Abusing money... at 1st level.

[Extra Anchovies]

So the aristocrat NPC class starts with 6d8*10 GP at first level, maximum 480. If their first level feat is Mercantile Background, they get another 300 GP, total of 780. Mercantile Background also lets us buy one item per month at 3/4ths list price; as long as we write that we bought one of our starting items per month, we have equivalent wealth of (780 GP)*(4/3)=1,040 GP.

What can we do with 1,040 GP? Alchemical items are probably our friend here, since they're cost-effective at low levels. However, I'm not too well-versed on them. What can you all come up with?

[Theomniadept]

Salvo, the poison from Complete Scoundrel has a craft DC of 12 which is low as it goes, Craft (Poisonmaking) makes progress in GP instead of SP. Plus, you pay only 1/6 of the base cost when using Craft (Poisonmaking), not 1/3.

4 ranks at 1st and a take 10 check, let's assume only 16 INT, and you spent 500 GP on an alchemy lab (assuming the generic 50 gp masterwork tool won't cut it because of logic), that's a take 10 check of 19. You make 19 x 12 = 228 gp worth of Salvo a week; that's two doses of Salvo, spending 33.33 gold to sell them both for 100 gold, netting 66.66 gp profit a week. That's enough to outfit a party with a month or two of just making Salvo. Only issue is being in a place where you could reliably sell it.

Then again for smaller profits but no arrest record Oil of Taggit is a completely okay sleeping aid.

[bobthedragon]

aboleth mucus 20 gp =)
fortitude save DC 19 or lose the ability to breath air for 3 hours

at level one this is instant death 9/10 times =)

Alternatively there is this: http://adamsouza.tripod.com/alchemy.html
and this: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?148101-3-x-Shax-s-Indispensible-Haversack-%28Equipment-Handbook%29

[StreamOfTheSky]

1000 gp starting wealth? Why, you'd buy a water clock, of course!

Is there a way to handle animal on multiple targets at once? Cause mules have 3 HD of kickass and are only 8 gp each...

Best uses will probably be alchemy, poison, and hirelings, though.

[icefractal]

If you really want to be cheesy - trained animals. They don't always scale well, but at 1st level you can easily get things much stronger than the rest of the party put together. A pair of Warbeast Fleshrakers would only cost you 800 gp, leaving enough for barding and a masterwork Handle Animal tool.

If handling multiple animals at once is a problem, just get a single advanced Fleshraker (10 HD would be 850 gp, and Large). Or for that matter, there may be even better choices.

Or just be annoying and buy 40 guard dogs. :smalltongue:


Edit: Wait a minute - if you really just want short term effectiveness, forget all that. A War Troll will work for 30 gp/day, and will absolutely murder anything you run into at 1st level. For 900 gp, you can hire one for a month.

[Extra Anchovies]

1000 gp starting wealth? Why, you'd buy a water clock, of course!

I really want to do this now; play an aristocrat 1/something effective 19 in a game that starts at level 1, and have my starting gear be a water clock plus 30 gp worth of adventuring gear. Insist on lugging the water clock everywhere. Put magical enhancements on it to improve its survivability as we reach higher levels. Be known as that one guy with the water clock who followed around an adventuring party despite their complaints.

Alternately, I could buy a spyglass.

ETA:
If you really want to be cheesy - trained animals. They don't always scale well, but at 1st level you can easily get things much stronger than the rest of the party put together. A pair of Warbeast Fleshrakers would only cost you 800 gp, leaving enough for barding and a masterwork Handle Animal tool.

If handling multiple animals at once is a problem, just get a single advanced Fleshraker (10 HD would be 850 gp, and Large). Or for that matter, there may be even better choices.

Dang, that's a nice idea. Two Warbeast Fleshrakers would eliminate encounters wholesale at level 1, and even at levels 2-4 would effectively reduce the number of enemies per encounter by 2, if not more. One big Fleshraker might be a better investment, though; it would stay useful through higher levels. I could also try to convince the DM to let it be a Wild Cohort...

[Rubik]

A warbeast titanic fleshraker dinosaur (25 HD and Gargantuan size) would only be 1,975 gp. Is there some way to stretch your budget a bit more?

[Phelix-Mu]

It's really about drugs, if all morality is aside.

Step 1: Find a town. Probably on the smallish side, preferably a bit remote.

Step 2: Bring drugs (BoVD).

Step 3: Bring something to help convince people to take drugs.

Step 4: As usual, first dose is either free or at bargain basement prices, depending on your starting supply.

Step 5: Second dose, not so free.

Step 6: Acquire wands of extract drug (BoVD), or similar manner of spamming the spell.

Step 7: Make more drugs.

Rinse and repeat until said town is milked of the majority of it's wealth. If coupled with a Diplomacy capable build, you can probably forestall the arrival of the authorities long enough to net a hefty profit. Move on to next town, or maybe a city, picking up protection, muscle, dealers, and spellcasters as you can afford to hire them (or pay them in drugs).

Added Benefit: If you are going scorched earth (wise choice), then drug addicts are pretty easy to kill, as the mechanic leaves many of them in a pretty bad state.

This all works best with a spellcaster, but with a bit more work, even an Expert or Aristocrat could pull it off pretty well.

[Rubik]

Just buy a casting of Wall of Salt.

Salt is literally worth its weight in silver, after all.

[Extra Anchovies]

Just buy a casting of Wall of Salt.

Salt is literally worth its weight in silver, after all.

Oooh, that's another good one. 1040 GP gets me a CL 26 Wall of Salt (with exactly zero gp left to spare; nice!). That's (26*5)=130 feet long, 5 feet high, and (26/12)=2.167 feet thick. I now have 1408.333 cubic feet of salt. Density of salt is 135.46867445 lb/ft3, so we have:

190,785 pounds of salt, worth a total of 19,078.5 GP.

Have hirelings carve off chunks of salt and transport it for sale; pay them in salt. After transport costs I'll probably still have acquired at least 19K gp from it. That's enough for +3 equivalent armor, a +2 equivalent weapon, and the aforementioned Titanic Warbeast Fleshraker. Or, if I'm feeling cheesy, I could purchase more Walls of Salt. Salt is a consumable, so market saturation is only a short-term issue.

[Phelix-Mu]

Just buy a casting of Wall of Salt.

Salt is literally worth its weight in silver, after all.

While it is RAW possible, the real question is why would anyone ever sell a casting of wall of salt, rather than just cast it for themselves, which is worth radically more money, at a negligible increase in personal effort (unless they don't also have an unseen servant, a shovel and a sack, in which case, fail caster).

[SiuiS]

So the aristocrat NPC class starts with 6d8*10 GP at first level, maximum 480. If their first level feat is Mercantile Background, they get another 300 GP, total of 780. Mercantile Background also lets us buy one item per month at 3/4ths list price; as long as we write that we bought one of our starting items per month, we have equivalent wealth of (780 GP)*(4/3)=1,040 GP.

What can we do with 1,040 GP? Alchemical items are probably our friend here, since they're cost-effective at low levels. However, I'm not too well-versed on them. What can you all come up with?

Become the independently wealthy investor of a fellow party member who uses craft skills and sink both full sets of starting gold into objects to sell at increased value. Add in a friendly enchanter who can hook you up via the mentor feat or with fees paid and start with enormous wealth in magical gear.

Or invest it all into a business in town and create a perpetual wealth generation engine; make the most efficient use of your few remaining gold and continuously spam downtime to get even more. Own a city and wage war instead of dungeon crawling.

[Pilo]

Buy a few riding dogs and guard dogs, trained for combat. You'll have more firepower than a fighter or a wizard, and you can make them breed to get more money.

[Yahzi]

Put it all on the Craps table at 30-to-1. If you fail the roll... create a new character and try again.

[Rubik]

While it is RAW possible, the real question is why would anyone ever sell a casting of wall of salt, rather than just cast it for themselves, which is worth radically more money, at a negligible increase in personal effort (unless they don't also have an unseen servant, a shovel and a sack, in which case, fail caster).Perhaps D&D characters are like those in StupidworldTM (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9669819/1/The-Two-Year-Emperor) and don't even bother to think about how the rules of their world can be used to their advantage beyond the bloody stupidly obvious.

[Hamste]

Eh, you can make more money by starting as a wizard and selling your starting spell book. All 0th level spells and 3+int level 1 spells add up quickly.

[Rubik]

Eh, you can make more money by starting as a wizard and selling your starting spell book. All 0th level spells and 3+int level 1 spells add up quickly.Combine with Precocious Apprentice and the other ingredients for an easy bake wizard (aside from Eidetic Spellcaster, of course) to multiply your spells in your spellbook quite handily.

You can also combine this with Scribe Scroll to sell scrolls you've made, pre-game, if you can somehow start with just a little XP.

[ace rooster]

Be the mule baron! 600gp can net you 75 cr1 mules, and handle animal is a class skill. A decent charisma, skill focus, and you can hit the 20 required to train them war tricks.

Unfortunately the poison thing does not work well, because aristocrat does not have craft as a class skill. As far as I am aware it is the only class that lacks it.

Aristorcrat does work better for a knight than any other class at level 1. You can actually afford a warhorse, and if you get 1/4 off it can be a heavy one. A heavy warhorse, studded leather barding, splint mail, a heavy shield, and a couple of weapons will put you at about 600gp spent, which leaves money to pay a groom and a squire. You have enough skill points that you can actually ride the horse, and even maybe spot something!

An illusionist with illusion mastery does not even need his spell book for illusions, so may as well sell it anyway. :smallbiggrin:

[Extra Anchovies]

An illusionist with illusion mastery does not even need his spell book for illusions, so may as well sell it anyway. :smallbiggrin:

But how valuable can we make this spellbook? Let's have a Human wizard 1, Intelligence 18, starting feats Collegiate Wizard and Mercantile Background. All 37 0-level spells, plus ten 1st-level spells, is 28.5 pages, for an equivalent cost of 2850 GP, or a sale price of 1,425. Mercantile Background, however, lets us sell one item per month at 75% list price, so we can sell our spellbook for 2137 GP, 5 SP. Buy a bucket for 5 SP, take off 15 GP for the spellbook's price, and we have 2122 GP. Mercantile Background, plus starting gold, boosts that to 2542 GP. That's enough to buy the Warbeast Titanic Fleshraker:

Hit Dice: 26d8+275 (387 HP)
AC: 28 (touch 8, FF 26)
Abilities: Str 46, Dex 15, Con 32, Int 2, Wis 16, Cha 12
Attacks: 2 claws +33 (3d6+18 plus poison), bite +28 (3d8+9), tail +28 (3d6?+9 plus poison), rake +29? (3d6+6)
Poison: DC 33, damage 2d6 Dex/2d6 Dex
Speed: 60 feet
CR: only 15, apparently

I'm not even going to bother calculating their grapple bonus. OH WAIT I AM THEY GET +49

I also would have 492 GP, enough to purchase another spellbook, some studded leather barding for my pet, and basic adventuring gear.

What's the bucket for, you ask? Well, that fleshraker isn't gonna clean up after itself... better buy a shovel, too.

Edited to add changes caused by Warbeast template.

[Seerow]

Wait how is the cost of a Titanic Warbeast Fleshraker calculated? Is there some general rule for calculating the value of a trained animal, or is this specific to Fleshrakers? If it is specific to fleshrakers, is the assumption that templates aren't increasing the price beyond what hd advancement does?

[Extra Anchovies]

Wait how is the cost of a Titanic Warbeast Fleshraker calculated? Is there some general rule for calculating the value of a trained animal, or is this specific to Fleshrakers? If it is specific to fleshrakers, is the assumption that templates aren't increasing the price beyond what hd advancement does?

Cost of a creature with the Warbeast template for animals greater than 3 HD is 100 GP +75 GP/HD. Warbeast adds 1 HD, so 26*75+100=2,050 actually.

[Seerow]

Cost of a creature with the Warbeast template for animals greater than 3 HD is 100 GP +75 GP/HD. Warbeast adds 1 HD, so 26*75+100=2,050 actually.

Wow... that is just ridiculous. Like I am speechless at the ineptitude of whoever wrote Warbeast.


On that note, off to go buy some 20+ hd flying mounts for some high level characters.


Edit: It occurs to me, as long as the Warbeast template makes cost based solely off HD... stack as many other templates as you can find that don't change type (making it disqualified from Warbeast) as you can find. For example: Why not make your Titanic Fleshraker a Flying Titanic Fleshraker?

[Segev]

If you're concerned about controlling multiple animals with Animal Handling, recall that you can solve this problem with money, as well. Buy your kennel of dogs or other favored animals, and then hire commoners who are proficient in animal handling to command them for you in combat. Arm them each with a longspear (which is, of course, their one simple weapon with which they're proficient), and they can lurk behind their trained war-dogs to poke things from relative safety, either for an extra attack, or just to Aid Another their animal that they're directing as needs dictate.

[Inevitability]

Edit: It occurs to me, as long as the Warbeast template makes cost based solely off HD... stack as many other templates as you can find that don't change type (making it disqualified from Warbeast) as you can find. For example: Why not make your Titanic Fleshraker a Flying Titanic Fleshraker?

Don't you mean a Winged Titanic Fleshraker? /nitpick

[devlear]

Why not also get a scroll of Empowered Maximized Awaken and then claim you are the Fleshraker and that it is your starting character.
+27 INT, +4 CHA +3 HD

[Sith_Happens]

Hire mercenaries. Lots of mercenaries.

[Coidzor]

Wow... that is just ridiculous. Like I am speechless at the ineptitude of whoever wrote Warbeast.


On that note, off to go buy some 20+ hd flying mounts for some high level characters.


Edit: It occurs to me, as long as the Warbeast template makes cost based solely off HD... stack as many other templates as you can find that don't change type (making it disqualified from Warbeast) as you can find. For example: Why not make your Titanic Fleshraker a Flying Titanic Fleshraker?

There was a thread a bit ago about template stacking on animal bases and how they compare with other forms of necromantic minions.

I think Woodling came up as keeping Animals as Animals.

[Endarire]

A similar way to get lots of money is to start as a Wizard and sell off the spells from your spellbook that you don't want (such as putting them into another spell book when you initially learn them).