Fabricate Loop, creating gold from gold.

[MiuKujo]

Warning: This is a thought experiment. No DM with two brain cells is ever EVER going to let this happen.
Moving on.

The idea is thus;
1) All coins in D&D 3.5 are 50 to a pound. Ex. 50gp=1lb. 50cp=1lb. Therefore 1lb of gold is worth 50gp, so we can assume the coins are pure (physical properties of the various metals aside).
2) The Fabricate Spell can be used to create mass amounts of items has two key phrases. "You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship." And "Material Component: The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created."
3) The Craft(XYZ) skill states that any base cost of a finished mundane product will require 1/3 it's value in raw materials in order to craft said item.

Therefore I would argue that one could in theory take 17gp(16.666...) which is 1/3 the base cost of a 1 lb ingot of gold. Cast Fabricate on the pile of coins. And get a 1 lb ingot of gold worth 50gp. Without making a craft check because melting pure gold and pouring into a mold isn't hard, just hot.
A 9th level wizard can work up to 9 cubic feet of pure gold. A 7th level artificer can do 7 cubic feet. Either way they're making millions of gold each day in a form that could be argued to be as good as the coins you started with. (Think Frontiersmen trading nuggets of gold for supplies) Yes, you could use Fabricate to make gold Full Plate armor with Craft(Armorsmithing), but you'd probably only sell one per country to the king if you're lucky. A 50gp ingot you might actually be able to spend at some of the higher establishments like a magic item shop, the church, or just buying the whole bar a round of the best ale in town (keep the change, madam).
Now, why Gold ingots? Because I feel that there wouldn't be nearly anywhere you could spend platinum bars. A 1lb bar of silver is worth 5 gp. Just carry gold coins at that point. And copper? Hahahaha, copper. Only good as distractions and bribing the homeless. Also gold is so inconspicuously readily available nobody would really bat much of an eye at gold bars. You're already dropping tons of it from your bottomless coin purse in every town you walk in to. (Because lets be honest. None of you are tracking the weight of your 1000gp aka 20 lbs of coins.)

Yes I know it's game breaking as hell. Yes it's also based on a LOT of technicalities. And yes, your GM will have gods strike you down in some ironic fashion for even thinking of maybe trying it, "Just once to see if it works." Thoughts?

[Âmesang]

The thought's crossed my mind as well, at least with regard to Eschew Materials and Ignore Material Components… but I think the only way it can really work is if one presumes that a raw chunk of natural, fresh-from-the-vein, still embedded in the rock gold is valued at one third of a refined ore/trade bar of the same weight (since some work would have to done to extract fresh gold from a vein).

…but then again I know nothing of the gold mining process. :smalltongue:

[MiuKujo]

But I think the only way it can really work is if one presumes that a raw chunk of natural, fresh-from-the-vein, still embedded in the rock gold is valued at one third of a refined ore/trade bar of the same weight (since some work would have to done to extract fresh gold from a vein).

I think it's all in how you think about it. Sure, you could make an ingot from raw, unrefined ore. But you could also make an ingot from refined ore. Ex. Melting down a pure golden chalice to make a pure gold ring. Or, for all it matters, the same chalice. Nothing, technically, says you can't.
You just decide that rather than refining a lot of raw gold ore into a pure gold ingot. You smelt a few pure gold coins into a pure gold ingot.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You can always make art objects out of gold prior to selling them. Take gold coins and fabricate into golden statues worth three times as much.

[Crake]

You can always make art objects out of gold prior to selling them. Take gold coins and fabricate into golden statues worth three times as much.

This would be your best bet really, because you see 1lb of gold coins is 50 coins, which is why 1lb of gold is worth 50gp. Casting the coins into gp does not actually change their value at all, just make it more granular in terms of how much you can spend at once. Fabricate cannot change the quantity of gold, just it's form, with only 1/3 of an lb of gold, you'd only get 16 (and 2/3rds) gp.

[GreyBlack]

RAW? No, this won't work.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm

The original material costs the same as the original material. Ergo, you could craft a 17 gp of gold into a 17 gp ingot. This is one of the few (extremely odd) areas of conservation of matter in 3.5.

