Wealthmancy- How To?

[Destro2119]

So recently I have been trying to figure out some high level wealthmancy tips to help generate an endless, or at least Fiction 500 level of wealth for a organization I am trying to homebrew (perhaps a later post).

The organization in question is an Epic level organization, with the highest level individuals being around 30-37th level (leading council). Average level of the bulk of the organization is 15th-23rd, with far far more people of lower levels available.

How can this organization generate an endless amount of wealth and/or raw materials to create tons of things, ranging from magic items to commlinks and computers to fortresses and starships on a consumer level (enough to sell or distribute to kingdoms, nations, etc.-- so not purely personal possessions-- think super magical megacorp)?

Assume 3.X rules (in this context, 3.X is any rule or spell you want to use from 3.0-3.5 to Pathfinder and Starfinder)

Please no "wall of salt" or "wall of steel into mwk daggers" economy exploitations, if possible.

BONUS: Present "wealth-mancy" options for people level 10 or below (ie "low-level" wealthmancy)

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, being an epic level crafter who focuses on crafting with as many cost reducers as possible can get you down to like 0.2% of the normal cost of whatever it is you're crafting. Then sell it at normal prices. You can multiply your epic wealth by a factor of 50,000 or so. And epic characters have a LOT of wealth to do this with. This is made much easier if you've got a bunch of dedicated wrights at your beck and call. Use one to make magic items and the rest to make nonmagical items. Or just use fabricate for the latter.

Or you could just magic up a demiplane made of platinum and use it directly as wealth, because it is wealth.

Hell, any trade good is directly usable as money, so wall of salt is literally a "wall of money" spell.

And anyone with Infested With Chickens is literally pulling money out of thin air.

Also, I hear you can sell spellcasting services for quite a lot, and epic casters have tons of spell slots they don't use every day. They can make creatures with spell slots they can also sell. They can summon, dominate, and call them, as well. And that's not even getting into daily free wishes and such, either. Which are entirely possible. Each wish nets you 25,000 gp, at least.

[aglondier]

Using the Pathfinder downtime rules, a 1st level character could use a craft or profession skill to earn money (2-4gp/day) until they can afford to build a Storage (60gp with a little work around town), then continue earning from said storage 1.2gp per day until they can afford the next piece, perhaps a Storefront (95gp) bringing their daily earnings up to 1.7gp. Follow that up with a Workstation (150gp), a Lavatory (60gp), and finish it off by hiring a team of Craftspeople (100gp) and you will be earning a neat 2.9gp every day with little or no extra input. If you reinvest that money back into a new business at every opportunity you fairly quickly reach the point a character I have is at where he earns 70+ gp every day and is the defacto mayor of a town simply because he owns most of the businesses in it...at only 3rd level...

[AvatarVecna]

BONUS: Present "wealth-mancy" options for people level 10 or below (ie "low-level" wealthmancy)

You're not a god wizard. You're just some guy with magic who has a lot of options but most of them aren't really great for combat. You live in a big city, you're comfortable not being some big-shot hero, but you wanna be fabulously wealthy without a great deal of effort on your part. So you sell Spellcasting Services. Assuming you have Int 18 (starting 16, 2 bumps from HD), your spell slots per day are 4/5/5/4/4/2. CL 10 means you can make a profit of up to 550 gp per day. If you did that for a year, you could stay in the equivalent of 5 star hotels (5 gp/day), eating like royalty (5 gp/day), drinking endless fine wine (90 gp/day), and still have 164250 profit per year.

