making money

[herculesftw]

What are some legit ways of making gold in DnD. None of the spells to make items that eventually disappear after the spell wears off. Anyone have any cool ideas?

[Kornaki]

There are spells that make items that do not disappear, such as

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wallOfIron.htm

[Gerrtt]

Take ranks in profession (anything you want).
Take Skill Focus (profession (anything you want).
Make skill checks for it whenever you can.
Profit.

Bonus points if your profession is adventurer because as an adventurer part of your job is making money anyways.

[ahenobarbi]

Check this out (https://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fdocument%2Fd%2 F1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i8KWw%2Fed it&ei=Uj5cUcLaBcfZPIKFgYgC&usg=AFQjCNETZwjCLUZKSx28AaxAgwHtTrRk4A&sig2=eSZWS-MGvFfa-p40ZrXbdQ&bvm=bv.44697112,d.ZWU)

[Gnome Alone]

Cost of ladder: 5 copper.

Selling price of two 10 foot poles: 2 silver.

Setting up a business based on exploiting the town ladder-maker: Priceless.

[Krobar]

Adventuring is very profitable, or so I'm told.

Save some money from adventuring, buy a scroll of Wish. Wish to know the location of a very large, as yet undiscovered and away from civilization, gold deposit. Think about your wording before you cast it.

Go there. Start digging.


In my game the PCs did this a while back. It spurred an entire campaign in and of itself, and resulted in the PCs owning a very lucrative gold mine. Of course that has all the hassles you might expect from owning a gold mine - thieves, other adventurers, dragons who want in, you name it.

[The_Jackal]

What are some legit ways of making gold in DnD. None of the spells to make items that eventually disappear after the spell wears off. Anyone have any cool ideas?

Kill monsters, take their stuff or take the Leadership feat and take craftsmen and merchants as your entourage.

[Ravens_cry]

Wall of Salt (Sandstorm) I hear has a darn good return. A pound of iron is 1 silver piece. One pound of salt is worth its weight in silver, 5 gold pieces.
Darn good return.

[NeoPhoenix0]

wall of iron and fabricate will ruin the entire worlds economy but not before you make a tidy profit.

making everburning torches can be profitable especially if you can get continual flame as a SLA.

[Hendel]

D&D is about adventuring and finding gold that way.

I have, however, thought that a low level caster may make some mone on the side with just mending spells. Imagine how handy that would be? A town tinkerer that could fix anything that was broken, plows, ladders, tools, teacups, walls, etc. I am sure a low level caster could use that and maybe that was how they actually got their starting gold.

I have seen the ladders to poles method that Gnome Alone suggests and you have to have A people that willing to buy poles with rung holes or marks in them and B a very huge demand for poles. Neither of which is very likely under any sane and most insane DM's.

The wall ideas are nice but the labor to break one down may start eat away at profits really quick unless you have teams of adamantine wielding cutters out there to cut it into bits. Again, you have the issue of overruning many small communities ability to pay and maybe even need for iron. Of course, the need for iron should always be high even in a pre-industrial society.

I really like the idea of taking ranks in Profession (Merchant) and allowing the characters to maybe run a shop. Perhaps they have helpers so they can go off adventuring. Maybe if a player wants to retire a character, they can become the local crafter of magic items. I would be hard pressed to allow active characters to develop the business to the point where they are crafting for half book value and selling for book value. However, if it was a retired or semi-retired character I would not mind it. Just because they are player characters does not mean that they always have to sell things at half price. I figure that rules are in place in game terms because the characters just want to sell or pawn items they find on a D&D type ebay or craigslist.

If they actually take the time and effort to set up a shop, then they could reap the benefits. Maybe it becomes the place where the characters bring their loot and then they try and sell it over time. I would pick a large city or town where demand will be higher and there would be taxes and such, but if that is what the players wanted to do, then I would allow the experiment to progress.

It is not really sword and sorcery but it may be fun for a while.

[NeoPhoenix0]

The wall ideas are nice but the labor to break one down may start eat away at profits really quick unless you have teams of adamantine wielding cutters out there to cut it into bits. Again, you have the issue of overruning many small communities ability to pay and maybe even need for iron. Of course, the need for iron should always be high even in a pre-industrial society.


fabricate can reduce all the time and effort converting the walls into a single spell and about 6 seconds.

