How many DMs allow Ambrosia, Liquid Pain, Thought Bottles, Fabricate, etc.?

[sorcererlover]

I am really tempted to use these but before I start investing time into learning and optimizing these things, i'd like to know how many DMs allow them into their game.

If it's as common as Shapechange or Gate then yeah i'll definitely learn and use them. If it's as common as Ice Assassin I doubt it.

I want a rough %. 90%? 0%? 0.1%?

[Eldonauran]

Not this DM, not to the point where you could 'optimize' their usage.

[Silva Stormrage]

I generally allow Liquid Pain/Ambrosia factories. For the main reason that they are actually fairly expensive to start up and don't generate that much XP in the first place for crafting.

I don't allow SLA's or any other means to reduce their cast time below 1 hour though (Through rapid metamagic) so thats a restriction.

Pretty much all the others I ban. Though I did create a "Lesser Fabricate" spell I allow which is just like fabricate but it only can create one item/dose per casting. That prevents it from shattering the economy entirely.

[RoboEmperor]

Pretty much all the others I ban. Though I did create a "Lesser Fabricate" spell I allow which is just like fabricate but it only can create one item/dose per casting. That prevents it from shattering the economy entirely.

Pretty sure you can argue this is RAW. Fabricate creates one item. A pile of masterwork items and a huge vat of Liquid Pain are not items. If they are then their craft DC should be significantly higher and you can say it's illegal because no such craft DC exists.


I don't allow SLA's or any other means to reduce their cast time below 1 hour though (Through rapid metamagic) so thats a restriction.

I didn't know this was a thing.

So 16 hours a day with 8 hour rests. That's 16 x 3 = 48xp a day. Not bad I guess. Is there a way to reduce this further?

As to the OP's actual question, I had a DM who completely allowed thought bottles, ambrosia, and liquid pain because he thought crafting xp was BS. Then I introduced him to my latest build and he said "Ok, I see why crafting xp is a thing" and banned them. My peers got mad at me but fortunately we play over the internet so they couldn't throw stuff at me.

[Fizban]

I have Polymorph and even a dash of Gate notes on the books because they're cool spells that I want to exist in some form. I don't have a single mention of "xp factories" or "lol casters already have infinite money" because they aren't worth the effort: if you even made it to my game you already know I don't care how "RAW" your exploit is and if you were going to whine about it you wouldn't have got in.

So that'd be a no from me. And remember that there's no way you're ever getting an accurate read on a percentage of all DMs from a forum. Threads like this do tend to attract some extra hits from the less extreme field, but are often quickly drowned out by a few posters, and even when not they still don't represent any of the non-foruming people.

Edit: to be more specific on the named spells-
-Fabricate is fine, but I would run it as I have mentioned in Fabricate threads (one item, overuse may result in a required cooldown, and there is no market for your fabricated stuff unless I say there is).
-Ambrosia and Liquid Pain are interesting but there is no item that auto-extracts Ambrosia, the Pain Extractor is hugely expensive, I am no longer allowing Evil parties (nor do I allow secret snowflake Evils), and in general you're just not going to get much out of it even long term.
-Thought Bottles just don't exist. If you want softer xp penalties or insurance policies then ask the DM, either when the campaign is being set up, or for something special later.

[Troacctid]

I use milestones instead of xp, so none of these would be useful in my games.

[Lapak]

Not this DM, not to the point where you could 'optimize' their usage.
This answer could just as easily be mine. There are RAW options that do not add fun to the fun, and these fall into that category for me.

[Feantar]

The only one of those I ban is the thought bottle. The others, I just generally follow some reasonable assumptions about (for example, as stated above, fabricate either only makes one object, or your craft DC goes to the stratosphere). But, in general, I have been lucky with my players - a gold exploit has only been used once, and they actually used it for political reasons (which made the campaign rather interesting) and not for battle prowess.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Allow their use; yes.

Allow them to be farmed; not without dramatic difficulty, in both the narrative and severity senses of the word.

House rule: thought bottle can not restore XP voluntarily lost.

[Zaq]

It doesn’t matter what “most GMs” allow.

It matters what one specific GM allows.

[Mike Miller]

It doesn’t matter what “most GMs” allow.

It matters what one specific GM allows.

Exactly this. I was going to say almost the same thing verbatim.

[RoboEmperor]

I don't allow SLA's or any other means to reduce their cast time below 1 hour though (Through rapid metamagic) so thats a restriction.

BAH! I GOT EXCITED FOR NOTHING!

Liquid Pain and Ambrosia's casting time is measured in DAYS. Not Hours so Rapid Spell does not affect these spells. D : <

[MaxiDuRaritry]

BAH! I GOT EXCITED FOR NOTHING!

Liquid Pain and Ambrosia's casting time is measured in DAYS. Not Hours so Rapid Spell does not affect these spells. D : <Yes, but each of them is permanent, meaning you get both ambrosia and liquid pain out of them every time they feel either joy or pain from then on. This is why you obtain an acorn of far travel from a tree in a slow-time plane, place it on your victim, and then, while the vic is slowed down too much to stop you, cast the two spells. Preferably via spell clock or repeating trap. They don't even have to know what happened.

[Bucky]

Liquid Pain makes a pretty good loot drop. It's a nice, compact, fairly liquid asset that the players are likely to use for its intended purpose (crafting).

[RoboEmperor]

Yes, but each of them is permanent, meaning you get both ambrosia and liquid pain out of them every time they feel either joy or pain from then on. This is why you obtain an acorn of far travel from a tree in a slow-time plane, place it on your victim, and then, while the vic is slowed down too much to stop you, cast the two spells. Preferably via spell clock or repeating trap. They don't even have to know what happened.

