How to make a sustainable income as a high level wizard

[Melcar]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

[Skysaber]

Casting Wall of Salt and/or Wall of Iron (with or without Fabricate) are your typical go-tos for a high level wizard to earn some money.

Cast the wall spell, sell the salt/iron.

If you want to go the extra step, throwing a Fabricate on top of that iron will grant you longswords, steel shields, breastplates, etc, out of the iron. They won't be fancy stuff, like masterwork or dwarvencraft or anything adventuring fighters go after, but perfectly fine for soldiers.

And if you flood the market with armaments then you go for other things, like lanterns and cookware. As we see from mondern-day, there is basically no limit to people's appetite for more stuff, so long as it's useful (or can be sold to them as such).

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Buy a cow (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins) for 10 gp, cast Flesh to Salt from Sandstorm, sell it for 5 gp per pound. Or just cast Stone to Flesh on a boulder, then Flesh to Salt on that. You can even cast Transmute Mud to Rock, cast Stone to Flesh on it, then Flesh to Salt.

[Glimbur]

Sell your spell slots. Check the rules for buying NPC casting, and you're pretty well set for the RAW. Less powerful than selling salt but less likely to get banhammered.

[Kalkra]

Even if you need to buy the raw materials, Fabricate will still let you outdo any mundane craftsmen, and since Fabricate goes by volume and not by value you can buy some gold or diamonds or whatnot and Fabricate it into something for triple the value.

On a completely different note, you could use Prestidigitation to make the world's best food. People pay a lot for that kinda thing.

[Mike Miller]

How high level do you consider high? Killing dragons is a pretty fast and easy way to accumulate wealth if you are as high level as I consider high.

[AvatarVecna]

A generalist Wizard 20 with Int 30 (probably a little low, but eh) and nothing else boosting their slots is looking at 4/7/7/6/6/6/6/5/5/5 slots to prepare. If you're located in a sizeable enough city, you can probably find 57 people willing to buy one or more spell slots for the day. Any day you don't spend adventuring or using your slots for some other BS, you can sell as spellcasting services, making about 50k per day. Even if you downcast to the minimum CL to keep your prices competitive with lesser mages, you'll still be making about 28k. And that's assuming none of these spells needed expensive components, those cost extra.

Alternatively, as pointed out, mid-level dragons are both rich (triple standard for their CR) and absurdly-easy for you to kill and loot, and as a bonus you're helping cull the dragon population (which is great if they're one of the non-shiny varieties). The key here will be finding a dragon just tough enough that you'll still get XP for slaying it, without it being so tough that it gives you trouble (but then, what creatures of such low CR could really give a wizard of your stature trouble? :smalltongue:). A "Young Adult Red Dragon" is CR 13, and can be taken down fairly simply: Teleport in to surprise it, cast Maximized Shivering Touch, and you've got a 95% chance it's helpless for the next two minutes (longer, depending on interpretation). If you can get something letting you reroll attack rolls, you can make that 99.75% instead. Kill it (maybe with 19 coup de grace attempts with a dagger until it nat 1s? lol), then loot its 29k worth of crap. Hell, the only reason to go with smaller dragons is that they won't have the magic chops to really make this strategy fail, but if you're confident enough in your abilities, snipe bigger dragons for more XP/Loot.

[noob]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

A great thing is that spell research probably allows you to get some benefits from selling copies of the spell you researched: get a bunch of scribes to copy the new spells(or use a spell to copy the written spells) and sell them.
You can probably get a huge amount of money from spell selling if the caster population is high.
Although later you should not be surprised to see opponent npcs using your spells because gms likes messing up with players like that.
Furthermore you can probably replace your guards by a bunch of spells which will do the role of guarding stuff better.
If your apprentices are actually able to get item crafting feats you might set up a low level magic items shop (just use one of the ways to provide crafting xp to your apprentices).
Also buy animals and sacrifice them for dark crafting xp, dark crafting gold and wishes if you are evil aligned(you can use those to help with your finances).
If you are good aligned buy dead animals and use the feat that allows to add a domain to your spell list then turn the dead animals into undying(good aligned undead) then make a charity and use a portion of the money you are given to create more undying(since undying are good aligned creatures they are quite likely to participate to your charity once they get a job).

[Iku Rex]

You could talk to your GM about using the DMGII business rules. Maybe you have, or could easily start, a "University" or "Service". It sounds like you've already put in quite a bit of money that could be considered part of the initial investment and minimum resource need.

You won't be making wall of salt-money, but it's a simple way to represent "making some money on the side". Even if you fail a few profit checks it won't cost you that much.


Edit: Pathfinder has some downtime rules as well: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/downtime . I haven't really looked at them.

[DarkSoul]

Get a copy of Power of Faerun and start a trading company. Combine with the business rules from DMG2. IIRC the trading company is one of the biggest moneymakers.

[Gnaeus]

Sell your spell slots. Check the rules for buying NPC casting, and you're pretty well set for the RAW. Less powerful than selling salt but less likely to get banhammered.

Less broken (slightly) than selling salt, and if you aren’t allowed to just sell your casting, you can Polymorph any Object for more expensive animals. Like, buy goats or pigs and permanently polymorph them into horses, or even elephants (both animals, mammals, same Int).

[GrayDeath]

Or, if your GM finds all these options too cheesy/too purely mechanical, given you live in Silverymoon and are "too high level to find stuff to loot", just let yourself be hired as the Court Wizard.

Should give you enough money from the many random threats the city faces all the time to live comfortably ^^

[zlefin]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

How much money do you need? and what level are you?

As a basic rule: find challenges meant for a party ten levels lower than you are, like ruins or bandits or such. Go beat them up for treasure. You should be able to trivially do so at least once a day.

[King of Nowhere]

as others have said, selling spells is a good idea, and not too broken if you fix the absurdly high costs.
my favourite way to have wizards contribute to the world economy is teleport. Buy some bags of holding, put people in them so you can teleport dozens of people at a time, at reasonable prices. advertise that you are taking a trip between two major cities every day, or a more complex schedule involving more cities. start your personal airline that way.

but historically, keeps were funded by either taxes or economic revenues. if you have a keep, you should have one of those.

[Tvtyrant]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

Bind a Lantern Archon, begin selling cheap "modern" lighting systems.

Double thought bottle then make a ton of magic items, making a new thought bottle each time your XP runs out and then using the first one to get back to full.

Release Shadows or other self-reproducing monsters into a city so they will pay you to eliminate them, repeat in different cities every so often.

Sell Simulacrums of yourself or other high level adventurers to be constructs for midlevel parties/guard cities. Why use expensive golems that kind of suck when you can get 10th level wizards for cheap?

Give Simulacrums of yourself to parties in return for a cut of the loot.

Make permanent flying colossal Animated Objects and sell them. These can be used to pull flying boats, looking like a huge paper airplane with a boat underneath. With thoughtbottles or binding something with Permanence this is cheap to make. You can also make animated ships that can slowly swim and fight off attackers.

Smaller animated objects using the same tricks can be sold as industrial farm equipment or modern tech. Plows that pull themselves, delivery drones (smaller versions of the airship above), animated boats and horseless carriages.

Tell fortunes, you have scrying and future predicting powers.

Sell good weather to cities/farms. Control Weather a few times to prevent a storm is rather easy for you and good for them; no more hurricanes or sudden blizzards as long as they buy your storm insurance.

Wall of Stone/Wall of Iron for cheap building materials or to quickly make stuff. If you get higher op you can persist Undermaster to make entire cities in days.

Sell security systems, scaled to clientele. You could even make simulacrums and have them actually go cast the Glyphs and other defenses.

[RNightstalker]

Farm out said servants, guards and apprentices.

Check out the profession skill and add as many bonuses to your checks as you can.

Or...since you're an adventurer...GO ADVENTURING AGAIN!!

[Jack_Simth]

Sell Simulacrums of yourself or other high level adventurers to be constructs for midlevel parties/guard cities. Why use expensive golems that kind of suck when you can get 10th level wizards for cheap?

Give Simulacrums of yourself to parties in return for a cut of the loot.Letting simulacrums of yourself out into the world largely unsupervised is begging the DM to make them a plot point. Sure, they're utterly loyal to you... but they're created so, and it's an Instant effect. Which means if an entity hostile to you lands a Dominate Person on one, they get access to a rather lot of information about you. If there's a lot of them, and you're selling and/or renting them out, you're going to be known for it rather quickly. If you're known for leaving copies of yourself about, it "makes sense" for your enemies to take advantage of this.

But then: Cleaning up mistakes is adventure, so....

The other ideas are largely cheap and easy, though. Note that Polymorph Any Object can turn regular objects into the Animated Objects of themselves Permanently for free (Kingdom? Check. Size? Check. Int? Check. Probably a few others, but those three alone get you +9) - you'll need to double-check control clauses, though. Wall of Stone + Stone Shape (or Fabricate) + Polymorph Any Object = Tireless stone horse. Can also do cheap stone golems that way (better choice, as you're their "Creator" in all ways that they have one). But do ask the DM (via a quick test), and don't try to sell them as the real deal, sell them as tireless lifting / hauling equipment unsuitable for combat.

[Quertus]

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, feels your pain. His businesses operate at a loss, on top of his other expenses.

Personally, he solved his financial problems a) by adventuring; b) by a player in these boards wanting to pay for someone to create a planet.

But, whatever you do, don't sell Simulacra of yourself, unless you have absolutely no secrets, and all your allies can instantly tell the difference between you and your Simulacra.

Also, it's just bad business. The cost of a Simulacrum is based on HD, not CR. It is far more optimal to purchase a Simulacrum of a Paragon ½-Dragon… Illithid Savant who has eaten the brains of epic Wizards, than to buy 10th level Wizards.

[Crake]

To all the people recommending selling spell slots, that would actually be covered by a profession skill. It's the same way that the DMGII business rules use the same rules for running a magic shop as anything else (it assumes only a couple of sales per year or so), because people don't just buy spell services willy nilly, and you need to spend time marketing your skills, you can't just rock up into town and expect to get clients.

The same would technically go for something like fabricating iron or salt, you can have all you like, but there's only a certain amount of demand to be met, so the majority of the time is actually spent finding clientelle rather than actually producing.

The real question is: What do you need the money for? Ideally you should just be able to provide for yourself to the point where your expenditure should be 0. Anything mundane that you need should be self crafted with fabricate, if there's anything you need a significant abundance of, your best bet would be to craft an at-will fabrication machine in which you put in 100x the material component, for example, if you want lots of expensive inks and scroll scribing supplies, you can put in 1000gp into the crafting of the fabricate item worth of raw materials for inks and scroll scribing supplies, and it will be able to make 30gp worth per use. Then just have an automaton, like a homonculus, or some other cheap construct just constantly using it, to generate 432,000gp worth of inks and scroll scribing supplies per day. Congratulations, you can now scribe as many scrolls/spells into your spellbook as you like, with the only limiting factor being your xp.

You then can fix that by finding a way to generate 40 crafting xp per day, the best method being ambrosia. An at-will item of rapid spell distilled joy can make 1 ambrosia per hour from someone, that's 24 per day if there's no rest. Symbol of Pain and nippleclamps of exquisite pleasure are the go-to method for permanent, debilitating pleasure, and you only need 1 subject, and there's no mention on the subject needing to be intelligent, so you could theoretically just hook up an animal of some kind to the ambrosia machine. I'd recommend a ring of sustenance as well, so the creature in question can be left completely unattended while you just passively generate ambrosia.

So yeah, I guess, at that point, you're generating your own xp faster than you can spend it, you're generating the materials you need way faster than you can expend them, what exactly is there left that you need money for?

This is actually the reason why there are no wizards messing with the economy in my setting, because... why? They can become entirely self sufficient, realistically they can source anything they need with something like true creation to create their initial fabricate devices, without spending xp, because they just scribe scrolls of it, and use the ambrosia instead of xp.... Basically, it becomes a time vs money scenario. If you have time, you don't need to spend money, and wizards are excellent at extending the amount of time they have. My personal favourite is just remaining permanently shapeshifted, your shapeshifted body ages, at which point you just shift into a new form, though other methods exist. A contingent last breath to reincarnate you is another popular method, usually achieved through the limited wish spell (which again you can bypass the xp cost with your excess ambrosia and crafting it into a scroll).

Honestly, once you have your free scroll scribing via an at-will fabricate item and 24 free daily ambrosia, you can basically make whatever you want given enough time.

[Quertus]

The real question is: What do you need the money for?

Answered in the OP:



So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Paying for these things for years of downtime with no adventuring income really adds up.

(EDIT: Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, needed money because of all of the businesses he was funding, including a spell component shop in Waterdeep, and a multi-planar Adventurers' Guild. All of which operates at a loss. Quertus' financial acumen was matched only by his tactical brilliance :smallamused:)

[Crake]

Answered in the OP:




(EDIT: Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, needed money because of all of the businesses he was funding, including a spell component shop in Waterdeep, and a multi-planar Adventurers' Guild. All of which operates at a loss. Quertus' financial acumen was matched only by his tactical brilliance :smallamused:)

It was more of a rhetorical question, the answer basically being that a wizard should never actually need money once they reach a certain level, they should just become entirely self sufficient, assuming they don't have an active adventuring campaign that's putting them under a time pressure.

[Quertus]

It was more of a rhetorical question, the answer basically being that a wizard should never actually need money once they reach a certain level, they should just become entirely self sufficient, assuming they don't have an active adventuring campaign that's putting them under a time pressure.

So… pay your household staff with fabricated goods? I considered that maybe you meant something like this, but, since you didn't explicitly state it, I figured it best to point out the exact problem to solve, and await clarification.

Because "self sufficient" and "able to pay retainers" are not necessarily synonyms.

[Eldariel]

You could just charge tuition fees for your magical university, sell gated/bound creatures on whatever grounds you feel like or some such. Just find wealthy clients and you can get good deals. Or yeah, you can always gank some demon or dragon or whatever and take their stuff. Killing demons carries the bonus of nobody really liking them so them having very few allies who would care enough to get in trouble for one of their subordinates/allies/whatever. They're also infinite.

[Lapak]

Since the standard D&D world is a weird kinda-but-not-actually medieval/feudal setting, lean into that by signing on with the local ruler as a court wizard and/or noble. Nobility's whole shtick is basically a protection racket, where the rest of the community supports them in exchange for being the Guy Capable of Defending The Place. Get whoever holds power to subsidize your household and research in exchange for knowing that if a dragon shows up or a demon army knocks on the gate you'll be there to drop 9th-level spells on them until they go away.

[unseenmage]

Get some Spell Clocks or Resetting Magic traps.
Set them in a circle all affecting the same space and/or target.

One makes material, one sculpts material, one enhances material, one animates material, one programs animated material.

Animated material moves to new circle.
New circle equips material and sends it away to any one of the numerous planar metropolises where it can purchase the components for assembling a new set of circles.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The details vary, I can help if you'd like. Simulacrums, Constructs, even Undead can be used in such.
Back when I did it they were Constructs and as an Artificer both divine and arcane magics were accessible. For an arcane caster though one could just buy spellcasting services.

The initial cost of setting up a self replicating wealth generating Spell Clock circle is admittedly staggering. However, it generates ever increasing amounts quite efficiently.

Alternatively, get a Mirror Mephit that makes Sims of more Mirror Mephits and have all the new ones make Clerics who True Creation gold pieces for you. Poof, you made money.
Or Runic Guardians with Fabricate.
Or Spellsong Nightingales with Create Water + Water to Acid (sell the acid) and Elation + Distilled Joy.
Or a Spell Turret of the above.

Sorry, my $ making schemes are all so nigh 8nfinitely repeatable.
If you're worried about breaking economies, dont be. Unlike our world the D&D-verse has destruction of matter as well as creation. Roaming herds of rust monsters, umbral blots, and even flocks of material wealth burning dragons roam this gameworld.
Their economy will (probably) be fine.

