Is there a spell that converts items to gold and gold to items?

[magicalmagicman]

Or a feat or class feature or something like that? Playing another robinson crusoe type adventure, and the DM asked me to ask on forums because our last attempt at using profession to gather supplies was terrible.

edit: Clarification, gather Magical supplies for magic item creation in a 0 civilization setting.

[Lazymancer]

I can remember only Ancestral Relic converting straight gold (or anything valuable) into useful stuff.

Or you can try planar binding. I think I've seen some merchant outsiders somewhere, but I'm not sure if that was even 3.5 or third-party.

[Esprit15]

Depends what you need to make. I know Fabricate can make basic things. Other than that, maybe Artificers.

[magicalmagicman]

I can remember only Ancestral Relic converting straight gold (or anything valuable) into useful stuff.

Or you can try planar binding. I think I've seen some merchant outsiders somewhere, but I'm not sure if that was even 3.5 or third-party.

Mercane is the merchant outsider, and he's in the d20srd, but we're trying to do a campaign that starts lower than level 9, and we need magic items to craft!


Depends what you need to make. I know Fabricate can make basic things. Other than that, maybe Artificers.

Magic supplies for magic item creation.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

He has plenty of gold, and he wants to eat it? Can't he just create food and water?

Or are you looking for an exchange rate, how much food he gets for the 7 gold pieces he made with his profession check? In that case: a poor meal that will keep you going for a day is about one silver piece, as per this chapter (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Food,_Drink,_and_Lodging). EDIT: Nope, you're not.

I think you're mostly looking at the survival and craft skills, with some knowledge of nature and geography thrown in. EDIT: For survival alone, Robinson Crusoe did not make too many magic items I think.

[magicalmagicman]

He has plenty of gold, and he wants to eat it? Can't he just create food and water?

Or are you looking for an exchange rate, how much food he gets for the 7 gold pieces he made with his profession check? In that case: a poor meal that will keep you going for a day is about one silver piece, as per this chapter (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Food,_Drink,_and_Lodging). EDIT: Nope, you're not.

I think you're mostly looking at the survival and craft skills, with some knowledge of nature and geography thrown in. EDIT: For survival alone, Robinson Crusoe did not make too many magic items I think.

Not food/water, but magical supplies for magic item creation. Island is filled with high CR monsters and our party fighter needs a magical sword!

[Gildedragon]

What do you have? GPs? A sword? Neither?

Remember the items needed to create a magic item aren't specified beyond needing the weapon or armor or tool... The items required is fluff:

So if you have a sword already: harvest materials till you have the GP equivalent needed to craft an item. It could be done via craft alchemy, creating reagents to enchant the blade.

If you only have GP: melt coins to make a sword, enchanting it in the process.

If you have both: toss the coins into a lake or suchlike to petition a local spirit to imbue the blade.

If you have neither: make a sword of local materials. Maybe find a bronzewood tree and craft a sword out of that, and harvest stuff to make the blade magical.

The key skill here is Craft.
But remember costs in the srd are abstract

[mabriss lethe]

When in doubt, there's always the sacrifice rules from BoVD.

[magicalmagicman]

What do you have? GPs? A sword? Neither?

Remember the items needed to create a magic item aren't specified beyond needing the weapon or armor or tool... The items required is fluff:

By this logic we could say GP itself is the best magical conduit/battery/catalyst/etc. and have the character use a "craft magical supplies from gp" check until he succeeds XD. Still though, mundane crafting methods will take ages since magical supplies are always in the thousands, minimum.



So if you have a sword already: harvest materials till you have the GP equivalent needed to craft an item. It could be done via craft alchemy, creating reagents to enchant the blade.

...

If you have neither: make a sword of local materials. Maybe find a bronzewood tree and craft a sword out of that, and harvest stuff to make the blade magical.

The problem here is that using a profession or craft check until you gathered the gp equivalent of magical supplies will take ages, because they cost 1000+ in gp, while you gather at a rate measured in silver pieces.




If you only have GP: melt coins to make a sword, enchanting it in the process.

Item Durability/hardness might be a problem for this.


If you have both: toss the coins into a lake or suchlike to petition a local spirit to imbue the blade.

