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Fax Celestis
2010-09-24, 02:47 PM
A lot of people (myself included) tout the potential and strength of spellcasting and its subdomain, item crafting. We all know spellcasting is potentially broken in and of itself, and item crafting allows one to escape the bounds of the WBL system.

I'm here to say that spellcasting itself breaks the WBL system.

No, no, hear me out. We can extrapolate from the 'spell trigger' item cost. Spell Level * Caster Level * 750gp. We'll be nice and say that a wand is a 'wrong slot', so it has a *1.5 price adjustment. After that, the base cost of a wand in the 'right slot' (the mind slot) is SL*CL*500gp.

Therefore, a ninth level spell slot at 17th level (when a wizard first gets access) is worth 9*17*500=76500gp. Each day. A 17th level wizard has, essentially, free buckets of wealth each day simply from being a wizard. A fighter, on the other hand, has a much smaller pool of free wealth daily. Extrapolating from the dark blue rhomboid ioun stone (which grants Alertness as a bonus feat), we can assume that a bonus feat is 5000gp (since an ioun stone is a slotless item, it automatically doubles the price). At 17th level, a fighter will have 9 free bonus feats, totaling 45000gp.

One ninth level spell slot is worth comparatively more than all of the fighter's bonus feats put together.

So from here I will submit to you: a 20th level wizard with a 36 Intelligence has, essentially, 2,860,000gp free each day EDIT This number is incorrect: read down for why. tl;dr I forgot the 1/5th cost for 1 use per day rather than 50 charges. If you had that much gp for a 20th level fighter on top of your base wealth by level (including consumables that would refresh daily), how much could you trick out your fighter, and how would they compare to a 20th level wizard without that wealth (since they already get it in the form of spellcasting)? Leave out prestige classes, since we're illustrating a point about base classes rather than prestige classes. I'll even be nice to the fighter and not count his (or the wizard's) bonus feats in that wealth total.

Emperor Tippy
2010-09-24, 02:51 PM
Haha. Nice.

It all pretty much get's dropped into disposable items after you buy all of the nice stuff.

It wouldn't be remotely balanced but it would be funny as hell.

Douglas
2010-09-24, 02:57 PM
Hmm, 20 crafted contingent spells that automatically come back every day, and that's just the start...

I could build a pretty hefty fighter with that much gear. I'm not too sure how much of a difference there'd be between that fighter and a commoner with the same gear, but he would be pretty powerful.

Fax Celestis
2010-09-24, 02:57 PM
It occurs to me that instead of using a wand, I could have instead used a stave that mimicked the sorcerer's entire class. I am, of course, lazy, so someone should do this for me. :smalltongue:

Ignition
2010-09-24, 03:08 PM
It still amazes me that people look at magic and expect it to not break things. I mean, that's what it's there for! :smallwink:

Douglas
2010-09-24, 03:12 PM
Heh. It actually wouldn't be too difficult to make a staff that's better than the entire Sorcerer class - for one day. But with this auto-refreshing gear scheme, that's all you need.

Let's see:
9th level spell: 750 * 9 * 20 = 135000
Extra 9th level spell: 750 * 9 * 20 * .75 = 101250
Third 9th level spell: 750 * 9 * 20 * .5 = 67500
3 8th level spells: 750 * 8 * 20 * .5 * 3 = 180000
3 7th level spells: 750 * 7 * 20 * .5 * 3 = 157500
3 6th level spells: 750 * 6 * 20 * .5 * 3 = 135000
4 5th level spells: 750 * 5 * 20 * .5 * 4 = 150000
4 4th level spells: 750 * 4 * 20 * .5 * 4 = 120000
4 3rd level spells: 750 * 3 * 20 * .5 * 4 = 90000
5 2nd level spells: 750 * 2 * 20 * .5 * 5 = 75000
5 1st level spells: 750 * 1 * 20 * .5 * 5 = 37500
9 0th level spells: 750 * .5 * 20 * .5 * 9 = 33750

Total = 1282500

Now, the Sorcerer would have more total spells per day than this staff has charges, but he wouldn't have the flexibility of using his cantrip slots to cast 9th level spells. But what the heck, let's get two of these. No Sorcerer 20 is going to have more than 100 spell slots without some serious cheese.