[tyckspoon]

Rent out access to your resources as a high-level mage. Rent work-time in your workshop/lab space. Charge for access to your library. Contract out your apprentices to provide magical services that don't require high-level spells. Make it a condition of apprenticeship that any capable apprentices create one easily-saleable magic item a month (a potion or scroll of a common buff or utility spell, for example.) Set up a rental/lease program for low level adventurers to use your high-level items (Geas them to bring it back at the agreed upon end of contract if you want) - you aren't actively adventuring, but imagine how much use a starting party could get from being able to bring along your Staff of Ultimate Burnination to have CL 17 blasting support or your Widget of Efficient Armaments that casts Chain Greater Magic Weapon and Chain Magic Vestments. And if they happen to die anyways you can just teleport yourself into their adventure location, take your item back, and finish looting the place yourself/take the rest of their gear for your troubles. Find some place that is having trouble with their coinage and offer to use Fabricate to be their mint, take advantage of using magic to place some feature on the coins that would be difficult or near-impossible to counterfeit without magic (traditionally the mint is paid by being permitted to keep some fraction of their production.)

If I were your DM I'd just handwave that these and similar activities generate sufficient income to cover your day to day operational costs - feeding/housing/paying your retainers, non-specific 'magical research', etc. Would only make you come up with more money to cover specific game-relevant expenses, like if you actually created a new functional spell or were making a major magic item. And if you happen to run low on gold for those.. well, sometimes you need something to get you out of your comfy lab and out looking for an adventure :smallamused:

[3drinks]

Conjure monsters with long duration summons, then rent yourself out to slay them.

Capital idea, it's the perfect crime!

[Telonius]

Go into the insurance business.

"Nice kingdom there. It would be a pity if something ... happened ... to it."

[Fizban]

I'd ask how things got to this point in the first place. If you owned your own stronghold with control of some sort of profit*, you could invoke Stronghold Builder's Guidebook for 1% of the base cost per year. Instead you apparently own an expensive tower in the middle of a city full of other powerful mages with expensive towers, which you got by trading a pile of cash (magic items) rather than any sort of backing from the people in power? Well yeah, you're pretty much screwed then, just like any other noble or windfall merchant who squandered their money instead of investing it well enough to get the returns needed to pay for their lifestyle. Turns out that kinda cash doesn't just appear out of nowhere and once the damage is done, it's just a matter of time.
*or can convince the DM that you and your apprentices' mere presence is an exploitable source of profit.

Except in dnd cash does appear out of nowhere. The only appropriate answer is to get the money the same way you did before, and go hunting. Pop open a planeshift, go find some of the infinite extraplanar foes with standard loot generation, pick a fight with some that are a bit under your level and don't have friends or superiors, and make some money and xp. It's far more honest than spells that create money (even though they should have been written to not do that), or pretending you can somehow forcibly sell your daily slots when there's nothing close to a suggestion on the demand for them, or using the terrible DMG2 business rules.

You could also try incorporating. The PHB2's Affiliation rules are far better than DMG2's business rules. If you have Leadership, or the obvious fact that you lead a massive pile of stuff gets your DM to waive the requirement, you could just found a self-sustaining affiliation. It would mean technically relinquishing control of your tower and reassigning or hiring a bunch of employees that work outside the domestic servant role, and if you want them to enable spell research you'd have to stat that up as an affiliation power (there's already one for item creation), but the rules don't actually mention who's in charge first- presumably it must be the founder, and it will be some time before anyone in the organization could really challenge you for leadership. Of course the rate at which they could put out magic items or spells would be far lower than you are used to, but this way they aren't removed from the map so to speak.

[D+1]

I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.
A: If this is an active player character then go on adventures. Adventuring is your profession, not research and experimentation, and is what the game is intended to reward monetarily.
B: Obtain land, get people to live there under your rulership and tax them.

[Melcar]

Hey guys... A lot of brilliant stuff! I'm going to hit a few of them here!



Sell your spell slots. Check the rules for buying NPC casting, and you're pretty well set for the RAW. Less powerful than selling salt but less likely to get banhammered.

Indeed, but how many can one sell per day?


Pathfinder has some downtime rules as well: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/downtime . I haven't really looked at them.

I'm surely going to be checking them out! :smallbiggrin:


How much money do you need? and what level are you?

As a basic rule: find challenges meant for a party ten levels lower than you are, like ruins or bandits or such. Go beat them up for treasure. You should be able to trivially do so at least once a day.

Level 32, and I need millions at this point. Basically I want to build more more space. Specifically a very large vault containing a restricted library for ancient books, which I also need money for buying and traveling to get, and more magical laboratories, where I want to build forges, that gives item creation feats while working at them. And I want to create some epic items! Not only am I running a small school, which cost around 2000 gp a week, I want to expand my operations as well.


To all the people recommending selling spell slots, that would actually be covered by a profession skill. It's the same way that the DMGII business rules use the same rules for running a magic shop as anything else (it assumes only a couple of sales per year or so), because people don't just buy spell services willy nilly, and you need to spend time marketing your skills, you can't just rock up into town and expect to get clients.

The same would technically go for something like fabricating iron or salt, you can have all you like, but there's only a certain amount of demand to be met, so the majority of the time is actually spent finding clientelle rather than actually producing.

How much salt is it conceivable to sell in one or maybe two metropolises per year? A human consumes about a kilo of salt per year, and although there is a lot of magic in Faerun, there cant be that many level 7 spellcasters. Furthermore, people again without magic conservation needed salt to preserve food, so how much salt could a salt wall casting mage sell, if a wall of salt casting mage could sell salt? :smalltongue:

And how many spell would I be able to sell per day? There are multiple academies in Silverymoon and Waterdeep, but few mages of my level (3 to be precise). How would I know how much money I can make in selling spellcasting servises per day? (including selling scrolls)


[...] if there's anything you need a significant abundance of, your best bet would be to craft an at-will fabrication machine in which you put in 100x the material component, for example, if you want lots of expensive inks and scroll scribing supplies, you can put in 1000gp into the crafting of the fabricate item worth of raw materials for inks and scroll scribing supplies, and it will be able to make 30gp worth per use. Then just have an automaton, like a homonculus, or some other cheap construct just constantly using it, to generate 432,000gp worth of inks and scroll scribing supplies per day. Congratulations, you can now scribe as many scrolls/spells into your spellbook as you like, with the only limiting factor being your xp.

You then can fix that by finding a way to generate 40 crafting xp per day, the best method being ambrosia. An at-will item of rapid spell distilled joy can make 1 ambrosia per hour from someone, that's 24 per day if there's no rest. Symbol of Pain and nippleclamps of exquisite pleasure are the go-to method for permanent, debilitating pleasure, and you only need 1 subject, and there's no mention on the subject needing to be intelligent, so you could theoretically just hook up an animal of some kind to the ambrosia machine. I'd recommend a ring of sustenance as well, so the creature in question can be left completely unattended while you just passively generate ambrosia.

What's this machine? And how does your calculations run up to 432.000gp worth of scribing materials?

That Distilled Joy spell has a casting time of 1 day, where it produces 2 exp for crafting. How do you get that to 40? Any chance you can explain that whole milking ambrosia in more detail?


So yeah, I guess, at that point, you're generating your own xp faster than you can spend it, you're generating the materials you need way faster than you can expend them, what exactly is there left that you need money for? Epic magic items! As in i need millions of gp!


I want to thank you all for you comments. There are some great ideas, and I'll be pursuing multiple of them for sure.

In the meantime, I want to ask how you guys would go about dealing with a player like me, if I came to you as DMs and said I need a way to make millions of gp within the next few years? Would you allow me selling salt? Could I create a Wall of Platinum spell? If there is a Wall of: Iron, Stone, Force, Salt, Sand and Ice, why not Gold, Platinum, Palladium, Ruby, Diamond?

Could I circumvent the need for money in item creations, by substituting salt for gp? (I seem to remember this being done in Harry Potter and the Natural 20)

I'm really interested in how you guys would handle such a request/ need for money from a player.

Thank you in advance!

[unseenmage]

Back when I played my artificer it was suggested that infinite gp would be a +7 LA power.

For a creatively played artificer it wasnt a high enough LA.

[Crake]

How much salt is it conceivable to sell in one or maybe two metropolises per year? A human consumes about a kilo of salt per year, and although there is a lot of magic in Faerun, there cant be that many level 7 spellcasters. Furthermore, people again without magic conservation needed salt to preserve food, so how much salt could a salt wall casting mage sell, if a wall of salt casting mage could sell salt? :smalltongue:

And how many spell would I be able to sell per day? There are multiple academies in Silverymoon and Waterdeep, but few mages of my level (3 to be precise). How would I know how much money I can make in selling spellcasting servises per day? (including selling scrolls)

For these, you need to remember that while there's a large demand, you're far from the only supplier in either case. This is why it comes down to a profession check, because as I said, it's more about marketing and getting clients, then it is about how much supply you have.


What's this machine? And how does your calculations run up to 432.000gp worth of scribing materials?

That Distilled Joy spell has a casting time of 1 day, where it produces 2 exp for crafting. How do you get that to 40? Any chance you can explain that whole milking ambrosia in more detail?

Epic magic items! As in i need millions of gp!

Fabricate turns raw materials into a final product, and the raw materials cost 1/3 of the final product. Thus, to make 30gp worth of scribing materials, you need 10gp. To create an at-will item of something that has a material component cost, you must supply 100x the material components. Thus, to create an at-will fabricate item that produces 30gp worth of scribing materials per use, you need to supply 1000gp extra into the crafting costs. You can scale this up however much you require, but in essence, if you have something using the item every round for a whole day, that's 30gp x10 rounds per minute x60 minutes per hour x24 hours per day which comes out to 432,000gp worth of scribing materials per day.

Alternatively, if you're an epic spellcaster (i hadn't realised you were THAT high level), you can just get the "ignore material components" feat, and cast fabricate to simply spontaneously create literally any mundane craftable good within the volume limits of the spell. If you wanted pure gold for example, being a mineral, you're looking at 1 cubic foot of pure gold per caster level, that's 491 lb of gold, at 50gp per pound, so 24,550gp per CL for each casting of fabricate. Alternatively, you could just make plantinum pieces, in which you could make the same volume, but at a higher density, so you'd get 1,338.9 lb of platinum per CL, or 66,945 pp per CL. Per. CL. So you're really looking at around fifteen million gp worth of platinum per cast if you're in the mid 20s. Not bad for a 5th level spell really?

Ambrosia takes 24 hours to cast, however, the rapid spell metamagic is a +1 spell level metamagic that reduces the casting time to 1 hour, so you can get 24x the casts in per day.

If you're crafting epic magic items, and I assume you have the epic magic item crafting feat, which lets you craft 10k gp per day, you'll need to scale that ambrosia production up by x10 though, since you'll be burning through 400xp per day, not 40.

[Fizban]

That Distilled Joy spell has a casting time of 1 day, where it produces 2 exp for crafting. How do you get that to 40? Any chance you can explain that whole milking ambrosia in more detail?
The presumption is a custom infinite item/trap/whatever that you use however many times you want, on however many targets you need. Of course the evil counterpart Extract Pain/Liquid Agony already has a magic item, which costs 68,000gp and extracts one dose from one person over one day.

In the meantime, I want to ask how you guys would go about dealing with a player like me, if I came to you as DMs and said I need a way to make millions of gp within the next few years? Would you allow me selling salt? Could I create a Wall of Platinum spell? If there is a Wall of: Iron, Stone, Force, Salt, Sand and Ice, why not Gold, Platinum, Palladium, Ruby, Diamond?
I would ask what it is you're trying to do. Presumably it does not relate to the current/planned adventure as I'm not likely to spread those out over years, and is thus a fluffier player goal. Thus there's no reason for me to really disallow anything I'm not already disallowing- which includes all forms of infinite wealth cheese. There's a good chance I could help you figure out how to do what you want affordably within the rules/my world, or if it requires unbounded epic or plot shenanigans, it can be noted as part of your epilogue that you go do that (with results to be determined if we ran another game in the future of the same setting). If you wanted a character with a grand ambition that might not be "physically" possible, you probably should have mentioned it before you settled on the character, so I could have told you whether it was possible or not.

[Jack_Simth]

How much salt is it conceivable to sell in one or maybe two metropolises per year? A human consumes about a kilo of salt per year, and although there is a lot of magic in Faerun, there cant be that many level 7 spellcasters. Furthermore, people again without magic conservation needed salt to preserve food, so how much salt could a salt wall casting mage sell, if a wall of salt casting mage could sell salt? :smalltongue:In both 3.5 (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins) and Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/goods-and-services/furniture-trade-goods-vehicles/#table-foods-spices), salt is a trade good, valued at 5 gp/pound (same as silver).

The 3.5 text to go with that table is: "Merchants commonly exchange trade goods without using currency. As a means of comparison, some trade goods are detailed below." and a later "Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
The Pathfinder text to go with that table is:
Merchants commonly exchange trade goods without using currency. Trade goods are the exception to the rule that you can sell an item for half its price; they’re valuable enough to be exchanged almost as if they were cash itself. Trade goods are usually transported and sold in larger quantities than the amount listed. A farmer may have 10- and 20-pound sacks of potatoes to sell to a large family or restaurant, and be resistant to tearing open a bag just to sell a few individual potatoes.
You don't so much sell salt as you use it to buy stuff. Sure, some of it will end up sprinkled on local folks' food and some of it will end up used to preserve local folks' food (and a few other items), but most of it will end up migrating with merchants who are going in and out of town.

Ignoring that, a D&D 3.5 Metropolis will have 40,000+ people. Going by one kilo of salt/person/year, that's 2.2 pounds of salt/person/year, or 88,000+ pounds of salt, or 440,000+ gp via trade goods tables.

[bundlesandflows]

The 3.5 text to go with that table is: "Merchants commonly exchange trade goods without using currency. As a means of comparison, some trade goods are detailed below." and a later "Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
The Pathfinder text to go with that table is:
You don't so much sell salt as you use it to buy stuff. Sure, some of it will end up sprinkled on local folks' food and some of it will end up used to preserve local folks' food (and a few other items), but most of it will end up migrating with merchants who are going in and out of town.

This, by the way, is not only historically accurate, it's also technically accurate today in the sense of commodity market trading.

[Reversefigure4]

At the point where you are 32nd level, and requiring millions of gold a month, you have moved well outside of the expected economic paradigm. Spells that produce a "mere" half-million gold pieces a year aren't going to mean much to you.

Because you're so far outside the expectations of the rules, you'll need to come up with your own solutions. That's what Epic Spellcasting is for, however. Focus your attentions first on a "Summon Platinum Pieces" spell, or Walls of Mithral, or the like, and sort your economy out with magic first, then worry about using the magic for crafting and the like.

[tyckspoon]

At the point where you are 32nd level, and requiring millions of gold a month, you have moved well outside of the expected economic paradigm. Spells that produce a "mere" half-million gold pieces a year aren't going to mean much to you.

Because you're so far outside the expectations of the rules, you'll need to come up with your own solutions. That's what Epic Spellcasting is for, however. Focus your attentions first on a "Summon Platinum Pieces" spell, or Walls of Mithral, or the like, and sort your economy out with magic first, then worry about using the magic for crafting and the like.