This might be a nice solution, but then it's the same as having magical spirits and creatures as merchants.


But remember costs in the srd are abstract

Why do you mean by this? Abstract??? The srd costs seem absolute, and in sp o_o


When in doubt, there's always the sacrifice rules from BoVD.

Imma check this out, although if you gave me the page numbers... hint hint

[Gildedragon]

By this logic we could say GP itself is the best magical conduit/battery/catalyst/etc. and have the character use a "craft magical supplies from gp" check until he succeeds XD. Still though, mundane crafting methods will take ages since magical supplies are always in the thousands, minimum.



The problem here is that using a profession or craft check until you gathered the gp equivalent of magical supplies will take ages, because they cost 1000+ in gp, while you gather at a rate measured in silver pieces.




Item Durability/hardness might be a problem for this.
alchemical gold.



This might be a nice solution, but then it's the same as having magical spirits and creatures as merchants.



Why do you mean by this? Abstract??? The srd costs seem absolute, and in sp o_o
as in the gp needn't be gp. They can be payed in goats, or herbs, or whatever.

Also re: the item harvesting. Well if they don't have GP at all there's not much of a way to get GP stuff sans craft etc checks.
Abstract the time of getting the stuff away. Party hunts for the goods as a team

[magicalmagicman]

alchemical gold.


as in the gp needn't be gp. They can be payed in goats, or herbs, or whatever.

Also re: the item harvesting. Well if they don't have GP at all there's not much of a way to get GP stuff sans craft etc checks.
Abstract the time of getting the stuff away. Party hunts for the goods as a team

You gave me an idea! Craft Alchemy to turn mundane things into magical supplies. Very interesting.

Anyways the harvest speed remains a problem. If I want to gather enough plants for 1,000gp, I will still be gathering at a rate of silver pieces, which means it's gonna take like a 100 days of gathering for that 1,000gp item. I guess that kinda makes sense.... hmm....

Anyways you've been extremely helpful. I'll still probably name the craft skill "craft magical supplies" instead of "craft alchemy"

[Rebel7284]

At higher levels that spell is Teleport, Greater to go to the nearest market. Doesn't sound like that's super useful here though.

[Lazymancer]

Magic supplies for magic item creation.
The closest I can come up with are the rules for growing rare herbs and chopping monsters for components (UA 140 and 150). You'll need to homerule things, though - those are metamagic components, not crafting.



When in doubt, there's always the sacrifice rules from BoVD.
Sacrificing fellow PCs is too gauche nowadays.

[Dagroth]

Polymorph Any Object solves your reagent/component/supply needs!

[Gildedragon]

You could also kill animals and harvest their valuable bits...
follow the guidelines for harvesting dragon bits and metamagic components.

alternatively: sacrificing XP/life force at a 1xp for 5gp (that's the standard rate iirc) to enchant items.

[animewatcha]

2 levels of chameleon for rotating ancestral relic for a mini-artificer.

[Thurbane]

To the OP: you'll probably get more usable answers if you give us an idea of the party composition.

[tiercel]

Sacrificing fellow PCs is too gauche nowadays.

Frickin' BoVD hipsters: "Sure, I used to offer up my fellow sentients' pain, suffering, and very lives for material gain, but then it got ALL POPULAR..."

In terms of finding valuable goodies, I'm guessing you're going to want to leverage Survival, possibly K-nature and K-arcana to identify nature-loot, though it wouldn't surprise me if your DM is planning to make those high-CR monsters *themselves* the loot (which might mean more Knowledge checks).

If you've got divine caster(s) in the party, you may want to (ab)use their spell lists to boost your relevant skill checks, and you may have to bootstrap your way to items by burning more spells on basic buffs (e.g. magic weapon, le gasp!) than you're used to until you can combine tooth of tyrannosaur, whipstrand of roper, and eye of roc into your shiny new Sword of +Awesome.

But straight up? Yeah, as others have said Ancestral Weapon from the Book of Exalted Cheese is probably the closest fit, but it's a feat, has potentially problematic fluff to introduce in media res, requires that particular book, oh, and is still only one item.