That's 2565000 gp. We have now more than duplicated the Sorcerer class (minus familiar), and we still have 295000 gp to spare. Spend some of it on boosting UMD so we can properly use our mega-staves, and we're ready to go.

Zaydos
2010-09-24, 03:14 PM
I just have to point out that the wand price is for 50 uses. 1/day would be 2/5th that price (charged is 1/2 base price, 1/day is 1/5 base price) so only 30,600 GP per 9th level slot. This values all of a 17th level fighter's bonus feats at approximately 1.5 9th level spells.

mucat
2010-09-24, 03:17 PM
No, no, hear me out. We can extrapolate from the 'spell trigger' item cost. Spell Level * Caster Level * 750gp. We'll be nice and say that a wand is a 'wrong slot', so it has a *1.5 price adjustment. After that, the base cost of a wand in the 'right slot' (the mind slot) is SL*CL*500gp.

Therefore, a ninth level spell slot at 17th level (when a wizard first gets access) is worth 9*17*500=76500gp. Each day.

Wait, Fax, either I'm misunderstanding your point or you're miscalculating here. The price you calculate is for a full wand, with 50 charges. He doesn't get that amount each day, because he can't cast his spell 50 times in a day. You would still probably find that casters are obscenely wealthy in this sense.

You've still got a good point here. You could calculate the price of a one-use-per-day permanent item, and say that each spell slot is worth that much (or more, since h gets nice perks like casting stat to DC)...but as a one-time wealth bonus, not as a per-day thing. (Or if you do want to think of it as a continuous income stream, the per-day benefit is 1/50 the wand cost.)


EDIT: Ninja'd.

tenshiakodo
2010-09-24, 03:17 PM
On a related (and more conservative) note, the PHB has a table for purchasing a spell from a caster. Ignoring any costly material components, the value of a 20th level Generalist Wizard spell slots is 36, 400 gp per day!

That's just amusing to think about, that by adventuring, casters are potentially losing out on thousands of gold pieces per day they could get by selling their spells to NPC's...

Fax Celestis
2010-09-24, 03:23 PM
Oh, true. Uhm... *plugs numbers into a spreadsheet*

Alright, so the actual gp value on the 1/5th uses-per-day adjustment I forgot is 572,000gp. A little more reasonable but still almost equal to a 19th level character's total WBL.

Dante & Vergil
2010-09-24, 03:34 PM
These stop looking like magic items and more like artifacts, if you ask me. Pretty ineresting idea though.

Ignition
2010-09-24, 04:03 PM
The distinction between crafted magic items and "artifacts" is largely pointless, though, especially since high level wizards are less and less indistinguishable from deities. :smallwink: Especially since many artifacts have a mechanically established way of making them in the system for general magic item creation. Sure, flavor-wise, but flavor isn't what's on trial here.

Milskidasith
2010-09-24, 04:12 PM
This is an interesting concept, but I think it's a backwards way of looking at things, at least from my experience in more easily solvable competitive games. You don't look at how much something can buy you if you were to get the gold it would be worth from items, you look at the benefit it gives you and how valuable it is.

To sum it up, it winds up being circular logic; you use the price, which is determined by how powerful something is, to determine how powerful something is... which is what should be defining the price.

Dante & Vergil
2010-09-24, 04:13 PM
The distinction between crafted magic items and "artifacts" is largely pointless, though, especially since high level wizards are less and less indistinguishable from deities. :smallwink: Especially since many artifacts have a mechanically established way of making them in the system for general magic item creation. Sure, flavor-wise, but flavor isn't what's on trial here.

I'm just saying that not many items are created like this, but they can be. It's no biggy really.

Fax Celestis
2010-09-24, 04:19 PM
To sum it up, it winds up being circular logic; you use the price, which is determined by how powerful something is, to determine how powerful something is... which is what should be defining the price.

Oh, of course. It's just amusing, to me, that replicating a sorcerer comes out to two and a half million gp.

137beth
2010-09-24, 04:29 PM
This is an interesting concept, but I think it's a backwards way of looking at things, at least from my experience in more easily solvable competitive games. You don't look at how much something can buy you if you were to get the gold it would be worth from items, you look at the benefit it gives you and how valuable it is.

To sum it up, it winds up being circular logic; you use the price, which is determined by how powerful something is, to determine how powerful something is... which is what should be defining the price.