Yeah, this is the point where you start creating something like Epic spells to Transmute Rock to Gold and create six-foot spheres of perfect pure gold or transform miscellaneous pebbles into perfectly cut gemstones or something (also the point where actual GP values have basically lost all meaning.) Or figure out how to survive in your setting's equivalent of deep space and go harvest exotic magical materials that are only useful to mages like yourself that find themselves with a need for pricelessly valuable items to make the most powerful of items with - moon-diamonds that have absorbed the unfiltered magical light of the stars and have to be carefully contained in quintessence lest they be contaminated with mere earthly magic, elementally active plasma-like matter from the exact center of balance between the four elemental Inner Planes, a live sea-worm from the deepest point of the planet's oceans that has never known light or air and lives off the very planet's magical background.. (if this sounds a lot like 'go on an adventure', well, it is. Because I'm assuming your GM will be a lot more receptive to the idea of you going on suitably magical-sounding trips like this and assigning a suitable gold value to your reagents than to you saying 'Ok so I create a literal mountain of gold, and then I transmute that into a magic item.')

[Melcar]

In both 3.5 (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins) and Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/goods-and-services/furniture-trade-goods-vehicles/#table-foods-spices), salt is a trade good, valued at 5 gp/pound (same as silver).

The 3.5 text to go with that table is: "Merchants commonly exchange trade goods without using currency. As a means of comparison, some trade goods are detailed below." and a later "Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
The Pathfinder text to go with that table is:
You don't so much sell salt as you use it to buy stuff. Sure, some of it will end up sprinkled on local folks' food and some of it will end up used to preserve local folks' food (and a few other items), but most of it will end up migrating with merchants who are going in and out of town.

Ignoring that, a D&D 3.5 Metropolis will have 40,000+ people. Going by one kilo of salt/person/year, that's 2.2 pounds of salt/person/year, or 88,000+ pounds of salt, or 440,000+ gp via trade goods tables.

So what you saying is, that I can substitute gp for salt as in 1 lbs for each 5 gp the creation cost is? As in a cloak of elven kind costs 1250 gp to make. So that would be 250 lbs of salt and I'm good?

If my calculations are correct, I produce 2133 cubic ft. of salt per casting, equaling 1.438.340.385 gp Is that really how much I can create items for per casting? (as in I use salt as a currency to exchange into the appropriate expensive crafting materials) Seems almost too easy?



At the point where you are 32nd level, and requiring millions of gold a month, you have moved well outside of the expected economic paradigm. Spells that produce a "mere" half-million gold pieces a year aren't going to mean much to you.

Because you're so far outside the expectations of the rules, you'll need to come up with your own solutions. That's what Epic Spellcasting is for, however. Focus your attentions first on a "Summon Platinum Pieces" spell, or Walls of Mithral, or the like, and sort your economy out with magic first, then worry about using the magic for crafting and the like.

I wanna stress that although we run a game at level 32, its not a high optimized game by any means. I have no epic items yet, and we basically run it as a lover level game just with higher stats... That's what we like, and well we still have a lot of smaller non-cosmic things to do. I do a lot of archeology trying to uncover lost treasures from Netheril, Crown Wars and Imaskar... The other player runs, as in is king, of a kingdom... which means doing international politics most of the time...



Yeah, this is the point where you start creating something like Epic spells to Transmute Rock to Gold and create six-foot spheres of perfect pure gold or transform miscellaneous pebbles into perfectly cut gemstones or something (also the point where actual GP values have basically lost all meaning.) Or figure out how to survive in your setting's equivalent of deep space and go harvest exotic magical materials that are only useful to mages like yourself that find themselves with a need for pricelessly valuable items to make the most powerful of items with - moon-diamonds that have absorbed the unfiltered magical light of the stars and have to be carefully contained in quintessence lest they be contaminated with mere earthly magic, elementally active plasma-like matter from the exact center of balance between the four elemental Inner Planes, a live sea-worm from the deepest point of the planet's oceans that has never known light or air and lives off the very planet's magical background.. (if this sounds a lot like 'go on an adventure', well, it is. Because I'm assuming your GM will be a lot more receptive to the idea of you going on suitably magical-sounding trips like this and assigning a suitable gold value to your reagents than to you saying 'Ok so I create a literal mountain of gold, and then I transmute that into a magic item.')

That was kind of my point when asking about, why I cant simply create a wall of Platinum or Wall of Diamond spell, when so many other versions exist!

[Crake]

So what you saying is, that I can substitute gp for salt as in 1 lbs for each 5 gp the creation cost is? As in a cloak of elven kind costs 1250 gp to make. So that would be 250 lbs of salt and I'm good?

If my calculations are correct, I produce 2133 cubic ft. of salt per casting, equaling 1.438.340.385 gp Is that really how much I can create items for per casting? (as in I use salt as a currency to exchange into the appropriate expensive crafting materials) Seems almost too easy?

It's worth noting that creating an item doesn't just use flat gold, you still need to actually source the materials by buying them, and cities have limited market values, not to mention the inflation that you'd run into by injecting that much "money" into the economy. I'd much rather recommend using ignore material components and fabricate to directly create the crafting materials you require, rather than creating "money", though fabricate can do that too, if you need to pay people for services.


That was kind of my point when asking about, why I cant simply create a wall of Platinum or Wall of Diamond spell, when so many other versions exist!

I mean, fabricate is basically "wall of X" where X is whatever you want? Hell, if you can get 13th level spell slots, you can even get fabricate as an innate spell and just cast it willy nilly to produce whatever you want at a whim.

[gogogome]

Cast fabricate on gold.

material component of fabricate: The original material worth the same as the raw materials of the finished product.
original material: gold
finished product: bar of gold worth 300gp
cost of raw materials to build bar of gold: 1/3 of what a bar of gold costs which in this case is 100gp
end result: cast fabricate on 100gp of gold to turn it into 300gp of gold

So just cast fabricate on gold to triple its amount per casting.
Bind a Rejkar which is an outsider with at-will fabricate and you can make a bajillion gold in an hour.

Of course if you tried to pull this in my games i'd slap you.

[Crichton]

It's worth noting that creating an item doesn't just use flat gold, you still need to actually source the materials by buying them



Point of technicality: Sure that would make total sense, for the sake of realism, but is that actually spelled out anywhere in the magic item creation rules?




On the SRD, the very first line in the magic item creation rules simply says: "To create magic items, spellcasters use special feats. They invest time, money, and their own personal energy (in the form of experience points) in an item’s creation. " (emphasis mine)


Yes, there are generic references to 'supplies' as in this line that comes a bit later in the rules: "Magic supplies for items are always half of the base price in gp"
But that's really just a formula for how much it costs. There's no sense of what those supplies are actually supposed to be, nor any indication you have to do anything aside from give up the gold to acquire them.


There are a few specifics given, in the various magic item creation rules. Things such as only masterwork weapons and armor being enhanced, and in each category of magic item, there's a small entry outlining the need for a heat source, or iron/wood/leatherworking tools, or parts of a ring, etc.



But there's no rules at all, nor even guidelines, that tell you you have to spend in-game time going out and buying every little piece or part or component.

It makes for some good roleplay and storytelling, but trying to use it as a way to restrict someone who's trying to make an item or prevent them from doing so isn't supported by the rules, nor is it really an act of good teamwork or fair play. They've already invested feats into being able to craft items, which is a not insignificant investment of character resources, and they're already paying the listed gold and xp prices for things.

Let them have their fun, roleplay the heck out of it to maximum story effect, but don't punish their feat choice nor their interest in pursuing this as a goal for their character and their character's story by making it harder than the rules already do.



As a side point of real-life reference, I have in real life made a ring. I used a pure silver coin to do it, and all it took in tools was a hammer, a round file, and some sandpaper and polishing compound. Nothing I had to go out of my way to procure, nor anything that would be difficult to find. Aside from that it merely took me time, and the cost of the coin. Just as an example. :)

[Melcar]

It's worth noting that creating an item doesn't just use flat gold, you still need to actually source the materials by buying them, and cities have limited market values, not to mention the inflation that you'd run into by injecting that much "money" into the economy. I'd much rather recommend using ignore material components and fabricate to directly create the crafting materials you require, rather than creating "money", though fabricate can do that too, if you need to pay people for services.



I mean, fabricate is basically "wall of X" where X is whatever you want? Hell, if you can get 13th level spell slots, you can even get fabricate as an innate spell and just cast it willy nilly to produce whatever you want at a whim.

I totally agree on going out and procuring said components, albeit non are stated as far as I can see in the rules. But I like too the roleplaying of it. At least as an off scene happening during downtime and such. But my concern was the very real cost - not only for making items, but also running my little operation. If I can use salt to pay for services/ materials etc., I'd be set for the rest of the campaign.


Cast fabricate on gold.

material component of fabricate: The original material worth the same as the raw materials of the finished product.
original material: gold
finished product: bar of gold worth 300gp
cost of raw materials to build bar of gold: 1/3 of what a bar of gold costs which in this case is 100gp
end result: cast fabricate on 100gp of gold to turn it into 300gp of gold

So just cast fabricate on gold to triple its amount per casting.
Bind a Rejkar which is an outsider with at-will fabricate and you can make a bajillion gold in an hour.

Of course if you tried to pull this in my games i'd slap you.

I did not think about this at all. I have 20k platinum pieces in my vault. Would I have to cast it on 1 coin at a time, or could I cast it on the entire pile once at end up having 60k by the end of the casting? I'm not sure I read the spell the same way you do? Is far as I can tell, the spell does no increase the value of said material. Thus a gold bar of gold valuet at 100 gp will only turn into something which is worth 100gp, like 100 gold coins...
what am I missing?


Point of technicality: Sure that would make total sense, for the sake of realism, but is that actually spelled out anywhere in the magic item creation rules?




On the SRD, the very first line in the magic item creation rules simply says: "To create magic items, spellcasters use special feats. They invest time, money, and their own personal energy (in the form of experience points) in an item’s creation. " (emphasis mine)


Yes, there are generic references to 'supplies' as in this line that comes a bit later in the rules: "Magic supplies for items are always half of the base price in gp"
But that's really just a formula for how much it costs. There's no sense of what those supplies are actually supposed to be, nor any indication you have to do anything aside from give up the gold to acquire them.


There are a few specifics given, in the various magic item creation rules. Things such as only masterwork weapons and armor being enhanced, and in each category of magic item, there's a small entry outlining the need for a heat source, or iron/wood/leatherworking tools, or parts of a ring, etc.



But there's no rules at all, nor even guidelines, that tell you you have to spend in-game time going out and buying every little piece or part or component.

It makes for some good roleplay and storytelling, but trying to use it as a way to restrict someone who's trying to make an item or prevent them from doing so isn't supported by the rules, nor is it really an act of good teamwork or fair play. They've already invested feats into being able to craft items, which is a not insignificant investment of character resources, and they're already paying the listed gold and xp prices for things.

Let them have their fun, roleplay the heck out of it to maximum story effect, but don't punish their feat choice nor their interest in pursuing this as a goal for their character and their character's story by making it harder than the rules already do.



As a side point of real-life reference, I have in real life made a ring. I used a pure silver coin to do it, and all it took in tools was a hammer, a round file, and some sandpaper and polishing compound. Nothing I had to go out of my way to procure, nor anything that would be difficult to find. Aside from that it merely took me time, and the cost of the coin. Just as an example. :)

See, that was my thoughts as well. Now I don't mind adding an element of reloplaying and lots of fun can come from that, but as you said, we usually don't go into what materiel we need - except maybe if I want to have a special material like mithral or something...

[gogogome]

I did not think about this at all. I have 20k platinum pieces in my vault. Would I have to cast it on 1 coin at a time, or could I cast it on the entire pile once at end up having 60k by the end of the casting? I'm not sure I read the spell the same way you do? Is far as I can tell, the spell does no increase the value of said material. Thus a gold bar of gold valuet at 100 gp will only turn into something which is worth 100gp, like 100 gold coins...
what am I missing?

Crafting (the skill) is a wealth tripler. In order to build a 100gp house you need to buy 33gp of raw materials. By using the craft skill you just tripled your wealth.
Fabricate turns that 33gp of raw materials into a 100gp house as well.

Read the material components section carefully.

You only need gold worth as much as the raw materials to create the final gold product.

"The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created. "
original material = gold
item to be created = 100gp gold bar
raw materials requied to craft the item to be created = 33gp of "raw materials"

So the material component is gold, which costs the same amount as 1/3 of the gold bar to be created.

You can cast fabricate on the entire pile as long as its within the spell's volume limit.

[Melcar]

Crafting (the skill) is a wealth tripler. In order to build a 100gp house you need to buy 33gp of raw materials. By using the craft skill you just tripled your wealth.
Fabricate turns that 33gp of raw materials into a 100gp house as well.

Read the material components section carefully.

You only need gold worth as much as the raw materials to create the final gold product.

"The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created. "
original material = gold
item to be created = 100gp gold bar
raw materials requied to craft the item to be created = 33gp of "raw materials"

So the material component is gold, which costs the same amount as 1/3 of the gold bar to be created.

You can cast fabricate on the entire pile as long as its within the spell's volume limit.


Ahh... now I think I get it. So my example is that if I want to create 60.000 platinum pieces, I only need 20.000 platinum pieces?

[Crake]

Cast fabricate on gold.

material component of fabricate: The original material worth the same as the raw materials of the finished product.
original material: gold
finished product: bar of gold worth 300gp
cost of raw materials to build bar of gold: 1/3 of what a bar of gold costs which in this case is 100gp
end result: cast fabricate on 100gp of gold to turn it into 300gp of gold

So just cast fabricate on gold to triple its amount per casting.
Bind a Rejkar which is an outsider with at-will fabricate and you can make a bajillion gold in an hour.

Of course if you tried to pull this in my games i'd slap you.

Technically, the raw material for a gold bar isn't gold, it's gold ore. If you wanted to improve the value of your gold, you would shape it into actual products like jewelry, or, I dunno, electronics.

A more interesting route to take would be coal -> diamonds, though remember for all fabricate castings, you do need to perform an appropriate craft skill, and the craft check required to turn coal into diamonds would be quite high I'd imagine.

[Crichton]

Technically, the raw material for a gold bar isn't gold, it's gold ore.


Again, that's a real life example, and would make sense, but where is the rules text that specifies gold ore's value or ore to pure gold ratio, or anything like that?

And strictly speaking, you can make a gold bar from any gold, you don't have to refine the ore into pure metal yourself. Just melt and cast it.
If you want to bring in real life processes like ore refining, you have to find the rules for it, or homebrew them yourself.


Of course, the fabricate/craft trick of turning 1/3 of something into 1 of something is silly, and a rules exploit, but it seems rules-legal, so there it is.

[Crake]

Again, that's a real life example, and would make sense, but where is the rules text that specifies gold ore's value or ore to pure gold ratio, or anything like that?

In the crafting rules, raw materials are valued at 1/3rd the price of the final product. So to make gold, you need 1/3rd the value of gold ore.


And strictly speaking, you can make a gold bar from any gold, you don't have to refine the ore into pure metal yourself. Just melt and cast it.
If you want to bring in real life processes like ore refining, you have to find the rules for it, or homebrew them yourself.

Correct, but casting regular gold into a bar doesn't add value, thus you're not turning raw materials into a final product.


Of course, the fabricate/craft trick of turning 1/3 of something into 1 of something is silly, and a rules exploit, but it seems rules-legal, so there it is.

I mean, it's not, because it turns raw materials into a finished product which is worth 3x more, by the crafting rules. If you just turn gold into gold, then you're not taking something raw and turning it into a final product, are you? You're just crudely reshaping it from coins into bars. On the other hand, turning gold into jewelry adds value because of the crafting process.

[gogogome]

Technically, the raw material for a gold bar isn't gold, it's gold ore. If you wanted to improve the value of your gold, you would shape it into actual products like jewelry, or, I dunno, electronics.

You don't need raw materials. You just need the original material worth as much as the raw materials.


Ahh... now I think I get it. So my example is that if I want to create 60.000 platinum pieces, I only need 20.000 platinum pieces?

Yes.

[Melcar]

A more interesting route to take would be coal -> diamonds, though remember for all fabricate castings, you do need to perform an appropriate craft skill, and the craft check required to turn coal into diamonds would be quite high I'd imagine.

