Do people actually buy high level spell casting services?

[SangoProduction]

Like, healing and resurrection (which is sometimes actually a quest to find someone who can resurrect your friend) is fairly reasonable to expect.

But...in my 20-30 years of tabletop gaming, with innumerable tables, most of which was D&D, I've never once even had someone *try* and ask for a 20th level permanence'd spell casting service at level 5, let alone actually get approved for it. .....Let alone doing cheesy stuff like Dark Chaos Shuffle.

Have people actually done stuff like this in games that lasted more than a month?

[King of Nowhere]

well, my party did buy a teleport at a time when the party wizard wasn't high level enough.
and another time a party bought a few long-duration high level buff spells to prepare for a big fight.

none of that was an abuse, and both made plenty sense.

[Drackstin]

I know in one of my games, the group couldn't afford a revive spell on a player that died, so they had to get a reincarnation, it actually killed the player again. because con was his dump stat for some reason, got a penalty for con and then rolled into a race with -con. ended up at 0 con and his body just stop existing. but in my 10 years of GMing, the most i get asked for is some gear items for min/maxers. most of my players are good with that they find and just enjoy the story without going super nuts.

[Elves]

Spellcasters get a certain number of spells or power points per day so they would certainly try to sell or give away those they can't use (they might also be taxed of spell slots directly by governments or member organizations). Except where regulation prevented it you would doubtless find these services anywhere there were spellcasters.

Arcane and psionic casters, at least. Divine magic is a more tender subject by default. I'm sure clerics of the god of commerce or whatever would be very into it though, and "temple donations" would get you pretty far with many churches.

[Silvercrys]

Like, healing and resurrection (which is sometimes actually a quest to find someone who can resurrect your friend) is fairly reasonable to expect.

But...in my 20-30 years of tabletop gaming, with innumerable tables, most of which was D&D, I've never once even had someone *try* and ask for a 20th level permanence'd spell casting service at level 5, let alone actually get approved for it. .....Let alone doing cheesy stuff like Dark Chaos Shuffle.

Have people actually done stuff like this in games that lasted more than a month?Yes and no.

The Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle is a bit obscure and pretty high op, even if you do a lot of internet research you'll probably only find mentions of it in TO threads because no one uses it in real games, practically speaking. I'm sure it's been done before in a high op game somewhere, but it isn't applicable to most games.

NPC spellcasting services are another matter, I wouldn't consider trying to find an NPC to cast Permanency on my Mage Armor spell or whatever to be cheesy at all; it's gold I'll never get back and the spell itself is gone forever with one Dispel Magic. More of a poor investment in 99% of situations than cheesy. There are some situations involving cheese and NPC Spellcaster services, but generally the NPC Spellcaster is just a stand-in for a second Wizard or Cleric or whatever and the trick itself is the cheese not the casting service. Psychic Reformation, for example, being able to trade feats is explicitly one of the purposes of the power and using it that way isn't really all that cheesy even if you're trying to dodge feat requirements. But Psionics are often banned (for other reasons, among which "flavor" and "blasting too strong" are near the top, heh) so it probably doesn't see much use either.

Pathfinder has explicit retraining rules that get used all the time in Pathfinder Society and it isn't cheesy there, just costs a bit more money and has to be done during downtime.

[noce]

A fellow warblade/psywar asked for a psychic reformation when his tactic ended up not working as expected (from concentration to damage to ubercharger).
Anyway his character rolled knowledge psionics to see if it knew the power.

Another guy asked for a permanencied read magic. No problem on the DM part.

[Crake]

I once had one of my players die during the sunless citadel, and as a reward for their help, the local priest sent a recommendation to the high clergy, letting them actually get put on a waiting list. It took a month, and several castings of gentle repose in the meantime, and they managed to scrounge up the money for the diamond, but they did actually manage to get the deceased character raised, despite being only level 3 or so.

Of course... later on that character inadvertantly brough about the return of lolth, so maybe it was better she had stayed dead. Hindsight's 20/20 I suppose.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Been with my current group for the better part of two years. We can buy spellcasting services at will with a few caveats.