Correct. Plus, the wizard "gets" the "free gold", but cannot spend it on things such as the uberstaves mentioned above, so its not exactly getting it:smallsmile:

Douglas
2010-09-24, 04:39 PM
Oh, of course. It's just amusing, to me, that replicating a sorcerer comes out to two and a half million gp.
I think just one of that staff would be sufficient to reasonably approximate a sorcerer for one day. I only added the second one because it was within the stated budget and would change it from "can't match total spell slots but has advantages to compensate" to "strictly superior in every way".

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-24, 04:46 PM
Correct. Plus, the wizard "gets" the "free gold", but cannot spend it on things such as the uberstaves mentioned above, so its not exactly getting it:smallsmile:

Fabricate would like a word with you. Several words, actually.

dsmiles
2010-09-24, 09:01 PM
Wasn't WbL broken to begin with? This just makes it...ummm...shattered (I think that's the word I'm looking for).

Chambers
2010-09-24, 09:37 PM
Not all feats cost the same, though.

Improved Critical [Keen] costs 6,000gp, being the difference between a +2 and a +1 weapon.

I can pick up Two Weapon Fighting or Improved Two Weapon Fighting from the same magic item for 8,000gp [Gloves of the Balanced Hand].

Skill Focus: Hide can be had for 900gp [Custom Item: Lesser Cloak of Elvenkind, +3 bonus].

Bracers of Lesser Archery give me Weapon Proficiency and Weapon Focus feats for every single kind of bow (excluding crossbows) for 5,000gp.

---

I suppose what I'm saying is that it's hard to make a value judgement for what all feats are worth based on the cost of a single magic item that grants a feat.

Edit:

If you put Keen on a +5 weapon, all of a sudden that feat [effectively Improved Critical] cost 22,000gp. Put it on a +9 weapon and the feat cost 38,000gp.

Likewise not all spell slots are worth the same. Gate does not have the same value as a Maximized Fireball Heightened to 9th level.

The cost & value of any widget, either a spell slot or a feat, depends on its use. I think it's right to say that spell slots have higher potential value, just by the nature of what spells can do. Some feats are better than spells, like Darkstalker or Mindsight or Power Attack. I'm not trying to start a Fighter vs Wizard argument - just saying that the value is not in the widget itself [feat vs spell slot] - the value is in the use.

137beth
2010-09-24, 10:13 PM
Fabricate would like a word with you. Several words, actually.

Fabricate does not allow you to freely craft magic items, nor does it allow you to convert your daily spells into gold.

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-24, 10:25 PM
Fabricate does not allow you to freely craft magic items, nor does it allow you to convert your daily spells into gold.

No, it allows you to convert your daily spells into massive quantities of sell-able items, many of which are fluffed as being in high demand, others (like, say, steel) being capable of reworking into something even more valuable, like tools, weapons, construction materials, et cetera, so forth, thus providing all the wealth you need.

137beth
2010-09-24, 10:46 PM
True, though the gold provided/day is less than what the OP's calculations came out to be. This also relies on NPCs to purchase these items. If you want to save up the 1282500 for an uberstaff, you will have to find NPCs to buy that much from you. And no, you can't just find an epic level NPC, because mundane tools that can be crafted with fabricate would not be useful to high level NPCs with PC class levels--they would be used more by experts and commoners. In short, fabricate DOES allow a stream of income, but it is limited by the wealth of common NPCs, which is rather small.
Actually, similar results could be obtained with the perform skill--no spellcasting involved.

Emperor Tippy
2010-09-24, 10:48 PM
Yep, Wall of Iron + Fabricate and you can produce dozens of suits of masterwork full plate in a day.

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-24, 10:49 PM
I dunno, you could make loads selling construction materials for golems, traps, and evil fortresses.

Y'know, kind of a traveling mining concern. "Roll on up, I've got your castle in a box right here!"

Emperor Tippy
2010-09-24, 10:58 PM
Just be glad you aren't using the trap rules.

Create a Fabricate trap and you can have it producing non magical goods by the thousands every day at no cost. Store one in a portable hole and activate it when you want the good that that trap makes.

Marnath
2010-09-24, 11:19 PM
Yep, Wall of Iron + Fabricate and you can produce dozens of suits of masterwork full plate in a day.

Not quite that easy, mate. Don't forget the wool padding and the leather backing/straps.

Emperor Tippy
2010-09-24, 11:24 PM
Not quite that easy, mate. Don't forget the wool padding and the leather backing/straps.

Ok, wall of iron plus a few GP worth of incidentals.

Marnath
2010-09-24, 11:27 PM
Ok, wall of iron plus a few GP worth of incidentals.

Yeah, I know it wasn't worth mentioning. I'm an annoying guy. ^.^

Cerlis
2010-09-24, 11:28 PM
as Haley said about not believing there is even a 17th lvl cleric in existance. not even a kingdom could afford to pay that wizard. His wealth is in telling reality to sit down and shut up.


a billion gold will not save you from a colossal dragon unless spent. And thats exactly what a wizard does with his "money"

Marnath
2010-09-24, 11:30 PM
as Haley said about not believing there is even a 17th lvl cleric in existance. not even a kingdom could afford to pay that wizard. His wealth is in telling reality to sit down and shut up.


a billion gold will not save you from a colossal dragon unless spent. And thats exactly what a wizard does with his "money"

OoTS world =/= Default D&D. In most campaigns there are oodles of people higher than that.

Shalist
2010-09-24, 11:43 PM
The quickest and easiest way to make money using fabricate, is to use money as the raw materials:


...pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.50 coins weigh 1 pound, and 1 pound of material is worth 50 of that type of coin (5s in copper, 500g in plat, etc)--fairly straight forward. Of course, this does mean that the raw materials needed to craft 150, say, platinum is...that's right, 50 platinum. This is probably what dragons spend all day doing when they're not sleeping for years at a time.

And of course, no mention of crafting is complete without everyone's favorite economy smasher:


Material Component

The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.

Forget 'wall of iron' or 'genesis,' with this, a level 10 wizard could be churning out millions of gold or platinum with every casting, and all he'd need is a single coin to get the ball rolling.

Gold is ~1200 pounds / cubic foot, platinum is ~1340...10 cubic feet / CL, so 600,000 gold / CL for gold, or ~670,000 platinum / CL for platinum, minus the 1/3 you started with as raw materials.

Also, you could probably use a variation of this to utterly devalue various precious stones (ie diamonds, rubies), so that someone would need several portable holes just to carry the "50 gold worth of diamond dust" needed for a simple spell :P

Marnath
2010-09-24, 11:48 PM
Umm, what? The materials needed to make 150 platinum is 150 platinum, it doesn't provide triple yield.

Shalist
2010-09-24, 11:58 PM
(edit)This came up in a "stupid RAW" thread, so I don't fault you for displaying common sense :P (/edit)

RAW for crafting stuff disagrees with you.

I'll quote it a second time, because that'll make it easier to understand than merely quoting it once:


To determine how much time and money it takes to make an item, follow these steps.

1. Find the item’s price. Put the price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp).
2. Find the DC from the table below.
3. Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.

Unless you're suggesting that all these wizards--who have no problem churning artifact-calibur items--are unable to craft a measly coin? Or that the rules for crafting, in any way shape or form, follow pidly concerns such as the conversation of mass?


say you're making a suit of full plate armor (1500g). You'd need 500g worth of raw materials, presumably iron, which cost 1s per pound. That works out to about 5000 pounds of iron just to make a 50 pound suit of armor. Even a 1 pound dagger or gauntlet require nearly 7 pounds of iron to create.

Either all those buckles, straps, hilts, and so on, are just _that_ expensive, or someone's pet rust monster is a growing boy.

NineThePuma
2010-09-24, 11:59 PM
The materials to make 150 platinum cost 1/2 the actual coinage cost. Ergo, buy the raw materials, fabricate, bam, double your money. Rinse, repeat.

Emperor Tippy
2010-09-25, 12:02 AM
Well, technically what you should do is get a pound of gold (worth 50 GP). Thanks to fabricate you can craft that into gold coins.

So 1 pound of gold gives you 150 GP (as fabricate requires 1/3rd the market price in raw materials).

Technically it works, but it is incredibly exploitative.

Do it with a trap and produce solid gold statues that are 200 cubic feet in size.

Then melt down the statues into raw gold. Nothing like creating millions of GP per round.

Marnath
2010-09-25, 12:07 AM
The pricing there takes into account labor costs. For your fullplate example, you also need other stuff for smelting, and fuel for the forge etc., it's not all just iron cost. Coins are 100% of the value it takes to make a coin, because if the value of the material in a platinum coin, for example, was less than 100% of a platinum coin, a paltinum coin would only be worth that much...which brings the price back to 100%.

Emperor Tippy
2010-09-25, 12:20 AM
Common sense has no place here. If you have a problem with crafting coins, you can just craft solid gold statues. Start with 1 pound of gold, use it as the 1/3rd raw materials for making a 3 pound solid gold statue. Melt it down and now you have 3 pounds of solid gold. That can be used for 9 pounds, which can be used for 27 pounds, which can be used for 81 pounds, which can be used for 243 pounds.

With 6 castings of Fabricate you can turn 50 GP into 12,160 GP. At 10 castings you have 984,150 GP.

BobVosh
2010-09-25, 12:35 AM
Well, technically what you should do is get a pound of gold (worth 50 GP). Thanks to fabricate you can craft that into gold coins.

So 1 pound of gold gives you 150 GP (as fabricate requires 1/3rd the market price in raw materials).

Technically it works, but it is incredibly exploitative.

Do it with a trap and produce solid gold statues that are 200 cubic feet in size.

Then melt down the statues into raw gold. Nothing like creating millions of GP per round.

Ok, I've seen the buff wagon train, now free money traps. Is there anything you can't do with traps? :P

Benly
2010-09-25, 12:37 AM
Why melt it down? A gold statue constitutes raw materials for melted-down gold lumps, after all. Use Fabricate and keep it tripling at each step without wasting time.

Marnath
2010-09-25, 12:39 AM
Why melt it down? A gold statue constitutes raw materials for melted-down gold lumps, after all. Use Fabricate and keep it tripling at each step without wasting time.

"You take 1d6 damage three times from being struck repeatedly with a DMG. Roll fort save vs. dazed. Also, don't do that anymore."

Benly
2010-09-25, 12:40 AM
"You take 1d6 damage three times from being struck repeatedly with a DMG. Roll fort save vs. dazed."

Oh, like it's going to take until you're this far into the process before that happens.

Incidentally, assuming you don't get DMG'd, doing this with gold isn't the best way to go about things in my opinion. The raw material to craft "a heap of gems" is "some gems". Fabricate a pile of onyx gems worth (x) out of a pile of onyx gems worth (x/3), or whatever your favorite expensive material component gem is. They're just as handy a trade good, but they also have real practical value when the economy you break can no longer deliver you the things you want.

Lord_Gareth
2010-09-25, 12:41 AM
DM Smite, however, has little to do with mechanical balancing. For some reason, D&D has become a creature of strict rules interpretations and exploits (unlike, say, New World of Darkness), and is now balanced as such.

Emperor Tippy
2010-09-25, 12:46 AM
Ok, I've seen the buff wagon train, now free money traps. Is there anything you can't do with traps? :P

Nope, well at least I have yet to find anything that I can't do with traps (when all else fails there is the wish trap), at least anything remotely approaching sane.

Shalist
2010-09-25, 12:50 AM
Honestly, even traps are unnecessary--you can simply use the coins as the raw materials to make more coins, and then use those coins as the raw materials to make even more coins, and so on.

Observe this raptoran sorcerer doing just that:

http://i702.photobucket.com/albums/ww30/123456laughs/Lotsamoney.jpg


Common sense has no place here.
Agreed:
http://i702.photobucket.com/albums/ww30/123456laughs/Realism1.jpg

ffone
2010-09-25, 02:14 AM
(On the OP topic and not Fabricate:)

An interesting analysis, and I often make feat choices etc. based on what's cheapest to 'buy' if I don't make it intrinsically part of my character. Feat-granting items tend to annoy me for just that reason. That, and the fact that wealth is exponential in level but feats are linear in level.

Alertness is not a particularly good example as a feat for a Fighter, as the ranger gets skill points so much more 'cheaply', and skill boosts are the cheapest sort of item. The feats-on-a-stick items tend to be first-tier feats with few to no prereqs. If I were forced to allow PCs to craft item-feats by some general formula, getting a feat chain would probably go with the square of the number of feats or something, like numerical bonuses.

Rather than use wand pricing for the analysis, wouldn't uses/day items make more sense? For command-word it's 360 x spell level x caster level x uses per day (in the DMG it's 1800 but then you divide by 5, so 360).

Or, pearls of power, which are spell level squared x 1000. Or the Ring of Wizardry - since it doubles your slots, it's like making a 2nd wizard if you have one of every level (sadly it's formula doesn't generalize upward well, since the diff between L2 and L3 is the same as between L3 and L4, but we all know these things ought be quadratic or more) .

Your math does illustrate a good general point, that the wizard/sorcerer-equivalent wealth is basically cubic. His new spells' levels are proportionate to his level, so the sum of all his spell slot levels is quadratic, and then they are multiplied by the linearly increasing caster level.

The issue is that most item prices are quadratic, but wealth is exponential (and has to be since PCs gobble up NPC wealth, so for NPC wealth to always be 1/3rd or so of PC...) So, everything becomes affordable. Then there's the 10x epic multiplier but that's a one time thing, worth about 5 levels.

The other issue is that the XP award rules give you exponentially more XP for being lower level. so if you spend XP item crafting, you recoup it all later and the items are basically 'free'. In the extreme long run you simply become more powerful for a given level, without any 'level adjustment' (although DMs may toughen up encounters and not raise the CR) This is the same problem level adjustment buyoff has; it's free in the long run.

Chipp Zanuff
2010-09-25, 02:24 AM
I'm here to say that spellcasting itself breaks the WBL system.


You may want to read this. It might add something to your ideas. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=9285.msg313074#msg313074)


To summarize: WBL is meant to be a PB system to balance players against encounters. The fact that casters can bypass the WBL is just one reason they are broken, but it certainly is a good reason.

137beth
2010-09-25, 09:32 AM
I dunno, you could make loads selling construction materials for golems, traps, and evil fortresses.

Y'know, kind of a traveling mining concern. "Roll on up, I've got your castle in a box right here!"
You seem to be totally missing my point: the gold income fabricate gives you is in no way the same as the "gold income" the OP claims you get based on the "cost of spells". Those calculations follow circular logic (i.e. power is based on cost, which is based on power). Yours do not, but they are not the same thing.

Ravens_cry
2010-09-25, 09:45 AM
Making counterfeit coinage has historically being treason and unless wizards are so rare a first level wizard could set himself up as a god, they will know how to deal with them once imprisoned, using a combination of magical and mundane means.

Hague
2010-09-25, 10:22 AM
Not all campaigns are high level. For instance, Player's Guide to Eberron states that there aren't any epic level characters in the current age (though it's possible that Erandis d'Vol is epic) Need a True Resurrection spell? Good luck, another book states that the only likely person to get that from is Jaela Daran, the Keeper of the Silver Flame and even then, only when she's inside Flamekeep.

This is why Eberron isn't all messed up, there simply aren't any ubercasters and the ubercasters that exist aren't readily available.

Flickerdart
2010-09-25, 10:53 AM
Making counterfeit coinage has historically being treason and unless wizards are so rare a first level wizard could set himself up as a god, they will know how to deal with them once imprisoned, using a combination of magical and mundane means.
"Once imprisoned" is the problem here. How do you catch a wizard, unless it's with a better wizard? And what wizard would be stupid enough to risk his life fighting his peers when he can be printing his own money without any dangers?

That also doesn't address the gems or statues thing. Barter is still going to be very common in the D&D era, and even if you have to sell your statue for half-price, half of infinity is still infinity.

Jack_Simth
2010-09-25, 11:23 AM
Common sense has no place here. If you have a problem with crafting coins, you can just craft solid gold statues. Start with 1 pound of gold, use it as the 1/3rd raw materials for making a 3 pound solid gold statue. Melt it down and now you have 3 pounds of solid gold. That can be used for 9 pounds, which can be used for 27 pounds, which can be used for 81 pounds, which can be used for 243 pounds.

With 6 castings of Fabricate you can turn 50 GP into 12,160 GP. At 10 castings you have 984,150 GP.
What the materials are is unspecified, and up to the DM. Pure gold being the 'starting material' doesn't make much sense, given that it costs 1/3. Possibly gold ore and coal for refining, however... which, by the way, would have a much higher volume than would the final result.

Making counterfeit coinage has historically being treason and unless wizards are so rare a first level wizard could set himself up as a god, they will know how to deal with them once imprisoned, using a combination of magical and mundane means.
They're not counterfeit. You make them as gold/platinum/silver coins, with your own marking (or the markings of a long-dead civilization. A little Knowledge(History) might help). They're real metal, which (in D&D) is the defining valuation. If the local government doesn't like it much, it doesn't much matter. You just take the coins you made HERE, and pass them off to merchants elsewhere (who value them based on the metal content, which is pure).

Aquillion
2010-09-25, 12:31 PM
They're not counterfeit. You make them as gold/platinum/silver coins, with your own marking (or the markings of a long-dead civilization. A little Knowledge(History) might help). They're real metal, which (in D&D) is the defining valuation. If the local government doesn't like it much, it doesn't much matter. You just take the coins you made HERE, and pass them off to merchants elsewhere (who value them based on the metal content, which is pure).Does it really say that anywhere? Coins are referred to by material, but nothing anywhere indicates that they are "pure" or that they actually contain enough of the material to be worth their 'printed' value. Indeed, given the fact that you can produce 3 gold coins with 1 gp worth of gold, it seems logical to infer that most coins are actually devalued and get their real value from the seal of the issuing authority, which states that they are worth 1 GP even though they only contain, in fact, 1/3 of a GP worth of gold.

However, I am not sure that this means that your coins are counterfeit. The rules for crafting explicitly indicate that the coins you made are, indeed, worth three times the materials you put into them, not merely that they appear to be worth that much.

Fax Celestis
2010-09-25, 12:34 PM
Wow, guys, this was a joke thread. Way to go off the deep end. :smallconfused:

Spellcasting is SRZ BZNZ. Who knew?

Marnath
2010-09-25, 12:38 PM
Wow, guys, this was a joke thread. Way to go off the deep end. :smallconfused:

Spellcasting is SRZ BZNZ. Who knew?

O.o

You expected a different outcome? This is the Internet man! Everything is serious business here. :smalltongue:

Oslecamo
2010-09-25, 12:45 PM
"Once imprisoned" is the problem here. How do you catch a wizard, unless it's with a better wizard? And what wizard would be stupid enough to risk his life fighting his peers when he can be printing his own money without any dangers?

-Clerics who don't have fabricate.
-Inevitables (and probably other outsiders).
-Gods
-Good and/or lawfull aligned wizards.



That also doesn't address the gems or statues thing. Barter is still going to be very common in the D&D era, and even if you have to sell your statue for half-price, half of infinity is still infinity.

Not if you have an infinity of spending on the other side!

Since all spellcasters are using spells for material components, and those gems are turned into worthless dust, then well, new gems have to come from somwhere! You're just keeping the economy stable!:smallbiggrin:

Douglas
2010-09-25, 01:10 PM
O.o

You expected a different outcome? This is the Internet man! Everything is serious business here. :smalltongue:
Hmm, how shall we resolve this matter? I know, let's play a children's card game! If it's good enough for determining the fate of the world, it should be more than good enough to resolve an internet argument, right?

... What?:smalltongue:

Coidzor
2010-09-25, 01:41 PM
Making counterfeit coinage has historically being treason and unless wizards are so rare a first level wizard could set himself up as a god, they will know how to deal with them once imprisoned, using a combination of magical and mundane means.

Well, the good thing about that in a standard setting is that peeps is bringing gold coins from all manner of places into circulation or at least selling 'em to moneychangers for legal tender.

Flickerdart
2010-09-25, 03:27 PM
-Clerics who don't have fabricate.
-Inevitables (and probably other outsiders).
-Gods
-Good and/or lawfull aligned wizards.

Most clerics can't go toe to toe with a wizard in a casting duel, and can be paid off with fabulous fortunes anyway. As far as I can tell, there's no inevitable that goes after counterfeiters, and outsiders...both sides can Planar Bind minions, but only one has great riches to offer them in exchange for services. Gods don't give a damn about coinage, and involving deities tends to be fiat.

The casters that aren't attracted to infinite wealth will be in the great minority and have much smaller resources than the others. They would be swiftly destroyed if it came to blows.



Not if you have an infinity of spending on the other side!