Could this actually be done? And what about the crafting DC? One could argue, that the crafting check was not necessary if you just turned a lump of coal into a lump of ray diamond. The craft check would be needed if turned into a facet cut diamond for sure, but just a raw uncut diamond I would assume no. Thoughts?


Ok, so could I use Major Creation to summon a pile of gold, and use Fabricate to turn that pile into gold coins? Sure they last only 32 hours, but the shop keepers do not know that!

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Take the leadership feat, let those guys run a magic item workshop, or perform any of the other plans while you live the high life. Make all your followers elves and you can start calling yourself Santa Claus.


You don't need raw materials. You just need the original material worth as much as the raw materials.

I agree with the other side. Turning gold not-quite-bars into gold bars is not a significant fabrication step and won't add much value. Turning gold into jewelry, or gold ore into gold, is. Fabricate does not change the amount of material you have, therefor the increase in value has to come from the material becoming a more markettable product such as what a craftsman could turn it into.

[King of Nowhere]

In the meantime, I want to ask how you guys would go about dealing with a player like me, if I came to you as DMs and said I need a way to make millions of gp within the next few years? Would you allow me selling salt? Could I create a Wall of Platinum spell? If there is a Wall of: Iron, Stone, Force, Salt, Sand and Ice, why not Gold, Platinum, Palladium, Ruby, Diamond?

Could I circumvent the need for money in item creations, by substituting salt for gp? (I seem to remember this being done in Harry Potter and the Natural 20)

I'm really interested in how you guys would handle such a request/ need for money from a player.

Thank you in advance!

depends strongly on the dm and the campaign.
personally, i don't like all those spells that would break the economy, make infinite wealth or stuff. i don't like the kind of campaign world they tend to make, and i prefer wizards to be part of the world, but held aloof. for that reason i suggested the teleportation business, as that - along with crafting - is actually the best way to make money in my campaign world with the limitations i set.

now, if a player out of the blue told me he wanted to spend a few years downtime making money, i'd tell them we're here to play dungeons & dragons, not deals & dividends, and suggest that if he wants to play an economic simulator, he should go for a different game.
but in your case, the dm has told you you are all going to get years of downtime, so i assume he is expecting something like that. in which case, the only limit is the level of broken-ness that he considers acceptable

[gogogome]

I agree with the other side. Turning gold not-quite-bars into gold bars is not a significant fabrication step and won't add much value. Turning gold into jewelry, or gold ore into gold, is. Fabricate does not change the amount of material you have, therefor the increase in value has to come from the material becoming a more markettable product such as what a craftsman could turn it into.

This is incorrect. D&D does not use the law of preservation of energy and mass. D&D uses the law of preservation of gp value. Fabricate triples gp value. As a result you can't turn a lump of a log into a high priced art statue even with a colossal log with all all the sky high craft checks in the world but you can turn that lump of log into something 3 times its value, such as a bigger lump of log.

[Crake]

Could this actually be done? And what about the crafting DC? One could argue, that the crafting check was not necessary if you just turned a lump of coal into a lump of ray diamond. The craft check would be needed if turned into a facet cut diamond for sure, but just a raw uncut diamond I would assume no. Thoughts?

If it didn't require a check at all, then it would be possible to do with your bare hands and no training whatsoever, but I'd say that's rather definitely not the case. Processing a raw diamond into an faceted diamond though is definitely something you could do that would drastically increase the value of the diamond (read: by x3, since that's what the value of the raw vs the final product is by default in dnd :smalltongue:) I'm 90% sure there's a line somewhere in one of the splatbooks that says the DM can adjust this value for various crafts, and I know that poisons specifically use an adjustment on the crafting rules altogether, as outlined in complete adventurer.


Ok, so what if a use Major Creation to summon gold, and use Fabricate to turn it into gold coins? Sure they last only 32 hours, but the shop keepers do not know that!

You could skip the entire major creation step if you had a way to bypass a need for material components. Even just eschew materials, you can create just under 3gp worth of things for free with each fabricate casting, by just ignoring a 99s 99c amount of base materials. If you have access to embrace/shun the dark chaos, you can pick up the ignore material components feat which lets you literally just make whatever you want (I've mentioned this a few times, but gotten no acknowledgement on it, so I'm not sure if it's just been missed in the chatter), or as I mentioned a post or two ago, you can get the innate spell feat which makes it into an SLA you can use at will, and SLAs ignore material components.

[Crichton]

In the crafting rules, raw materials are valued at 1/3rd the price of the final product. So to make gold, you need 1/3rd the value of gold ore.



Correct, but casting regular gold into a bar doesn't add value, thus you're not turning raw materials into a final product.



I mean, it's not, because it turns raw materials into a finished product which is worth 3x more, by the crafting rules. If you just turn gold into gold, then you're not taking something raw and turning it into a final product, are you? You're just crudely reshaping it from coins into bars. On the other hand, turning gold into jewelry adds value because of the crafting process.


I was gonna do a detailed response, but largely the responses that came in before me already have it covered::


You don't need raw materials. You just need the original material worth as much as the raw materials.


Turning gold not-quite-bars into gold bars is not a significant fabrication step and won't add much value. Turning gold into jewelry, or gold ore into gold, is. Fabricate does not change the amount of material you have, therefor the increase in value has to come from the material becoming a more markettable product such as what a craftsman could turn it into.


This is incorrect. D&D does not use the law of preservation of energy and mass. D&D uses the law of preservation of gp value. Fabricate triples gp value. As a result you can't turn a lump of a log into a high priced art statue even with a colossal log with all all the sky high craft checks in the world but you can turn that lump of log into something 3 times its value, such as a bigger lump of log.



It doesn't matter that it makes no sense in real world physics. It's what the rules say about how it works. It's a game. Rules are abstractions, and yes, sometimes they break down when you try to bring real world processes in that the rules aren't meant to cover. That's just how games work.

There are no 'gold ore' rules in 3.5. You're free to make some up, but it's not a thing that has a market value listed, and it's not anywhere listed as the 'raw material' needed to fabricate gold bars or gold coins, and even if it was, the craft/fabricate rules wouldn't care, they'd still just triple the value, as gogogome has laid out a couple times here already.


All the arguments for 'it's not a value-adding significant crafting step' are arguments from how real life crafting should work, but have no bearing on how the rules say in-game crafting does work



Here, quoted directly from the Craft rules on the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm), filled in with our example in italics:


To determine how much time and money it takes to make an item, follow these steps.

1. Find the item’s price. Put the price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp). Item=One 1lb gold bar. Value 50gp=500sp
2. Find the DC from the table below. DC=unknown, lets go with the highest listed nonmagical/nonalchemical DC:20
3. Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials. Cost of materials is One third of 500sp=166sp and 66cp
4. Make an appropriate Craft check... This part isn't relevant to the issue of value. You either make the Craft check or don't, or via Fabricate don't even need to



So assuming to speed things up you're using Fabricate, you Craft 166sp and 66cp worth of gold into your gold bar that's worth 500sp, which is of course, 50gp. Is it slightly nonsensical? Sure, but it's also exactly how the rules say it works, so, barring houserules, it works.

It doesn't have to be a gold bar, it could be a gold anything. You could make gold coins the same way, or platinum using that instead, or whatever. Sure, jewelry is fine, but jewelry is neither a currency nor a trade good, so having something you can immediately spend or trade as currency without having to find a buyer first is far more convenient.

[Crake]

So assuming to speed things up you're using Fabricate, you Craft 166sp and 66cp worth of gold into your gold bar that's worth 500sp, which is of course, 50gp. Is it slightly nonsensical? Sure, but it's also exactly how the rules say it works, so, barring houserules, it works.

The issue here is that you're using the craft rules for something that doesn't come under the craft rules. You don't "craft" a gold bar. It doesn't require a craft check at all, it just requires melting the gold, and pouring it into a mold. No craft check = not using the craft skill rules. Now, processing ore on the other hand WOULD require skill, and thus would come under a craft check, likewise, turning gold into jewelry requires skill, thus would come under a craft check. Hell, even refining timber into wooden beams requires skill and would come under a craft check, but stamping a coin or pouring gold into bar molds? Sorry, that doesn't count. That would be the equivilent of bending a piece of metal and saying you've "crafted" something. That's where the so-called dysfunction lies here: people using rules where they don't apply.

[gogogome]

The issue here is that you're using the craft rules for something that doesn't come under the craft rules. You don't "craft" a gold bar. It doesn't require a craft check at all, it just requires melting the gold, and pouring it into a mold. No craft check = not using the craft skill rules. Now, processing ore on the other hand WOULD require skill, and thus would come under a craft check, likewise, turning gold into jewelry requires skill, thus would come under a craft check. Hell, even refining timber into wooden beams requires skill and would come under a craft check, but stamping a coin or pouring gold into bar molds? Sorry, that doesn't count. That would be the equivilent of bending a piece of metal and saying you've "crafted" something. That's where the so-called dysfunction lies here: people using rules where they don't apply.

" You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material. Creatures or magic items cannot be created or transmuted by the fabricate spell. The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication. If you work with a mineral, the target is reduced to 1 cubic foot per level instead of 10 cubic feet.

You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.

Casting requires 1 round per 10 cubic feet (or 1 cubic foot) of material to be affected by the spell. "

Crafting with fabricate is optional. You can fabricate a round rock into a cube rock 3 times its value.

The spell is horrendously written and clearly betrays the obvious intent of the spell. So the right thing to do here is accept that and rule this spell as intended with house rules instead of trying to lawyer the poorly written spell into working as it should by lawyering a bunch of tertiary mechanics that are also not well written.

[Quertus]

If it didn't require a check at all, then it would be possible to do with your bare hands and no training whatsoever, but I'd say that's rather definitely not the case. Processing a raw diamond into an faceted diamond though is definitely something you could do that would drastically increase the value of the diamond (read: by x3, since that's what the value of the raw vs the final product is by default in dnd :smalltongue:)


I think you mean "in 3e". Perhaps it's this way in 4e & 5e, too? But I'm fairly sure it wasn't like this before 3e.

[Crichton]

The issue here is that you're using the craft rules for something that doesn't come under the craft rules. You don't "craft" a gold bar. It doesn't require a craft check at all, it just requires melting the gold, and pouring it into a mold. No craft check = not using the craft skill rules.

You might be able to make that argument, but simply stating it and not backing it with rules text isn't making an argument for your side


Now, processing ore on the other hand WOULD require skill, and thus would come under a craft check,

And again I say: citation needed. Is "gold ore" ever even addressed in D&D 3.5 rules, anywhere? I couldn't think of anywhere it is, and a google search for 'd&d 3.5 "gold ore"' doesn't come up with anyone else citing any such rules, so... Are you literally just making this up and assuming it exists because that's how mining/ore processing/raw metal production works in real life?


likewise, turning gold into jewelry requires skill, thus would come under a craft check. Hell, even refining timber into wooden beams requires skill and would come under a craft check,
No argument that they wouldn't. They are examples of things that are crafted.


but stamping a coin or pouring gold into bar molds? Sorry, that doesn't count. That would be the equivilent of bending a piece of metal and saying you've "crafted" something.


Those aren't equivalent at all. Minting coins is absolutely an act of crafting, as is melting and casting metal objects. Those don't just happen by accident, or in common labor. Sure, casting might not be as intricate as fine engraving type jewelry work, but looking around the real world at the variety of products that are made of cast metal, there's zero case for saying that's not crafting. Shoot, the vast majority of cheap jewelry is exactly that: cheaply cast metal. Doesn't matter if the mold you're casting into is a gold bar mold or a basic flower-shaped pendant/necklace, the act is the same.

All of that aside, you're once again trying to impose your judgments from real-world ideas of crafting onto a system of rules that clearly outline that making a product is crafting, and that it doesn't have to be any kind of intricate, finely detailed work to count as crafting. It takes far less skill or effort to carve a 'Very simple item (wooden spoon)' from the craft DC chart than it does to mint a two-faced coin, or even a metal bar. Anyone can whittle with a pocket knife. Not everyone has the skill or setup to melt metal and handle it safely in its molten form.



If you're gonna come in and try to shoot down rules-based ideas with broad statements that those rules don't apply, or those materials aren't 'raw' enough materials, you'd better be able to back that up from actual text. Just stating your opinion doesn't change what the rules say

[Tvtyrant]

I don't know how people expect to make diamonds out of coal. For one I don't know that coal exists in D&D, it is certainly not spelled out as a material. For two atoms aren't raw and diamonds are necessarily made by compression.

[Melcar]

I was gonna do a detailed response, but largely the responses that came in before me already have it covered::

It doesn't matter that it makes no sense in real world physics. It's what the rules say about how it works. It's a game. Rules are abstractions, and yes, sometimes they break down when you try to bring real world processes in that the rules aren't meant to cover. That's just how games work.

There are no 'gold ore' rules in 3.5. You're free to make some up, but it's not a thing that has a market value listed, and it's not anywhere listed as the 'raw material' needed to fabricate gold bars or gold coins, and even if it was, the craft/fabricate rules wouldn't care, they'd still just triple the value, as gogogome has laid out a couple times here already.


All the arguments for 'it's not a value-adding significant crafting step' are arguments from how real life crafting should work, but have no bearing on how the rules say in-game crafting does work



Here, quoted directly from the Craft rules on the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm), filled in with our example in italics:



So assuming to speed things up you're using Fabricate, you Craft 166sp and 66cp worth of gold into your gold bar that's worth 500sp, which is of course, 50gp. Is it slightly nonsensical? Sure, but it's also exactly how the rules say it works, so, barring houserules, it works.

It doesn't have to be a gold bar, it could be a gold anything. You could make gold coins the same way, or platinum using that instead, or whatever. Sure, jewelry is fine, but jewelry is neither a currency nor a trade good, so having something you can immediately spend or trade as currency without having to find a buyer first is far more convenient.

Ok, so let me get this strait: If I non-magially wanted to create a 150 gold pieces, I could do that by minting them from 1lbs of gold? How do we square that they a finite amount of gold now weighs 3 times as mush as before they were coins???... And if I understand correctly, Fabricate simple does this process magically for me, right?

Lets say I take 1 lbs of gold, I cast Fabricate and magically turn this small gold bar into a larger gold bar now weighing 3 lbs, which is now worth 150 gp? Am I getting this right? And this is possible because crafting an item needs only 1/3 of the material? I assume this can be done with any material (however intricate/ complex items needs a craft check to go with it for the spell to work... right? From srd: "In some cases, the fabricate spell can be used to achieve the results of a Craft check with no actual check involved. However, you must make an appropriate Craft check when using the spell to make articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship."

One could argue that since money hasn't lost its value no one has done this yet meaning its impossible (just like why PunPun doesn't exist in most worlds). However that it doesn't work would be a rai interpretation at the table level, not raw rules... the way I see it.


The issue here is that you're using the craft rules for something that doesn't come under the craft rules. You don't "craft" a gold bar. It doesn't require a craft check at all, it just requires melting the gold, and pouring it into a mold. No craft check = not using the craft skill rules. Now, processing ore on the other hand WOULD require skill, and thus would come under a craft check, likewise, turning gold into jewelry requires skill, thus would come under a craft check. Hell, even refining timber into wooden beams requires skill and would come under a craft check, but stamping a coin or pouring gold into bar molds? Sorry, that doesn't count. That would be the equivilent of bending a piece of metal and saying you've "crafted" something. That's where the so-called dysfunction lies here: people using rules where they don't apply.

I would assume smelting precious metals was a craft skill, however its not a delicate job piling gold into a crucible heating it till it melts and pouring into a mold (casting a bar), hence the no need for a crafting check during the casting of fabricate. However, we are debating raw here, so sure it makes no sense, but apparently the craft skill, which rules are applied during the casting, is not making a lot of sense when it comes to producing gold coins, since golf coins are 1-1 in terms of value. However, the crafting rules say you need only 1/50 lbs to create 50 coins... weird!

