Blessing of the Forge - What is possible

[Pyrophilios]

Forge Clerics have a pretty neat Channel Divinity option: In one hour they can create an up to 100gp worth object as long as they have acess to metal worth the same amount. The creation can have non-metal parts.

The first thing that comes to mind is turning looted metal into easily portable and vendable gold coins - and vice versa turning gold coins into large amounts of steel
Technically, you could also create diamonds (set within a ring) from gold coins to be used in spells that need them. This is also useful in combination with the Fabricate spell that the cleric also gets at 7th level - you can convert money into objects that contain the material you need for fabricate - and then reform that material into whatever you need without the 100gp limit

Plate armor is too expensive at 1500 gp - but you could forge individual pieces of the armor one at a time (boots, gauntlets, helmet, visor, individual plates, padding) - and of course all from recycling existing amounts of metal.

Best of all: The immutable value of things means, that whatever you create will have that fixed value and can be reused for the same value for a different creation (Money to weapon to money again)

What else can you think of to do with this ability?

[Quietus]

Plate armor is too expensive at 1500 gp - but you could forge individual pieces of the armor one at a time (boots, gauntlets, helmet, visor, individual plates, padding) - and of course all from recycling existing amounts of metal.

Unfortunately, you can't actually do this. The pieces of full plate font have a listed cost, so you can't make them individually. A DM might allow it, but it's not RAW.

also remember that as you make things, if they have non - metal parts, you can't turn them back into raw gold for materials. I do fondly remember taking the four locks off of a chest and consuming them to build my party a boat once, though.

[Wraith]

While you wouldn't be able to make pieces of a suit of platemail armour, you could probably make pieces of pieces. Maybe not a full helmet in a single ritual, but a skull-cap in one, a visor in another, a set of rivets in a third.... Basically, split a 1800gp suit of armour into 100gp pieces and assemble them with your Mending cantrip later. It's 18 hours of work at the absolute minimum, but that might be more palatable to your GM than an entire breastplate, etc.

I think the trick is in the wording that you can only create something of up to 100gp in value. Let's consider; art. The Mona Lisa is a sheet of canvas with some paint on it; it's worth millions of dollars, but it's actual physical value is about 20 bucks in supplies and a bit of time spent creating it. Blessing of the Forge lets you create something worth 100gp in value, so what we could try to do is make something very valuable that is constructed from materials of lesser cost.

So using Blessing of the Forge, let's say you make a sculpture out of copper or bronze - something with a rich colour and a nice shiny appearance that isn't particular rare or expensive. Then you hit it with Mending a couple of times - it's a cantrip to Forge Clerics, so what's another 60 seconds' work for the sake of making it perfect, maybe include a little bit of engraving or scrimshawing to make it extra pretty? It's not as though Mending wears off after 24 hours, like Prestitigitation or something; we're literally carving the effect into metal. Make a skill check with your smithing tools if you like, you've almost certainly got a set handy.

We now have 100gp worth of art that cost us significantly less in materials - according to the player's handbook, a steel/iron hunting trap costs 5gp and weighs 25lb, so if we're being generous we could say that we could make something out of iron or copper for 1gp per 1lb of item. Now we go to the local bazaar and have the party Bard haggle a bit to sell our 1gp copper statuette for anything more than 1gp - the full 100gp would be nice, but who cares if we only get 20? That's a 1900% increase in our investment, for the sake of 1 hours' work.

It could be bespoke art, too. We can turn metal into anything we like, so long as it's simple - no moving parts, or we don't try to claim that it's of Masterwork quality or something - and get commissioned by churches, kings, nobles, etc. I'm using hyperbole of course, but I think the principle is sound; Turn 1gp of metal into an object whose value is in the craftmanship rather than the material value, and profit. 100gp worth of coins is worth 100gp, but 100gp worth of gold sculpted into art can be worth whatever the buyer is willing to pay for it.

It's not even an "infinite money" trick, as you're not creating demand out of nowhere and a canny GM will simple make it so that you run out of buyers and have to move on to the next city to find more. Still, you can potentially turn junk into gold at an extremely efficient rate when you need to.

