Breaking WBL in an actual game

[Heliomance]

So it is well known that there are many,many ways to break WBL. Thing is,though, a lot of them are utterly ridiculous - breaking ladders into ten foot poles springs to mind. So what ways are there to get more cash that are likely to fly with an actual DM?

[Extra Anchovies]

Adventuring.

DMs really don't like it when players waste potential gaming time on trying to sell their walls of salt. Unless, of course, the PCs start a legitimate business and the game is not particularly plot-based.

[eggynack]

I don't think there necessarily is a method. Breaking wealth by level is intrinsically ridiculous, because it's one of the most critical factors of power in the game, so even if a method appears sane or within the confines of the game, it immediately becomes crazy when you use it to get massive piles of wealth. The means don't justify the ends, in other words.

[Urpriest]

There are two distinctions: WBL-breaking that's "realistic" and WBL-breaking that's PO, and I'm not sure which one you're going for.

As the others have pointed out, WBL-breaking that's PO is basically a no-go. At most, you've got the old "all dead characters will their gear to the party" trick as something that flies in many actual games.

WBL-breaking that's realistic basically just comes down to making something valuable and selling it. Wall of Salt is probably the best option of that sort: you're using magic to make a valuable trade good. If magic can make valuable trade goods, then logically one should be able to profit from doing so.

[Chaosvii7]

Adventuring.

DMs really don't like it when players waste potential gaming time on trying to sell their walls of salt. Unless, of course, the PCs start a legitimate business and the game is not particularly plot-based.

I mean, the game could still be plot based if the plot revolved solely around the business.

I imagine it'd just sort of become high fantasy Always Sunny....

[Vortenger]

Anything that nets you more money than the investment put into it is likely to get a red flag raised if used more than once in-game (per DM?). That's a known quantity. Best then to innumerate the many ways available and let each reader decide what flies at their table.

Wall of Salt / Wall of Iron + Fabricate = win.

Water to Acid = win.

Wall of Stone + Bones of the Earth (?) + Diplomacy= Magic meets real estate. Make a fort and sell it for cash.

Craft (art), (gem cutting), etc. + Fabricate = Turn materials into something worth 3 times as much, instantly. Turn a 50g bar of Platinum into a 10,000 gp diadem, maybe more than one. (value taken from Draconomicon).

Wall of Stone (create a basin) + Decanter of Endless Water (salt, geyser) = Fill the basin, collect salt at the end of summer.

Decanter of Endless Water + Desert dwelling culture = win.

Trade Goods + Teleport = Creating the Tippyverse one entrepreneurial mage-merchant at a time.

Plane Shift (Plane of Elemental Earth) + Shovel (Titan's Mattock preferred) = mining win.

The business rules from the DMG2 and downtime rules from PF, respectively.

Selling Spellcasting services, per the DMG.

That's a decent starter list, methinks.

[OldTrees1]

Crafting, under some DMs, will allow you to convert Feat slots + Time into a controlled higher WBL.

[Jeff the Green]

It's not really getting more cash as using less, but item creation plus cost reduction is a lot more likely to fly than becoming a salt merchant. Probably because you actually have to make a significant investment. With Extraordinary Artisan, Legendary Artisan, Magic Artisan (tied to Extraordinary Artisan), and Metacreative (also tied to Extraordinary Artisan) you're crafting at 0.753 = 42% of the original cost, giving you 4.8x normal wealth. Plus there are other things that can easily bump that up to 6.2x normal wealth.

[Tvtyrant]

I don't think you get that much out of it. You become rich quicker by leveling rapidly and killing progressively less likely dragons and cults than you do making giant salt merchant chains or farming deserts. Infinite wishes tricks are also quicker and cheaper, but likely to be banned.

If you become as rich as a level 12 character at level 9, but it took long enough you would be level 12 anyway, what is the point? You are actually making yourself weaker at that point.

[Urpriest]

If you become as rich as a level 12 character at level 9, but it took long enough you would be level 12 anyway, what is the point? You are actually making yourself weaker at that point.

Not if you're still fighting level 9 challenges. :smallwink:

[Tvtyrant]

Not if you're still fighting level 9 challenges. :smallwink:

But then you will actually be getting weaker faster compared to your leveling self, since your XP allotment will be lower. Basically WBL shenanigans makes you weaker the more you commit to it.

[SiuiS]

I like perform, craft and profession myself. You rack up a size able amount durig any down time and can also basically fish for plot hooks.

I've done some WBL stuff, usually through crafting shenanigans: profession (miner) to produce GP in raw materials, craft (smelting) to refine them, and craft (armor) or (weapons) for Adamantine gear at 1/9 cost without needing DM permission. My current game as a drow, I've finagled our level 4 party (at the time) Adamantine +2 armor and weapons that also behave like mithril, by using old drow fluff as justification. So the weakest members of the party have discount Adamantine darkleaf weave armors (using crafting and profession for materials, the Adamantine is "shadow steel" and takes damage in direct light as a vampire), which are mystically enchanted (using the "only work for x race" and "only work for x alignment" stuff from the DMG to cut the price down) and are enchanted via the DMG events style because we kidnapped a smith, drugged him and performed ancient drow voodoo rituals while he worked to channel the essence of darkness.

But you know? It doesn't unbalance the game in any meaningful way, since we have a dread necromancer and a DMM cleric in the group too. It's just leveraging power for the other players instead of ourselves. If it broke the game then we would end up fighting things at our limit and be fine.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

So it is well known that there are many,many ways to break WBL.
Common misconception. There are many ways to produce wealth. WBL is the guideline saying how much of that you should be keeping. A few points on the matter;


1) The DM makes the encounters. If you're under WBL, he might have some high-treasure encounters to boost you. If you're right at WBL and won't be leveling soon, he might start using no-treasure encounters. If you're over WBL via various shady means, there's always rust monsters, disenchanters, shadesteel golems, item-possessing spirits and so on and so forth.


2) The DM controls the NPCs. All merchants are NPCs and they don't have to do business with you if they (or the DM) don't want to. Maybe your selling iron from "wall of iron" spells threatens their business agreements with other merchant factions. Maybe the iron from those spells is low quality. Maybe the merchant is superstitious and doesn't like wizards. Maybe your poles-from-ladders scheme hurts their profits from overpricing said poles in the first place.


3) Profiteering large-scale from things other than pure adventuring always requires the interference of a 3rd party. And once you do that there's no reason other interested 3rd parties won't interfere back with you. If you're making money, crafting items and the like, someone might want to tax you, control what you're doing or take their cut...

[SiuiS]

WBL is not as hard and fast a rule as it was in fourth edition though. It's perfectly fine to go over it. You could say that's how much treasure you're supposed to have, but that's not even a hard and fast rule.

[Invader]

The entire concept of breaking WBL in any mercantile situation (salt, 10ft poles, iron, etc.) is based on the unreasonable predilection that the dm is just going to immediately let you sell all, or a large quantity of the material in a relatively short amount of time for max profitability.

[Urpriest]

Common misconception. There are many ways to produce wealth. WBL is the guideline saying how much of that you should be keeping. A few points on the matter;


1) The DM makes the encounters. If you're under WBL, he might have some high-treasure encounters to boost you. If you're right at WBL and won't be leveling soon, he might start using no-treasure encounters. If you're over WBL via various shady means, there's always rust monsters, disenchanters, shadesteel golems, item-possessing spirits and so on and so forth.