[Crake]

Those aren't equivalent at all. Minting coins is absolutely an act of crafting, as is melting and casting metal objects. Those don't just happen by accident, or in common labor. Sure, casting might not be as intricate as fine engraving type jewelry work, but looking around the real world at the variety of products that are made of cast metal, there's zero case for saying that's not crafting. Shoot, the vast majority of cheap jewelry is exactly that: cheaply cast metal. Doesn't matter if the mold you're casting into is a gold bar mold or a basic flower-shaped pendant/necklace, the act is the same.

Your confusing the act of crafting the mold, with casting the mold. Casting a mold most certainly comes under common labor, crafting a mold on the other hand is at least mildly complex work that requires some level of skill. Coins and coin stamps are the same.

[Crichton]

Ok, so let me get this strait: If I non-magially wanted to create a 150 gold pieces, I could do that by minting them from 1lbs of gold? How do we square that they a finite amount of gold now weighs 3 times as mush as before they were coins???... And if I understand correctly, Fabricate simple does this process magically for me, right?

Lets say I take 1 lbs of gold, I cast Fabricate and magically turn this small gold bar into a larger gold bar now weighing 3 lbs, which is now worth 150 gp? Am I getting this right? And this is possible because crafting an item needs only 1/3 of the material? I assume this can be done with any material (however intricate/ complex items needs a craft check to go with it for the spell to work... right? From srd: "In some cases, the fabricate spell can be used to achieve the results of a Craft check with no actual check involved. However, you must make an appropriate Craft check when using the spell to make articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship."

One could argue that since money hasn't lost its value no one has done this yet meaning its impossible (just like why PunPun doesn't exist in most worlds). However that it doesn't work would be a rai interpretation at the table level, not raw rules... the way I see it.



I would assume smelting precious metals was a craft skill, however its not a delicate job piling gold into a crucible heating it till it melts and pouring into a mold (casting a bar), hence the no need for a crafting check during the casting of fabricate. However, we are debating raw here, so sure it makes no sense, but apparently the craft skill, which rules are applied during the casting, is not making a lot of sense when it comes to producing gold coins, since golf coins are 1-1 in terms of value. However, the crafting rules say you need only 1/50 lbs to create 50 coins... weird!



I'm not gonna tell you your DM will let you get away with it. It's ridiculous. But yes, that's how the rules say it works. It's clearly not how they're supposed to work, but it's how they do work.



And point of technicality: It's not 'because crafting an item needs only 1/3 of the material'

Rather, it's because Craft requires you to 'Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials' and Fabricate reinforces this by saying the Material Component for the spell is 'The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.'

So if the finished item's price is 150gp, then Craft says it costs you materials totaling a cost of 50gp, and Fabricate says you instead consume that same amount worth of materials as the component for the spell.

[Crichton]

Your confusing the act of crafting the mold, with casting the mold. Casting a mold most certainly comes under common labor, crafting a mold on the other hand is at least mildly complex work that requires some level of skill. Coins and coin stamps are the same.

I'm gonna reply with the same thing I've been responding to you with this whole time: citation needed. You've yet to actually present the D&D 3.5 rules text where any of what you claim is backed up.



What the rules actually say is that if you're making something, anything, you're Crafting (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm):



"A Craft skill is specifically focused on creating something. "

"The basic function of the Craft skill, however, is to allow you to make an item"

[Melcar]

I'm not gonna tell you your DM will let you get away with it. It's ridiculous. But yes, that's how the rules say it works. It's clearly not how they're supposed to work, but it's how they do work.





And point of technicality: It's not 'because crafting an item needs only 1/3 of the material'

Rather, it's because Craft requires you to 'Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials' and Fabricate reinforces this by saying the Material Component for the spell is 'The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.'

So if the finished item's price is 150gp, then Craft says it costs you materials totaling a cost of 50gp, and Fabricate says you instead consume that same amount worth of materials as the component for the spell.

Indeed, I think we are beyond discussing whether my or any other DM would let this fly. At this point I'm trying to understand the rules more than anything. Besides the obvious, there's a lot of interesting information on here.

In terms of your point of technicality, the crafting rules state: "Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.". So I'm laying a down payment of 100 gp, because the cost of raw materials is 300, but I need only to pay 1/3 of that, ergo 100. I assume that's why... also a weird bit of rule... if I understand it correctly!

[Crichton]

Indeed, I think we are beyond discussing whether my or any other DM would let this fly. At this point I'm trying to understand the rules more than anything. Besides the obvious, there's a lot of interesting information on here.

In terms of your point of technicality, the crafting rules state: "Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.". So I'm laying a down payment of 100 gp, because the cost of raw materials is 300, but I need only to pay 1/3 of that, ergo 100. I assume that's why... also a weird bit of rule... if I understand it correctly!

No, no, in your example, the raw materials don't cost 300. You pay 100, because the finished product's value is 300, and you pay 1/3 the cost of the item's price, not the raw materials' price.

The "Item's Price" is the rules term for what the cost of the item would be if you purchased it from a vendor (aka, the list price in the rules books)

[Crake]

I'm gonna reply with the same thing I've been responding to you with this whole time: citation needed. You've yet to actually present the D&D 3.5 rules text where any of what you claim is backed up.

Citation: real life.

If something isn't covered by the rules, we look to the real world to tell us the answer. The d20 system is a framework, not an all encompassing physics engine, it doesn't give you literally every example possible, it gives you enough examples for you to extrapolate the rules to fit any scenario. In this case, we don't need a rule to tell us that gold ore is the raw material of gold, because we have real life to tell us that. Gold ore is purified into gold. That gold, in whatever shape, be it bars or coins or bricks, is worth the same unless it's had some kind of complicated transformative process applied to it, because, as I said, anyone can pour gold into a brick mold, or stamp it out into coins, given they have the mold or the coin stamps.

However, your argument seems to be that because fabricate says "The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created." you seem to be attempting to make a distinction between "original material" and "raw material", and I would ask you to describe to me what the difference between "the original materail" and "the raw materials" is, because to me, it sounds like a distinction without a difference.


What the rules actually say is that if you're making something, anything, you're Crafting:

Logical fallacy. All craft checks create an item, but not all creations of items require a craft check. If all As are Bs, that doesn't necessarily mean all Bs are As. An obvious example would be chipping a rock off a boulder. You've created an item in the form of a rock, but it did not require a craft check or any kind of skill at all.

[Crichton]

Citation: real life.

If something isn't covered by the rules, we look to the real world to tell us the answer.

But in this case, it is covered by the rules, and you are effectively saying 'it works the way I say it works, because I want it to, even though the way I say it works is in contradiction to the actual rules'



In this case, we don't need a rule to tell us that gold ore is the raw material of gold,

You do if you want to force all players to use it in all gold-based crafting. The rules specify something different, and if you want to change that, or even add to it, you need to specify, in game-rule terms, what gold ore is, how much it's worth, and what exact in-game, rules legal method is used for extracting, processing or refining it. None of that exists in the rules, and the Craft skill can't function the way you seem to want it to without it.



That gold, in whatever shape, be it bars or coins or bricks, is worth the same unless it's had some kind of complicated transformative process applied to it, because, as I said, anyone can pour gold into a brick mold, or stamp it out into coins, given they have the mold or the coin stamps. (emphasis mine)

Anyone can turn that gold into your jewelry example too, given they have the jeweler's tools and workbench to do so. Your example proves nothing except a difference of intricacy and minute detail.

All that aside, operating a coin-mint or a foundry/casting facility is covered by the craft rules You're taking a material, and outputting a product made from that material. That's not fundamentally different in any way but size/scale, and intricacy from your jewelry example. Nothing in the Craft rules imply a need for any kind of 'complicated transformative process' being applied in order to count as Crafting.


However, your argument seems to be that because fabricate says "The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created." you seem to be attempting to make a distinction between "original material" and "raw material", and I would ask you to describe to me what the difference between "the original materail" and "the raw materials" is, because to me, it sounds like a distinction without a difference.

You're failing to realize that Fabricate uses the words 'original material' because the spell has already imposed the limitation that "You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material." Thus in the Material Component line, it specifies that the component is 'The original material' as in, the material you'll be converting into your product.

How much does that 'original material' cost? Well, by the Component line, it costs the same amount that the 'raw materials' specified in the Craft skill entry say it should cost. So we go to the Craft skill entry and what does it say? It says it costs 1/3 the amount of the final price of the product you're Crafting. It isn't difficult logic. The product I'm crafting is a one pound bar of gold, which is a product that has a listed price in the rules (that's a key point - without a listed product price in the rules, you're just making things up). Whatever that listed price is, if I'm going to Craft it (or Fabricate it, which is basically just a magical means of Crafting, since it explicitly uses the same materials costs), then my cost for materials is 1/3 that price.


(Additionally, you don't need Fabricate for this exploit to function. The Craft rules are sufficient to do the same thing. All Fabricate does is make it fast enough to be a quick exploit.)



Yes, they didn't intend for you to use it in this way, they intended for you to use Craft (and thus by extension, Fabricate) to do things like turn bulk iron into daggers, or something like that. But that intention doesn't change the fact that the rules are written to work this way, even though it's most definitely a verisimilitude-breaking exploit. Of course you shouldn't be allowed to turn a pile of one thing into three times as much of that thing, in different shapes. But you can, because the rules say you can. That's how game rules work. You can't do what it doesn't say you can do, and you can do what it does say you can do. Even if that thing the rules say you can do sounds as nonsensical as multiplying gold.



Logical fallacy. All craft checks create an item, but not all creations of items require a craft check. If all As are Bs, that doesn't necessarily mean all Bs are As. An obvious example would be chipping a rock off a boulder. You've created an item in the form of a rock, but it did not require a craft check or any kind of skill at all.


Logical fallacy: Faulty Comparison (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/97/Faulty-Comparison). Your example of chipping a rock from a boulder isn't the creation of an item that's covered by the Craft skill rules, since boulders and rocks aren't price-listed items/products in the rules.

You're attempting to limit what types of products a Craft check can be used to produce, but again, you cite no rules to support your limitation. On the other hand, I've cited the Craft rules, and the price-listed item that shows that it is in fact a product, despite it being but one example of many possible such exploits of the Craft/Fabricate rules.

[Crake]

Logical fallacy: Faulty Comparison (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/97/Faulty-Comparison). Your example of chipping a rock from a boulder isn't the creation of an item that's covered by the Craft skill rules, since boulders and rocks aren't price-listed items/products in the rules.

I'm pretty tired, so I'm only going to address this: You're absolutely right, in that chipping a rock isn't the creation of an item covered by the craft skill rules, because that was my entire point. You're saying that the creation of any item necessitates the use of the craft rules (that 1/3rd raw materials = final product). I'm saying that this rule is not universal, and only covers items that require skill to create, and thus would necessitate a skill check. If an item does not require skill (as is the case with casting gold into a bar), then it doesn't follow the craft skill rules, because there is no craft skill check involved.

Also, again, you keep looking to the rules as if they're an exhaustive list of all things you're allowed to have/use, and if something isn't covered by the rules, it's not allowed to exist. That's a very bad mentality to have, because all it does is isolate yourself in a tiny box, playing with the same toys over and over.

[Crichton]

You're saying that the creation of any item necessitates the use of the craft rules (that 1/3rd raw materials = final product).



You've misread me, then. I in no way am saying that the creation of any item necessitates the use of the Craft rules. I'm saying that the creation of an item with a rules-listed price is already considered by the rules to be a product. Really the exploit isn't that you can Craft gold bars or gold coins or whatever. You could just as easily exploit Fabricate to Craft bulk iron or large cheap iron items into iron daggers, or turn your gold into Art Objects. The only difference is that iron daggers aren't a liquid currency, so you have to sell them first.



If an item does not require skill (as is the case with casting gold into a bar), then it doesn't follow the craft skill rules, because there is no craft skill check involved.

And that's where you're, by the text, wrong.

One, you don't get to be the one that decides which items require 'skill' and which don't. The Craft rules don't allow that, and even have example items that 'require less skill' than operating a foundry/casting facility would.
And two, the Craft rules are very clear that any product (with a listed price, which is required in order to be able to follow the 4 step process listed under the Craft entry) can be created via the Craft rules.

Plus, again, it doesn't have to be a gold bar, that's just a convenient item with a listed price that makes for a good example.


Also, again, you keep looking to the rules as if they're an exhaustive list of all things you're allowed to have/use, and if something isn't covered by the rules, it's not allowed to exist. That's a very bad mentality to have, because all it does is isolate yourself in a tiny box, playing with the same toys over and over.

You're perceiving it in a very skewed manner. Sure, things not covered by the rules are allowed to exist. But abilities (like Crafting) can only be granted by the rules. You can only do the things the rules say you can do. The rules clearly say you can Craft (and how to), and so you can. I never said gold ore couldn't exist, just that you couldn't enforce its use as the raw material without adding new rules to the existing rules on what and how crafting is done.

[Melcar]

No, no, in your example, the raw materials don't cost 300. You pay 100, because the finished product's value is 300, and you pay 1/3 the cost of the item's price, not the raw materials' price.

The "Item's Price" is the rules term for what the cost of the item would be if you purchased it from a vendor (aka, the list price in the rules books)

Right... The weirdness stems from gold being valued 1-1. Meaning one is magically increasing the amount of material instead of increasing value. At least that's the way I see it. For some reason, someone has sold you 1 lbs of gold not for 50 gp but for 16.67gp... That's a hell of diplomacy check! :D



Citation: real life.

If something isn't covered by the rules, we look to the real world to tell us the answer. The d20 system is a framework, not an all encompassing physics engine, it doesn't give you literally every example possible, it gives you enough examples for you to extrapolate the rules to fit any scenario. In this case, we don't need a rule to tell us that gold ore is the raw material of gold, because we have real life to tell us that. Gold ore is purified into gold. That gold, in whatever shape, be it bars or coins or bricks, is worth the same unless it's had some kind of complicated transformative process applied to it, because, as I said, anyone can pour gold into a brick mold, or stamp it out into coins, given they have the mold or the coin stamps.

However, your argument seems to be that because fabricate says "The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created." you seem to be attempting to make a distinction between "original material" and "raw material", and I would ask you to describe to me what the difference between "the original materail" and "the raw materials" is, because to me, it sounds like a distinction without a difference.



Logical fallacy. All craft checks create an item, but not all creations of items require a craft check. If all As are Bs, that doesn't necessarily mean all Bs are As. An obvious example would be chipping a rock off a boulder. You've created an item in the form of a rock, but it did not require a craft check or any kind of skill at all.

I have seen enough Gold Rush on Discovery to know that not all mined gold come from gold ore. Some gold is found in flakes, which is like a sand grain substance but made from pure gold. This gold dust is simple gathered and melted into bars... simply put.

Also, when creating a wooden bridge from trees your taking wood and turning it into wood, your not taking acorns or seeds from trees and turning that into wood, so the material is the same, its just its form which is now different. Ergo, you can create gold bars from gold coins or gold coins from bars... You don't have to change material.


I'm pretty tired, so I'm only going to address this: You're absolutely right, in that chipping a rock isn't the creation of an item covered by the craft skill rules, because that was my entire point. You're saying that the creation of any item necessitates the use of the craft rules (that 1/3rd raw materials = final product). I'm saying that this rule is not universal, and only covers items that require skill to create, and thus would necessitate a skill check. If an item does not require skill (as is the case with casting gold into a bar), then it doesn't follow the craft skill rules, because there is no craft skill check involved.

Also, again, you keep looking to the rules as if they're an exhaustive list of all things you're allowed to have/use, and if something isn't covered by the rules, it's not allowed to exist. That's a very bad mentality to have, because all it does is isolate yourself in a tiny box, playing with the same toys over and over.