[Edit to add] The rules for bonded magic items (DMGII, p.231) may be of interest for DYI items. These rules refer to gold costs, but it is fluff-easy to imagine using/sacrificing valuable natural components/monster-bits as part of a bonding ritual, and lets each character DYI w/o item creation feats or even spellcasting. YMMV.

[magicalmagicman]

To the OP: you'll probably get more usable answers if you give us an idea of the party composition.

TBD, except me, who will be sorcerer to avoid wizard paper shenanigans. You can suggest anything. There will be a mundane character for sure though, just don't know which.

[Firest Kathon]

Ask your GM if he is open to something like Pathfinder's Automatic Bonus Progression (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression/) variant. I find that especially useful in settings where Ye Old Magick Shoppe is not around the corner (or not available at all).

[Fouredged Sword]

Remeber, when crafting you can use an increased DC to craft faster at the cost of requireing a higher DC check. You gain check results X DC in value crafted each week.

Ways to speed this up

Unseen Crafter spell - Each instance adds another week of work per week of crafting. You spam it each day and you get many many more days of crafting per day.
Magecraft - Gives a nice solid bonus to craft checks each day. It allows an easier time boosting the crafting DC to speed things up.

So yeah, assuming a DC 10 for gathering herbs and such. You add 10 to the DC to boost it to DC 20 and take 10's to craft with a +10 modifier (int+magecraft). This allows you to generate 20*20 silver pieces a week, meaning 40 gold. Assuming you burn 3 2nd level spells a day and are at least level 7 that means you get 840gp a week in crafting done.

[gogogome]

Wouldn't gathering supplies be profession instead of craft? Crafting is using what you have to make something else, where as profession sounds like the one to gather stuff when you have nothing.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Wouldn't gathering supplies be profession instead of craft? Crafting is using what you have to make something else, where as profession sounds like the one to gather stuff when you have nothing.

I suspect you're right in general, but in this situation gathering supplies would probably be survival. But to model how much you're gathering it may be useful to model it like profession and craft when used to gather an income. Actually making an item from these materials, which can be treated as their value in gold as determined by the survival check modeled as a profession check, would be a relevant craft check. For a magical weapon the basic item has to be masterwork, which costs a lot of extra time and money/materials. Actually putting the enchantment on is presumably a spellcraft check.

The craft rules were probably never really meant for high level characters making their own gear, so this whole setup is going to take a lot of ingame time, unless the DM is willing to give the group the materials in exchange for a short adventure, raiding the treasure chest of the raw material goblins of north cape, and then gives a reduction on time spent making the masterwork component of the weapon.

[Bronk]

Island is filled with high CR monsters and our party fighter needs a magical sword!

You might be able to find a craftsman able to make an "Item of Legend" (War of the Lance, p23), for a +5 mundane attack bonus.

[Thurbane]

Maybe just have everyone go VoP (or at least, the melee types), then rely on Greater Magic Weapon (on your quarterstaff) and Magic Vestment (on your rags) spells. :smalltongue:

[RedWarlock]

Doesn't apply to magic items, but I recall there being a House Kundarak-created magic box that converted jewels and treasure-items into gold, and possibly the reverse? Not recalling where it was, exactly, later Eberron book of some sort...

[lbuttitta]

When in doubt, there's always the sacrifice rules from BoVD.
Can I sig this?

[Fouredged Sword]

Actually one good solution would be to planer bind an agent who can go purchase an item for you from one of the big planer markets. There are several outsiders who would be able to go on a shopping trip for you such as a Succubus. Admittedly she is likely to pocket the money and rob the merchant she finds blind with her charm magic, but you get your item none the less.

[Thurbane]

Actually one good solution would be to planer bind an agent who can go purchase an item for you from one of the big planer markets. There are several outsiders who would be able to go on a shopping trip for you such as a Succubus. Admittedly she is likely to pocket the money and rob the merchant she finds blind with her charm magic, but you get your item none the less.

That's a good suggestion. Once they get access to these type of spells, a Mercane (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/mercane.htm) becomes an option. They are (more-or-less) extradimensional shop-keeps/merchants.

Come to think of it: by the time Teleport or similar abilities come online, you could always just jaunt off to the mainland to shop: although if the DM specifically wants the adventure/campaign to play out on the island, it may be dimension locked or similar to prevent this kind of thing.