Fabricate Question - Sorry!

[kalos72]

Sorry folks, new here and I had a question.

So if I buy 100 Red Steel ingots I can create a Fabrication Trap and get 14400 ingots every day?

And if I take some Red Steel ingots, make 100 MAGICAL +1 Red Steel Masterwork long swords and create a second Fabricate trap, I get 14400 MAGICAL +1 Red Steel masterwork long swords every day?

XP Forge for an Artificer anyone?

Or a platinum coin forge where I get 14400 platinum coins every day?


Is it that simple or am I missing something?

And btw: Is there a search function on these forums? I looked bu could not find one. :(

[asnys]

I believe the usual interpretation is that it can make red steel bars and other valuable, mundane stuff. My personal view is that a trap, lacking an intelligence score, cannot make anything requiring a Craft check, and any of the listed examples would require a Craft check to make, and thus the trap would not do anything. However, I'm basing this solely off the SRD; I don't have the Dungeonscape book that goes into a lot more detail about traps, so I may be wrong. And traps in the hands of PC's are ridiculously broken anyway - if you want to make tons of money with a trap, how about an automatic resetting wall of salt trap?

It definitely can't make anything magical, though. That's in the spell description:


Creatures or magic items cannot be created or transmuted by the fabricate spell.

[AstralFire]

No search function besides Google for a temporary but indefinite amount of time.

[kalos72]

Thanks Asnys.

Red Steel is considered magical on its own, that why I used it as an example. Just creating a weapon with it makes it +1 magical for DR purposes I believe.

But taking out the "magical" part, my understanding seems correct yeah?

As for the salt reference...would I need to even use wall of salt? Take 100x the salt block of your choice and create the fabrication trap. Done. 14400 salt blocks of a particular salt in block form. :)

[Der_DWSage]

It's not so much that you 'need' the wall of salt spell as it is the fact that you can easily get the salt needed from it to fuel the first casting of Fabricate.

Much more easily than actually buying 100x blocks of salt and carrying them with your noodly wizard arms, at least.

But yes, you've kinda stumbled on why most people regard Fabricate as a rather broken spell. Create a mountain of money each time you poke your hand in a trap, and you're golden.

Lastly:The only search function at the moment is using Google, and typing 'site:Giantitp.com' before your actual search query.

[asnys]

Thanks Asnys.

Red Steel is considered magical on its own, that why I used it as an example. Just creating a weapon with it makes it +1 magical for DR purposes I believe.

But taking out the "magical" part, my understanding seems correct yeah?

Sorry, I'm not familiar with red steel. If it's magical it shouldn't work. But yeah. My counterargument only works if what you're trying to make requires a Craft check, and I gather people who have read more books than me believe that even that is not necessary.


As for the salt reference...would I need to even use wall of salt? Take 100x the salt block of your choice and create the fabrication trap. Done. 14400 salt blocks of a particular salt in block form. :)

What are you fabricating out of salt? Especially that doesn't require a Craft check?

But it's not like it isn't very well-known that the D&D economy model is deeply borked and easy to game. There's the ladders to firewood+10' poles trick, casting wall of salt, casting wall of iron if you're core only, just plain casting fabricate and making a ton of, say, telescopes, wish-loops, etc. etc. etc.

[Sewercop]

Can you tell me where i can find the red steel materials properties listed?

[kalos72]

Well now that I read the spell description again...it says magic ITEM. Is a base material that has magical properties considered a magic item?

Items made from Red Steel are considered magical because of the metal...not any additional creation steps that MAKE it magical. Kind of like how making a long sword from Mithril automatically makes it a masterwork.

Just trying to make the logic work... :)

[Spore]

As DM I'd follow ONE of the following choices (depending on further information):

1) Red Steel counts as magical for overcoming DR/magic but for nothing else. Then the swords (no enhancement bonus) can be fabricated.

2) Red Steel swords automatically count as magical. Then any smith can create magical weapons without caster levels but you cannot fabricate it.

[kalos72]

Just in case some of you aren't aware, the Red Steel I am speaking of is a material found in the Red Steel Boxed set.

I think those options are fair...hwo or would you work into a masterwork option to this scenario?

[Thiyr]

I believe the usual interpretation is that it can make red steel bars and other valuable, mundane stuff. My personal view is that a trap, lacking an intelligence score, cannot make anything requiring a Craft check, and any of the listed examples would require a Craft check to make, and thus the trap would not do anything. However, I'm basing this solely off the SRD; I don't have the Dungeonscape book that goes into a lot more detail about traps, so I may be wrong. And traps in the hands of PC's are ridiculously broken anyway - if you want to make tons of money with a trap, how about an automatic resetting wall of salt trap?

It definitely can't make anything magical, though. That's in the spell description:

I'd personally go with "the trap can follow a pre-set pattern". That's sensible. But I'd also say that the trap can't create something out of nothing (That is, you can't spend 100 of the raw materials for item X to get 14400/day of that same item). You're covering the material component cost, but the spell doesn't have a valid target when it is going off. (Plus, the spell says that it converts one thing into another, so logically if you didn't have the initial one thing, there would be nothing to convert into anything else, thus doing nothing.)

That said, wall of salt or iron are good ways to go if you just want money. And if you want infinite swords, wall of iron and fabricate go together nicely at that point.

[asnys]

I'd personally go with "the trap can follow a pre-set pattern". That's sensible. But I'd also say that the trap can't create something out of nothing (That is, you can't spend 100 of the raw materials for item X to get 14400/day of that same item). You're covering the material component cost, but the spell doesn't have a valid target when it is going off. (Plus, the spell says that it converts one thing into another, so logically if you didn't have the initial one thing, there would be nothing to convert into anything else, thus doing nothing.)

I think that's a very sensible house rule, but I was talking about RAW. RAW, the raw material for the fabricate is an arcane material component and thus the trap does not need it except when it's first built, but every time it goes off it does need to make a Craft check (if it's a complex item). And if I was going to make a house-rule then, unless I was running a game in an intentionally Tippyverse setting, I think the house rule would be "no, you can't make spell traps, stop asking".

[kalos72]

So the question arises for the crafted item, not the material itself it seems.

Anyone have a good link for item creation details?

I am lost on the details on making simple magical items like +1 long swords for example... :(

[kalos72]

Would these metals be considered magical in themselves or could they also be reproduced via fabrication trap?

http://www.ekkaia.org/rpg/dnd/ps/planarmetals.pdf