2) The DM controls the NPCs. All merchants are NPCs and they don't have to do business with you if they (or the DM) don't want to. Maybe your selling iron from "wall of iron" spells threatens their business agreements with other merchant factions. Maybe the iron from those spells is low quality. Maybe the merchant is superstitious and doesn't like wizards. Maybe your poles-from-ladders scheme hurts their profits from overpricing said poles in the first place.


3) Profiteering large-scale from things other than pure adventuring always requires the interference of a 3rd party. And once you do that there's no reason other interested 3rd parties won't interfere back with you. If you're making money, crafting items and the like, someone might want to tax you, control what you're doing or take their cut...

"A DM can shut it down" doesn't mean very much. A DM can shut down any and all player behaviors, munchkin and rudisplorker alike.

A DM who enforces WBL by the method the books suggest (making sure that encounters average Standard Treasure) is not obligated to also counteract wealth gain outside of encounters. They can, yes, but nothing obligates them to if they think of these sorts of methods as legitimate optimization.

Essentially, the question boils down to whether these tricks are legitimate uses of the rules. If they are, the DM has no more motivation to interfere with the players' attempts to use them than any other player action. If they aren't legitimate, then the DM can oppose them through whichever methods are most appropriate. Saying "the DM can shut it down" just postpones the question.

[Milodiah]

The entire concept of breaking WBL in any mercantile situation (salt, 10ft poles, iron, etc.) is based on the unreasonable predilection that the dm is just going to immediately let you sell all, or a large quantity of the material in a relatively short amount of time for max profitability.


Correction.

A good DM will stop you and point out that you're not the only person who's thought of this before.

One game I played in with a particularly thorough DM didn't allow you to get arbitrarily large amounts of money by these cast-and-sell schemes because that's what the market already is.

That's actually the biggest thing that pisses me off about D&D. Not the whole caster vs. mundane issue, not WBL, not anything mechanical...just the fact that the published settings, and 99% of homebrewed settings, don't remember to consider the economic effects of huge piles of magic.

[ericgrau]

To make money in a way that will fly with the DM, start a business. If it is based on the plot then you are likely to be allowed to do even more. For example if you have ludicrous cooking skills, a herd of exotic magical beasts are terrorizing the land, and the city has a group of wealthy people with eccentric tastes. You elaborate in role-playing detail and boom, profit.

[Lappy9001]

I mean, the game could still be plot based if the plot revolved solely around the business.

I imagine it'd just sort of become high fantasy Always Sunny....This absolutely works. My group has had a campaign that inadvertently turned into this. If everyone was down for the idea, it could be quite fun.

[Raven777]

3) Profiteering large-scale from things other than pure adventuring always requires the interference of a 3rd party. And once you do that there's no reason other interested 3rd parties won't interfere back with you. If you're making money, crafting items and the like, someone might want to tax you, control what you're doing or take their cut...

I call these plot hooks, which players might enjoy completing as follows:

Taxes: King's castle on fire.
Control: Merchant's Guild office on fire.
Take their cut: Local Thieve's Guild looted and on fire.

[heavyfuel]

Correction.

A good DM will stop you and point out that you're not the only person who's thought of this before.

One game I played in with a particularly thorough DM didn't allow you to get arbitrarily large amounts of money by these cast-and-sell schemes because that's what the market already is.

That's actually the biggest thing that pisses me off about D&D. Not the whole caster vs. mundane issue, not WBL, not anything mechanical...just the fact that the published settings, and 99% of homebrewed settings, don't remember to consider the economic effects of huge piles of magic.

This is so true.

Our punny average 10 Int minds simply can't be compared to the 30+ Int a High-ish level Wizard has. If you can think about doing it, he has thought about it before you.

All things considered, it's really up to the DM and the argument of "hard" vs "soft" WBL we were having over at the other thread. If your DM goes by hard WBL, there's nothing you can do to go over it, because he'll just bring you back down shortly after, and if he goes by soft WBL, then either he should have some plan to stop you from going too above it (like said Wizard) or he just doesn't care, in which case, you might as well break 10ft ladders for 2 10ft poles.

[Kelb_Panthera]

One important thing to remember about WBL is that it's really not about cash or castles or a fancy carriage. It's about the personal power granted by magical equipment. A mountain of gold coins won't stop the red dragon from torching your tiny adventurer butt until and unless you trade part of it for some magical gear that protects you from fire and massive claws.

As such, I don't actually count liquid assets, real property, or one-shot expendable items against my players WBL; permanent and semi-permanent gear only. Let them have their castles and pimp-coaches and hire a staff of porters to haul the dragon's (and his kobold tribe worshipers') treasure pile out of the mountain. None of that stuff matters when swords, arrows, and spells start flying and the party is up too its knees in mud and blood.

That said, I do apply market forces to my settings too. If you flood a market with conjured iron, the value of iron declines. More importantly, magical interference in the economy draws the attention of those who make it their business to control and engage the economy for their livelihood; merchant guilds, the church of waukeen (or an equivalent deity), mining companies (in this particular case), etc.

That said, the ladder - ten foot pole thing is nonsense. A ladder, at least the kind that you'd spend money on, isn't just a few poles lashed together. It's a wooden structure the breakdown of which renders it into useless lumber.

Ulimately, unless the DM in a group takes an outlook a bit like what I've described above, no method of breaking WBL will work unless the DM dispenses with WBL as a game construct altogether. Having 4-8 times standard WBL creates a dramatic increase in a character's individual power, far beyond what resources are typically spent in its aquisition. The DM -has- to compensate in one way or another.

[aleucard]

Honestly, the best you're likely to find as far as things a DM won't throw books at you for is selling your spellcasting and anything involving Craft/Profession skill use. The rest gets too much GP too quickly to be realistically accounted for. At least with the previously mentioned methods, you're limited by how much downtime you have.

I agree with Kelb here for the rest of it. You can't really do certain large-scale campaigns well without such a thing, anyway. Sure, keeping track of the actual cost of everyone's gear is going to be a pain in the ass, but such is the nature of bookkeeping, and you could just record the listed price of it alongside the thing's name anyway for easy reference.

[Abithrios]

If there is a preexisting monopoly on iron mining, they would probably be interested in a source of iron that is cheaper than digging it out of a mountain. Simply sell the wall of iron to them at some fraction of its market value. You profit. They profit. The people with the money are happy.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If there is a preexisting monopoly on iron mining, they would probably be interested in a source of iron that is cheaper than digging it out of a mountain. Simply sell the wall of iron to them at some fraction of its market value. You profit. They profit. The people with the money are happy.

Until their competitors hear about it, sure.

[Tvtyrant]

Until their competitors hear about it, sure.

Reminds me of a fantasy story where they used a magic item to make ore and gems in a mine, and paid people to take them out so it all looked legitimate. Wizard goes down, makes some walls of iron, pays to have them cut up and shipped out.

[Milodiah]

If there is a preexisting monopoly on iron mining, they would probably be interested in a source of iron that is cheaper than digging it out of a mountain. Simply sell the wall of iron to them at some fraction of its market value. You profit. They profit. The people with the money are happy.

What you don't quite grasp here is that there's a pre-existing market on Wall of Iron, because there are other wizards.

[Kazyan]

So what ways are there to get more cash that are likely to fly with an actual DM?

In my groups? Stop leaving perfectly good loot behind.

