grow properly back home. (As for now in my conceptualization, I want to try to focus things on the islands... though, come to think of it... mass deforestation and displacement of the peasantry in favor of magical crops could make for an interesting frontier...)

Cyrion
2009-06-17, 09:06 AM
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series had a crystal that sheltered a metal that was extremely valuable to mages. It was dangerous to mine, and it was ruined if exposed to magic prematurely. Think about a similar fragility for your crop that prevents it from being exported easily, and makes control of the actual location an issue.

A second thought- make it something that is valuable to one group and dangerous to another. Say, Wyrmwood- valuable as your universal spell component for wizards but can suppress a dragon's breath weapon (or makes dwarves break out in giggles, take your pick). All goes well, until the dragons discover the side effect...

Devils_Advocate
2009-06-17, 01:20 PM
NPC spellcasters will essentially sell their XPs at 5 gp apiece; that's how much an XP cost raises the cost of having a spell cast for you. On the other hand, you can reduce how much gold you pay for a magic item by 12.5 gp per XP you put into making it... but this also requires time. It's not an instantaneous transaction.

Make this stuff cost 12.5 gp for each XP it replaces, and you're better off just buying an item than making it with XP-substitute. Don't do that.

Make it cost 5 gp per XP it replaces, since that's basically the price of XP on the open market.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-06-17, 02:40 PM
BoED specifically states 5GP=1XP when discussing the VoP.

Also, I like the idea of Cannabis as a source of magical power.

kopout
2009-06-18, 04:14 PM
Possibly introduce some kind of weevil that eats manaleaf.

Devils_Advocate
2009-06-18, 05:21 PM
Hey, what if you could gain XP by eating it? Not necessarily as much XP as it gave you for item creation purposes, mind you.

Now that would cause a resource rush. I mean, the chance to become significantly better at whatever you do? Every ambitious soul with the means would be all over that.

Edit: Or maybe it makes you gain XP at a some multiple of the normal rate until all of the consumed XP has been added to your total. Or something like that.

JellyPooga
2009-06-18, 06:16 PM
Hey, what if you could gain XP by eating it? Not necessarily as much XP as it gave you for item creation purposes, mind you.

Now that would cause a resource rush. I mean, the chance to become significantly better at whatever you do? Every ambitious soul with the means would be all over that.

Edit: Or maybe it makes you gain XP at a some multiple of the normal rate until all of the consumed XP has been added to your total. Or something like that.

Better yet, make it exceedingly addictive as well and have some huuuuuge drawback to go with the XP gain like it accelerates the aging process exponentially the more you take; obviously, addicts wouldn't notice this until it was too late...

kopout
2009-06-18, 06:19 PM
But what if they have timeless body?

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-06-18, 06:23 PM
But what if they have timeless body?There's now a justification for my druggie Druids.

JellyPooga
2009-06-18, 06:31 PM
But what if they have timeless body?

Then they start to go nuts; being magically aged to 1000's of times your natral lifespan in only a few years can't be conducive to a stable mentality....

kopout
2009-06-18, 06:34 PM
Then they start to go nuts; being magically aged to 1000's of times your natral lifespan in only a few years can't be conducive to a stable mentality....

Ah, but do they keep raking up age bonuses?

Lycanthromancer
2009-06-18, 06:38 PM
Hmm. If the plant absorbs magic and stores it for later use (which is where the XP comes from), have the islands be (effectively) a dead-magic area. The plants pull all the magic from their surroundings, so perhaps the only magic available where they grow is psionics (since that comes strictly from within).

Thus, the manages (ie, mana cabbages) would be exceptionally valuable, but growing it on the mainland in any quantity is a BAD idea (since magic is a part of the environment, and even 'normal' plants and animals contain quite a bit; the land would die if exposed to this for too long, until and unless the flora and fauna have adapted to it, like they have on the islands).

This also means that if you eat it, you gain XP, but lose the ability to use and/or benefit from magic of any kind. Magical fire and such would still hurt you, but you'd lose the benefits of magical items and spells (and psionics, Sp, Ps, and Su abilities) while it was in your digestive system (about 8 hours).

Add to that its addictive properties, and...maybe eating it isn't usually a great idea after all...

[edit] Also, if a living manage is exposed to the undiluted magic of the mainland, maybe it mutates into a horrible magic-eating plantmonster?

Duff
2009-06-18, 10:12 PM
Don't forget the natives.
Call them "Orc" or "Goblin" or "Dark One"
Make them Xenophobic and ugly and give them enough magic to make things interesting.
Don't even decide if they are actually evil or not until you get into the campaign a bit, they could easily be both good and opposed to a non evil party if you wanted to.

Fishy
2009-06-18, 10:38 PM
Magic. Kudzu.

Think about it- manaleaf grows in a place so inhospitable to plant life, it has to warp the fabric of reality around it to survive. Magic Marco-Polo discovers it, Magic George Washington Carver discovers that it can be used for crafting XP, and some genius takes it back to the mainland- where there's enough sunlight, soil and water for it to grow incredibly fast, and enough abjuration magic to make it invulnerable and impossible to harvest.

Queue the waves of immigration off to the New World.