Alternatively your GM decides that "value" also includes the craftsmanship of the item so you're capped at a 100gp sculpture regardless of what its made from, in which case you're screwed. Certainly worth a try, though! :smalltongue:

[Misterwhisper]

Never underestimate the part that lets you make exact copies of things.

Forgery Cleric.

[Pyrophilios]

Unfortunately, you can't actually do this. The pieces of full plate font have a listed cost, so you can't make them individually. A DM might allow it, but it's not RAW.

also remember that as you make things, if they have non - metal parts, you can't turn them back into raw gold for materials. I do fondly remember taking the four locks off of a chest and consuming them to build my party a boat once, though.

A single key as per the example also has no fixed cost. There is clearly no intent that you can only replicate stuff from the official list (otherwise there would have to be a stipulation to that effect).

@Wraith
Using mending in conjuction with that is an interesting idea, but do you think the rules for this cantrip support this?
The text appears to speak mainly about breaks and tears, but not about assembling distinct pieces (the stuff you create isn't broken but a distinct object - if that makes sense)



@Misterwhisper

Forgeries are good idea - especially since you can now make copies of copies

Here I think, mend can actually work great, as damage to an object can lower its value, allowing it to be copied. Afterwards you repair the original object with mend. You now have a copy of a damaged object - which you then can reform to it's full functionality with fabricate
(Blessing of the Forge has the limitation that it can change metal only into an object worth up to 100gp, but can turn metal into any non-magical substance. Fabricate isn't limited by worth but can't transmute one substance into the other. Combined they nullify each other's limitations)

[Mr Adventurer]

Armour - especially plate armour - has a lot of nonmetal parts which is likely to stymie the piecemeal approach. I also wouldn't expect Mending to work for assembly - there's nothing broken - so you'd need to apply normal armoury processes to assemble it.

Making raw materials for Fabricate does seem to be very clever.

Making copies of things also has potential for shenanigans. I always remember a campaign story I saw online where the party were facing off against the invincible darklord warrior BBEG, put a lot of resources into having their Fighter succeed on one disarming check - triggering the Wizard's readied Time Stop, whereby he replaced the BBEG sword with a replica which was also the trigger for a powerful imprisonment spell. But apart from that, also general trickery and heists.

[Wraith]

@Wraith
Using mending in conjuction with that is an interesting idea, but do you think the rules for this cantrip support this?
The text appears to speak mainly about breaks and tears, but not about assembling distinct pieces (the stuff you create isn't broken but a distinct object - if that makes sense)

Honestly? Only under a very broad definition of "broken item". For example, it certainly wouldn't fuse several pieces of helmet together to make a single, perfect piece of armour, but possibly you could use it to fuse two ends of a single rivet together?

It'd take dozens and dozens of castings to make a single piece of armour, but the idea would be that you wouldn't need a hot forge, or tools, or any specialist equipment - just time and patience, which crucially are free so long as you have adequate down-time.

That being said, I think I could make a case that it should work in the way I'd like it to for this exercise, by stretching the definition of a "broken item" by making otherwise strange things with Blessing of the Forge.
For example, let's say I wanted to make a suit of armour and was using BotF to make pieces of it that I could fix together; can I make such a thing as "half a breastplate" and use Mending to weld the two halves together? Mending explicitly says that I can use it to weld metal together for things like links of chain, so how does the spell define what is broken and what is just weird?

DM fiat is the answer. If they don't want you to take a week off adventuring and make yourself a suit of platemail out of a barn full of rusty old farming tools then there's nothing that will change that, and to be honest if a level 3 Player tried to do it I wouldn't be surprised if the GM stopped them just to stop level 3 players from having 1800gp worth of armour. It's way above the expected income in value and would probably be detrimental to the balance of the game.
I just think that one could make a logical and not at all abusive case that it should work, in theory, and would be a convenience at higher levels rather than spending IC time haggling and chasing around merchants for stuff that a decent smith could make on their own, let alone a magical smith who could *probably* do the shaping and welding without a forge. :smallsmile: