[3.5] Morally Questionable Enchanter

[Ksheep]

Hello all. I'm currently running a campaign, and I had made a minor plot hook which I need to flesh out. There is an enchanter who sells his wares at greatly decreased prices, to the point of driving other enchanters out of business. Normally, this wouldn't mean much, as there aren't that many enchanters in any given town (1-2 on average). However, this town is home to the Adventurers Guild, and they don't like the guy much as he doesn't work with them.

There is a good chance of the party hearing grumblings in town about the guy, and if they work with the Guild at all they may be asked to investigate. If they don't take this bait, they will run into another hook on the way out of town, described later.

If the party investigates, they will find that this enchanter has found a fair-sized tribe of goblins locked away in a cave in the mountains. He has kept this a secret, and is breeding them as XP fodder, routinely slaughtering them by the dozens (probably via Fireball) in order to get the XP components he needs for enchanting without all that pesky adventuring. If the party misses the first hooks, they will run into a goblin who escaped captivity looking for help in the wilderness.

Now, the party has had one run-in with goblins before, as a crew of pirates (see Sable Drake adventure in Stormwrack). However, the fighter of the group detests seeing people of any race being subjugated and wants to free them if possible, and the other characters have similar feelings (to an extent).

The problem I'm running into is… what is this enchanter's build? The party is all around 6-7th level. The enchanter will probably be Halfling or High Elf (High Elves run the country, and they detest Wood Elves and Half-Elves, effectively wiped out Gnomes, and never let Dwarves or Orcs colonize. They only get along with Humans and Halflings, basically seeing them as manual labor, but letting some get into positions of power).

I'm thinking around level 10 should be good, but I'm afraid it may be too easy. Granted, this enchanter won't be built around combat, but instead will have spells specialized for crafting wondrous items. This will leave some wiggle room for offensive spells, and if he's been at this for a while he may have some spells set aside in case of attack (as the other merchants don't like him). Alternatively, he could focus on fleeing, trying to save his hide and getting back at the attackers at a later time.

Thoughts?

[Emperor Tippy]

The guy specializes in making magical items. Make him an artificer and then kick him out with triple WBL or so. He might be personally weak but his items make him a real threat.

This is also a great IC way to get the PC's specific items that they are looking for. What you do is on death have a disjunction like effect occur (as the enchanters final curse at the world) with the only items that make their saves just happening to be whatever you wanted to give the party as treasure.

This also lets you draw from other spell lists and use some more exotic spells and items that rarely see play.

Perhaps give him a golem or two of the appropriate CL. Take an iron golem, cut it's HD in half, reduce it's size to medium, and possibly tweak it's other stats a bit.

[Flickerdart]

I like using Astral Constructs to quickly generate "golems" of any CR you could want.

[KillianHawkeye]

Would the average goblin even be worth ANY xp to a 10th level character? They clearly don't pose much of a threat.

[Trasilor]

Would the average goblin even be worth ANY xp to a 10th level character? They clearly don't pose much of a threat.


Maybe in addition to breeding pits, the Enchanter has the goblins participate in constant pit fights with the ultimate prize of freedom. However, instead of freeing his (high level) champion, he simply kills the goblin away from the masses.

Given that he is a high level caster, is catching his opponent off guard, and his opponent is a melee type it is reasonable to think that he will easily kill off these champions.

The better question that comes to mind, is why is the enchanter doing this anyway? Is his goal to amass a huge wealth to quietly live out the rest of his days in luxury? If so, wouldn't he be better off killing off all the goblins to get that next level and cast wall of Iron? Per the spell's description he creates more iron than the cost of the spell. In other words free money. He does that and gets 200+gp per day, more than enough to eek out a quiet luxury filled life.

I am sure there are other shenanigans a wizard can use to create even more free money, I am just pointing out that his current method is not only inefficient it also causes would be adventurers to come looking for him.

[Ksheep]

He tried the Wall of Iron trick before in another town, but his supply quickly outstripped demand, causing the value of iron to plummet. Alternatively, he may have heard of a wizard who had done this and decided not to risk it.

Also, for the whole "that shouldn't be worth an XP" argument, I'm fairly certain that there is a chart saying "X CR 1 monsters is equivalent to a CR Y encounter". Get enough goblins in the "encounter" and it can be worth a pretty penny. He just has to worry that no goblins become spellcasters of high enough level, and that they don't invent ranged weaponry (why would you need bows if you live in a cave?)

[sreservoir]

there's the clause which more or less says that you don't get xp if there's no real threat posed.

[FMArthur]

Don't worry about those first two words, all Enchanters are morally questionable! :smallsmile: Taking away a person's right to choose or altering their personality to your preference are absolutely evil acts. By replying to this post you disavow FMArthur of all responsibility for any consequences of bringing up this barely relevant tangent, including any obligation to reply with a serious response.

[Ksheep]

Don't worry about those first two words, all Enchanters are morally questionable! :smallsmile: Taking away a person's right to choose or altering their personality to your preference are absolutely evil acts. By replying to this post you disavow FMArthur of all responsibility for any consequences of bringing up this barely relevant tangent, including any obligation to reply with a serious response.

I was referring to the OTHER meaning of enchanter, ie. one who enchants items to make them magic, not one who enchants people to make them do what the caster wants.

[Thomasinx]

there's the clause which more or less says that you don't get xp if there's no real threat posed.

I think this is the real problem... Under this structure he wouldn't be getting any XP. However there are a few ways you can tweak this:

1.) Instead of farming goblins for XP, have him farm something else for it's body parts. It could be some sentient race with inherent poison, it could be for some creepy organ trade, or it could be for many other reasons. Or even keep the goblins... maybe some culture out there thinks that goblin liver is a good cure for hemmorhoids?

2.) Instead of having him pay the full Xp cost, maybe he's using one of the demon-summoning alternatives. (I forget which book they're from). The basic gist is that you summon a demon who pays half the xp cost of creation (or more, you could finagle it). The catch is that the items are sometimes cursed... which could be a fun plot hook too.

As far as the character's strength, I personally think he should be roughly their CR, but -completely- decked out in magical items. (As many one-use items as possible, potions, scrolls, etc). This would make him stronger and also give you a huge amount of flexibility in what he might do. You just need to find a way to destroy a lot of the items so as to not give the players too much wealth.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, with regards to money making schemes....

You should read this.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i8KWw/edit

Most of this stuff is doable by the point an Artificer is level 10.

Instead of doing this stuff to try and make 'money', he should instead do this stuff to try and make 'money' obsolete. Or at least, make it so that the only valuable items are those which can immediately be used in magical item crafting, and then after that, the society is fully post-scarcity, and no actual 'items' are scarce, and economic forces stop really working on 'stuff' in general, and only work on other things.

[Ksheep]

Well… that could've gone better. The PCs managed to take him down in 2 rounds, mostly because they got the jump on him. Caught him with a snare trap and took out a good quarter of his health. He managed to escape via a potion of Gaseous Form, but was quickly beaten to a pulp by the big smashy, who happened to have a magic hammer…

Luckily, he didn't die, and they decided to let him live, so long as he reforms his ways. I have decided to keep him on as a recurring character, trying various money-making schemes along the way until he nearly rips the multiverse asunder while doing a magical experiment.

Also, I've finally got some motivation for him. In his early years, he had been an adventurer, and he decided to try to steal from a dragon using a construct and a pair of Ring Gates. Unfortunately for him, his construct was caught and the dragon threatened to destroy the surrounding kingdom to try to kill this guy unless he payed back the stolen gold ten-fold… plus interest. He has since then been trying various money-making schemes to try to get enough money to pay it back (using his ring gates to deliver payments)… but these keep failing for various reasons.

[Calanon]

The guy specializes in making magical items. Make him an artificer and then kick him out with triple WBL or so.

How does an Artificer have triple WBL? I've been reading that around but can't seem to find a legitimate source where it states that they get that :smallconfused:

[Emperor Tippy]

How does an Artificer have triple WBL? I've been reading that around but can't seem to find a legitimate source where it states that they get that :smallconfused:

They don't. As an NPC though you can easily make him have it and have a valid IC reason for it.

[Reluctance]

How does an Artificer have triple WBL? I've been reading that around but can't seem to find a legitimate source where it states that they get that :smallconfused:

Any crafter can gain significantly more wealth than they should have for their level. Just keep funneling XP into items instead of levels. This causes you to fall behind average party level, but without a party (and a DM who insists on balance), you can stretch out your crafting for a long time.

Two bits of caution to take away from the encounter, though:

First, solo enemies are unwise, since there are so many ways to take them out of commission. Crafters especially should have a construct or two. Any other bad guy type should likewise have minions.

Second, tenth is not low-level. One more level, and this dude starts to count as "legendary" for the purposes of Legend Lore. You can still have a legendary merchant with a penchant for get-rich-quick schemes, but things like goblin farming are well beneath him. Likewise, if you're going to hold a dragon over his head, keep in mind that anything that could appreciably challenge him is already running in power player territory, and deserves at least a little thought itself.

[HeadlessMermaid]

@Ksheep:
Out of curiosity, didn't the rationale "use goblins as XP fodder for my spells" totally break immersion and suspension of disbelief? It's a D&D rule, sure, but it doesn't translate to anything the enchanter would know in game. As far as he's concerned, XP isn't a thing.

Are you guys used to ignoring stuff like that? Or did you refluff the whole thing? (As in, "the enchanter developed a necromantic technique which sacrifices people to fuel his arcane power" or something similar.) Just asking.

By the way, I liked very much his motivation, looks like he'll make a very good recurring character.

[Glimbur]

there's the clause which more or less says that you don't get xp if there's no real threat posed.

There are rules in the alignment books for alternate ingredients instead of XP (liquid joy and liquid pain, maybe). Goblins are perfectly capable of producing joy or pain, depending on the spells applied.

As a secondary alignment question, is it Good to keep goblins catatonic with joy so you can enchant things? The liquid pain route is more clearly evil, but...

[Ksheep]

First, solo enemies are unwise, since there are so many ways to take them out of commission. Crafters especially should have a construct or two. Any other bad guy type should likewise have minions.

Second, tenth is not low-level. One more level, and this dude starts to count as "legendary" for the purposes of Legend Lore. You can still have a legendary merchant with a penchant for get-rich-quick schemes, but things like goblin farming are well beneath him. Likewise, if you're going to hold a dragon over his head, keep in mind that anything that could appreciably challenge him is already running in power player territory, and deserves at least a little thought itself.
For that first point, he did have a Homunculus, level 7, that was his body guard, but they separated the two rather quickly. For the second, I ended up going with level 9… but I see your point of bordering on legendary status…



@Ksheep:
Out of curiosity, didn't the rationale "use goblins as XP fodder for my spells" totally break immersion and suspension of disbelief? It's a D&D rule, sure, but it doesn't translate to anything the enchanter would know in game. As far as he's concerned, XP isn't a thing.

Are you guys used to ignoring stuff like that? Or did you refluff the whole thing? (As in, "the enchanter developed a necromantic technique which sacrifices people to fuel his arcane power" or something similar.) Just asking.

The way he described it (after being captured and interrogated) was something along the lines of "When you create magic items, it drains your power, leaves you weaker. Thus, you must regain this power through working out… exercise, if you will. Normally, one does this through adventuring, but I've discovered a quicker, easier, and safer way of doing this…"