It's all about the money!

[Thuphinlok]

Hello again playgrounders. I have a quick question about monies in D&D. Specifically the selling of spells from a PC perspective. I am playing a Druid/Runecaster, who for fluff reasons, usually tries to sell all of his buff spells at the end of the day to churches/shops, and other needy peoples (read: party members). I know it's weird for a druid to be so obsessed with money, but that is what the Runecaster cares about for its entire schtick. So here we go, and yes I am aware that there is no reason for the church with its clerics to buy my cure spells, but it is just an example.

Ex 1:
Cost to create a level 1 rune of Cure Light Wounds = (spell level X caster level X 50) = (1 X1 X 50) = 50 GP (Xp is not an issue in this particular thread)
With Master Artisan? feat (-25% crafting) I save ~12.5GP

When selling my Runes, how much can I realistically charge for them? The party has been getting things at cost (without adding in the 25% savings, cuz a mans gotta eat right?), but how much could I get from the church? I seem to remember reading somewhere that when you craft something, you can typically sell it for double what it cost you, but that seems INSANE to me! Maybe not for the lvl one one time use rune, but what about

Ex 2:
Cost to create a permanent rune of Freedom of Movement (spell level X caster level X 2000) = (4 X 7 X 2000) = 56000
With Master Artisan = save 14000

Selling for double would make that over a 100K magic item, and that seems a little pricey for Freedom of movement, even if it is permanent, and takes no body slot (or engraved on another piece of gear ie your boots). We haven't really had an issue yet because we are still a low enough level that I am mostly supplying the party with things that they need, but I will eventually need more money than I can get from my party if I really want to stay this route. What are your thoughts on this?

~Thuphinlok

[Flickerdart]

It's not that the clerics in the church have no reason to buy your spells, it's that they can't afford to - spellcasting services are incredibly expensive, and a church will be mostly filled with 1st level Experts and Adepts who have a pittance of gold at best.

If you can manage to actually hock your spell runes to someone, everything PCs sell that isn't trade goods is sold at half price. Crafting items also costs half price - so you would pay 25gp to craft your level 1 rune, and that's also how much a merchant would pay for it. So your cut is just the 25% you save with Master Artisan.

You would, in some cases, make more money selling your spell services rather than by crafting runes. Your profit on a CL1 rule of CLW is only 6.25gp, but you would earn 10gp when selling the casting as a service.

[icefractal]

The item one is simple. Selling is generally at half price, with a limit based on the size of the town. So just RAW, you only make money if you have cost reducing abilities, because otherwise you craft at half price and sell for the same.

IMC, this is where the downtime / business rules come in - if you have an appropriate type of business, you can sell a certain amount of items per week at full price - a larger amount the bigger your business is. But YMMV.

Selling spells is a bit less well defined. RAW, you can sell as many spells as you want (up to the town's resource limit, presumably, but for this purpose that's pretty high), possibly at half-price although it doesn't say. Sometimes GMs might limit how much demand there is, but that's all house-rule territory so it varies from campaign to campaign.


I've been working on a unified money-earning system, that would bridge the gap between Profession/Craft rules (tiny amounts per day), selling spells (large amounts per day), and hiring out as a bodyguard / warrior / whatever (somewhere in the middle, but still pretty low based on book rates), and make the amount more consistent and worth doing.

It's not done yet though, and it would require a change to the skill rules (making it so that more ranks gives a qualitatively better result) to make sense.

[Thuphinlok]

Excellent guys! This falls more or less where I expected it to. I thought the 2x sell was a bit much, and the 25% savings is much more in line with my thoughts. I'm not particularly worried about the size of the town and the amt of resources available right now because the DM said it was a go, so rules or no rules I'm good to go, I just wanted to get other opinions on how much I should be making.