How to make money while in seclusion?

[Barstro]

There is another thread about gaining a level each year.

My knee-jerk reaction to that is to create my own demiplane as soon as possible and avoid the impending wars that will happen here on earth. I also expect that I will want to live forever, but my class of choice (Pathfinder Witch) cannot do that on its own. Fortunately, I can make friends or summon spirits to handle those other tasks, but that isn't free. I know I can spend lots of time crafting (plane will be at quickened time, so lots of opportunity), but I still need raw materials and a market. Earth's markets will be rather volatile (as will the Earth itself) and I'd like to minimize my time there and still be safe.

Are there ways to source wealth and spell components without coming back to Earth?

[Red Fel]

Are there ways to source wealth and spell components without coming back to Earth?

Does a proxy work? You can easily send any number of minions or substitutes - many of which you can create yourself - to do business on earth on your behalf and return with the spoils.

That said... Do you need raw materials? If you can create a private demiplane, you ought to have access to True Creation and Fabricate, which basically gives you all of the raw and processed materials you'll need. And lower-level spells will give you pretty much everything else, including food and water and other supplies.

As for spell components, there are ways to bypass that cost, among which is to simply have farms for them on your demiplane. Bat farms for guano, spider farms for webs and live spiders, and so forth. Or simply take a feat, or have a spell component pouch - which, as a spellcaster, you can craft with the right feats.

[Cosi]

Bind some Efreet*.

Use their wishes for true creation to make cocaine.

At CL 12 that's 12 cubic feet per casting times three castings per day, so 36 cubic feet/Efreet. Assuming cocaine has the same density as flour, that's about 16,000 grams per cubic foot. Total of of 576,000 grams/day. At current market price, that's about $60/gram, so well over $3 million a day per Efreet.

There are a few issues with that. For one thing, I'm pretty sure the cocaine market can't absorb that much product without an absurd price crash. Also, you have to go back to Earth to sell.

You could try making pharmaceutical drugs. Or using fabricate and skill boosters to make consumer electronics.

*: Technically you can bind all the Efreet, but I imagine you'd run out of market before you ran out of Efreet.

[Barstro]

Does a proxy work? You can easily send any number of minions or substitutes - many of which you can create yourself - to do business on earth on your behalf and return with the spoils.

That said... Do you need raw materials? If you can create a private demiplane, you ought to have access to True Creation and Fabricate, which basically gives you all of the raw and processed materials you'll need. And lower-level spells will give you pretty much everything else, including food and water and other supplies.

As for spell components, there are ways to bypass that cost, among which is to simply have farms for them on your demiplane. Bat farms for guano, spider farms for webs and live spiders, and so forth. Or simply take a feat, or have a spell component pouch - which, as a spellcaster, you can craft with the right feats.

For this thought experiment, I'd like to go without proxies. I'm more interested in what the game allows. Plus, proxies could wind up being dominated, etc. I'm trying to be as safe as possible.

True Creation and Fabricate do not really help, since they cost at least as much as what one would gain.

I'm willing to handwave "free" components. Besides, I would have taken eschew materials early on.

My specific concern is making the planes and other things permanent and paying for Wish, etc. when it's time to reincarnate.

[Flickerdart]

Spirits will take payment in gold and trade goods. Teleport to a diamond planet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet), mine the diamonds, and pay your buddies in those.

[ATHATH]

Wasn't there a trick that abused the crafting rules to craft multiple GP from one GP?

[Barstro]

Use their wishes for true creation to make cocaine.

No.

Aside from the moral part of this, opening up trade with anything is really going to alter the economy. Flooding the market with anything will drop prices, so the Player's Guide cannot really be used for actual prices of things. I expect that it will not be long before a diamond worth $1,000 today will be worth $50,000 in the near future if diamonds keep getting used as spell components. UNLESS, there is another source. And that is part of my questions; from where could I source diamonds without dealing with the Earth's suddenly rocky market? Does the game allow for me to travel to a diamond realm to get them?

[Necroticplague]

Wasn't there a trick that abused the crafting rules to craft multiple GP from one GP?

For any craft skill, you need one-third its final cost in material components. So Craft (Minter) to make coins would take 1/3rd the amount of coins you would produce. So assuming you used GP themselves as the raw material (easy to justify, you're melting the coins for metal, then re-minting), you somehow end up with three times as many coins afterwards (less justifiable). Of course, this only produces a result based on your possible Craft check, not based on amount of input material.