I consider breaking WBL to be like turning on cheat codes. Crafting is fine, as is creative looting, because you're making use of the game resources. But if you just want to conjure unlimited money with Wall of Salt, you're opting out of playing the game and are just saying "I win". If you decide to put a cap on how much money you'll conjure...why not just ask the DM to make the game easier, or give more treasure? The decision of how much loot a player gets is 80% the DM's discretion, after all.

[SiuiS]

Correction.

A good DM will stop you and point out that you're not the only person who's thought of this before.

One game I played in with a particularly thorough DM didn't allow you to get arbitrarily large amounts of money by these cast-and-sell schemes because that's what the market already is.

That's actually the biggest thing that pisses me off about D&D. Not the whole caster vs. mundane issue, not WBL, not anything mechanical...just the fact that the published settings, and 99% of homebrewed settings, don't remember to consider the economic effects of huge piles of magic.

This isn't an issue, really. D&D is not a setting. It's a ruleset toolbox. It is not their job to define setting parameters for you outside of nominal balance concerns. This is why prestige classes aren't actual jobs, why you're allowed to ignore alignment, and why they don't give you a kingdom by kingdom breakdown of trade and inflation.


To make money in a way that will fly with the DM, start a business. If it is based on the plot then you are likely to be allowed to do even more. For example if you have ludicrous cooking skills, a herd of exotic magical beasts are terrorizing the land, and the city has a group of wealthy people with eccentric tastes. You elaborate in role-playing detail and boom, profit.

I've done that once. Tomas, the necromancer. Priest, gourmet chef, notary, financier, and wizard. Good times, that guy.


This is so true.

Our punny average 10 Int minds simply can't be compared to the 30+ Int a High-ish level Wizard has. If you can think about doing it, he has thought about it before you.

Incorrect. Our int 10 minds can totally come up with things too small for the hubris filled int 30 wizard supercomputer to consider relevant or to notice at all.

The asinine part isn't that magic can make you rich, it's the idea that a wizard gives a damn about making it rich with kingdom based fiat currency when they are card carrying members of the eighth circle of the lower depths and have poker on Tuesdays with Pistis Sophia and Primus.


One important thing to remember about WBL is that it's really not about cash or castles or a fancy carriage. It's about the personal power granted by magical equipment. A mountain of gold coins won't stop the red dragon from torching your tiny adventurer but until and unless you trade part of it for some magical gear that protects you from fire and massive claws.

Enough gold provides both cover and concealment :smallbiggrin:


If there is a preexisting monopoly on iron mining, they would probably be interested in a source of iron that is cheaper than digging it out of a mountain. Simply sell the wall of iron to them at some fraction of its market value. You profit. They profit. The people with the money are happy.

What makes you think they mine iron in the first place?


What you don't quite grasp here is that there's a pre-existing market on Wall of Iron, because there are other wizards.

What you don't grasp is that there's literally nothing that could financially motivate a wizard to waste his time on walls of iron for sale – or even a magic item of wall of iron to sell.

Seriously. You're a wizard. Your wants and needs are qualitatively different from mortal wants and needs. If you run out of materials you don't get money to buy more – you get the materials. You don't sell walls of iron, you've already made a deal with that elder elemental to tithe you stones from the purest cerulean depths of the earth planes as payment for not destroying their kingdom when they insulted your lineage.

The crime of these threads is that people who ostensibly pretend to be people with so grand a vision they enforce the sheer magnitude of their willpower through force and narcissistic engagement on reality, think so small for goals and means. If you're selling walls of iron instead of mining the swords of fallen angels from an Acheron cube you're a chump. If you're trading disks of "precious" common metals for goods and services then both the incantor who plays chess with inevitables for leeway on law breaches and the sorcerer who bound the djinn Prince to marriage with a ring cut from the still beating jeweled heart of the undine queen are laughing at you and "forget" to invite you to your wizard college reunion.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What you don't grasp is that there's literally nothing that could financially motivate a wizard to waste his time on walls of iron for sale – or even a magic item of wall of iron to sell.

Seriously. You're a wizard. Your wants and needs are qualitatively different from mortal wants and needs. If you run out of materials you don't get money to buy more – you get the materials. You don't sell walls of iron, you've already made a deal with that elder elemental to tithe you stones from the purest cerulean depths of the earth planes as payment for not destroying their kingdom when they insulted your lineage.

The crime of these threads is that people who ostensibly pretend to be people with so grand a vision they enforce the sheer magnitude of their willpower through force and narcissistic engagement on reality, think so small for goals and means. If you're selling walls of iron instead of mining the swords of fallen angels from an Acheron cube you're a chump. If you're trading disks of "precious" common metals for goods and services then both the incantor who plays chess with inevitables for leeway on law breaches and the sorcerer who bound the djinn Prince to marriage with a ring cut from the still beating jeweled heart of the undine queen are laughing at you and "forget" to invite you to your wizard college reunion.

This presumes a particular mind-set and a desire to deal with the realms beyond the material. Some wizards just want to research magic. They spend gold because it's the quickest, least difficult way to get raw materials for experimentation and they avoid dealing with outsiders because of all the complications that come with dealing with powerful creatures with forceful personalities. Bad enough to have to deal with other wizards, at least they're intellectuals.

More simply; hubris is not a class feature of wizards.

[Milodiah]

Oh, yes, every single wizard ever except the player character refuses to spend one week of his life earning enough money to have all the conveniences and ease of living being rich carries. You wouldn't even have to waste your valuable spell slots prepping things like get-me-food spells, you'd get servants for that. Regular ones that don't run on magic and/or involve summoning, whose materials cost is about a gold piece a week...

[Jowgen]

A lot of players I've known have made rogue-type characters with the sigular goal of stealing all the stuff and getting mega-rich. I've never seen it work. Questing gets in the way, other party members need to be on board to let you cramp, and unless your character is really well built, there are plenty of ways for a DM to shut you down.

That being said, you can theoretically succeed in breaking wealth by level by building a character capable of tracking down "pockets" of wealth and stealing everything; even if it can be a serious up-hill battle depending on DM.

[TypoNinja]

I've always found that the application of magic to a mundane industrial problem can generate you ridiculous levels of money in short order. In one game where we broke WBL we sold rubber to the gnomes.

Magical solutions to logistics problems require the least thought. A wagon full of something that comes from an inaccessible place, shrink item, teleport. You now have millions of GP.

Stupid high magic and power realms (like Faerun, but really anywhere will do, at worst you plane shift to Union) with giant ass cities like Waterdeep means you can always sell your product, and can always buy anything. Waterdeep, thanks to its huge size, and status as a Planar Metropolis ends up with a GP limit north of 10mil, never mind its total assets. Groups like the Red Wizards mean that not only can you always find any magic item you want, you can buy it for a discount.

D&D was not designed with a global economy in mind.

[Kelb_Panthera]

A lot of players I've known have made rogue-type characters with the sigular goal of stealing all the stuff and getting mega-rich. I've never seen it work. Questing gets in the way, other party members need to be on board to let you cramp, and unless your character is really well built, there are plenty of ways for a DM to shut you down.

That being said, you can theoretically succeed in breaking wealth by level by building a character capable of tracking down "pockets" of wealth and stealing everything; even if it can be a serious up-hill battle depending on DM.

