Library of Boccob

[Twilightinferno]

In my next session my party will be going into the Library of Boccob. This is the largest collection of arcane knowledge and magic items on this plane. The DM made it very clear we won’t be able to take anything out of the library unless we want to fight the libraries very powerful guardians, but we can make or own copies of any knowledge we want to take back with us. My character is a banished Drow that’s trying to take back her home city. From past adventures my character has already received a lordship, 2 strongholds, followers, and a lot of land. My plan is to us the library as a way to get knowledge that I can use to build up my followers and holdings. The best part is that after this my DM is planning to do a new arc that takes place 50 years in the future, so my character will have 50 years to use what she finds in the library to build up her forces. My problem is I’m not sure what type of knowledge to look for. So far I’ve come up with finding out how to make valuable magic items I can produce to make revenue, knowledge on how to train characters for arcane classes, and finding powerful spells to learn but no specifics.

[Uncle Pine]

Look up the dates of the next few solar eclipses, so that you can strike your enemies when they're powerless.

[Arcanist]

My problem is I’m not sure what type of knowledge to look for. So far I’ve come up with finding out how to make valuable magic items I can produce to make revenue, knowledge on how to train characters for arcane classes, and finding powerful spells to learn, but no specifics.

Investing in magical items sounds like a super awesome idea.

What edition? D&D? or Pathfinder? What is your build? What pre-existing resources do you have at your disposal? Does your character have class levels in our lord and savior, Artificer? In theory, you can always just take advantage of the downtime to retrain your character. I imagine 50 years to be enough to replace almost any number of levels you'd want with whatever else you want so don't feel too hunkered down.

If you're really interested in making some magical items, what are you looking for? Do you want to improve the infrastructure of your Stronghold? Maybe expand it out from a small little Moat and Fort and turn it into a fully fledged township? Or eventually expand out into your own small nation? Or maybe you want to expand your military force around your stronghold and try to conquer the countryside and establish yourself as a Warlord. Or does your character want to maybe go back to their home town and slaughter the people who banished them. Regardless, we need more details about your aspirations with your character.

TL;DR Edition? D&D or Pathfinder? Character levels? Just saying your a banished Drow isn't enough detail to go on besides maybe presenting the mental image of you being running around with two swords and a panther.

[Twilightinferno]

Investing in magical items sounds like a super awesome idea.

What edition? D&D? or Pathfinder? What is your build? What pre-existing resources do you have at your disposal? Does your character have class levels in our lord and savior, Artificer? In theory, you can always just take advantage of the downtime to retrain your character. I imagine 50 years to be enough to replace almost any number of levels you'd want with whatever else you want so don't feel too hunkered down.

If you're really interested in making some magical items, what are you looking for? Do you want to improve the infrastructure of your Stronghold? Maybe expand it out from a small little Moat and Fort and turn it into a fully fledged township? Or eventually expand out into your own small nation? Or maybe you want to expand your military force around your stronghold and try to conquer the countryside and establish yourself as a Warlord. Or does your character want to maybe go back to their home town and slaughter the people who banished them. Regardless, we need more details about your aspirations with your character.

TL;DR Edition? D&D or Pathfinder? Character levels? Just saying your a banished Drow isn't enough detail to go on besides maybe presenting the mental image of you being running around with two swords and a panther.

Thanks for the tips. My campaign is D&D 3.5 and my character is a CG drow 2warlock/3cleric/4eldrich disciple. She’s was a member of the ruling family of her home city in the underdark, but was forced to flee for wanting to have friendly relations with the surface. Now her goal is to go back and conquer her home city and then begin trading with the surface kingdoms and colonizing the surface. What I’m trying to mainly get from this library are ways make some gold and to make it easier to build up her infrastructure and military on the surface so it will be easier to conquer her home city.

[Arcanist]

My campaign is D&D 3.5 and my character is a CG drow 2warlock/3cleric/4eldrich disciple. [...]

[...] What I’m trying to mainly get from this library are ways make some gold and to make it easier to build up her infrastructure and military on the surface so it will be easier to conquer her home city.

Theurges, particularly this combination of Theurge, are exceptionally bad at what you're trying to do here so you're probably going to want to retrain as an Archivist and pick up Merchantile Background and Craft Wondrous Items.

Archivist is basically the same as Cleric, except they can cast from any divine list explicitly including Druid. Now the fact you can prepare and cast Druid spells is very, very important because this gives you access to a few very important spells, these spells are from most important to least important:


Plant Growth
Glibness
Diminish Plant



You're going to convert a large portion of your Stronghold into farmland (specifically farming Rice, which sells for 5gp by the pound), cast Plant Growth to increase it's yield, and have your followers gather said crops. If anyone asks how you have such good crops, you lie and say you have a green thumb. Next, you're going to go to every single farm within your region, and cast Diminish Plant over their crops, and when they ask you if you did it, you're gonna lie and say you didn't.

This should give you a steady income because you'll basically be out supplying every other farm around you. For more easier use, just make a magic item useable once per day to do Diminish Plant and have your cohort or followers or whatever do it. Ideally, this should be enough to increase the demand for food stuffs to at the very least "sought" to be able to sell off your crops at a relatively large profit (at the very least sold at about 6gp per round of rice, of which you're yielding at the very least 1 1/2 of your total yield). Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me find any rules on farming in detail in a WoTC source that tells me how much a "yield" even is. At worst, your DM makes you use the business rules from DMGII, at best he uses a house rule that lets you make a lot more money from this venture. If neither happens and he flat out says no?