[Rezialn]

Wasn't there a trick that abused the crafting rules to craft multiple GP from one GP?

That's basically what a business is. Take what GP you have and grow it into more.

[Barstro]

Spirits will take payment in gold and trade goods. Teleport to a diamond planet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet), mine the diamonds, and pay your buddies in those.

Ah, you posted while I was busy. I was wondering if you could do that.

Begs the question, though. If that can be done, how do games not get broken as soon as someone has access to that sort of spell? Sure, in my scenario there will not be magic items to purchase (since they do not exist on this world until we get high enough level to craft), but in game I would sudden purchase EVERYTHING once I became a diamondaire

[Barstro]

That's basically what a business is. Take what GP you have and grow it into more.

But, businesses need markets. I'm trying to do this independent of a market (like mining or growing; but I don't know if one can mine a plane he created).

[Red Fel]

Begs the question, though. If that can be done, how do games not get broken as soon as someone has access to that sort of spell? Sure, in my scenario there will not be magic items to purchase (since they do not exist on this world until we get high enough level to craft), but in game I would sudden purchase EVERYTHING once I became a diamondaire

Short answer? DM fiat.

This issue comes up a lot whenever someone points out how easy it is to break the game economy with even low-level spells. Spells break economics as well as physics, you see.

Perfect example: Wall of Salt is a spell from Sandstorm (aka "It's Hot Outside"). It's a 4th-level spell that can be learned by Clerics, Druids, Wizards or Sorcerers. Its material component is a crystal of rock salt - which you can harvest from the wall itself. It creates a wall that's 100 feet by 10 feet per level.

One pound of salt is worth 5 gp (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins). Imagine how much salt is in a 100'x10' wall. A few castings of this spell and you are rich.

Point is, teleporting to a diamond planet and selling what you find there is hardly the only thing spellcasters can do to utterly decimate the economy.

[ATHATH]

Short answer? DM fiat.

This issue comes up a lot whenever someone points out how easy it is to break the game economy with even low-level spells. Spells break economics as well as physics, you see.

Perfect example: Wall of Salt is a spell from Sandstorm (aka "It's Hot Outside"). It's a 4th-level spell that can be learned by Clerics, Druids, Wizards or Sorcerers. Its material component is a crystal of rock salt - which you can harvest from the wall itself. It creates a wall that's 100 feet by 10 feet per level.

One pound of salt is worth 5 gp (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins). Imagine how much salt is in a 100'x10' wall. A few castings of this spell and you are rich.

Point is, teleporting to a diamond planet and selling what you find there is hardly the only thing spellcasters can do to utterly decimate the economy.
I wonder if there's a secret order of assassins that try to keep the slide into the Tippyverse from happening by killing (or mind-wiping) anyone that tries to break society or the economy.

[Zaq]

There's no logically consistent way to make money without interacting with someone. Money only means anything in the context of someone willing to give you something (whether that's a good, a service, a promise, etc.) for it, and unless you're a government creating their own fiat currency (the value of which is dubious in the absence of other people), you can't really create money without someone else giving you an agreed-upon medium of exchange for some reason.

If we're working within the game rules that specify that certain items (primarily gold and trade goods) have a specific value, then you can set yourself up to generate those items in seclusion. In other words, if we start with the premise that gold has a set value and declare that it is meaningful even without interacting with someone willing to give you something in exchange for that gold, then you can make money by working a gold mine and building up a stockpile of metal. How useful that is to you depends on how willing you are to accept the abstractions of the game rules as actual facts—for example, if you accept that a Wizard with the right feats can turn a literal pile of gold into a magic item (rather than that gold representing the materials the Wizard has to buy to accomplish the same thing), then you've done something that is valuable to you by mining that gold. Without that abstraction, though, money only has value when you're interacting with someone.

If you want to get downright silly with the abstractions in the game rules, you can just use the PHB Profession skills to make gold (ignore the business rules in DMG2), since they don't explicitly say that your earnings from Profession come from other people paying you. This is obviously absurd, but that's what I mean about treating the game's abstractions as actual fact.

[Barstro]

...then you can make money by working a gold mine and building up a stockpile of metal.

Agreed. But, can one do that on a plane created by Create Greater Plane? That's the big question I have.

If I wanted 50,000 in diamonds, a large opal, and 50,000 gp, can that be done purely on a plane that I create if I start with zero gold?
If not, can it be done on some other plane so that I at least do not need to go back to Earth?