Those players annoy me. How hard is it to grasp that NPC wealth by level makes you one of the super-rich by mid level and PC wealth by level reaches retarded levels in a hurry. The WBL of a 20th level character is about equal to the total tax income for the government of a city of 18,500 people at a not unreasonable tax rate. I'll dig up the calculations I did way-back-when, if anyone's interested.

[icefractal]

I do find that when you start exploring the implications of what spells can do, both in terms of logistics and in terms of personal tactics, you hit a significant disconnect with the published settings. They just don't take it into account. And I feel like you have three choices:

1) Tell the players not to take advantage of it either. Not my favorite - it shuts down outside the box thinking in a lot of areas, and can feel like you're holding the idiot ball. But for one-shot, or a campaign where you just want to focus on one area, or do some dungeon crawling, it can be a simple solution.

2) Say (reasonably) that other people have thought of these things too, and incorporate that in your setting. Maybe you go full-on Tippyverse, maybe just part of the way, but it means rewriting everything from the economics of the kingdom to the tactics of the foes with that in mind. Pro: Satisfying results. Con: It's a lot of work.

3) The PCs are an exception. The rest of the world is in stasis, prevented by some force from changing the paradigm. The PCs aren't, so once they get some momentum, they'll be facerolling supposedly equal opposition. Which can be solved by giving them distinctly unequal opposition - "You need to topple this empire, at least one god is opposing you on this, and you're only 10th level. Go." Seems like it'd be a fun thing to try, but not sure it fits every campaign.

There's also 2b ... wait and hope someone else does option #2 for you, and posts it online. :smallwink:

[Curmudgeon]

1) The mild way:
Take on a second job, working the hours when party spellcasters are resting and preparing for the day (9 hours). Being an Elf means you trance for 4 hours and don't sleep. As soon as you can manage it, a wand of Ray of Resurgence (level 1 spell) removes fatigue and frees up the full 9 hours daily for that second income.

2) The brutal way:
Rise to the challenge of difficult encounters. When some party members don't survive, divvy up their stuff.

[SiuiS]

This presumes a particular mind-set and a desire to deal with the realms beyond the material. Some wizards just want to research magic.

And that's how you do it; research. Field tests. Experiments.

This misses that in order to get to "I just want to be a mild mannered scientists sitting at home doing research papers" which no wizard has said ever, you survive a ten year or longer apprenticeship bending forces to your will that will bend you back if you slip, running around an explosive chemical laboratory and routinely practicing minor contrivances which can literally tear you limb from limb with a simple mistake just to get the mystic awareness down to make it rote.

I do not believe that it is somehow strange that a wizard who goes trough the rigors – and they are rigors – of magical training does not have to have the will, the drive, the devotion and the goal-setting skill to get there. That's like saying that all scientists must survive a five year your on the front lines of viet nam war, but that not every successful scientist has the drive to survive even though they did somehow, and they just want to do some paperwork.



More simply; hubris is not a class feature of wizards.

You're right, it's a prerequisite.


Those players annoy me. How hard is it to grasp that NPC wealth by level makes you one of the super-rich by mid level and PC wealth by level reaches retarded levels in a hurry. The WBL of a 20th level character is about equal to the total tax income for the government of a city of 18,500 people at a not unreasonable tax rate. I'll dig up the calculations I did way-back-when, if anyone's interested.

The problem is that this doesn't have any meaningful effect. NPCs have castles, armies, crews, loyal subjects and grand mansions with farms and townsteads by about 100,000 gold. Players do not and often cannot have these things. You never feel rich.

I had a tiefling character once who operated as a military commander. I had a single magic item from start due to shenanigans; basically a handy haversack variant that was a command tent slash luxurious apartment. Being able to set up an actual camp and operate from it changed everything; just having that bit of description got more respect from players and NPCs alike. This wasn't some trollop in armor polishing a sword in some muddy ditch; this was a commander at ease lounging in a pavilion with servants nearby, offering you dates and honied almonds and putting you at ease during negotiations.

All because I had an actual building. That? That felt rich. Having +5/+5 armor, sword, shield, rings, cloak, etc but having no home, no family or friends, and no roots? That does not feel rich. Because when you walk into town, you're still an outlaw and vagabond as far as everyone else is concerned.

[Zrak]

Correction.

A good DM will stop you and point out that you're not the only person who's thought of this before.


I actually once played an aristocratic snob whose backstory involved his family being the first people in the setting to come up with a series of WBL-breaking shenanigans. I thought about a lot of reasonable, realistic ways for them to have made their fortune back in their vulgar merchant days and decided it would be more fitting and funnier to instead obliquely refer to some of the more famous economic rule exploits.
It had the added benefit of there being an actual, canonically established figure who the DM could point to if one of the more munchkinly-inclined players tried anything. "Are you sure you want to do that? Attempting to sell split ladders into poles has been considered high treason ever since Edmund's great-great uncle's ladder-splitting pyramid scheme caused a catastrophic economic crash from which some provinces still haven't fully recovered." "A wall of salt? What are you, that gauche nouveau-riche family Edmund's cousin married into?"

[Kelb_Panthera]

And that's how you do it; research. Field tests. Experiments.

This misses that in order to get to "I just want to be a mild mannered scientists sitting at home doing research papers" which no wizard has said ever, you survive a ten year or longer apprenticeship bending forces to your will that will bend you back if you slip, running around an explosive chemical laboratory and routinely practicing minor contrivances which can literally tear you limb from limb with a simple mistake just to get the mystic awareness down to make it rote.

I do not believe that it is somehow strange that a wizard who goes trough the rigors – and they are rigors – of magical training does not have to have the will, the drive, the devotion and the goal-setting skill to get there. That's like saying that all scientists must survive a five year your on the front lines of viet nam war, but that not every successful scientist has the drive to survive even though they did somehow, and they just want to do some paperwork.



You're right, it's a prerequisite.

If that's how you want to play your wizards, more power to you. It doesn't make how I want to play mine badwrongfun. The "rigors" of learning magic are 1000gp a week times the level of the spell you're trying to research and overcoming the necessary challenges to level up. Mind you, that's overcome challenges, not survive battles. That may or may not include travel, bypassing the occasional trap or natrual hazard that is not necessarily a creature described in a monster book, negotiating with a stubborn possessor of important knowledge, or any of a number of other difficult but not necessarily life-threatening challenges.



The problem is that this doesn't have any meaningful effect. NPCs have castles, armies, crews, loyal subjects and grand mansions with farms and townsteads by about 100,000 gold. Players do not and often cannot have these things. You never feel rich.

I had a tiefling character once who operated as a military commander. I had a single magic item from start due to shenanigans; basically a handy haversack variant that was a command tent slash luxurious apartment. Being able to set up an actual camp and operate from it changed everything; just having that bit of description got more respect from players and NPCs alike. This wasn't some trollop in armor polishing a sword in some muddy ditch; this was a commander at ease lounging in a pavilion with servants nearby, offering you dates and honied almonds and putting you at ease during negotiations.

All because I had an actual building. That? That felt rich. Having +5/+5 armor, sword, shield, rings, cloak, etc but having no home, no family or friends, and no roots? That does not feel rich. Because when you walk into town, you're still an outlaw and vagabond as far as everyone else is concerned.

That's just a question of group dynamics. If the DM makes getting those things prohibitively difficult or the player never thinks about getting these things then no amount of gold will solve the problem. Feeling rich is in how you spend your money, not how much you have.