You can mine out the Elemental Plane of Earth, but this is actually hard because doing that runs the risks of your followers dying, and it is fairly hard to actually maintain a long term mining operation on the Elemental Plane of Earth because random encounters occur and most of them can and will easily wreck your mining team if they get unlucky, combine that with the mild rewards (gems, some metals, etc.) and the risks outweigh the rewards unless you can find a way to "cull" the random encounter list. To do this, you can cast Forbiddence (off the Blighter list as a 5th level spell), and make it so that anyone who isn't your alignment exactly can't get through. Your alignment doesn't matter, so long as it isn't Neutral, Lawful Evil, or Chaotic Evil. This basically culls everything from the list except the following:


Earthquake: Unavoidable, you just have to deal with this.
Elemental Pocket: A random pocket connecting to another plane, potentially might dump you in lava and destroy your diamonds.
Fossil: A potential undead, approach with caution.
Gemstone: MIGHT encounter Mountain Dwarves or Duergar. Personally? I'd be prepared to kill them immediately.
Mercane Trading Mission: A bit of a wild card if you trust in your social skills, or maybe kept Glibness prepared from the previous venture.
Metal Seam: Pay dirt. An explicit value given.


Follow this up by making a Profession (Miner) check to rake in more dough and you're all good.

TL;DR Retrain to Archivist pure (or dip in something that doesn't lose you caster levels), pick up a few spells, and get books on Farming, Mining, and social skills.

Alternatively: You can just rob someone who has a lot of money. I'm confident your DM would prefer this route instead of the above convoluted quest to establish a township and get revenge. If you want a cheap army, consider setting up a beneficial Trap of Animate Object and Permanency to make disposable soldiers that you can throw at people.

[Jay R]

Obviously, the most straightforward thing to take away is knowledge. Perhaps you can find the notes of the architect who designed the place you're going next, or traveler's tales. The location of the Lost Treasure of Sredni Vashtar would be worth knowing. A very subtle approach is to look up some secret that some noble or high-level priest or wizard would like to know. Then sell them the knowledge.

Where is the king's half-brother building an army to try to take over the kingdom? Is there a rich but unopened tomb you could locate?

But besides knowledge, you described it as a large collection of magic items. What kind of magic items are there? The goal is to find an item which has long-lasting effects.

If there are scrolls or books you can cast from, then look for a Permanent spell and pick your best option of the spells that can be made permanent.

Use a Mirror of Mental Prowess or Crystal Ball to scout your next mission.

Is there an efreeti bottle?

Can you make something with Marvelous Pigments, and take the item you made?

Or see if there is an item (scroll, ring, sword, book) that can cast a Wish or Alter Reality.

How long will you be allowed to stay? Is there time to read a Tome of Clear Thought or some other enhancement book?

Don't forget that you don't need to conserve resources. Go all the way through a Book of Infinite Spells.

The highest risk / highest gain approach is to look for a Deck of Many Things. I don't recommend it, but I point it out. [If you take this risk, look for an item that can improve your luck in that regard, or your defense, first.]

[BWR]

You could have Boccob steal from Thoth (http://mimir.net/musee/thoth.html)

[Twilightinferno]

Obviously, the most straightforward thing to take away is knowledge. Perhaps you can find the notes of the architect who designed the place you're going next, or traveler's tales. The location of the Lost Treasure of Sredni Vashtar would be worth knowing. A very subtle approach is to look up some secret that some noble or high-level priest or wizard would like to know. Then sell them the knowledge.

Where is the king's half-brother building an army to try to take over the kingdom? Is there a rich but unopened tomb you could locate?

But besides knowledge, you described it as a large collection of magic items. What kind of magic items are there? The goal is to find an item which has long-lasting effects.

If there are scrolls or books you can cast from, then look for a Permanent spell and pick your best option of the spells that can be made permanent.

Use a Mirror of Mental Prowess or Crystal Ball to scout your next mission.

Is there an efreeti bottle?

Can you make something with Marvelous Pigments, and take the item you made?

Or see if there is an item (scroll, ring, sword, book) that can cast a Wish or Alter Reality.

How long will you be allowed to stay? Is there time to read a Tome of Clear Thought or some other enhancement book?

Don't forget that you don't need to conserve resources. Go all the way through a Book of Infinite Spells.

The highest risk / highest gain approach is to look for a Deck of Many Things. I don't recommend it, but I point it out. [If you take this risk, look for an item that can improve your luck in that regard, or your defense, first.]

We have no idea what items are inside. All we know is that the library is focused on knowledge involving magic(spells, creating magic items, magic creatures, etc) and that in order to get in you need to offer magical knowledge that's currently not in the library or a unique one of a kind magic item. As far as time we can stay as long as we want but when you leave you have to once again pay the entrance fee I mentioned.

[Falontani]

if your DM allows custom items, then become an artificer. Keep your flavor. Create a wondrous item that allows you to cast scorching ray at will, or some other single target ray spell with good power (disintegrate?) to mimic your EBs. Otherwise do what Arcanist suggested for a huge income, and boost your army. Magic items are expensive, but if you have 50 years of downtime you can easily get the money required to make the items so long as you aren't outright attacked by other adventurers.