[Dragolord]

RAW? No, this won't work.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm

The original material costs the same as the original material. Ergo, you could craft a 17 gp of gold into a 17 gp ingot. This is one of the few (extremely odd) areas of conservation of matter in 3.5.
You can still use Fabricate to work the gold, though. You can make quite a few sets of gold cufflinks out of 17gp worth of coins, after all.

[mauk2]

So.....

What I'm getting from this is that Fabricate needs to be out of the spell list.

Readily accomplished! :)

[Jack_Simth]

Yes I know it's game breaking as hell. Yes it's also based on a LOT of technicalities. And yes, your GM will have gods strike you down in some ironic fashion for even thinking of maybe trying it, "Just once to see if it works." Thoughts?

Problem:
The materials for crafting are not defined, and are left up to the DM. When you're using a Craft check normally, you purchase poorly-defined materials to produce your results.

You're instead swapping around and saying "X is made of Y, ergo, I can use Y as the base materials". Trouble is, that transform isn't defined. All the DM has to say is "that's not proper materials for the finished product, so you're just exchanging at equal value" and the exploit breaks.

Mind you, you can spend the coin in an area where suitable materials would reasonably be available, Fabricate those, and triple your investment.... but that's theoretically a separate problem.

[GreyBlack]

Problem:
The materials for crafting are not defined, and are left up to the DM. When you're using a Craft check normally, you purchase poorly-defined materials to produce your results.

You're instead swapping around and saying "X is made of Y, ergo, I can use Y as the base materials". Trouble is, that transform isn't defined. All the DM has to say is "that's not proper materials for the finished product, so you're just exchanging at equal value" and the exploit breaks.

Mind you, you can spend the coin in an area where suitable materials would reasonably be available, Fabricate those, and triple your investment.... but that's theoretically a separate problem.

Yay laws of equivalent exchange! Now I wonder what I can combine with a dog...

[weckar]

I'd argue you an even quicker one: You state 50GP is equivalent to 1lb. This is normal, stock, exchange currency rate.

I argue that if you melt down your coinage into raw gold and then apply Craft(minting) you'd be left with 150GP in coins - as the value of the resource does not change but the output is tripled.

Who needs magic anyway?

[Barstro]

I'd argue you an even quicker one: You state 50GP is equivalent to 1lb. This is normal, stock, exchange currency rate.

I argue that if you melt down your coinage into raw gold and then apply Craft(minting) you'd be left with 150GP in coins - as the value of the resource does not change but the output is tripled.

Who needs magic anyway?

Ah, but you do not mint 50gp of coins out of just 50gp of gold. You also need 10gp of coal to build up a fire, 9.3gp of ceramics to hold the melting gold, 4gp to rent the correct moulds, and 10gp in variable costs for people to guard the cooling coins while you mint the next part of the batch (or you can get rid of the guards and pay more for additional moulds and ceramics to do it all at once).

In the end, you use 50gp worth of stuff to make 16.7 gp worth of coins.

[weckar]

Seems to me most of those are rather an initial investment that can be solved through bulk production. Valid point nonetheless though.

[Jay R]

The essential observation was the OP's first line, which I quote here:


Warning: This is a thought experiment. No DM with two brain cells is ever EVER going to let this happen.

The solution to any rules loophole is a competent DM.

[weckar]

With the logical DM solution in this situation being the observation that the undertaken action would be Forgery, not Craft. Therefore, it does not work with Fabricate.

[MiuKujo]

With the logical DM solution in this situation being the observation that the undertaken action would be Forgery, not Craft. Therefore, it does not work with Fabricate.

Ah, but there's the rub. Gold ingots would not be a currency controlled by the state(Whomever is controlling the region). If I wanted to make coins out of the gold I started with, yes. Forgery. Flat out. Nobody'd argue that. That's why I was leaning more in the direction of sell-able materials. And again, ingots rather than crafted goodies because no shopkeeper is going to by a few dozen gold rings. But they might take a solid ingot off your hands. They might even be able to get that ingot converted directly into coinage at the treasury or a bank.
And besed on the comments of the other people, I'm just looking down the barrel at a shortcut to say, buy 17gp of raw ore. Cast Fabricate. I now I have 50gp ingot. Buy 50gp raw ore. Fabricate. Now I have 3 50gp ingots. Unfortunately this requires finding a gold mine of raw ore. Must look deeper down this rabbit hole to break it....