Honestly, I'm highlighting the lvl 10 cuz that was the upper limit of this part of the challenge, but at basically any level, selling your spellcasting services is a phenomenal way to turn time into money. A 1st lvl wizard with Int 11 can still make a profit of 25 gp/day (175 gp/week). If you tried to make that kind of money with Craft checks, you'd need to be hitting a DC 52 every time (52 x 52 x 2/3 = 1802 sp of profit per week). If you tried to make that kind of money with Profession checks, you'd need to have something like +350. If you tried to make that kind of money with Perform checks, it'd be literally impossible without assistance. So yeah...if you're wondering how wizards can even afford a starting spellbook that's worth like 20000 gp, this is why: becoming a wizard takes awhile becuase you're paying off them student loans with spellcasting services. :smalltongue:

EDIT: If you're a Wizard 20 with maxed-out Leadership score but nothing else boosting it, you've got a Wizard 18 cohort and (let's say) all wizards for your followers. Assuming all of you have the minimum Int necessary to cast all your spell levels (11-13 for cohorts, 19 for you and cohort), and nobody is doing anything to boost slots per day or caster level, your "spellcasting service business" is making a total of 77965 profit per day. And again: that's with nothing boosting your leadership totals, nothing boosting Int higher than absolute minimum necessary, nothing boosting number of slots per day, and nothing boosting caster level. All four of those are easy to boost.

[Destro2119]

Well, being an epic level crafter who focuses on crafting with as many cost reducers as possible can get you down to like 0.2% of the normal cost of whatever it is you're crafting. Then sell it at normal prices. You can multiply your epic wealth by a factor of 50,000 or so. And epic characters have a LOT of wealth to do this with. This is made much easier if you've got a bunch of dedicated wrights at your beck and call. Use one to make magic items and the rest to make nonmagical items. Or just use fabricate for the latter.

Or you could just magic up a demiplane made of platinum and use it directly as wealth, because it is wealth.

Hell, any trade good is directly usable as money, so wall of salt is literally a "wall of money" spell.

And anyone with Infested With Chickens is literally pulling money out of thin air.

Also, I hear you can sell spellcasting services for quite a lot, and epic casters have tons of spell slots they don't use every day. They can make creatures with spell slots they can also sell. They can summon, dominate, and call them, as well. And that's not even getting into daily free wishes and such, either. Which are entirely possible. Each wish nets you 25,000 gp, at least.

Your "chicken infested/wall of salt" is directly in violation of my request NOT to do things like that (*cough* economy is a guideline, not physics *cough*)


"They can make creatures with spell slots they can also sell."

How? On what scale?

"Or you could just magic up a demiplane made of platinum and use it directly as wealth, because it is wealth."

How?

Also, how could they make the objects I have set forth they want to make ("magic items, computers and commlinks, fortresses and starships" etc.) on an industrial scale? Remember, this is on a national/planetary level.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Your "chicken infested/wall of salt" is directly in violation of my request NOT to do things like that (*cough* economy is a guideline, not physics *cough*)If the system explicitly allows you to literally make money, then telling us in a thread about making money that we're not allowed to make money seems kinda ridiculous, honestly.


"They can make creatures with spell slots they can also sell."

How? On what scale?Spells like simulacrum and ice assassin allow you to flat-out create new spellcasters with spell slots you can sell spells with. They can sell spellcasting services as well as anyone of that level can, which is nice, passive income for you, since the critters you create using a one-and-done spell effect require almost nothing for themselves and can (and will, if you tell them to) give you everything they earn without complaint (implicit or otherwise).

Alternatively, going out and using dominate spells on some spellcasting critters does something very similar, only you have to renew the dominate effect periodically. Of course, if you have a spell trap, you can let it do it for you, as you command your new minion to come back every couple of days to subject itself to your trap several times for overlapping dominate spells in case the spell doesn't take the first time, or someone tries to dispel it (in which case they'll have to dispel several times while your minion is attempting to resist, on your orders).

Or you could use planar binding and its ilk to pull in spellcasters that you can then proceed to debuff the heck out of (while buffing yourself) and forcing them to agree to long-term servitude. In which case you can sell their spellcasting services.

Or you can go kidnap small children evil, evil bad guys to manifest mind seed on. They then become you at a lower level, can sell their services, and then all pool their money together with you to help build your shared empire.

Leadership, thrallherd, Undead Leadership, etc. do the same as above.

You could craft repeating spell traps, restrict access to them, and sell the services from the traps. It's like how De Beers collected all the diamonds they could get their grubby mitts on to create an artificial dearth of them, then started an ad campaign to convince everyone that these little rocks are rare and you need to buy them to celebrate matrimonial unions, else you don't love your significant other. The fact that there are literally thousands of tons of the things under lock and key has no relevance, I'm sure. Anyway, just use healing traps and demand money in return. You can be Phantasy Big Pharma.