You would need a craft check if you wanted a round ball... Who determines what demands a craft check. I would definitely say that casting metal needed a craft check... maybe DC 10...


You've misread me, then. I in no way am saying that the creation of any item necessitates the use of the Craft rules. I'm saying that the creation of an item with a rules-listed price is already considered by the rules to be a product. Really the exploit isn't that you can Craft gold bars or gold coins or whatever. You could just as easily exploit Fabricate to Craft bulk iron or large cheap iron items into iron daggers, or turn your gold into Art Objects. The only difference is that iron daggers aren't a liquid currency, so you have to sell them first.




And that's where you're, by the text, wrong.

One, you don't get to be the one that decides which items require 'skill' and which don't. The Craft rules don't allow that, and even have example items that 'require less skill' than operating a foundry/casting facility would.
And two, the Craft rules are very clear that any product (with a listed price, which is required in order to be able to follow the 4 step process listed under the Craft entry) can be created via the Craft rules.

Plus, again, it doesn't have to be a gold bar, that's just a convenient item with a listed price that makes for a good example.



You're perceiving it in a very skewed manner. Sure, things not covered by the rules are allowed to exist. But abilities (like Crafting) can only be granted by the rules. You can only do the things the rules say you can do. The rules clearly say you can Craft (and how to), and so you can. I never said gold ore couldn't exist, just that you couldn't enforce its use as the raw material without adding new rules to the existing rules on what and how crafting is done.

I think the reason a gold bar is interesting, or why gold is interesting is because its valued in its weight, so when crafting gold bars, the rules tell you that you only need to pay 1/3, even though the value is based on amount. That was not the intention for sure, but when dealing with RAW, that's what you get some times...

[Yahzi Coyote]

All of that aside, you're once again trying to impose your judgments from real-world ideas of crafting onto a system of rules that clearly outline that making a product is crafting
Are their rules for opening doors? Changing clothes? Tying your shoes? Yet characters do all those things.

The rules tell you how to allow players to apply dice to generate results for those times when you need to randomize the results. They are not perfect but they are not nearly as dumb as you're making them out to be. With a little effort (well maybe a fair amount of effort) I have built a functioning economy that adheres to basic D&D tropes like 1 lb of wheat = 1 cp and the crafting rules. As part of that, the crafting rules imply the value of the labor you can impart, which controls but is not determined by the value of the object you make. Creating a silver necklace is not harder than creating a gold necklace, even though one is 10x more valuable than the other (also, in any medieval economy, jewelry basically sells for its weight in precious materials).

Casting Wall of Iron is fine (though any 9th lvl wizard who is doing that for money is doing something seriously wrong). Abusing Fabricate to turn gold into gold is just silly, and most people don't want to play just silly. (But if you do, have at it!)

[Crake]

I have seen enough Gold Rush on Discovery to know that not all mined gold come from gold ore. Some gold is found in flakes, which is like a sand grain substance but made from pure gold. This gold dust is simple gathered and melted into bars... simply put.

Correct, but the gold dust and the gold bars has the same value, this is true in dnd as well, since precious metal dust measured in pounds valued the same as bars or coins would be. So talking gold dust into gold bars is the same as talking gold coins into gold bars.


Also, when creating a wooden bridge from trees your taking wood and turning it into wood, your not taking acorns or seeds from trees and turning that into wood, so the material is the same, its just its form which is now different. Ergo, you can create gold bars from gold coins or gold coins from bars... You don't have to change material.

Correct, but you didn't make more wood, you increased the value of the wood by reshaping it, the same way a jeweler reshapes gold to make jewelry. The fact that gold coins, gold bars and gold dust are literally worth the same pound for pound proves that there is no value in changing gold's shape at such a crude level, which further supports the fact that it's an unskilled labour, as all craft checks actually add value.


You would need a craft check if you wanted a round ball... Who determines what demands a craft check. I would definitely say that casting metal needed a craft check... maybe DC 10...

Your DM.

[Crichton]

Right... The weirdness stems from gold being valued 1-1. Meaning one is magically increasing the amount of material instead of increasing value. At least that's the way I see it. For some reason, someone has sold you 1 lbs of gold not for 50 gp but for 16.67gp... That's a hell of diplomacy check! :D


I think the reason a gold bar is interesting, or why gold is interesting is because its valued in its weight, so when crafting gold bars, the rules tell you that you only need to pay 1/3, even though the value is based on amount. That was not the intention for sure, but when dealing with RAW, that's what you get some times...


Oh, it's certainly weirdness, and as I already said, don't expect a DM to allow it. But it's what the rules say, so...




Are their rules for opening doors? Changing clothes? Tying your shoes? Yet characters do all those things.

The rules tell you how to allow players to apply dice to generate results for those times when you need to randomize the results. They are not perfect but they are not nearly as dumb as you're making them out to be. With a little effort (well maybe a fair amount of effort) I have built a functioning economy that adheres to basic D&D tropes like 1 lb of wheat = 1 cp and the crafting rules. As part of that, the crafting rules imply the value of the labor you can impart, which controls but is not determined by the value of the object you make. Creating a silver necklace is not harder than creating a gold necklace, even though one is 10x more valuable than the other (also, in any medieval economy, jewelry basically sells for its weight in precious materials).

Casting Wall of Iron is fine (though any 9th lvl wizard who is doing that for money is doing something seriously wrong). Abusing Fabricate to turn gold into gold is just silly, and most people don't want to play just silly. (But if you do, have at it!)




Never said it wasn't silly. In fact I even used the world nonsensical at least once. It's not the first example, nor the worst or most broken example, of crazy things you can do in the 3.5 rules that make no sense.


And as for your mention of basic life activity, no, there are no rules for those. That's the point. There aren't, and don't need to be, rules for such basic daily activities that don't have any in-game consequences. The point is that when there ARE rules for something, it doesn't matter if they make sense to real life or not. The rules say what they say. If you don't like them, then you as a DM can change them. That's the first rule, Rule Zero, even, of the game. But don't go pretending that because they don't make sense to real life examples, that the rules aren't there or don't say what they say.

[Crichton]

...proves that there is no value in changing gold's shape at such a crude level,

No, it proves that it shouldn't (in your opinion, and probably mine too, when we get right down to it, but they're still just opinions), not that it doesn't (by the way the existing rules are written)



which further supports the fact that it's an unskilled labour, as all craft checks actually add value.


You've clearly never actually done any metal casting or fabrication in real life, either, then, or even know much about how it's actually done. There's nothing unskilled about it. Even casting something as simple as a bar shape is far more involved and skill-requiring than whittling a spoon out of a piece of wood (something that is unquestionably a Craft check)



Your DM.

Clarification: Your DM does, because it's their job to implement and adjudicate the rules. If the rules say you should make a craft check, and they tell you you're not doing something that counts as crafting, then the DM is exercising their right to change the rules.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Of course you shouldn't be allowed to turn a pile of one thing into three times as much of that thing, in different shapes. But you can, because the rules say you can. That's how game rules work.

That's not even how actual laws work, and those are laws. The letter of the law is important in ensuring the spirit of the law is applied fairly and equally to all, but any judge would convict a murderer who proudly complains he's found an exploit by killing someone behind a "end of all interdictions" traffic sign.

If I want to play exactly by the rules as written without keeping an eye on their intent I'll play a computer game.

[Crichton]

That's not even how actual laws work, and those are laws. The letter of the law is important in ensuring the spirit of the law is applied fairly and equally to all, but any judge would convict a murderer who proudly complains he's found an exploit by killing someone behind a "end of all interdictions" traffic sign.

If I want to play exactly by the rules as written without keeping an eye on their intent I'll play a computer game.

Thanks for pulling that one tidbit out of context and portraying it as if it was how I said things should be.


Literally said multiple times it shouldn't be allowed, probably wouldn't be allowed, and was nonsensical. As you sort of allude to, it's the DM's job to adjudicate the rules, and this would be a prime example of that. That doesn't alter the fact that in doing so, they're exercising their right to change how the rules work. It's important to understand that this was a discussion of what the strict text of the rules actually say and allow, not how they should be implemented or adjudicated.


Those sorts of 'technical RAW' discussions make up a large percentage of the discussions on this forum, and one reason for that is that it's important for DMs and players to know and understand the rules as written, including their exploits and inanities, precisely so that they can go forward and make informed adjustments, with full understanding of the potential ramifications and consequences of those changes.

[Quertus]

I'm not gonna tell you your DM will let you get away with it. It's ridiculous. But yes, that's how the rules say it works. It's clearly not how they're supposed to work, but it's how they do work.



And point of technicality: It's not 'because crafting an item needs only 1/3 of the material'

Rather, it's because Craft requires you to 'Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials' and Fabricate reinforces this by saying the Material Component for the spell is 'The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.'

So if the finished item's price is 150gp, then Craft says it costs you materials totaling a cost of 50gp, and Fabricate says you instead consume that same amount worth of materials as the component for the spell.

So, I just want to know, by RAW, can I use Fabricate and Craft: Taxidermy to literally tell the BBEG to "get stuffed", and then sell him for 3x his original value (calculated as CR²x100 GP, as a slave)?

[gogogome]

So, I just want to know, by RAW, can I use Fabricate and Craft: Taxidermy to literally tell the BBEG to "get stuffed", and then sell him for 3x his original value (calculated as CR²x100 GP, as a slave)?

"Creatures or magic items cannot be created or transmuted by the fabricate spell."

[unseenmage]

So, I just want to know, by RAW, can I use Fabricate and Craft: Taxidermy to literally tell the BBEG to "get stuffed", and then sell him for 3x his original value (calculated as CR²x100 GP, as a slave)?
BBEG kills self and has their corpse (now an object) hit with Fabricate to make 3x as much BBEG corpse.

Gets resurrected inhabiting new larger body.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Swol BBEG, "Bruh, do you even fabricate!?"

[Warmjenkins]

I'm gonna reply with the same thing I've been responding to you with this whole time: citation needed. You've yet to actually present the D&D 3.5 rules text where any of what you claim is backed up.



What the rules actually say is that if you're making something, anything, you're Crafting:

Citation needed. Where in the rules does it state that if you are making something, anything, you're crafting.

Say I'm a farmer, do I not make anything by my profession farmer checks? Where does all the food come from then? I never see any npc's with ranks in craft corn or craft goat/livestock.

Or is it possible that not all items are covered by the crafting rules, say commodities such as gold and wheat.

[Melcar]

Citation needed. Where in the rules does it state that if you are making something, anything, you're crafting.

Say I'm a farmer, do I not make anything by my profession farmer checks? Where does all the food come from then? I never see any npc's with ranks in craft corn or craft goat/livestock.

Or is it possible that not all items are covered by the crafting rules, say commodities such as gold and wheat.

"While a Craft skill represents ability in creating or making an item, a Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge."

You don't seem to create anything with profession...

[Crichton]

Citation needed.
I see what you did there. :smallcool:


Where in the rules does it state that if you are making something, anything, you're crafting.

Say I'm a farmer, do I not make anything by my profession farmer checks? Where does all the food come from then? I never see any npc's with ranks in craft corn or craft goat/livestock.

Or is it possible that not all items are covered by the crafting rules, say commodities such as gold and wheat.


Thing is, I'd already quoted the relevant text earlier, not to mention it's right there in the Craft skill entry, if you would go read it:


A Craft skill is specifically focused on creating something. If nothing is created by the endeavor, it probably falls under the heading of a Profession skill.

The basic function of the Craft skill, however, is to allow you to make an item of the appropriate type. The DC depends on the complexity of the item to be created.


Additionally, the Profession skill adds this little nugget of wisdom, to help clarify which is which:

While a Craft skill represents ability in creating or making an item, a Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge.


On top of all that, using the Fabricate spell can sometimes bypass the need to actually roll the Craft check, if the item is simple:

In some cases, the fabricate spell can be used to achieve the results of a Craft check with no actual check involved. However, you must make an appropriate Craft check when using the spell to make articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.



So there ya have it, fully cited. The Craft skill rules apply to the creating or making of an item, or more specifically if you actually read the rules that lay out how to do so, an item with a specific price listed in the rules.

[Warmjenkins]

I see what you did there. :smallcool:




Thing is, I'd already quoted the relevant text earlier, not to mention it's right there in the Craft skill entry, if you would go read it:



Additionally, the Profession skill adds this little nugget of wisdom, to help clarify which is which:



On top of all that, using the Fabricate spell can sometimes bypass the need to actually roll the Craft check, if the item is simple:




So there ya have it, fully cited. The Craft skill rules apply to the creating or making of an item, or more specifically if you actually read the rules that lay out how to do so, an item with a specific price listed in the rules.

Yes, crafting something = creating something. The rules state that plain enough. However they don't stat that creating some = crafting something, which is what you claimed. The profession check example was meant to point out that there are other ways to create things.

Similarly if a bit more nonsensical, how are more humans, goblins, and animals "created" if not through craft human checks ect... or is sex just an (usually) untrained craft check?

Edit: To put it another way, if you want a steak you don't go to someone with craft steak or craft meat products, you go to a butcher. Something covered under profession. Yet they still produce a good from a raw material. Perhaps a better example is a cook; a gourmet meal is certainly worth more than its base ingredients yet you would use profession cook/chef to make one.

[zlefin]

Yes, crafting something = creating something. The rules state that plain enough. However they don't stat that creating some = crafting something, which is what you claimed. The profession check example was meant to point out that there are other ways to create things.

Similarly if a bit more nonsensical, how are more humans, goblins, and animals "created" if not through craft human checks ect... or is sex just an (usually) untrained craft check?

sex as an untrained craft check to reproduce; great idea! Let's incorporate it into a setting. Make multiple craft checks required for continued growth; hmm, we could make some interestingly bizarre alternate biologies.

[unseenmage]

sex as an untrained craft check to reproduce; great idea! Let's incorporate it into a setting. Make multiple craft checks required for continued growth; hmm, we could make some interestingly bizarre alternate biologies.
Warforged. They'll be crafting to reproduce ergo they'll be Warforged. Or at least very Warforged-like.

[Warmjenkins]

sex as an untrained craft check to reproduce; great idea! Let's incorporate it into a setting. Make multiple craft checks required for continued growth; hmm, we could make some interestingly bizarre alternate biologies.

To be fair I don't have a copy of the book of erotic fantasy so it might be covered. Although I'm not exactly looking forward to shopping for the "raw materials" needed to make those craft checks.

Good point on the growth also needig craft checks, does that mean dwarfs are just giants who didnt make high enough checks to keep getting bigger?

[Melcar]

I see what you did there. :smallcool:




Thing is, I'd already quoted the relevant text earlier, not to mention it's right there in the Craft skill entry, if you would go read it:



Additionally, the Profession skill adds this little nugget of wisdom, to help clarify which is which:



On top of all that, using the Fabricate spell can sometimes bypass the need to actually roll the Craft check, if the item is simple:




So there ya have it, fully cited. The Craft skill rules apply to the creating or making of an item, or more specifically if you actually read the rules that lay out how to do so, an item with a specific price listed in the rules.

I think its fairly safe to say that we have established now that the craft skill is involved when creating items, and that it is readily abuseable. And that very few, if any, would allow the printing of money that this skill provides options for in a strictly RAW interpretation.

Back to the problem at hand; I haven't yet found the perfect solution to my problem. We have run through some options here that however rule legal probably wont work. Besides fabricate there's casting wall of salt and using that salt as a currency for taking care of the cost of materials for magic item creation. This actually seems fairly strait forward and legal and only poses an ingame problem in as much as the salt at some point will loose its value when being flooded into the marked... Again this is based on the size of the community and the DM, but I assume it happens fairly quickly, considering I make about 100.000 lbs per casting.