First the settlement we're in has to be large enough that a roll on the demographics table could produce a caster of the appropriate level and then the roll has to be done and succeed (lines added for non-core classes and no arcanes above level 16 as a result).

Second, if the spell is exclusive to a divine spellcasting list you must find a church of an appropriate god and convince the clergy there that your cause is in line with their church's doctrine (DM call but metropolises usually have all the major deities and commerce gods will almost always take cash to "convince" them).

Third; the higher the caster's level, the higher the value placed on his time so you may have to jump through some minor hoops to even be seen, especially with wizards in high standing within an academy/university/college or high ranking priests within a church, else sign up for a waiting list if one's available.

Same applies to commissioning high level and/or highly customized items although there are alternatives to dedicated casters in their cases (midgard dwarves, moderate level warlocks, battlesmiths, etc)

[smetzger]

My experiences....
Raise Dead - very frequently

Buying scrolls - very frequently
Trading spells between casters spell books - as often as possible

Using the services of a caster to improve an existing magic item - very frequently

Everything else - maybe once a campaign at the most.

[heavyfuel]

In over 10 years of playing 3.5 my group once paid for a Cleric to cast Control Weather to aid in an upcoming big battle and that was it.

Personally we have a rule that any spell beyond 3rd level is very very hard to get. Even if a Spellcaster is able to cast it, he's likely not going to leave himself vulnerable by spending their highest level spells for some quick cash.

This particular Cleric was a known NPC we knew was high enough level and my PC and him were on good terms, so he was willing to do it.

[Troacctid]

I have some choice spellcasting services in the itemization section of my Warlockopedia. In actual games, I've found by players often prefer proper magic items, which feel more exciting. In my current game, though, they did recently purchase a scrying service to help solve a fetch quest, so that's something.

[False God]

Well...in one game one of the players sold healing services quite effectively, to the tune of ~100gp/day, and mostly on quantity over quality too.

Most of the times the "spellcasting services" that my DMs have offered are unique services or magical healing, so, not something that you can get by combining Spell A and Spell B and Permanency.

[Eladrinblade]

One time I was playing pathfinder years ago, and our group had to escape a magitech city with a certain politician and get back to our homeland with him. I figured that as soon as we busted him out, we'd have diviners on our ass, so we pre-hired a criminal wizard to teleport us where we needed to go as soon as we met up with him. This was way outside of what the DM planned for, but it worked.

[Feantar]

I can only think of two cases of high level (7 and higher) magic being purchased in the games I've participated in.

One was in a Planescape game where we were fighting an enemy that had the annoying habit of returning. If I recall correctly, the DM was following the suggestion that outsiders reform into their plane when killed. We were around level 13, and scrounged up enough money to pay an (advanced) Arcanaloth to come with us and cast soul bind on him. Then we used the soul as a spell component. Granted, that party was pretty evil (A group of Doomguard, mostly).

The other was an FR game where we wanted to evacuate an island really fast before a meteor fell on it. I don't remember our level but I remember that we had a cleric that specifically couldn't cast miracle - so, less than 17. So we sneezed, hit the obligatory invisible archmage passing by and paid for a teleportation circle. (Okay, it wasn't that easy, but it was still ridiculously easy because this is the Realms, where archmages can be expressed as a significant percentage of the atmospheric composition of Toril).

[Korwin]

Most often bought, Psychic Reformation
(Chaos Feat shuffle, never)

[Asmotherion]

the rule of thumb i use is if a Wizard of the PC's level would be able to cast said spell there will be one nearby. For a higher level spell a mini-quest to find a caster is needed.

i remember regularly paying for scrying and teleport before my caster had access to them. An other time i bought a couple Wall of Stone castings to build a temporary base.

[Telonius]

We've bought a few scrolls that we hadn't been capable of casting yet, in preparation for an army of undead that was going to lay siege to the city. (We did a "Scry and Die" decapitation attack on the enemy, rather hilariously while they were doing the exact same thing to the High Priest back in the city).

[Psyren]

For high-level spells, especially non-core ones (or more powerful core ones like Wish and Discern Location), finding a caster that knows it or a lost scroll is often an adventure in itself. Our tables largely consider dropping down to Mages-R-Us and placing an order to be boring.