[Flickerdart]

Ah, you posted while I was busy. I was wondering if you could do that.

Begs the question, though. If that can be done, how do games not get broken as soon as someone has access to that sort of spell? Sure, in my scenario there will not be magic items to purchase (since they do not exist on this world until we get high enough level to craft), but in game I would sudden purchase EVERYTHING once I became a diamondaire
In D&D, you can't just go to the diamond planet and grab a sack of diamonds. You have to go to the Elemental Plane of Earth, whose natives are many and terrifying. The PCs want to set up a mining operation and become super rich? Fine, but that sort of setup is a campaign in and of itself.

[Fitz10019]

What about art or literature? When successful, the components' value is a pittance compared to the result's value. The seclusion and accelerated time should support this endeavor. Are there rules for producing works of art?

[Necroticplague]

What about art or literature? When successful, the components' value is a pittance compared to the result's value. The seclusion and accelerated time should support this endeavor. Are there rules for producing works of art?

Those would be Craft checks, since they involve using your skill to make something. So they bump into the "raw materials=1/3rd cost" problem.

[Zaq]

What about art or literature? When successful, the components' value is a pittance compared to the result's value. The seclusion and accelerated time should support this endeavor. Are there rules for producing works of art?

I think Races of Stone has suggestions for that. Still bumps into the problem of objects vs. money vs. value. A work of art may have value in whatever sense you like, but you can't turn that value into money unless you interact with someone else. A hermit may wall themselves off from the world and write the greatest literature to ever spring forth from the human brain, but until that hermit brings someone else into contact with their art and that someone else pays them, they haven't made any money at all.

And again, we run into the question of how literally we want to interpret the abstractions in the rules, since "art items" are considered to have inherent value and can in many ways be treated as money.

[Coidzor]

Begs the question, though. If that can be done, how do games not get broken as soon as someone has access to that sort of spell?

DMs, mostly.

Other planets aren't a given. The plane of gems has guardians anmd inhabitants and non-spell-related gems that act as gristle between pockets of magically interesting gems.

Agreed. But, can one do that on a plane created by Create Greater Plane? That's the big question I have.

If I wanted 50,000 in diamonds, a large opal, and 50,000 gp, can that be done purely on a plane that I create if I start with zero gold?
If not, can it be done on some other plane so that I at least do not need to go back to Earth?

You have to have a nest egg of some sort for all of the recursive money tricks I'm aware of.

To get that nest egg, you have to be on either the material plane or another plane or Sigil.

[Barstro]

To get that nest egg, you have to be on either the material plane or another plane or Sigil.

Annoying, but at least it makes sense and closes some loopholes.

[Rezialn]

But, businesses need markets. I'm trying to do this independent of a market (like mining or growing; but I don't know if one can mine a plane he created).

What are you doing with your earnings if you are independent of market?

[Segev]

Technically, flooding markets doesn't devastate an economy. It merely shifts the wealth, and can undermine existing investment properties. It can ruin individual lives, but the economy recovers very quickly (barring legal actions taken to try to "fix" the economy creating distortions in it). It ultimately is pretty good for most people, because it drops the cost on the flooded good.

You make the most money, though, when you sell it all at once, because you can probably find a buyer or several who aren't aware of just how badly what you're selling will plummet in value.


I think, though, you'd make the most wealth by building or creating sourceless energy. Constructs and undead will suffice. Build dynamos and have them ceaselessly turning them. Sell the electricity. No emissions, no fuel, just maintenance and profit.

[Fitz10019]

I think we're overlooking the obvious. The best way to make money in D&D is adventuring. Therefore, send your DM to the accelerated demiplane (so they have time to come up with adventures), order a pizza, and step into the demiplane when the pizza arrives.

[IcarusWulfe]

1. Make a 10ft. ladder
2. Cut ladder into two 10ft. poles
3. Sell 10ft.poles
4.use money gained from selling poles to buy materials for another ladder
5. Profit

[Flickerdart]

1. Make a 10ft. ladder
2. Cut ladder into two 10ft. poles
3. Sell 10ft.poles
4.use money gained from selling poles to buy materials for another ladder
5. Profit
This assumes that the ladder pieces are identical to 10ft poles. Such an assumption is far from a given - for example, your ladder bits would have holes in them from the steps, and therefore lack the structural integrity of a true 10ft pole.