We also touched upon selling spellcasting services. However, it was suggested that that be determined by profession skill income modifier. Even if I had a +1000 bonus item to my profession skill it would never make a dent in the money I need... and barely make up for my upkeep...

So what do you guys suggest. Going back to being a full time adventure is not an option at this point. Its not where the character is in his life and he has quests that are of a more scholarly nature... Consider yourself the DM, what would you guys suggest I do? What options would you guys allow in your game if you had a high level character who wanted to create epic items and expand his school? The game is really cool, I don't want to break it, but farming adds for gold seems like such an enormous waste of time for such a powerful character (albeit we run a low optimization game)... I just want my +12 headband of intellect and, a lecturing hall and a few fancy workshops and laboratories... what are my options, if they have to fly in your game???

I am fully committed to expanding my school and producing said epic items, so in your game, how would I be able to procure lets say 3.000.000 gp for item creation and stronghold building?

Thank you in advance!

[Warmjenkins]

Sorry to assist in the derailment of the thread. But on topic and as a dm, the suggestion I saw that seems easiest and I wouldn't bat an eye at is the ignore material components epic feat.

It is 100% first party and doesn't require obscure source books or dragon magazine or anything setting specific to the best of my knowledge. And using it to ignore costly material components on spells is 100% what it was designed to do. By level 32 I wouldn't consider anything it could do game breaking, especially compared to epic spellcasting and the myriad of other ways you could easily break the game.

It also has the benefit of allowing you to literally just fabricate up whatever crafting materials you need out of thin air without needing to go out and buy them, potentially you could convince your dm to just let you ignore all or part of any crafting cost by saying you simply create the materials you need to craft it and cut out the middle man of potentially destabilizing a country's economy.

(This also has the benefit of explaining why other wizards don't produce infinite money. Once they are strong enough they simply have no need to involve themselves with outside resource and wealth procurement and just go about their research/retirement by producing everything they could ever want themselves.)

[Crichton]

I am fully committed to expanding my school and producing said epic items, so in your game, how would I be able to procure lets say 3.000.000 gp for item creation and stronghold building?

Thank you in advance!

As others have said, the epic feat Ignore Material Components would totally allow you to simply create whatever wealth you wanted, if you can get it.


Aside from that, I'm pretty sure I disagree with whoever said that selling your spellcasting services would fall under the Profession check profit rules.
Sure, I can see how they might be able to make a case for it, but there's no way to reconcile the profit that Profession checks provides with the amount of money that Spellcasting Services are explicitly listed to cost. There are no material costs that aren't added to the price, so there's no 'overhead' so to speak. The only thing it costs you is the use of a spell slot. It's pure profit in exchange for spellcasting. If someone wants to limit you to Profession check amounts of profit, they're gonna have to make a case for why those rules apply, or they're gonna have to change the Spellcasting Services rules.

[Crake]

Aside from that, I'm pretty sure I disagree with whoever said that selling your spellcasting services would fall under the Profession check profit rules.
Sure, I can see how they might be able to make a case for it, but there's no way to reconcile the profit that Profession checks provides with the amount of money that Spellcasting Services are explicitly listed to cost. There are no material costs that aren't added to the price, so there's no 'overhead' so to speak. The only thing it costs you is the use of a spell slot. It's pure profit in exchange for spellcasting. If someone wants to limit you to Profession check amounts of profit, they're gonna have to make a case for why those rules apply, or they're gonna have to change the Spellcasting Services rules.

That was me, and the case for why it'd be a profession check was that there's a limited demand for spellcasters, and you're not the only one who can do it, and finding clients for your spell services is also another hurdle to overcome. All of that is what the profession check represents, and it's the same reason why a magic shop doesn't make significantly more money than say, a jewelry shop, because sure, when you make a sale, it's huge money, but the sales are so few and far between, that it averages out over time (the rules for running a magic item shop are located in the DMG2, and is basically what i'd be basing that ruling off).

[Crichton]

That was me, and the case for why it'd be a profession check was that there's a limited demand for spellcasters, and you're not the only one who can do it, and finding clients for your spell services is also another hurdle to overcome. All of that is what the profession check represents, and it's the same reason why a magic shop doesn't make significantly more money than say, a jewelry shop, because sure, when you make a sale, it's huge money, but the sales are so few and far between, that it averages out over time (the rules for running a magic item shop are located in the DMG2, and is basically what i'd be basing that ruling off).

Every one of those points make sense from a logical, common-sense standpoint, but as a partial counter, they also fail to take into account the city's size/population, the contact network you've built up as a long term adventurer, etc. Additionally none of that addresses the fact that even selling one low level spell slot per week would vastly outstrip the profit that the Profession check would allow, so there's no way they're comparable. On top of that, there's nothing in the Profession rules, which are pretty scant, to be honest, to indicate that's how something as specialized as selling spellcasting services would work or that Profession skill check rules take authority in that area.


Your mention of the business rules in DM2 is interesting, though. Well, for one, at least it's pointing to actual rules. And they do have a brief entry on running a magic shop, so at least there's rules for that. Though again, after going through the numbers of them, they don't seem to align in any way with even the modest profit a spellcaster would make from selling even one 3rd or 4th level spell slot per week. Add to that the fact that a magic shop, stocking and selling expensive magic items, isn't really comparable to a spellcaster selling spellcasting services, which has literally zero overhead aside from the spell slots themselves. Or to put it in DMG2 business rules-terms, it requires no capital, no resources, and has no risk.

And of course, we also come back to the reality that the DMG2 business rules don't ever mention selling spellcasting services, or make any claim to apply to that area of the game, so they too aren't binding rules that govern the profit from the sale of spellcasting services (Nor would I recommend them to anyone looking to make a profit in D&D. They're more or less a waste of time for adventuring characters, the way they're written and the paltry amounts you can earn through using them).

The only rules that do claim to apply in that area are the listed prices for spellcasting services, which, as you point out, aren't really complete in their treatment of the actual factors involved in trying to provide that service full-time


The real trouble is, the game isn't meant for you to have ways to make continuous high-profit gains outside of adventuring/loot. Given the strict formulas they implemented surrounding WBL and treasure distribution per encounter, it's no wonder the designers didn't hand us on a silver platter a set of rules for vastly surpassing the normal amount of wealth a character is expected to have. So when we suddenly need millions of gp for something and we can't go adventuring for it, we're stuck with the options of extrapolating from vastly incomplete rules, settling for paltry profits that aren't worth our time, or finding ways (like using magic and feats to ignore costs and literally create valuable things from nothing) to exploit other parts of the system.

[Crake]

Every one of those points make sense from a logical, common-sense standpoint, but as a partial counter, they also fail to take into account the city's size/population, the contact network you've built up as a long term adventurer, etc. Additionally none of that addresses the fact that even selling one low level spell slot per week would vastly outstrip the profit that the Profession check would allow, so there's no way they're comparable. On top of that, there's nothing in the Profession rules, which are pretty scant, to be honest, to indicate that's how something as specialized as selling spellcasting services would work or that Profession skill check rules take authority in that area.

That's because you're trying to align it 1:1. You may only actually cast one or two spells a month, but the profession check covers you spending time trying to find clients, possibly having them pay in installments, or maybe you offered them a discount, because, well, they can get the same service from this other guy who's half your CL, but the spell itself isn't exactly CL dependant, so you dropped your price. Also note that the city's size/population is a factor, but it's not an enormous factor, because while the population, and hence demand goes up with a larger city, the supply would likewise go up, with more mages in the city who can compete with you, so business will likely remain about the same. Of course, you can argue that with your DM, and he may give you a circumstance bonus, since that's literally what they're for.


Your mention of the business rules in DM2 is interesting, though. Well, for one, at least it's pointing to actual rules. And they do have a brief entry on running a magic shop, so at least there's rules for that. Though again, after going through the numbers of them, they don't seem to align in any way with even the modest profit a spellcaster would make from selling even one 3rd or 4th level spell slot per week. Add to that the fact that a magic shop, stocking and selling expensive magic items, isn't really comparable to a spellcaster selling spellcasting services, which has literally zero overhead aside from the spell slots themselves. Or to put it in DMG2 business rules-terms, it requires no capital, no resources, and has no risk.

As I mentioned above, I was more referring to the fact that while, individual sales would be a spike in revenue, the overall earnings are modest because the sales happen so rarely. As it is with magic items, so it would likely also be with spellcasting services. The times you do make a sale, you'd get a huge spike, but it would average out to the value of a profession check, especially when you're trying to charge 32x the price for something like an identify (probably one of the most common spells you'd be getting requests for in a major city i'd imagine), just because your CL is 32.


And of course, we also come back to the reality that the DMG2 business rules don't ever mention selling spellcasting services, or make any claim to apply to that area of the game, so they too aren't binding rules that govern the profit from the sale of spellcasting services (Nor would I recommend them to anyone looking to make a profit in D&D. They're more or less a waste of time for adventuring characters, the way they're written and the paltry amounts you can earn through using them).

The only rules that do claim to apply in that area are the listed prices for spellcasting services, which, as you point out, aren't really complete in their treatment of the actual factors involved in trying to provide that service full-time

Correct, hence we look at rules that are adjacent to the ones we're trying to implement (the magic item shop rules), to try and make an analogous set of rules.


The real trouble is, the game isn't meant for you to have ways to make continuous high-profit gains outside of adventuring/loot. Given the strict formulas they implemented surrounding WBL and treasure distribution per encounter, it's no wonder the designers didn't hand us on a silver platter a set of rules for vastly surpassing the normal amount of wealth a character is expected to have. So when we suddenly need millions of gp for something and we can't go adventuring for it, we're stuck with the options of extrapolating from vastly incomplete rules, settling for paltry profits that aren't worth our time, or finding ways (like using magic and feats to ignore costs and literally create valuable things from nothing) to exploit other parts of the system.

Well, it's also because if something was so lucrative that you could earn exorbitant amounts of money from it without the risk of adventuring, then the market would flood, and it's value would depreciate to the point that it's not so lucrative. Economies just doesn't scale like that. You need to take into account that even adventuring at that level would get you items that are so highly priced that, unless the person you're bartering with wants what you have, the items are practically worthless, simply because nobody can afford to buy such items just on the hope that they'll be able to sell it later for a profit. So while you may have something that's market value is technically millions of gold, and you may have an incredible portfolio of other such items, you're likely very rarely ever actually going to be trading it for actual currency.

[Crichton]

to try and make an analogous set of rules.
At least you've finally admitted you're using all these references to non-applicable (as is) rules sections as inspiration to homebrew your own rules to cover it.




Well, it's also because if something was so lucrative that you could earn exorbitant amounts of money from it without the risk of adventuring, then the market would flood, and it's value would depreciate to the point that it's not so lucrative. Economies just doesn't scale like that. You need to take into account that even adventuring at that level would get you items that are so highly priced that, unless the person you're bartering with wants what you have, the items are practically worthless, simply because nobody can afford to buy such items just on the hope that they'll be able to sell it later for a profit. So while you may have something that's market value is technically millions of gold, and you may have an incredible portfolio of other such items, you're likely very rarely ever actually going to be trading it for actual currency.

If the game was called Global Economic Simulator, you might actually have a point. But it's Dungeons & Dragons, a game about adventuring parties roaming around killing monsters defeating bad guys and such. I'm pretty sure the designers didn't care about inflation and depreciation and market factors. They just didn't want to provide players with a handy dandy rules-legal way to vastly outpace their adventuring companions or the encounter difficulty/reward design formulas with large sums of money. Thus, they didn't write rules for doing so. That's all.

[unseenmage]

How many Wish spells can the character cast each day?
Gold is a nonmagic material.

Just wish up craptons of gold. Better yet, you're pretty far into epic? Can your Simulacrums cast Wish?

If so chaining Sims who all cash in created gold just makes endless wealth.

Dont like gold? Fine. Make food, building supplies, goods, clothing, jewelry.

Seriously. Making stuff is so far beneath par for an epic spellcaster its laughable.

The issue isnt that you might make too much money. The issue really is that you're making money instead of solving whatever problem money was supposed to solve.

[Crake]

At least you've finally admitted you're using all these references to non-applicable (as is) rules sections as inspiration to homebrew your own rules to cover it.

You're acting like I've been trying to hide that fact? The rules don't cover literally every use case scenario, they (try to) give you enough rules to be able to extrapolate to any conceivable scenario. Hence finding rules that are "close enough", and working off those. If you spend your time trying to find the exact rule to cover your scenario, like your aformentioned "please point to where in the rules it says gold ore is the raw material for gold", you'll be forever disappointed, because those things are not covered, and you have to make them up yourself.

[Malphegor]

For money, how about a sustainable fully trained workforce? assuming you’re nigh immortal and have access to wu jen spells at this point, pop out a permanencied body outside body every now and then and send it to have a job in the private sector. All wages go to you. All you need to do is make it so they have no physical needs, and bam, intelligent workers out in the world serving you.

Now, eventually you’re going to want to take over society with your duplicates and murder everyone who stands in you and yourselves’ way, because the real money is in total universal conquest because if you own all the money you own all the money, but take it slow.

[Crake]

Now, eventually you’re going to want to take over society with your duplicates and murder everyone who stands in you and yourselves’ way, because the real money is in total universal conquest because if you own all the money you own all the money, but take it slow.

What would be the point of that though? Why would a wizard want to take over society at all? What would they gain from that? They can conjure up literally anything they want at a whim, what purpose would controlling a society serve them?

[Firkraag]

I'd invest into economy, public projects, planar trade, stuff like that...

I mean, there's a lot of tricks to make a quick buck, but you'd end up with nothing after you've exhausted the local wealth with luxury services. But if you'll start creating wealth through funding public schools, opening up new planar/teleport trade routes, equipping NPCs with ability and skill-boosting magic, you'll create more jobs, more businesses, more artisans, more scholars, more culture, more wizards, more epic level magic research assistants...

Think big! Think huge!! Think colossal!!!

[SLOTHRPG95]

Step 1: Trap Demogorgon in an Epic, Wish-proof uber-version of a reinforced, anchored Magic Circle diagram.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit

Or if you don't mind evil, become a lich*, travel to a plane where time passes arbitrarily faster than on the prime material plane, and even if you're making 1 sp/day as an unskilled laborer, you can make 3Mgp before a prime material year has gone by. If no such plane exists, try high-stakes speculative finance in Sigil. There's probably enough cash floating around there to actually make it possible.
*The "become a lich" part you can substitute with your favorite strategy for not dying while you spend tens or hundreds of thousands of years earning your cash.

[Crichton]

So, for the OP, since he's a level 32 wizard, I'm going to make my official suggestion this:


Use the epic spell rules, develop an epic spell from the Conjure seed with permanent duration. Use it to conjure 20 cubic feet of platinum per casting. Platinum is worth 500gp per pound in D&D, and platinum weighs just over 1338 pounds per cubic foot. So for each casting, you're creating 20x1338x500=13,380,000gp worth of platinum. Problem solved. Rules legal. Still ridiculous. But you'll have your millions of gp pretty quickly, and do so in a wonderfully flashy, epic wizardly sort of way. You can even really ham it up. Make the casting of your spell require all kinds of over the top chants or flashes of light or anything you can think of. You're an epic wizard after all. It wouldn't do to just snap your fingers and 'Q' it into existence. :D


Note that you can also use your new epic spell to create 20 cubic feet of anything, so there may be a lot of things you no longer need to purchase with your money. Just make them.