There are plenty more, I'm sure, but these are just off the top of my head.

Note that a lot of them could continue the cycle on their own. For instance, a dominated wizard could further dominate others. Or a simulacrum that has simulacrum itself could make more simulacrums of you (which could themselves make more).


"Or you could just magic up a demiplane made of platinum and use it directly as wealth, because it is wealth."

How?Genesis is a 9th level spell that allows you to set the parameters of the demiplane you create out of whole cloth. And if that cloth happens to be made of platinum...


Also, how could they make the objects I have set forth they want to make ("magic items, computers and commlinks, fortresses and starships" etc.) on an industrial scale? Remember, this is on a national/planetary level.Size-altering effects that can turn small models into giant fortresses. It's easy to work on something at 1/10,000 scale, then super-size it. For instance, turning it into a +1 sizing weapon would allow you to turn your scale model of the Taj Mahal into a full-sized one.

There's also this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?246396-Another-Addition-To-The-Tippyverse). It allows you to clone magic items ad infinitum.

[Jack_Simth]

Wealthomancy? How do you feel about wish loops?

1) Purchase a Lawful-Evil Candle of Invocation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#candleofInvocation)
2) Use the Gate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/gate.htm) option to Call an Efreeti (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/genie.htm#efreeti).
3) Order it to use it's 1/day ability to grant 3 wishes to a mortal on you.
4) Use the first two of those wishes to make new LE Candles of Invocation (magic item creation is on the safe list).
5) Use the third to make whatever item you actually want.
6) GoTo 2.

8,400 gp investment, you can multiply that by YES very quickly.

[Max Caysey]

So recently I have been trying to figure out some high level wealthmancy tips to help generate an endless, or at least Fiction 500 level of wealth for a organization I am trying to homebrew (perhaps a later post).

The organization in question is an Epic level organization, with the highest level individuals being around 30-37th level (leading council). Average level of the bulk of the organization is 15th-23rd, with far far more people of lower levels available.

How can this organization generate an endless amount of wealth and/or raw materials to create tons of things, ranging from magic items to commlinks and computers to fortresses and starships on a consumer level (enough to sell or distribute to kingdoms, nations, etc.-- so not purely personal possessions-- think super magical megacorp)?

Assume 3.X rules (in this context, 3.X is any rule or spell you want to use from 3.0-3.5 to Pathfinder and Starfinder)

Please no "wall of salt" or "wall of steel into mwk daggers" economy exploitations, if possible.

BONUS: Present "wealth-mancy" options for people level 10 or below (ie "low-level" wealthmancy)

Wish, use it to cast fabricate, and have it create 1 cubic ft. of platinum/level!

[smasher0404]

Like all great things, wealth can be created via Human Sacrifice and Slavery in a loop that only requires 100 gp startup cost (and some XP):

Slaves can be bought for as cheap as 100 gold pieces (Lords of Madness, pg 101), sacrificing them nets back Sacrifice DC X 5 gp in Dark Craft GP (Book of Vile Darkness, pg 27). Therefore anyone who can make a DC 20 or higher Religion check, can make a profit off of the cheapest level of slaves. Economic pressures will drive price of slaves up, but at the upper level, a 37th level character can reasonably make a DC 40 check with no investment into Intelligence (or special circumstances outlined in the Sacrifice section) so can continue to make a "profit" off of buying out the slave market until prices for slaves doubles (and likely still make a profit until the price starts growing exponentially). The crafters should also have the Extraordinary Artisan feat to make Magic Item crafting cheaper (Eberron Campaign Setting) and thus each slave more "profitable" for crafting.

In order to supplement XP, you can dominate (or coerce) slaves to use as XP batteries. The Transference spell (PHB II Web Enhancement) allows for the transfer of XP for the purposes of item crafting. Use the spell to effectively purchase XP off of the market. Invest in either a self-resetting trap, or a wand of the spell (which should run you 750 gp). Notably, 4th level Kobold Warriors are CR 1 and thus still cost 100 gp, but most slaves with a few NPC levels will serve for this purpose (assuming that XP and Gold are traded at a 1 to 5 ratio, a second-level slave has about 5000 gp worth of XP). Once a slave has run out of XP to steal, you can use them for a sacrifice for more Dark Craft GP (or Dark Craft XP if you still need to supplement the XP cost).

After a while, with Extraordinary Artisan, you'll only need to purchase slaves for crafting XP (although sacrificing them in the end can still generate some extra income), which helps alleviate some of the supply chain issues with buying so many slaves (however, it'll eat into your margins).

With enough starting capital, you can begin to increase your crafting speed. Autoscribes (Web Enhancement: here (http://rpg.nobl.ca/archive.php?x=dnd/cw/20070326a)) can effectively scribe 20 spell levels per day (as opposed to 1000 gp per day). For spells without expensive components, this is a 8x efficiency boost for 9th level spells (4 days to normally craft, ~1/2 day to craft with the autoscribe). For a scroll of Wish (which is the most expensive Core spell to scribe), the efficiency boost is effectively 56x (28 days to normally craft, ~1/2 day to craft with the autoscribe) If you have UMD Bonus granting gear to reliably get them to +40, you can even have a slave operate the Autoscribe for you in exchange for increased XP cost. Once a spell has become unprofitable to produce scrolls for, you can just load in a new spell and switch up production for minimal cost. This becomes effectively infinitely scalable, since you can use more slave labor in order to create items faster.

Alternatively, you can start a Dedicated Wright(Eberron Campaign Setting) factory. Dedicated Wrights can craft for you, so you don't have to spend the downtime crafting. You can then order your Dedicated Wrights to create more Dedicated Wrights. With enough Dedicated Wrights, the crafter only needs an hour to direct the Wright to get the crafting process started for an item, and can spend their day just ordering Wrights to create the item (24 Magic Items started per day). You can sell a more diverse array of magical items, but it takes longer for your first batch to finish (since the Dedicated Wright needs to actually take the time to craft it.) This is also a less scalable solution, since you can't pawn off the directing to your slaves and thus will always need to spend the hour per item directing your Wrights to craft it.

[Destro2119]

Wish, use it to cast fabricate, and have it create 1 cubic ft. of platinum/level!

Why do you need to cast wish to do that? Why not just fabricate?

[Destro2119]

Like all great things, wealth can be created via Human Sacrifice and Slavery in a loop that only requires 100 gp startup cost (and some XP):

Slaves can be bought for as cheap as 100 gold pieces (Lords of Madness, pg 101), sacrificing them nets back Sacrifice DC X 5 gp in Dark Craft GP (Book of Vile Darkness, pg 27). Therefore anyone who can make a DC 20 or higher Religion check, can make a profit off of the cheapest level of slaves. Economic pressures will drive price of slaves up, but at the upper level, a 37th level character can reasonably make a DC 40 check with no investment into Intelligence (or special circumstances outlined in the Sacrifice section) so can continue to make a "profit" off of buying out the slave market until prices for slaves doubles (and likely still make a profit until the price starts growing exponentially). The crafters should also have the Extraordinary Artisan feat to make Magic Item crafting cheaper (Eberron Campaign Setting) and thus each slave more "profitable" for crafting.

In order to supplement XP, you can dominate (or coerce) slaves to use as XP batteries. The Transference spell (PHB II Web Enhancement) allows for the transfer of XP for the purposes of item crafting. Use the spell to effectively purchase XP off of the market. Invest in either a self-resetting trap, or a wand of the spell (which should run you 750 gp). Notably, 4th level Kobold Warriors are CR 1 and thus still cost 100 gp, but most slaves with a few NPC levels will serve for this purpose (assuming that XP and Gold are traded at a 1 to 5 ratio, a second-level slave has about 5000 gp worth of XP). Once a slave has run out of XP to steal, you can use them for a sacrifice for more Dark Craft GP (or Dark Craft XP if you still need to supplement the XP cost).

After a while, with Extraordinary Artisan, you'll only need to purchase slaves for crafting XP (although sacrificing them in the end can still generate some extra income), which helps alleviate some of the supply chain issues with buying so many slaves (however, it'll eat into your margins).

With enough starting capital, you can begin to increase your crafting speed. Autoscribes (Web Enhancement: here (http://rpg.nobl.ca/archive.php?x=dnd/cw/20070326a)) can effectively scribe 20 spell levels per day (as opposed to 1000 gp per day). For spells without expensive components, this is a 8x efficiency boost for 9th level spells (4 days to normally craft, ~1/2 day to craft with the autoscribe). For a scroll of Wish (which is the most expensive Core spell to scribe), the efficiency boost is effectively 56x (28 days to normally craft, ~1/2 day to craft with the autoscribe) If you have UMD Bonus granting gear to reliably get them to +40, you can even have a slave operate the Autoscribe for you in exchange for increased XP cost. Once a spell has become unprofitable to produce scrolls for, you can just load in a new spell and switch up production for minimal cost. This becomes effectively infinitely scalable, since you can use more slave labor in order to create items faster.

Alternatively, you can start a Dedicated Wright(Eberron Campaign Setting) factory. Dedicated Wrights can craft for you, so you don't have to spend the downtime crafting. You can then order your Dedicated Wrights to create more Dedicated Wrights. With enough Dedicated Wrights, the crafter only needs an hour to direct the Wright to get the crafting process started for an item, and can spend their day just ordering Wrights to create the item (24 Magic Items started per day). You can sell a more diverse array of magical items, but it takes longer for your first batch to finish (since the Dedicated Wright needs to actually take the time to craft it.) This is also a less scalable solution, since you can't pawn off the directing to your slaves and thus will always need to spend the hour per item directing your Wrights to craft it.

Autoscribe... wow. Just the sort of thing I love :smallbiggrin:

On the topic of dedicated wrights, I have a plan that I want to pitch for this organization: advanced technomagical crafting lines centered around a "central core" that is a magic robot with cooperative crafting and wizard levels (taking a valet familiar-- shaped like a drone of course) cranking out dozens upon dozens of advanced robot dedicated wrights that are identical except they each have the cooperative crafting feat. They then all cooperate to make items.

How's that? :smallcool:

[Zaile]

So I had the idea of a town-building Dwarf who goes around the remote areas of the world using his magic to improve poor villages and towns with fortifications, big houses/buildings and keeps (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?625450-Bob-the-Builder-A-dwarf-who-make-villages&highlight=bob+the+builder).

In 3e, a wizard can do even MORE than this, so it could easily be a guild that works like a construction company using magic to get things done fast. One elf wizard at 30th could easily make MILLIONS by making fancy castles or forts for lords/nobles at 2/3rds the normal price and a fraction of the build time.

[smasher0404]

Autoscribe... wow. Just the sort of thing I love :smallbiggrin:

On the topic of dedicated wrights, I have a plan that I want to pitch for this organization: advanced technomagical crafting lines centered around a "central core" that is a magic robot with cooperative crafting and wizard levels (taking a valet familiar-- shaped like a drone of course) cranking out dozens upon dozens of advanced robot dedicated wrights that are identical except they each have the cooperative crafting feat. They then all cooperate to make items.

How's that? :smallcool:

It'd really depend on the ruling for Cooperative Crafting. By strict raw, I'm not sure Cooperative Crafting really helps you, since Dedicated Wrights lack Item Crafting feats (it bypasses it with the Item Creation ability, but the feat calls out the feat/skill requirement in order to use the Cooperating Crafting feat). You'd also need a means of granting your Dedicated Wright a caster level to take an item creation feat (since it is a requirement for Cooperative Crafting)

If each Wright can cooperate, and each additional wright doubles production for the item, you'd see an efficiency boost in items per day at the cost of active hours used per day (since each Wright needs an hour to initiate the process).

If each Wright can cooperate, but crafting is proportional to number of Wrights cooperating (AKA 2x for 2 Wrights, 3x for 3 Wrights etc), Cooperative Crafting ends up netting you the same result as if you ordered each Wright separately to craft a different item, except you've used up more active hours. It'd get the first batch done faster, but your magic items per day stays the same.

[Max Caysey]

Why do you need to cast wish to do that? Why not just fabricate?

Well you don’t want to have to use a component... wish takes care of that, but sure, if you have the ignorant material component feat you can just cast the spell!

[Destro2119]

It'd really depend on the ruling for Cooperative Crafting. By strict raw, I'm not sure Cooperative Crafting really helps you, since Dedicated Wrights lack Item Crafting feats (it bypasses it with the Item Creation ability, but the feat calls out the feat/skill requirement in order to use the Cooperating Crafting feat). You'd also need a means of granting your Dedicated Wright a caster level to take an item creation feat (since it is a requirement for Cooperative Crafting)

If each Wright can cooperate, and each additional wright doubles production for the item, you'd see an efficiency boost in items per day at the cost of active hours used per day (since each Wright needs an hour to initiate the process).

If each Wright can cooperate, but crafting is proportional to number of Wrights cooperating (AKA 2x for 2 Wrights, 3x for 3 Wrights etc), Cooperative Crafting ends up netting you the same result as if you ordered each Wright separately to craft a different item, except you've used up more active hours. It'd get the first batch done faster, but your magic items per day stays the same.

Let's handwave it and say that we modified the robot wrights to count their HD as their CL and for Item Creation to sub in for the feat.

"Cooperative Crafting ends up netting you the same result as if you ordered each Wright separately to craft a different item, except you've used up more active hours. It'd get the first batch done faster, but your magic items per day stays the same."

I am making the logical assumption that you can make more than 1 item a day.

EDIT: Also, by RAW, the argument CAN be made that the doubling that the Cooperative Crafting gives is actually doubling since the Multiplication rules only explicitly say that rolls scale proportionally, while the feat itself doubles the total flat amount.

[smasher0404]

Let's handwave it and say that we modified the robot wrights to count their HD as their CL and for Item Creation to sub in for the feat.

"Cooperative Crafting ends up netting you the same result as if you ordered each Wright separately to craft a different item, except you've used up more active hours. It'd get the first batch done faster, but your magic items per day stays the same."

I am making the logical assumption that you can make more than 1 item a day.

EDIT: Also, by RAW, the argument CAN be made that the doubling that the Cooperative Crafting gives is actually doubling since the Multiplication rules only explicitly say that rolls scale proportionally, while the feat itself doubles the total flat amount.


I'm using Items Per Day as a measure of overall volume. Obviously, item production can exceed 1 item per day (the autoscribe being one such example), but if you are using the proportionate ruling, you end up producing the same amount of items overall (since Dedicated Wright-hours is conserved). Two Wrights producing an item in 4 hours is functionally equivalent to two Wrights producing two items in 8 hours on the macro level.

[Bugbear]

True Creation traps for platinum bars works..or any of a list of materials of value.

Xp farming can be Wish for Ambrosia as a mundane object at 125 doses per wish.

Genesis also can create special materials and Quintessence.


Make a proximity reset magic boon trap of Genesis that goes off every round or every other round (does the reset require an action) built into a Stronghold Space that doubles as my Dedicated Wright's crafting workshop.
Workshop will also be equipped with Greater Humanoid Essence -> Elation -> Distilled Joy targetting the Dedicated Wright for good measure.


I'll also invest starting wealth in at least one crafting Simulacrum equipped with a Craft Contingent Shapechange -> Zodar -> Wish program to make more crafting Sims and Craft Contingent Shapechanges all in fast time.

[Destro2119]

I'm using Items Per Day as a measure of overall volume. Obviously, item production can exceed 1 item per day (the autoscribe being one such example), but if you are using the proportionate ruling, you end up producing the same amount of items overall (since Dedicated Wright-hours is conserved). Two Wrights producing an item in 4 hours is functionally equivalent to two Wrights producing two items in 8 hours on the macro level.