[Yahzi]

There's also 2b ... wait and hope someone else does option #2 for you, and posts it online. :smallwink:
I'm working on it, though my stuff focuses on lower level. I'm not sure anyone can write it up for 15+ level, other than the Tippyverse. My world has several reasons why most societies don't ever get there.

One thing I do is treat XP and Gold interchangeably (at the rate of 1 to 5, just like the DMG suggests). Among the many great benefits this brings, eliminating WBL is one of them. Under my scheme wealth is level. You can spend your treasure on magic items or levels. You make the call which one is best. Since I also run a sandbox style world, the players are picking their challenges anyway, so level-appropriate challenges aren't really my problem either.

[Psyren]

WBL-breaking that's realistic basically just comes down to making something valuable and selling it. Wall of Salt is probably the best option of that sort: you're using magic to make a valuable trade good. If magic can make valuable trade goods, then logically one should be able to profit from doing so.

If you're bringing that kind of logic into it, some wizard would have done this long ago and flooded the salt market.


Crafting, under some DMs, will allow you to convert Feat slots + Time into a controlled higher WBL.

Yes, this is the best way - if you have the downtime and make your skill checks, crafting is intended to save WBL.


"A DM can shut it down" doesn't mean very much.

The thread is explicitly about "actual games," thus the response of a DM in an actual game is relevant. This is not a TO exercise.

[Urpriest]

2) The brutal way:
Rise to the challenge of difficult encounters. When some party members don't survive, divvy up their stuff.

Yeah, the old "we get dead PCs' treasure plus the WBL of the replacement PCs" trick is both very common at low-op tables and in practice more powerful than many of the milder WBL shenanigans.


If you're bringing that kind of logic into it, some wizard would have done this long ago and flooded the salt market.

You can't flood the market, though, because salt has a fixed price.

Or thinking about it another way: spellcasters can sell spellcasting services, which tend to be rather pricey, and cost the spellcaster nothing but time. If you can sell spellcasting services, then presumably some other spellcaster could have, thus flooding the market and lowering the price, yes?

The reason the above is stupid is because we assume that the price of spellcasting services already takes into account supply and demand. So why aren't we assuming the same about salt? Why don't we assume that the price of salt in the books already takes into account the existence of Wall of Salt? Absent an independent argument of what the price should be (which is something economists can't even do often in the real world), there's no reason that the price in the book isn't the price after the market is "flooded".




The thread is explicitly about "actual games," thus the response of a DM in an actual game is relevant. This is not a TO exercise.

And an actual DM will only object to WBL-bending either because they don't think it's legitimate optimization (which is something we can determine here in this thread) or because it's too powerful/unrealistic for the campaign (which depends on the theme of the campaign and the other players).

In the former case, if you think that WBL-bending isn't legitimate optimization, you can argue it right here rather than wasting time talking about tricks the DM can use to shut it down.

In the latter, we can argue that WBL-bending is too powerful for the majority of campaigns. This is again a reasonable argument to make, but there's no reason to add "and the DM will make the NPCs turn against you". If it's too powerful, either you don't try it in the first place, or you try it and the DM asks you not to. NPCs conspiring against you (more than they would normally) never has a chance to happen.

[Psyren]

You can't flood the market, though, because salt has a fixed price.

Or thinking about it another way: spellcasters can sell spellcasting services, which tend to be rather pricey, and cost the spellcaster nothing but time. If you can sell spellcasting services, then presumably some other spellcaster could have, thus flooding the market and lowering the price, yes?

No offense but that's a ridiculous comparison. Salt is a good, it can be mass-produced and traded very far away from the originating source (whether natural - an ocean - or spell) and stockpiled. Spellcasting meanwhile is a service, it has to accompany the actor performing the service. Mages are extremely rare, especially high level ones (see also - DMG population tables) and it cannot be mass-produced; thus it is not at all possible to "flood the market with spellcasting."



And an actual DM will only object to WBL-bending either because they don't think it's legitimate optimization (which is something we can determine here in this thread) or because it's too powerful/unrealistic for the campaign (which depends on the theme of the campaign and the other players).

Thinking it's unrealistic is a legitimate complaint if you're trying to do it by selling salt, or any other good that more or less can have functionally infinite supply anywhere in the multiverse.

Shutting it down doesn't require "tricks" - just reason, which is what the thread is asking for.

[Urpriest]

No offense but that's a ridiculous comparison. Salt is a good, it can be mass-produced and traded very far away from the originating source (whether natural - an ocean - or spell) and stockpiled. Spellcasting meanwhile is a service, it has to accompany the actor performing the service. Mages are extremely rare, especially high level ones (see also - DMG population tables) and it cannot be mass-produced; thus it is not at all possible to "flood the market with spellcasting."


Ok, fine, everburning torches then. Setting aside tricks involving Lantern Archons, everburning torches take 50gp of materials and are bought for 110gp. That's actually a bit above the "spellcasting services" price if they're made by Wizards. Since any Wizard of third level or above can produce them and any (non-PC) wizard can sell them at a profit, they should be produced at a fairly prodigious rate. They also last forever and don't get used up (unlike salt), so any adventurer who buys one can sell it when they're done with it. We have to assume that the supply and demand of everburning torches, despite all that, is such that someone who makes one can make a 60gp profit on it. Absent actual economic math showing the contrary, I don't see why we can't make the same assumption about salt.



Thinking it's unrealistic is a legitimate complaint if you're trying to do it by selling salt, or any other good that more or less can have functionally infinite supply anywhere in the multiverse.

Shutting it down doesn't require "tricks" - just reason, which is what the thread is asking for.

The post I was responding to wasn't saying WBL-breaking was unrealistic. It was saying that the DM can always make you earn less on later encounters and have NPC middlemen screw you over. My point is that those sorts of interventions are never relevant, because they apply to anything and never come up in a healthy game.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The post I was responding to wasn't saying WBL-breaking was unrealistic. It was saying that the DM can always make you earn less on later encounters and have NPC middlemen screw you over. My point is that those sorts of interventions are never relevant, because they apply to anything and never come up in a healthy game.

In a healthy game the players don't deliberately try to break WBL in the first place.

[Urpriest]

In a healthy game the players don't deliberately try to break WBL in the first place.

If it's Tippy-levels of optimization, they certainly might. Plenty of low-op games break WBL via dead character wealth, as discussed earlier, while mid-op games often stretch WBL with crafting.

Which tricks are legitimate depends entirely on the game in question.

[unseenmage]

Just wanted to remind everyone (again) that magic breaks all of the normal laws of our universe. It doesn't just create matter, it also destroys. Rust Monsters, planar rifts, and Sphere's of Annihilation can all be conjured forth with magic just as easily as Water to Acid, True Creation, and Fabricate can make wealth.

The D&D market gets just as unbalanced by magical destruction as from magical creation. The DM isn't the only entity that's going to be destroying wealth in the gameworld.

Perhaps this more than anything else explains why NPC WBL is so low, their worldly possesions and gp just keeps getting eaten by a gameworld where gp is delicious.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If it's Tippy-levels of optimization, they certainly might. Plenty of low-op games break WBL via dead character wealth, as discussed earlier, while mid-op games often stretch WBL with crafting.

Which tricks are legitimate depends entirely on the game in question.

As I recall, Tippy himself applies a houserule to limit the gear players can use to WBL. He's also replaced gold with the CHIT system as a much more stable medium of exchange in direct opposition to some of the kind of economy breaking notions that this thread is asking for.

WBL's guidelines are a rule for a reason. Dispensing with it creates a number of problems in the game's mechanical setup, the group dynamics if the player breaking WBL doesn't share, and the believability of economics in the setting.

While you can certainly make it possible to generate wealth, even obscene wealth, you have to compensate in some manner to keep the game running smoothly because money can be turned -directly- into personal power by purchase of magical equipment. The easiest way is to simply limit some of the less believable methods and to counter some of the others in such a way to make the wealth go just as fast as it comes when necessary.

[Psyren]

Ok, fine, everburning torches then. Setting aside tricks involving Lantern Archons, everburning torches take 50gp of materials and are bought for 110gp. That's actually a bit above the "spellcasting services" price if they're made by Wizards. Since any Wizard of third level or above can produce them and any (non-PC) wizard can sell them at a profit, they should be produced at a fairly prodigious rate. They also last forever and don't get used up (unlike salt), so any adventurer who buys one can sell it when they're done with it. We have to assume that the supply and demand of everburning torches, despite all that, is such that someone who makes one can make a 60gp profit on it. Absent actual economic math showing the contrary, I don't see why we can't make the same assumption about salt.

Just as at some point, you have enough salt to preserve every ounce of meat in the city for the next thousand years, at some point you have enough torches to light every cobblestone like a noonday sun. You can saturate any market with goods or services, but doing so with the former is far easier because the person providing a goods commodity does not have to be physically or even temporally present to do it. You can churn out walls of salt/EBTs on a fast-time plane for instance and leave no room for any other wizard to ascend to affluence that way.



The post I was responding to wasn't saying WBL-breaking was unrealistic. It was saying that the DM can always make you earn less on later encounters and have NPC middlemen screw you over. My point is that those sorts of interventions are never relevant, because they apply to anything and never come up in a healthy game.

Of course "earning less on later encounters" is a relevant DM strategy. In fact, the CRB openly suggests it:


Encounters against NPCs typically award three times the treasure a monster-based encounter awards, due to NPC gear. To compensate, make sure the PCs face off against a pair of additional encounters that award little in the way of treasure. Animals, plants, constructs, mindless undead, oozes, and traps are great “low treasure” encounters. Alternatively, if the PCs face a number of creatures with little or no treasure, they should have the opportunity to acquire a number of significantly more valuable objects sometime in the near future to make up for the imbalance.

The GameMastery Guide goes into even more detail:


Fixing a “Broken” Game

Too Much Treasure: This trap is the easiest for a GM to fall into, but fortunately is also the easiest to correct. A few too many encounters with treasure-rich opponents such as NPCs with classes can mean that the PCs end up with significantly more wealth than the suggested value for their level. Too much wealth means they can afford to buy or craft multiple magic items to enhance their characters beyond the expected power level, allowing them to more easily defeat other opponents and collect even more treasure. See Chapter 5: Rewards for more information on how to solve this problem.

Chapter 5 goes into all kinds of techniques to work around this - limiting access to magic-mart (i.e. items that can only be sold for their full value in specific places), factoring in a need for the PCs to haggle to get maximum value, treasure consisting of valuable items that are cumbersome or dangerous to transport, tariffs or bandit attacks, and in the extreme case even limiting the entire campaign, including spellcaster progression.


If it's Tippy-levels of optimization, they certainly might. Plenty of low-op games break WBL via dead character wealth, as discussed earlier, while mid-op games often stretch WBL with crafting.

Which tricks are legitimate depends entirely on the game in question.

Generally when people make a thread about "an actual game," they are not referring to either the Tippy nor the Jedipotter ends of that spectrum. At the very least, it's a safe bet to peg your mental state between those two.

[heavyfuel]

Seriously though, does any DM allow for PCs to get loads of wealth by having their characters die?


He's also replaced gold with the CHIT system as a much more stable medium of exchange in direct opposition to some of the kind of economy breaking notions that this thread is asking for.

What is this CHIT system?

[Elricaltovilla]

I have a great recipe for breaking WBL that works in an actual campaign. Its a bit pathfinder specific, but can be adapted to 3.5


1. Have an Alchemist and another character capable of casting wall of stone.
2. Trick or otherwise convince your DM to make a ruling about what kind of stone the wall of stone is made of when its cast. Note: the answer you're looking for is "same as the material focus for the spell."
3. Have the Alchemist use his insanely high Alchemy skill to make Meth (as a joke of course).
4. Use the meth "rock" as the material component for Wall of Stone
5. ????
6. Profit.


And that's how my Real Life campaign turned from being about Airship Pirates to Breaking Bad.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What is this CHIT system?

A series of high op techniques used to generate a series of indestructable, impossible to counterfeit coin-like objects that are used as a medium exchange in place of gold coins or cash.

As I recall, magical trap creates ice assassin of aleax of <random, intelligent but otherwise irrelevant creature> true mind switched into animated object (a coin), that's connected to a verification system comprised of intelligent constructs irrevocably mind-linked to each, individual coin.

CHIT stands for Credit of His Imperial Tippiness.

[Urpriest]

As I recall, Tippy himself applies a houserule to limit the gear players can use to WBL. He's also replaced gold with the CHIT system as a much more stable medium of exchange in direct opposition to some of the kind of economy breaking notions that this thread is asking for.

From what I remember, he uses different setups in different campaigns. In both systems infinite mundane wealth via WBL tricks is expected and encouraged, you're just not able to use it for game mechanical power (as in the "yes you can all have carriages" philosophy already mentioned).



WBL's guidelines are a rule for a reason. Dispensing with it creates a number of problems in the game's mechanical setup, the group dynamics if the player breaking WBL doesn't share, and the believability of economics in the setting.

While you can certainly make it possible to generate wealth, even obscene wealth, you have to compensate in some manner to keep the game running smoothly because money can be turned -directly- into personal power by purchase of magical equipment. The easiest way is to simply limit some of the less believable methods and to counter some of the others in such a way to make the wealth go just as fast as it comes when necessary.

Definitely. But there are some WBL-breaking tricks that are absolutely everywhere in low-op games (again, dead character wealth). Just because something is in general bad for the game doesn't mean it isn't also present, or even necessary, in many games.


Just as at some point, you have enough salt to preserve every ounce of meat in the city for the next thousand years, at some point you have enough torches to light every cobblestone like a noonday sun. You can saturate any market with goods or services, but doing so with the former is far easier because the person providing a goods commodity does not have to be physically or even temporally present to do it. You can churn out walls of salt/EBTs on a fast-time plane for instance and leave no room for any other wizard to ascend to affluence that way.

I'm not even talking about fast-time planes or any crafting tricks though. Why haven't EBTs saturated the market without any special tricks?




Of course "earning less on later encounters" is a relevant DM strategy. In fact, the CRB openly suggests it:



The GameMastery Guide goes into even more detail:



Chapter 5 goes into all kinds of techniques to work around this - limiting access to magic-mart (i.e. items that can only be sold for their full value in specific places), factoring in a need for the PCs to haggle to get maximum value, treasure consisting of valuable items that are cumbersome or dangerous to transport, tariffs or bandit attacks, and in the extreme case even limiting the entire campaign, including spellcaster progression.


All of those quotes explicitly deal with player wealth gained through encounters. This is important, because all it's doing is suggesting that a DM needs to have a balanced campaign, that the aspects that it is the DM's responsibility to control should be controlled. The DM is under no responsibility to keep reins on non-encounter wealth, since it's not something they introduced into the game in the first place.



Generally when people make a thread about "an actual game," they are not referring to either the Tippy nor the Jedipotter ends of that spectrum. At the very least, it's a safe bet to peg your mental state between those two.

Sure. And generically, I'm not suggesting either. But there is quite a range in between, and different tactics will be appropriate in different contexts.



Seriously though, does any DM allow for PCs to get loads of wealth by having their characters die?


It's a pretty common mistake among novice DMs. Heck, I made it my first campaign.

[Psyren]

I'm not even talking about fast-time planes or any crafting tricks though. Why haven't EBTs saturated the market without any special tricks?

But the first wizard to have broken WBL in the way you describe has no incentive not to monopolize in this fashion as there are no market controls. Indeed, not doing so is just asking for a rival to do exactly as you describe and achieve dominance themselves. The moment he can afford a scroll or staff of Genesis he can corner these markets with ease. The fact that no one has done so indicates that something is preventing it; call it the DM, call it the gods, whatever helps you bridge that gap.



All of those quotes explicitly deal with player wealth gained through encounters. This is important, because all it's doing is suggesting that a DM needs to have a balanced campaign, that the aspects that it is the DM's responsibility to control should be controlled. The DM is under no responsibility to keep reins on non-encounter wealth, since it's not something they introduced into the game in the first place.

The tables are Wealth By Level, not Wealth By Encounter. They refer to what you should have whether you are fighting or not.

Also, an encounter is defined as "any event that puts a specific problem before the PCs they must solve" (CRB 397). It does not have to mean combat. "Find a merchant who will buy all the gallons of salt I've created" can be an encounter too, or after you've found him, "convince the merchant to buy all my salt." This places the rewards of that encounter firmly under the DM's purview as it is for all other non-combat encounters.


Sure. And generically, I'm not suggesting either. But there is quite a range in between, and different tactics will be appropriate in different contexts.

Right, but given how strongly both games recommend against deviating from the WBL guidelines, it's a safe bet that the tactics you describe are not a standard assumption of the system outside of a TO context.

[Urpriest]

But the first wizard to have broken WBL in the way you describe has no incentive not to monopolize in this fashion as there are no market controls. Indeed, not doing so is just asking for a rival to do exactly as you describe and achieve dominance themselves. The moment he can afford a scroll or staff of Genesis he can corner these markets with ease. The fact that no one has done so indicates that something is preventing it; call it the DM, call it the gods, whatever helps you bridge that gap.

That argument only works if we're talking about literally infinite production, or at least an obvious level of "this is far too much for anyone to use" production. I wasn't proposing anything along those lines. There's certainly nothing obvious about Wall of Salt that says that if everyone capable of casting it does (sans tricks which make anything infinite like fast time planes) then there is no longer any demand for it.




The tables are Wealth By Level, not Wealth By Encounter. They refer to what you should have whether you are fighting or not.

Also, an encounter is defined as "any event that puts a specific problem before the PCs they must solve" (CRB 397). It does not have to mean combat. "Find a merchant who will buy all the gallons of salt I've created" can be an encounter too, or after you've found him, "convince the merchant to buy all my salt." This places the rewards of that encounter firmly under the DM's purview as it is for all other non-combat encounters.

The DM can also handle the above as non-encounters, though, since there isn't exactly a resource for merchant CRs.




Right, but given how strongly both games recommend against deviating from the WBL guidelines, it's a safe bet that the tactics you describe are not a standard assumption of the system outside of a TO context.

Neither does, though. Tippy allows deviation from WBL, he just doesn't allow it to impact the magic items you carry at any one time. And Jedipotter likely bends WBL constantly, given his general disdain for RAW and those who rely on it.

All I'm saying is that Wall of Salt may well be within the OP's search parameters, depending on context. This is why it would be extraordinarily helpful if the OP would get online and respond to the thread. :smalltongue:

[Heliomance]

I have little to add to the discussion. I don't have an actual game I'm planning on using any of these in, I was more asking as a hypothetical, and for discussion's sake. Wall of Salt does sound like a useful one, though.

[unseenmage]

I have little to add to the discussion. I don't have an actual game I'm planning on using any of these in, I was more asking as a hypothetical, and for discussion's sake. Wall of Salt does sound like a useful one, though.

Less economy breaking (IMO) is Water to Acid (St) with two castings of Create Water. Acid, in the game, is a consumable and gets used up in a rules friendly way.
Same goes for the old Elation (BoED) and Distilled Joy (BoED) combo. The Ambrosia created by it gets used up rather than persisting in the marketplace forever.


Also remember that magic also destroys things. It is just as easy for one PC/wizard/nation to flood an economic system by making goods/gold as it is for another to destroy that same goods/gold.

[Nightcanon]

I seem to remember a fairy tale about a magic salt mill that produced endless salt on command (a bit like the magic porrige pot, that did similar). I can't remember the details on either, but the little old lady who tried to exploit her porrige pot ended up filling her house, and the salt mill tale ends with '... and that is why the sea tastes of salt'.
Of course, you can't win with fairy tales- presumably the owners of the goose that laid golden eggs would have been squashed by the weight of gold had they not foolishly elected to kill it.

[AnonymousPepper]

Step 1: Have an artificer in the party.

That's it, that's their exact purpose in life, breaking WBL over their knees for the entire party at once.

[Milodiah]

So, I just realized a rather underappreciated aspect of WBL, which is Wealth By Level. It's not just "this is how rich you should be at this point in the game", it's "this is the rational progression of how you got there since level 1."

The way my current campaign worked out, the PCs aren't even becoming true adventurers (currently they're very ambitious city watchmen) until they're around level 10. So, a dungeon's almost cleared, and they're about to jump from ~5,000GP between them at level 9 to slightly above recommended individual WBL at level 10. I know it's tangential, but I figured I'd toss it into the pot...WBL is really good for the players' and DM's sanity because this is gonna be a time-consuming complete overhaul of the party's inventory rather than the easier-to-handle piecemeal upgrade supplemented by cool toys tossed at them in narrative-wise.

[icefractal]

A series of high op techniques used to generate a series of indestructable, impossible to counterfeit coin-like objects that are used as a medium exchange in place of gold coins or cash.

As I recall, magical trap creates ice assassin of aleax of <random, intelligent but otherwise irrelevant creature> true mind switched into animated object (a coin), that's connected to a verification system comprised of intelligent constructs irrevocably mind-linked to each, individual coin.

CHIT stands for Credit of His Imperial Tippiness.Ok, so ... on the one hand, this is pretty cool. On the other - you have a magical trap of unlimited creature production. What are you using the currency for? Because at this point, you already have unlimited minions (of any strength), magical items, and raw materials. I guess you could use them for gambling with other post-singularity individuals?

Or is the idea that only one person has the singularity on tap, and actively prevents anyone else from reaching it? WBL, enforced by a malevolent super-power.

[Extra Anchovies]

Ok, so ... on the one hand, this is pretty cool. On the other - you have a magical trap of unlimited creature production. What are you using the currency for? Because at this point, you already have unlimited minions (of any strength), magical items, and raw materials. I guess you could use them for gambling with other post-singularity individuals?

Or is the idea that only one person has the singularity on tap, and actively prevents anyone else from reaching it? WBL, enforced by a malevolent super-power.

The core of the concept is that the CHIT system is enacted by the societal powers-that-be to form a more stable currency than gold pieces. It's not something the PCs engage in themselves, they just end up having to acquire and use CHITs to purchase important things (magic items, etc), while GP is used by the commoners to trade for loaves of bread.

[Emperor Tippy]

What I use for WBL when I don't have a specific reason to do something else:

1) Wealth By Level is the expected wealth of a character of that level at any given time. How that wealth, as measured by market value, is gained or created is utterly irrelevant.

2) Characters can attune themselves to any chargeless magical item with five minutes of work or with a DC 10+ item CL UMD or Spellcraft check.
3) Characters can only have up to WBL+10% (or WBL + 1,000 GP, whichever is greater) in magic items attuned to themselves at any point in time, exceeding this amount results in the utter destruction of the individuals soul and makes them irrevocably dead.
4) To use a chargeless, portable, magical item requires that the user be attuned to it.

The end result of this is that PC's have the wealth that is expected by the game rules for any given encounter while not being arbitrarily restricted in terms of non combat relevant wealth.

The PC's end up a bit more powerful but not significantly so and it negates all of the tricks to exceed WBL (along with the motivation to do so).

[heavyfuel]

2) Characters can attune themselves to any chargeless magical item with five minutes of work or with a DC 10+ item CL UMD or Spellcraft check.

4) To use a chargeless, portable, magical item requires that the user be attuned to it.

I'm sure this doesn't matter at your table, but this seems to hurt mid-op characters that lack access to both Spellcraft and UMD.

[Extra Anchovies]

What I use for WBL when I don't have a specific reason to do something else:

1) Wealth By Level is the expected wealth of a character of that level at any given time. How that wealth, as measured by market value, is gained or created is utterly irrelevant.

2) Characters can attune themselves to any chargeless magical item with five minutes of work or with a DC 10+ item CL UMD or Spellcraft check.
3) Characters can only have up to WBL+10% (or WBL + 1,000 GP, whichever is greater) in magic items attuned to themselves at any point in time, exceeding this amount results in the utter destruction of the individuals soul and makes them irrevocably dead.
4) To use a chargeless, portable, magical item requires that the user be attuned to it.

The end result of this is that PC's have the wealth that is expected by the game rules for any given encounter while not being arbitrarily restricted in terms of non combat relevant wealth.

The PC's end up a bit more powerful but not significantly so and it negates all of the tricks to exceed WBL (along with the motivation to do so).

Hm. I like that approach. UMD and spellcraft are useful but not necessary; they let you switch items faster, which is an interesting application of the skills. Is there some way for a PC to know if attuning a particular item will put them over the edge? It would make a bit more sense to me that attempts to attune items over the limit would fail; otherwise, not having a party member with Appraise Magic Value means you're playing russian roulette with those gloves of dexterity.

[Emperor Tippy]

I'm sure this doesn't matter at your table, but this seems to hurt mid-op characters that lack access to both Spellcraft and UMD.
Not really, they can still spend the five minutes to flip out items. It alters the relative power slightly but not enough, in my experience, to really be relevant.


Hm. I like that approach. UMD and spellcraft are useful but not necessary; they let you switch items faster, which is an interesting application of the skills. Is there some way for a PC to know if attuning a particular item will put them over the edge? It would make a bit more sense to me that attempts to attune items over the limit would fail; otherwise, not having a party member with Appraise Magic Value means you're playing russian roulette with those gloves of dexterity.
Yeah, characters know when they are at or close to the limit and if attuning the item that they are trying to attune would push them over.

[heavyfuel]

Not really, they can still spend the five minutes to flip out items. It alters the relative power slightly but not enough, in my experience, to really be relevant.

Oh, it's either 5 min or the checks. I had misread it. Makes sense then

[NichG]

These approaches are way too direct. If you want to break WBL and fly under the radar, that means basically tricking the DM into giving an unbalanced amount of wealth. Anything overt you do will focus attention on the fact that you're doing this, and can then be shut down. Let me go back to something someone said earlier in the thread: "Adventuring"

It is generally the case that whenever the party fights enemies with class levels (and more generally 'humanoid' foes), their opponents need gear in order to be an appropriate threat. If you level up solely by fighting equal-CR NPCs who are geared according to NPC wealth-by-level (~1/4 PC WBL), it'll take about 10 encounters and so you'll end up about a factor of 2 ahead of the WBL curve assuming the DM gives no other loot even if you were to completely discard all your gear when you level up. If you have to sell that gear, you break even by discarding all your gear each level. So in practice you'll be a few levels ahead of the curve.

This can be short-circuited by the DM using a lot of consumables/pre-buffs, or by a DM who uses different mechanics for enemies (e.g. humanoid enemies have mundane gear but use powerful templates instead to up their CR, or the DM just uses much higher-level enemies than the party with comparatively miniscule amounts of gear, or any number of other things). Still, this is basically what breaks WBL by accident in most games - overuse of humanoid opponents.

So, as a player, when you get to decide whether to go into the ruined lair of a dragon with its pile of riches and monstrous guardians, or take out the local thieves' guild, the second option is going to get you more wealth than the first. Make that sort of choice consistently, and you'll end up ahead of WBL.

The other passive trick you can do is to spurn XP as much as possible. Have everyone in the party have ways to sink XP into things other than levels. Die and get Raised a few times each level so you have to catch up. Do everything you can to shed XP. The longer you delay leveling up, the more wealth you're going to have proportional to your level.

Both of these are kind of awful ways to play, IMO, but I'd say they're the things most likely to work in an actual game.

[icefractal]

The other passive trick you can do is to spurn XP as much as possible. Have everyone in the party have ways to sink XP into things other than levels. Die and get Raised a few times each level so you have to catch up. Do everything you can to shed XP. The longer you delay leveling up, the more wealth you're going to have proportional to your level.People used to do this in Living Greyhawk - enough that they specifically banned it, IIRC. It's more potent in the organized play environment though, because there are always games of a given level available, and the difficulty is standardized. In a campaign, where the DM could just use tougher foes, this seems like it would have less impact.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Ok, so ... on the one hand, this is pretty cool. On the other - you have a magical trap of unlimited creature production. What are you using the currency for? Because at this point, you already have unlimited minions (of any strength), magical items, and raw materials. I guess you could use them for gambling with other post-singularity individuals?

Or is the idea that only one person has the singularity on tap, and actively prevents anyone else from reaching it? WBL, enforced by a malevolent super-power.

CHIT's are technically government fiat money in the setting they were made for. They are, indeed, produced and distributed by a ruling governing body (The Tippy Empire) to use in place of gold coins that can otherwise be produced without limit by a whole host of creatures on the outer planes, making gold essentially worthless. Their actual value, if you go by the cost of the magics involved, is several tens of thousands of gold pieces each but since they serve no other purpose than to be a medium of exchange the government declares that each CHIT is worth exactly 1gp. In the setting in question, Tippy is the god-king of a multi-planar empire and this is how he handled the gold is worthless problem of organizing the economy beyond the material plane.

[Darkweave31]

So far as craft skills go I believe the writing one from races of stone is the most lucrative. Find a way to cast unseen crafter several times over and you have yourself a fantasy printing house. Have them write novels about your adventures, propaganda for your nation, expose the corrupt organization, or just smear the name of your enemies. It could be a fun subplot to work into a campaign to see if you can prove that the pen is mightier than the sword. Works best with several well placed readings of your works to the illiterate masses.