[Tvtyrant]

So, for the OP, since he's a level 32 wizard, I'm going to make my official suggestion this:


Use the epic spell rules, develop an epic spell from the Conjure seed with permanent duration. Use it to conjure 20 cubic feet of platinum per casting. Platinum is worth 500gp per pound in D&D, and platinum weighs just over 1338 pounds per cubic foot. So for each casting, you're creating 20x1338x500=13,380,000gp worth of platinum. Problem solved. Rules legal. Still ridiculous. But you'll have your millions of gp pretty quickly, and do so in a wonderfully flashy, epic wizardly sort of way. You can even really ham it up. Make the casting of your spell require all kinds of over the top chants or flashes of light or anything you can think of. You're an epic wizard after all. It wouldn't do to just snap your fingers and 'Q' it into existence. :D


Note that you can also use your new epic spell to create 20 cubic feet of anything, so there may be a lot of things you no longer need to purchase with your money. Just make them.

"This is just a note that says I can do what I want."

The epic spell rules sneer back him.

[Crichton]

"This is just a note that says I can do what I want."

The epic spell rules sneer back him.

Yeah, that's about right. The epic spell rules really are, more or less, Mr. Swanson's note, but with magical authority.


And honestly, Fabricate with the epic feat Ignore Material Components (as has been mentioned here) is actually a far easier/cheaper/less intensive way to make far more per casting(214million gp per casting at CL32). But it's not quite as... uh... epic?

[Hua]

If you want that kind of money, you have to do it by trading other people's time for money, same as anyone else.
You buy or create businesses. You can't really do it with your own time, or you will be right back there soon enough. Make investments in many businesses and take a cut of the profits.

If you were non-epic level type looking for money, in a large city like Silvermoon you become the go-to person for identify of magic items. Analyze dweomer is free after the one time investment in a focus. No 100 gp pearl and you can do it in a round per magic item. Undercut anyone doing it with Identify spell.

[Crichton]

If you want that kind of money, you have to do it by trading other people's time for money, same as anyone else.
You buy or create businesses. You can't really do it with your own time, or you will be right back there soon enough. Make investments in many businesses and take a cut of the profits.

If you were non-epic level type looking for money, in a large city like Silvermoon you become the go-to person for identify of magic items. Analyze dweomer is free after the one time investment in a focus. No 100 gp pearl and you can do it in a round per magic item. Undercut anyone doing it with Identify spell.

"Have to"?? I think this thread has demonstrated pretty clearly that the rules allow for multiple ways to utterly break, destroy even, any 'have to' or 'same as anyone else'



Should? Yeah, probably. But this is Dungeons & Dragons, not Dollars & Dividends. It threw 'have to' out the window on like, page 2.

[Crake]

Analyze dweomer is free after the one time investment in a focus. No 100 gp pearl and you can do it in a round per magic item. Undercut anyone doing it with Identify spell.

As an aside, an artificer's monocle costs the same as the analyze dweomer focus, and allows you to identify items with the detect magic spell, which you can get on another incredibly cheap item. There's going to be LOTS of people undercutting you on identify.

[Crichton]

As an aside, an artificer's monocle costs the same as the analyze dweomer focus, and allows you to identify items with the detect magic spell, which you can get on another incredibly cheap item. There's going to be LOTS of people undercutting you on identify.

This is a great point. Always good to point out the artificer's monocle, it's a must-have item for anyone who identifies stuff.


Additional sources of gp-free Identify are any clerics with either the Magic or Oracle domains, or any psions with the psionic version of Identify

[Crake]

Additional sources of gp-free Identify are any clerics with either the Magic or Oracle domains, or any psions with the psionic version of Identify

Or cloistered clerics.

[Crichton]

Or cloistered clerics.

Ooh yeah. I forgot about that one!

[Melcar]

Thanks you to everyone who has participated in the very informative and interesting post. I personally learned a lot, and in the end found what I was looking for. For some it might have been known all along, and seem like super simple information, but since I don't play very often anymore, some of the intricacies mentioned was news to me.

Despite a long list of cool suggestions, I have decided to pursue getting the Ignore Material Component feat at next (33) level. It fits the character (he already has Eschew Material) and I can basically wing the monetary expenses by fabrication what ever materials I need for the production of magic items and spell research material. And somehow it feel less broken than printing gold...

I don't know when we will be playing again, but I will be bringing this feat up to my DM. He usually hand-waves anything which is strictly legal, so it should be no problem. My use of the feat in conjunction with fabricate might need a bit of convincing, but since it is legal by raw, he should allow it. Especially when used in the manner intended. I'm still bound by exp, and I'm not sure milking creatures for distilled joy is my character's style... so I'll probably not be doing that, but it means effectively that I can't just print magic items left and right, which is probably a good thing. Another nice thing about this solution is the building process of extending my tower with lecturing hall, library, vault and laboratories will now also be a lot easier... Again, playing only once or twice a year, its going to be nice to not have gold cost be in the way of fun.


Again, thanks to all who helped make this a lively and very interesting topic!

[unseenmage]

... I'm still bound by exp...
With creative use of the Transference (Player's Handbook II) spell you're not limited by xp either, fyi.

[Crichton]

[snip]

Sounds like a great plan. Have a ton of fun with it! And don't forget that if you ever need money, Fabricate with Ignore Material Components can make 6.69 million GP worth of platinum PER caster level :smallcool: Though you might want to have the spell divide the material into 13,380 1.29 inch cubes, which are one pound each (500gp worth per cube) Or maybe 1,338 ten pound ingots, worth 5000gp each? Make into shapes/sizes that are both in convenient weights for handling and convenient gp-amounts per piece, in other words.

[Tedective]

Thought Bottles. Make Thought Bottles with Wish, use them, wish for more Thought Bottles, etc. etc. etc....

Number your Thought Bottles according to which are used first and use Wish to Wish for more and more Thought Bottles.

When you have a sufficient number of Thought Bottles, you have unlimited Wishes to wish for any item worth 25,000 or less gold. (Yes, you can wish for the materials to create more thought bottles.)

Congratulations, you're now in Genie economics, where anything worth less than 25,000 gold isn't worth trading. All it cost you was 500 exp and a year's worth of life (in a timeless demiplane under Time Stop).

Specific spells required to get this done instantly: Wish, Genesis, Time Stop (On a timeless plane), Planeshift, Steal Life

Just make sure you have some Steal Life's ready for the next full moon because it also likely costs months to years of your lifespan to get this done exceptionally well.

The best incomes aren't "sustainable". They are "game breaking".

Announce how your near-infinite economic loop works, your intentions with this sort of power, the ramifications of your actions, whether or not you're telling your party where you've been for the last 12 seconds, and how often you intend on doing this.

I would use the "Crunch Time" to get +5 all stats and custom crafted magic items. Embrace the Dark Chaos and Shun the Dark Chaos means you have every crafting feat, so make some spectacular custom artifacts for your party and don't tell them how you did it or why you're a decade older. Wish + Permanent Time Stop + Infinite Thought Bottles = Unlimited crafting time and money.

But before you get annihilated by an army of "Stop Asking Forums for Help" demons, due make sure...

Please cast responsibly.

[Melcar]

Thought Bottles. Make Thought Bottles with Wish, use them, wish for more Thought Bottles, etc. etc. etc....

Number your Thought Bottles according to which are used first and use Wish to Wish for more and more Thought Bottles.

When you have a sufficient number of Thought Bottles, you have unlimited Wishes to wish for any item worth 25,000 or less gold. (Yes, you can wish for the materials to create more thought bottles.)

Congratulations, you're now in Genie economics, where anything worth less than 25,000 gold isn't worth trading. All it cost you was 500 exp and a year's worth of life (in a timeless demiplane under Time Stop).

Specific spells required to get this done instantly: Wish, Genesis, Time Stop (On a timeless plane), Planeshift, Steal Life

Just make sure you have some Steal Life's ready for the next full moon because it also likely costs months to years of your lifespan to get this done exceptionally well.

The best incomes aren't "sustainable". They are "game breaking".

Announce how your near-infinite economic loop works, your intentions with this sort of power, the ramifications of your actions, whether or not you're telling your party where you've been for the last 12 seconds, and how often you intend on doing this.

I would use the "Crunch Time" to get +5 all stats and custom crafted magic items. Embrace the Dark Chaos and Shun the Dark Chaos means you have every crafting feat, so make some spectacular custom artifacts for your party and don't tell them how you did it or why you're a decade older. Wish + Permanent Time Stop + Infinite Thought Bottles = Unlimited crafting time and money.

But before you get annihilated by an army of "Stop Asking Forums for Help" demons, due make sure...

Please cast responsibly.

Holy moly that's some effective shenanigans right there...

[Crake]

The best incomes aren't "sustainable". They are "game breaking".

I suspect that the OP knows this, hence why he asked for a sustainable income, not a game breaking income. 'Cause, y'know, he doesn't want to break the game.

[Segev]

If you want "sustainable" without "game-breaking," then the first question to answer is: what does that look like? What is the maximum income/month that would not be game-breaking? What is the minimum you need to cover your expenses?

Next, an enterprise such as you've described should be easily self-sustaining. If you don't want to make a game out of running its finances, look at the range of minimum to maximum income/month established above, discuss some price point between the two with your DM, and declare that your enterprise makes that much per month, sustaining itself plus some amount of profit. "It's just self-sufficient" is also fine.

If you do want to make a game out of it, the first place you should look isn't your own ability to carry the place's finances, but rather to what it can do to earn money. You have apprentices! Sell their labor. Sell their spell slots. Have people come to your place and purchase castings of various spells. Let your apprentices go out with adventuring parties to serve as buff-bots for agreed-upon sums (or shares of loot), and make the adventurers pay "resurrection insurance" for your apprentice (who you'll bring back via a local cleric if he dies).

Your minions should be making money, not costing it.

[tyckspoon]

If you want "sustainable" without "game-breaking," then the first question to answer is: what does that look like? What is the maximum income/month that would not be game-breaking? What is the minimum you need to cover your expenses?

Next, an enterprise such as you've described should be easily self-sustaining. If you don't want to make a game out of running its finances, look at the range of minimum to maximum income/month established above, discuss some price point between the two with your DM, and declare that your enterprise makes that much per month, sustaining itself plus some amount of profit. "It's just self-sufficient" is also fine.

If you do want to make a game out of it, the first place you should look isn't your own ability to carry the place's finances, but rather to what it can do to earn money. You have apprentices! Sell their labor. Sell their spell slots. Have people come to your place and purchase castings of various spells. Let your apprentices go out with adventuring parties to serve as buff-bots for agreed-upon sums (or shares of loot), and make the adventurers pay "resurrection insurance" for your apprentice (who you'll bring back via a local cleric if he dies).

Your minions should be making money, not costing it.

There's actually two different questions the OP was approaching here - one is 'How can I support my various followers/buildings/operations.' I think "leverage them into a business resource" covers that one pretty neatly through a variety of means. The other one is "how can I come up with the literally millions of GP worth of valuables/gold/treasure I need to create Epic magic", which is where most of the thread has been because it's a much more interesting question.

[Segev]

There's actually two different questions the OP was approaching here - one is 'How can I support my various followers/buildings/operations.' I think "leverage them into a business resource" covers that one pretty neatly through a variety of means. The other one is "how can I come up with the literally millions of GP worth of valuables/gold/treasure I need to create Epic magic", which is where most of the thread has been because it's a much more interesting question.

The trouble is, is that his goal? If it is, great: stop worrying about breaking the game, because you're making bloody epic magic and it will break the game.

If it isn't, we need to rein in so that we are discussing solutions to his problem, not solutions to a problem we think is more interesting to solve but which he's not having.

[Melcar]

I suspect that the OP knows this, hence why he asked for a sustainable income, not a game breaking income. 'Cause, y'know, he doesn't want to break the game.

Indeed... My goal is not to break the game. I am fully aware that what I want (millions of gold) and not breaking the game might not be mutual inclusive...



If you want "sustainable" without "game-breaking," then the first question to answer is: what does that look like? What is the maximum income/month that would not be game-breaking? What is the minimum you need to cover your expenses?

Next, an enterprise such as you've described should be easily self-sustaining. If you don't want to make a game out of running its finances, look at the range of minimum to maximum income/month established above, discuss some price point between the two with your DM, and declare that your enterprise makes that much per month, sustaining itself plus some amount of profit. "It's just self-sufficient" is also fine.

If you do want to make a game out of it, the first place you should look isn't your own ability to carry the place's finances, but rather to what it can do to earn money. You have apprentices! Sell their labor. Sell their spell slots. Have people come to your place and purchase castings of various spells. Let your apprentices go out with adventuring parties to serve as buff-bots for agreed-upon sums (or shares of loot), and make the adventurers pay "resurrection insurance" for your apprentice (who you'll bring back via a local cleric if he dies).

Your minions should be making money, not costing it.

I think, notwithstanding the previous mentions solution I chose, that you bring up some great ideas for gaming overall. Hadn't thought of renting my students out! Really like that! Other have mentioned something similar I think.



There's actually two different questions the OP was approaching here - one is 'How can I support my various followers/buildings/operations.' I think "leverage them into a business resource" covers that one pretty neatly through a variety of means. The other one is "how can I come up with the literally millions of GP worth of valuables/gold/treasure I need to create Epic magic", which is where most of the thread has been because it's a much more interesting question.

That was also the challenge I struggled the most with, why it also was great that it was the most focused on in the thread.



The trouble is, is that his goal? If it is, great: stop worrying about breaking the game, because you're making bloody epic magic and it will break the game.

If it isn't, we need to rein in so that we are discussing solutions to his problem, not solutions to a problem we think is more interesting to solve but which he's not having.

The trouble I have is that we run a low op game. Meaning I that we play it like a lower level game with high numbers. Nothing like interacting with cosmic entities or something like that... I am mostly interested in getting a Headband of Intellect +12, but other items would be nice too... The Epic Magic spell-system we have not yet entered, and I feel like it would render the game almost unplayable - simply because its so easily abusable. You can become virtually impervious to any form of attack/dam/conditions with a spell that takes 0 days to research, cost 0 gp to develop and demands a Spellcraft DC 0 to cast. Besides the gods, I now only have to contend with other epic magic users... And frankly only a handful at best comes to mind... I'm not saying I will never use epic magic, but so far no.

[Segev]

Indeed... My goal is not to break the game. I am fully aware that what I want (millions of gold) and not breaking the game might not be mutual inclusive...




I think, notwithstanding the previous mentions solution I chose, that you bring up some great ideas for gaming overall. Hadn't thought of renting my students out! Really like that! Other have mentioned something similar I think.Thanks!

Most guilds and master craftsmen and masters of art sold their apprentices' labor. Or had them doing scut work that had to be done but was a waste of the master's time to do if he could possibly be doing more valuabe labor. They were businesses; apprentices were like a cross between entry-level employees and interns. The "apprentice fee" sometimes paid was more a tuition to cover the time it took to get the apprentice to be profitable.

So, yes, your enterprise should be self-sufficient on the labor of your underlings. They get support and learning out of it; you get an increased standard of living.



The trouble I have is that we run a low op game. Meaning I that we play it like a lower level game with high numbers. Nothing like interacting with cosmic entities or something like that... I am mostly interested in getting a Headband of Intellect +12, but other items would be nice too... The Epic Magic spell-system we have not yet entered, and I feel like it would render the game almost unplayable - simply because its so easily abusable. You can become virtually impervious to any form of attack/dam/conditions with a spell that takes 0 days to research, cost 0 gp to develop and demands a Spellcraft DC 0 to cast. Besides the gods, I now only have to contend with other epic magic users... And frankly only a handful at best comes to mind... I'm not saying I will never use epic magic, but so far no.
Okay, then you're going to either need to look to cheesy ways to transform spell slots into gold, or you're going to need to do epic adventuring. Epic items are priced on the assumption that epic adventuring is going on, with suitable rewards. But you do have the means to shatter the economy if you want to. Browse the broken methods here, and then discuss with your DM what he really would like to see as a cap. You can get as much gp as you want/need, so the real question is: how fast is too fast for your game? Get your epic headband of int! You can afford it! Just...decide how much of the potentially-arbitrary gp you actually make in-game.