That's not how the spell works. It's confusing as hell but if you read BoVD
"It takes a full day to distill a dose of liquid pain with the liquid pain spell or a pain extractor. A victim cannot endure—or produce, to put it another way—more extractions of pain than it has points of Constitution."

So this is how the spells work.
1. Find a creature in bliss/pain
2. Cast Ambrosia/Liquid Pain
3. You immediately extract bliss/pain and it takes 1 day to turn that bliss/pain into Ambrosia/Liquid Pain.

[rel]

I disallow thought bottles. They remove an otherwise meaningful limitation without adding anything interesting to a game.

[Yogibear41]

House rule: thought bottle can not restore XP voluntarily lost.


I think there was a clarification somewhere that more or less said you can't use them to recover XP used to cast spells or make magic items anyway. Just one of those things that get "over looked"

Took me about 30 seconds of googling to find it:

Here ya go

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20070308a



That's not how the spell works. It's confusing as hell but if you read BoVD
"It takes a full day to distill a dose of liquid pain with the liquid pain spell or a pain extractor. A victim cannot endure—or produce, to put it another way—more extractions of pain than it has points of Constitution."

So this is how the spells work.
1. Find a creature in bliss/pain
2. Cast Ambrosia/Liquid Pain
3. You immediately extract bliss/pain and it takes 1 day to turn that bliss/pain into Ambrosia/Liquid Pain.



There is also the alchemical DC and price on liquid pain to add even more confusion. Like do you need alchemy to make it? Can you make it without the spell if you use alchemy? etc. etc.

[RoboEmperor]

There is also the alchemical DC and price on liquid pain to add even more confusion. Like do you need alchemy to make it? Can you make it without the spell if you use alchemy? etc. etc.

Spell = Liquid Pain. Pain Extractor = Liquid Pain. Buying one third of 200gp and passing a craft alchemy check of 25 DC = Liquid Pain. The FAQ confirms this as well.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think there was a clarification somewhere that more or less said you can't use them to recover XP used to cast spells or make magic items anyway. Just one of those things that get "over looked"

Took me about 30 seconds of googling to find it:

Here ya go

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20070308a


Lots of rules text has unintended consequences. The readily apparent intended usage doesn't affect how the item actually functions in the least. The sage articles and the FAQ can help to clarify designer intent (not needed here) but they're not errata and not infrequently wrong in their answers.

Making it an explicit house rule side-steps this issue entirely.

[RoboEmperor]

Lots of rules text has unintended consequences. The readily apparent intended usage doesn't affect how the item actually functions in the least. The sage articles and the FAQ can help to clarify designer intent (not needed here) but they're not errata and not infrequently wrong in their answers.

Making it an explicit house rule side-steps this issue entirely.

You can claim RAI here so you don't have to go so far as a house rule. Making Greater Glyph Seal hold a spell of 5th level or LOWER is RAI not house rule, for example.

[sorcererlover]

Alright, so the answer seems to be almost a unanimous NO. I thought it was too good. Oh well.

[Nifft]

It doesn’t matter what “most GMs” allow.

It matters what one specific GM allows.

True if you're a player in a stable game.

Painfully unhelpful if you are the GM.

Invalid if you're not in a group at all.

[Yogibear41]

Our GM allows basically everything including 3rd party and some homebrew and no one has broken the game yet, but to be fair no one has really tried.

We once had a player playing a Wizard Chosen of Mystra with a minor tweak that he could only use the SLAs of the level of spells he could cast, for example he wouldn't be able to use SLA wish until he could cast 9th level spells.

Ironically the player picked horrible spells, then complained about how useless he was, and the the group warlock (me) who dumped Charisma was better. Literally all I did was fly around and spam eldritch blast for mediocre damage..... I even had the Enlightened Spirit Prestige class.


If your curious how the character ended up, the player quit the game then the DM npc'd him more or less how the player played him with die rolls to determine what he would do based on what the rest of the party did, he died trying to solo a decently aged red dragon at level 15ish, he flew into a dormant volcano where the dragon was sleeping just in time to figure out it was a dead magic area and die as a 15th level commoner getting chewed on.

[Bucky]

Alright, so the answer seems to be almost a unanimous NO. I thought it was too good. Oh well.

In case I wasn't clear,

I allow Liquid Pain, the substance, to exist. Players can obtain it by e.g. loot drops.
I have never had players try to manufacture it. If they did, I would allow it in small batches but not mass-production. I would probably require both the Liquid Pain spell and Craft: Alchemy check to succeed in order to prepare it.

[Yogibear41]

I would probably require both the Liquid Pain spell and Craft: Alchemy check to succeed in order to prepare it.


To be fair a DC 25 alchemy check is probably trivial to someone who can cast 4th level spells.

[Bucky]

Sure, but that interpretation means they can't prepare it with *only* the Alchemy check.

[martixy]

Well... my game conveniently sidesteps many of these issues.

Ambrosia and Liquid Pain are narratively difficult to obtain in large quantities, so that's fine.

I don't use XP so Thought Bottles work completely differently.

Fabricate is... high level and not really that broken outside of TO.

Instantaneous creation spells, e.g. Wall of Salt/Iron have an xp cost in my game, so you don't get something from nothing.

[Incorrect]

I allow everything that doesn't interfere with the balance of the group (or the adventure if its prewritten)
But if one character is a VOP monk, and one a wizard wanting a Liquid pain factory, then we are going to have a talk as a group.

As a GM I will use all your tricks against you, and if you dont play fair, I wont.

[Crake]

Pretty much every time liquid pain or ambrosia have been in my games, it's not been to circumvent xp costs (200gp for 2 xp is not very good cost conversion, when the typically accepted "standard" is 5:1). It'd be better to just pay an NPC to craft the item for you, would be far cheaper. The only time we've used liquid pain/agony is either for the +2 CL boost, or for... recreational purposes.