Since all spellcasters are using spells for material components, and those gems are turned into worthless dust, then well, new gems have to come from somwhere! You're just keeping the economy stable!:smallbiggrin:
As long as the GP is devalued at the same rate as gems, it doesn't matter.

Coidzor
2010-09-25, 03:57 PM
As long as the GP is devalued at the same rate as gems, it doesn't matter.

And thus, stable but infinitely expanding wealth.

Also, I think the infinite amount of planes and planar travel may help.

137beth
2010-09-25, 05:36 PM
The casters that aren't attracted to infinite wealth will be in the great minority and have much smaller resources than the others. They would be swiftly destroyed if it came to blows.


Uh, most good casters aren't going to totally destroy the savings of an entire nation by duplicating its currency, as that would result in massive economic downfall. Unless this is a campaign dominated by evil, your're gonna have to come up with an explanation for why the evil casters are a "great majority".

Benly
2010-09-25, 05:54 PM
The casters that aren't attracted to infinite wealth will be in the great minority and have much smaller resources than the others.

You think so? Honestly, I think most people who can do this would have no reason to care.

What exactly are you planning to buy with all that wealth? Okay, you can buy the materials for your wizard's tower, awesome. You've got all the food and booze you want, assuming you haven't just made your tower an Endless Banquet Table. You can even hire a crapload of manservants, assuming the Unseen kind doesn't do it for you. This is still only a fragment of what your ordinary WBL would be at the level you can do this, other than maybe the tower which is frankly easier and cheaper to build with Walls and Fabricate anyway.

What you're going to be buying at this level of money, the only markets where this kind of wealth matters, are magic items, the materials required to produce them, and expensive material components. And everyone who is involved in those markets also has access to Fabricate, Walls of Whatever, and any other wealth-generation spells you want. Any wealth you can create an unlimited amount of via spells is, by definition, valueless for purchasing anything you'd want to buy with it.

The Tome netbooks' "wish economy" is just a variation of this, now that I think of it, the core premise still being "any wealth you can create with spells has no value as wealth by the time you can create it", the main difference being that Tome presumes the baseline for this is everyone freely spamming Wish. Personally, I find the wish economy as imagined a silly implementation of it, but it's more or less inevitable if you allow infinite wealth generators.

Coidzor
2010-09-25, 06:08 PM
The idea is more of a side-line progression for further crafting and material component access than normal.

Also, of course, that since it's TO, you wouldn't be seeing this in a game that's not already SRS BSNS

Oslecamo
2010-09-25, 06:13 PM
Most clerics can't go toe to toe with a wizard in a casting duel,

Perhaps when you're closer to reaching level 20. But at level 10 range, it's more than a fair fight.



and can be paid off with fabulous fortunes anyway.

Above everyone else, any self-respecting cleric won't sell his ideals for mere gold.



As far as I can tell, there's no inevitable that goes after counterfeiters, and outsiders...

There's inevitables that go after people desestablizing reality by magic loops.



both sides can Planar Bind minions, but only one has great riches to offer them in exchange for services. Gods don't give a damn about coinage, and involving deities tends to be fiat.

Hey, that magic and outsiders aren't comming from nowhere!:smalltongue:



The casters that aren't attracted to infinite wealth will be in the great minority and have much smaller resources than the others. They would be swiftly destroyed if it came to blows.

No, because they're all higher level, since the loop casters are too busy looping whitout gaining exp, the other casters will quickly grow in power by hunting them. And the loop casters will be specially easy to spot since they're carting around huge amounts of goods and need to stop at the markets.

Filthy money is nice and stuff, but experience is even more valuable for a caster. And comes with free money attacked.

Benly
2010-09-25, 06:29 PM
The idea is more of a side-line progression for further crafting and material component access than normal.

Also, of course, that since it's TO, you wouldn't be seeing this in a game that's not already SRS BSNS

The thing is, I don't think it would get you better crafting and material components, because those are markets where every other buyer has access to the exact same infinite wealth loops you do. You only get an advantage there if you're the first one to think of it, and given that it's obvious to ordinary schlubs looking over the spell descriptions and any wizard with Fabricate access is likely to have superhuman intelligence, you're not going to be. At best, it means you have unlimited access to whatever "normal" things you want, but pretty much any adventurer does anyway if he cares to put his money into that.