[Coidzor]

The wall ideas are nice but the labor to break one down may start eat away at profits really quick unless you have teams of adamantine wielding cutters out there to cut it into bits. Again, you have the issue of overruning many small communities ability to pay and maybe even need for iron. Of course, the need for iron should always be high even in a pre-industrial society.

If you've got a base of operation, a one-time investment for permanent walls of fire and an appropriate crucible can allow you to just melt down the iron and cast it in whatever form one wants, though I believe at that point just fabricating (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm)it into a more fungible form is on the table as well. Yeah, Wall of Fire 4th level spell unless you're a druid and it's 5th level, Fabricate and Permanency are both 5th level, and Wall of Iron is 6th level.

Fortunately as far as markets go, Teleport is a 5th level spell. If they've got a cleric friend then Plane Shift is potentially on the table as well, but planar economies are a bit weird.

Hmm... Is there a spell that one can use to get essentially free carbon? Because I'm thinking you could go ahead and start mass-production of steel while you're at it instead of just cast iron/pig iron.

Granted, steel doesn't have a listed price as a trade good...

[NeoPhoenix0]

Hmm... Is there a spell that one can use to get essentially free carbon? Because I'm thinking you could go ahead and start mass-production of steel while you're at it instead of just cast iron/pig iron.

all you need is oil and fire. fire can be produced with flint, and oil could come from some spells. maybe even grease, not that we need to make grease more powerful.

[ahenobarbi]

You can use minor creation for Coal or Oil (it doesn't matter if it disappears after you burn it).

Also planar bind Genies to create permanent vegetable matter.

[NeoPhoenix0]

this takes a lot more effort and can give you less money than wall tricks but you could use teleportation. you could charge people to transport them or hire cheap labor if no one wants to go anywhere. you have all the people carry their max load in goods that are rare at your destination and common where you start.

of course you need a cooperative dm for this.

edit: for example taking water into a desert

[Pally din]

You can use minor creation for Coal or Oil (it doesn't matter if it disappears after you burn it).

Actualy it does matter, since the carbon you want stays in the iron matrix to make it steel. If all the carbon in steel goes away, you no longer have steel.

But it is fairly easy for spell casters to start selling scrolls, potions, wonderous magic items, arms and armor, etc, with the right feats and time. Clerics are in some sense already in a healing business. Druids can help out the local crops. Magic, as renewable as it is, can be a steady stream of money. Rangers whole concept is about guiding people through the wilderness, plus they can train animals for gp. Thieves can run protection rackets, gambling dens, tax free import export, etc. A fighter basicaly hires out his sword and shield to everything from town guards to carravan runs. Etc.

A well done hook could mix several of these. The thief helps get the goods out of the city and accross borders. The fighter guards the goods. At some point they cut across the wilderness either as a shortcut, to avoid taxers, or to get to the rare spell components site. And the spell caster helps to pick the right ingredients, and takes some as his cut. Then they all reverse direction to get back to the city eventualy where they can sell something rare on the black market.

[Coidzor]

this takes a lot more effort and can give you less money than wall tricks but you could use teleportation. you could charge people to transport them or hire cheap labor if no one wants to go anywhere. you have all the people carry their max load in goods that are rare at your destination and common where you start.

of course you need a cooperative dm for this.

edit: for example taking water into a desert

There's actually a PrC dedicated to this concept the Wayfarer Guide. Possibly an Eberron PrC as well.

[Cirrylius]

I really like the idea of taking ranks in Profession (Merchant) and allowing the characters to maybe run a shop.
If they actually take the time and effort to set up a shop, then they could reap the benefits. Maybe it becomes the place where the characters bring their loot and then they try and sell it over time. I would pick a large city or town where demand will be higher and there would be taxes and such, but if that is what the players wanted to do, then I would allow the experiment to progress.
It is not really sword and sorcery but it may be fun for a while.
IIRC, the rules for Profession and running businesses in the DMG 2 are kind of weaksauce. It'd still be fun, of course, it's just that the rules could use some tweaking to keep the players from being underwhelmed with the fruits of their labor.


you have all the people carry their max load in goods that are rare at your destination and common where you start.
of course you need a cooperative dm for this.


I tried this once. The DM had to have the laws of trade/scarcity repeatedly explained to him. Alarmed at the thought of a 13th level character (to whom he granted a Staff of the Magi as a class item at 10th level) having access to middling amounts of money, he threw a 5% return at me just to shut me up.

[only1doug]

simple maths:

Wall of Iron 12th level caster (for convenience) produces 5'x5'x1"x12 or 5'x5'x1'or 25 cubic feet of Iron.
Fabricate cast by a 12th level caster will use 12 cubic feet of mineral or 120 cubic feet of other material. Lets call Iron a mineral even though it isnt, so two castings of fabricate will use up most of our wall of iron (all but one cubic foot).
We could make iron Ingots without any stress. 1 cubic foot of Iron weighs about 450 pounds so 24 cubic feet (2 fabricates worth if we treat it as a mineral) would weigh 10800 pounds.

Interestingly an Iron Golem body needs 5000 pounds of Iron and some other materials (10000gps worth) so each Fabricate could create one Iron Golem (Body) if the caster can make the DC 20 Weaponsmith and armoursmith checks. but as there is no listed price for Iron Golem Body (ready for enchanting) we are probably better off just selling the Iron Ingots to someone.

Lets instead consider making lots of fullplate (50 lbs each so only 108 / casting of fabricate or 216 / wall of Iron at a retail price of 1500gp each) which if sold individually could bring in 216*750 = 162000 gp (provided you could find somewhere to sell that many) we could discuss instead 1350 / fabricate longswords at 7.5gp each but thats only 10125gp (20250 for 2 castings) and it could possibly be harder to shift that many items than the platemail would be.

[NeoPhoenix0]

let us now consider a mage who decided to put ranks in craft (weaponsmith). he decides to turn the entire wall into masterwork daggers. why daggers? because they weigh 1 lb.
let's assume this mage is to busy to start his own business so he sells them to merchants at half price thats 151X10800=1,630,800 gp for 2 castings of fabricate.

[only1doug]

let us now consider a mage who decided to put ranks in craft (weaponsmith). he decides to turn the entire wall into masterwork daggers. why daggers? because they weigh 1 lb.
let's assume this mage is to busy to start his own business so he sells them to merchants at half price thats 151X10800=1,630,800 gp for 2 castings of fabricate.

the market for masterwork daggers may require a more substantial volume discount than just 1/2 price if you are trying to sell 10800 at once.

[NeoPhoenix0]

the market for masterwork daggers may require a more substantial volume discount than just 1/2 price if you are trying to sell 10800 at once.

teleportation and maybe planar shift based distribution.

probably also split it up with masterwork gauntlets and masterwork sais.

i do not promote this as a legitimate means of gaining money. it just takes the fun away.

[only1doug]

teleportation and maybe planar shift based distribution.

probably also split it up with masterwork gauntlets and masterwork sais.

i do not promote this as a legitimate means of gaining money. it just takes the fun away.

I was getting quite excited about the conceptof using it to create Golems until we hit the standard item creation problem of "this item requires that you use materials worth ....".

I guess you could use an extra fabricate spell in the process.

For the purpose of this the caster will be Level 16 (needed to create Iron Golem)
At caster level 16 the wall of Iron will be 33 cubic feet or 14850 pounds of Iron.
Fabricate will effect 16 cubic feet / casting or 7200 pounds.

Create wall of Iron: use one fabricate to create 7200 MW daggers, use your 2nd fabricate to convert 70000gp worth of daggers (70000/302=232 daggers) and 4768 Lbs of remaining wall of iron + 10000gp of other materials to create your golem body (using materials worth 80000gp) then continue to enchant as normal, having already met the material costs of an iron golem for an outlay of only 10000gp.

Not as wealth producing as making MW daggers but more likely to fly with most GMs (especially at that sort of level).

[NeoPhoenix0]

maybe we should design the dagger golem.

a cheaper weaker version of the iron golem available at your local discount artificer store.

[UnjustCustos]

I want a golem that is about the size of a human skeleton that folds up into a nice box... What?

[Story]

Another potential source of money is Eberron's Unseen Crafter spell. You can make lots of money setting up a mundane weapons factory and casting Unseen Crafter all the time out of all your spell slots.