Gold Making Ideas

[Tarlek Flamehai]

Greetings all,

I am looking for cash-cows for PC's. I am trying not to burn feats on crafting, but it looks like I may have to. Can any of suggest anything for a straight DFA to earn gold on the side?

[shylocke]

Take the leadership feat and have you cohort become a mystic pimp. Then everyone chips inand buys him an epic traveling brothel wagon.

[Mootsmcboots]

-Steal things.
-Kill people.
-Dress up a party member as a monster, send him into town to wreak havoc, show up after and offer to take care of the monster for a small fee, of any magical items/gold the town can scrounge up, just pile it it in the cart thank you very much.
-Start a small town, charge rent.
-Start a travelling merchant route.
-Threaten to destroy/invade towns unless they pay up.

etc

[hemming]

Invest and make your money work for you...

-Buy a cart and hire someone to sell roast chickens
-Renovate that old building into a tavern
-Invent time-shares and sell them to the nobility
-Craft a bunch of potions and sell them as more powerful potions before skipping town

If the DM allows it, I really like investing gold into a business

[Tommy2255]

One of our PCs is running for office, so the party has a bunch of funding from supporters, and if he gets elected there'll be bribes and such. And if he doesn't get elected, we skip town with all the money.

[Zweisteine]

Start a production line!

The basics (I forget the specifics):
Have a bunch of ranks in a craft skill. Get a masterwork skill tool and a magic item that grants a bonus (besides a competence bonus). Hire a few (hundred) trained hirelings, and have them all aid you in crafting. Witness as you turn out a masterwork weapon every day, or a boat very week, or something like that.

I'll try to find the source for that.

Then convince our DM to let you open a factory, and sell the items ou make at fill selling price (but, at that point, most of the money is being spent on supplies, the building, or paying the workers who will inevitably form a union and demand higher pay).

EDIT:
Here it is. (https://m.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/37/Harry-Potter-and-the-Natural-20) I'd recommend hirelings over zombies, at least to start. If your DM says you can't UMD enough hirelings, go for undead. The hirelings jut provide a way for your DM to balance it by requiring you to pay them some portion of their profit.

[Zetapup]

Depending on your alignment, you could run con jobs on towns/people in order to make money. Extortion, pick pocketing, "protecting" merchants from bandits (anyone who doesn't have your protection gets robbed by you), threatening other shops to close and then selling goods for outrageous prices... The list goes on.

If you're more good aligned, you could do actual protection of caravans and whatnot, although that may be more fulltime than on the side. Maybe try to find a way to make money with your breath weapon/invocations? "See the great [insert name] breathe fire for the low low price of 1gp per person!", something like that. Any other good/neutral aligned options I can think of (crafting, etc) would require you to spend feats/skill points.

Once you have enough money, you can start a production plant like detailed above in Zweisteine's post. Another option is a mine, a farm, or any similar good-producing thing. These have the added bonus of making money with little action needed from you and they offer a lot of great plot hooks for the dm to work with. If the dm thinks you're making too much money, they can introduce problems like bandits or competition so you prolly won't overshoot wealth by level by too much.

Of course, talk to your dm about any idea beforehand. This gives them an opportunity to work with you on whatever you decide (you want a mine? Hrm, how convenient, the mayor of the town is offering a majority share for whoever rids it of [insert monster]). If they think that'd be a different type of game than the one they want to run, it means there's no awkward in game "so I can't make money except by adventuring?" sorta thing going on.

[morkendi]

Depending on level, there is a spell in sandstorm wall of salt. It is ppermanent and says it can be chipped away. Salt sells for decent price. Only component is a salt crystal. Corner the market in the right location. If high enough, wall of stone wich is also permanen. Polymorph any object into gold, diamond, etc. Since it is mineral, should be permanent. Break it apart and sell. Lower level. Cast mount, use magical aura the first level spell to hide the aura and make it look like a normal fine hourse. Sell said horse and leave. If you need to stay in town, use alter self when you sell it.

[Tarlek Flamehai]

Assuming a caster level of 7 and that the wall is made of average density rock salt that comes to roughly 89,580 gp worth of salt. Now selling it to dealers is probably only get you half of that, and it will probably devalue the local market for at least a year. Also local market in this case indicates the total area of regular trade, probably a two to three major kingdom area. So roughly 40k gold a year income for casting one spell.....

Of course this won't help my DFA at all. :smallsmile:

[Zweisteine]

In pretty sure salt is a trade item, so it goes for full value.

Also, D&D economies don't usually follow supply/demand.
If they do, go to Sigil, which has an effectively unlimited supply of everything, but a balanced market.

[Clistenes]

If high enough, wall of stone wich is also permanen. Polymorph any object into gold, diamond, etc. Since it is mineral, should be permanent. Break it apart and sell. Lower level. Cast mount, use magical aura the first level spell to hide the aura and make it look like a normal fine hourse. Sell said horse and leave. If you need to stay in town, use alter self when you sell it.

I think PAO can't produce precious metals, gems, or expensive trade wares.

Anyway, the easiest way to earn a ton of money is to use Fabricate and Magecraft to produce anything. You can turn raw materials into wares worth three times the rice of the original raw materials. Sell your production at 50 % its market price, and you would still be earning a lot of coin.

And you can even create the raw materials with Wall of Iron, Transmute Metal to Wood, ...etc.

Of course, you will be ruining all local artisans, from weavers to potters to blacksmiths to coppersmiths to carpenters to luthiers, and will become the most hated person in the country/continent/world.

[morkendi]

You are right. PAO cant make gold and such. The salt thind still works though. You csm also build structures with wall spells and sell them.