[IcarusWulfe]

This assumes that the ladder pieces are identical to 10ft poles. Such an assumption is far from a given - for example, your ladder bits would have holes in them from the steps, and therefore lack the structural integrity of a true 10ft pole.

Alas, I tried
(I've just always thought it was funny that 2 10 ft. poles are more expensive than a ladder)

[RhymarJared]

I don't know why my DM allowed it.

In an epic campaing, I made first enough money legally to craft a custom magic item. Without using all the tricks I used, I'm going to lay out the basic details of it. It's basically an objet to grant the wish spell at will. This way, as a standard action, you can create an object of a maximum value of 25000gp (basically any objet or material you want).

If we make it as if cast by a wizard, you have to be CL17 minimum to pull this off (or a lvl 15 artificer). On my build, I made is as a beholder mage spell, which allows me to reduce the caster level requirement (CL9) and the overall price. I made it also to need a specific skill (Use Magic device) and working only for my class to reduce the value of the item by 90%, then 70%.

So the main price would be 162,000gp (9*9*2000), +2,500,000gp worth of material components to cover the 5,000XP cost of the spell as continuous. Add the 70% and 90% multipliers, and it makes a non-epic item to create riches that costs 838,530gp to create and spending 67,083XP in the process. But compared to unlimited wish, it's inconsequential.

But that's just the basic. My artificer had the apprentice feat (90% to creation cost), the magical artisan feat for wondrous items (75% to gp and xp cost), the 2 artisan feats from the eberron campaign setting book (another 75% reduction on gp and xp cost), which put my creation cost at 424,506gp and 33,960XP. Still a big cost, but so worth it.

[EDIT] The poor man's version of this involves being an artificer of a high enough level to craft staffs. You create a staff of wish with only one charge, reducing dramatically the cost to create, then use a 4th level artificer infusion to grant it temporary charges, at the cost of 45XP. The XP cost is far lesser, but still costs over time.

[Zaq]

1. Make a 10ft. ladder
2. Cut ladder into two 10ft. poles
3. Sell 10ft.poles
4.use money gained from selling poles to buy materials for another ladder
5. Profit

Even if your GM allows this, steps 3 and 4 are problematic from the perspective of the OP. We're trying to make money without interacting with anyone else, so you can't sell the poles to anyone, and you can't buy the new materials from anyone.

[Necroticplague]

Wealth has no meaning without a market. Money, or liquid assets easily convertable to money, only mean something if you can actually use them to buy something. Similarly, whatever valuables you can make or harvest while isolated in your demiplane won't do you much good until you meet someone willing to buy or trade you for them.


Technically, flooding markets doesn't devastate an economy. It merely shifts the wealth, and can undermine existing investment properties. It can ruin individual lives, but the economy recovers very quickly (barring legal actions taken to try to "fix" the economy creating distortions in it). It ultimately is pretty good for most people, because it drops the cost on the flooded good.

You make the most money, though, when you sell it all at once, because you can probably find a buyer or several who aren't aware of just how badly what you're selling will plummet in value.

Don't forget, if other people don't know you're about to do this, you have very valuable information that can be used in the financial sector for gigantic profit. Set up a corporation that deals in that good (at least on paper), create large amounts of stocks as shares in said company. Start shorting the stocks for other companies that make the same good. Start selling, record that as profits for your new company, use this inflated profit value to sell off your stocks for a bunch of money (said stocks will become worthless in a few weeks/months, but other people don't know that yet).

[RhymarJared]

Wealth has no meaning without a market. Money, or liquid assets easily convertable to money, only mean something if you can actually use them to buy something. Similarly, whatever valuables you can make or harvest while isolated in your demiplane won't do you much good until you meet someone willing to buy or trade you for them.

Using my method presented above (the costly or poor man's version), since you can basically create any non-magical materials for spellcasting or magic item creation, there's no need to really trade with anyone.

[Jack_Simth]

There is another thread about gaining a level each year.

My knee-jerk reaction to that is to create my own demiplane as soon as possible and avoid the impending wars that will happen here on earth. I also expect that I will want to live forever, but my class of choice (Pathfinder Witch) cannot do that on its own. Fortunately, I can make friends or summon spirits to handle those other tasks, but that isn't free. I know I can spend lots of time crafting (plane will be at quickened time, so lots of opportunity), but I still need raw materials and a market. Earth's markets will be rather volatile (as will the Earth itself) and I'd like to minimize my time there and still be safe.

Are there ways to source wealth and spell components without coming back to Earth?With the Create Demiplane (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/spells/createDemiplane.html) line of spells, specifically?

Yeah, easily. The "Structure" option of Create Demiplane (Witch 8) is very open-ended. The least rules-bendy option is "Gold Mine" or "Diamond Mine", in which you can then justify making Profession(miner) checks to get raw gold / diamonds and craft (Coins / Gemstones) checks via Fabricate to enhance the value quickly (Craft is usable untrained, profession is not).

If you don't mind bending rules, then it's perfectly fine to use "Structure" to get yourself, oh, a giant maze where the walls are patterned with cut Diamond, Rubies, Emeralds, Sapphires, and black onyx stones, which are held in position via gold instead of mortar. You then carve up the walls with Fabricate.

In either case, adding a 'structure' to an existing demiplane is an Instant effect of the spell, so no worries about it going away after the harvest.



One pound of salt is worth 5 gp (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins). Imagine how much salt is in a 100'x10' wall.Why imagine? That sort of question is what math is for. Per Sandstorm page 127, Wall of Salt gives you 1 inch thick per caster level, and one 5x5 square per caster level. So that's 12x5x12x5x1 cubic inches per (level squared) = 3600 * CL^2 cubic inches.

2.54 centimetres per inch, and that's cubed, so that 3600 * CL^2 cubic inches goes to 2.54^3 * 3600 * CL^2 cubic centimetres = 58993.4304 * CL^2 cubic centimetres.

Per Wikipedia, Salt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt) has a density of "2.17 grams per cubic centimetre". So that 58993.4304 * CL^2 cubic centimetres becomes 128015.743968 * CL^2 grams.

There's 453.592 grams per pound, so that 128015.743968 * CL^2 grams becomes 282.22663532 * CL^2 pounds. So at, say, CL 15 (about the earliest to reasonably be making your demiplane), that's 63,500.992946966 pounds of salt. At 5 gp/pound, at CL 15, that's 317,504.964734828 gp worth of trade goods for crafting.

[Coidzor]

I think, though, you'd make the most wealth by building or creating sourceless energy. Constructs and undead will suffice. Build dynamos and have them ceaselessly turning them. Sell the electricity. No emissions, no fuel, just maintenance and profit.

Even the lowliest skeleton or zombie that you can make can end up Haunt-Shifted into a Fabricated dynamo and create an animated object.

If you have either a shenanigan to get around the control cap for skeletons and zombies or you're going with them going with the last set of instructions they were given before they became uncontrolled, then you're good as gold.

Of course, if everyone else on the planet or even this forum ended up gaining 1 level per year, we'd be at risk of someone using early access shenanigans to Wight or Shadow apocalypse us all before the population had become powerful enough that early spawn-creating undead were no longer that big of a problem.

So it's entirely possible that 15 years later, only the most hardened and wily of people would still be alive, along with maaaybe some other people or the occasional child under their protection. OTOH, surviving the wightopocalypse would probably help jump a person several levels ahead so they'd be able to either do something about it or escape to another plane sooner than 15 years after whatever started giving people levels.

[Jack_Simth]

So it's entirely possible that 15 years later, only the most hardened and wily of people would still be alive, along with maaaybe some other people or the occasional child under their protection. OTOH, surviving the wightopocalypse would probably help jump a person several levels ahead so they'd be able to either do something about it or escape to another plane sooner than 15 years after whatever started giving people levels.
Wights aren't getting into the Cheyenne mountain complex, but if a shadow gets in there (and the door... probably isn't thick enough to stop them), no mundane is getting out alive (it is very likely that everyone will leave, however... they just won't be alive anymore).

[Barstro]

I think a post of mine was lost.

I would need gold (gp, specifically) and diamonds for certain Pathfinder spells. If possible, I'd prefer ideas that do not include relying on DM fiat, since the reason for the question has no DM.

I realize that my basis involves mixing D&D with real world, which is a fancy way of dividing by zero, but I would like things that do not need Tippy to work.

[Jack_Simth]

I think a post of mine was lost.

I would need gold (gp, specifically) and diamonds for certain Pathfinder spells. If possible, I'd prefer ideas that do not include relying on DM fiat, since the reason for the question has no DM.

I realize that my basis involves mixing D&D with real world, which is a fancy way of dividing by zero, but I would like things that do not need Tippy to work.

Well, once you have your first permanent demiplane, Structure (Gold Mine) and Structure (Diamond Mine) from Create Demiplane should let you use Profession to harvest materials.