Easiest solution at this point might be invent UPBs from Starfinder and then invent Eclipse Phase style replicators for those UPBs :smallsmile:

[GeoffWatson]

You're not a god wizard. You're just some guy with magic who has a lot of options but most of them aren't really great for combat. You live in a big city, you're comfortable not being some big-shot hero, but you wanna be fabulously wealthy without a great deal of effort on your part. So you sell Spellcasting Services. Assuming you have Int 18 (starting 16, 2 bumps from HD), your spell slots per day are 4/5/5/4/4/2. CL 10 means you can make a profit of up to 550 gp per day. If you did that for a year, you could stay in the equivalent of 5 star hotels (5 gp/day), eating like royalty (5 gp/day), drinking endless fine wine (90 gp/day), and still have 164250 profit per year.


Why do you assume that there is a buyer for every single spell you have prepared?
Who is paying for all this?

[Sam K]

Why do you assume that there is a buyer for every single spell you have prepared?
Who is paying for all this?

D&D doesn't have rules for supply and demand, it's generally just assumed that anything you wish to sell will find a buyer at the listed price for PCs selling it.

It's probably intended to make it quick and easy for PCs to sell off loot they can't use, but there's always someone who want to take it one step further. Of course, it's unlikely that most GMs would rule it that way, but the gentlemans agreement on the forums seem to be not to discuss what any particular GM is likely to do, since it can vary so much and there's no such thing as an "average GM".

[AvatarVecna]

Why do you assume that there is a buyer for every single spell you have prepared?
Who is paying for all this?

A metropolis is 25000 people at least, and the given example of the 10th lvl wizard with a reasonably-high-but-not-absurd Int and no item boosts only has 24 spell slots to sell per day. There are many wizards throughout such a metropolis, but not so many that the ratio between wizard and aristocrat ever gets much different than that...and when you add more people to the total, the number of wizards doesn't increase while the number of aristocrats does. When working freelance like this, you'd generally leave your spell slots open, and when a customer comes by wanting to purchase a spell, there's a 15 minute wait while you get it prepared.

And this is assuming you're just selling to random private citizens: if you're a local who lives in town who does this for a living, rather than an adventuring wizard, it's likely that the local leadership has things they want done via magic, and can pay you in advance for - and there's certainly plenty of utility spells that are worth having cast on a regular basis. Generally one would imagine that such a business would involve a person who wishes to buy a spell will probably arrange for it in advance, so that you can get all your spells prepared in the morning knowing exactly what this councilmember or that prince wants you to be casting for him today. There's always work to do. And that's still sticking you in a mere Metropolis, but you're a Wizard 10 - Plane Shift and Teleport are on the menu, and that means the markets of the literally infinite multiverse are open for you to access. Planar metropolises like the City Of Brass and Sigil will dwarf even the biggest cities of the material plane, and in such places, items that are so expensive and so difficult to repair that it's cheaper and faster to get it "Mending"d than to call a mundane repairman in for the job will be far more common. And that's just with cantrips - there's literally thousands of spells you could be casting for people if they'll pay the price...and there's always somebody out there with the demand for your supply.

An infinite universe means infinite supply and infinite demand, which balances out in the long run. This is as plausible an explanation as any for why the prices in the game don't necessarily account for inflation or market saturation - the market is just too big for one person to affect the price of stone or iron or salt using spells, even if they're making a planet's worth at once: a planet's worth of iron is a lot of iron, but the infinite armies of Heaven and Hell and the Abyss are always marching on infinite fronts, and they need more weapons!

[AvatarVecna]

D&D doesn't have rules for supply and demand, it's generally just assumed that anything you wish to sell will find a buyer at the listed price for PCs selling it.

It's probably intended to make it quick and easy for PCs to sell off loot they can't use, but there's always someone who want to take it one step further. Of course, it's unlikely that most GMs would rule it that way, but the gentlemans agreement on the forums seem to be not to discuss what any particular GM is likely to do, since it can vary so much and there's no such thing as an "average GM".

FWIW, there's actually some very basic rules for economy in the DMG, although they're honestly pretty bad. A given settlement has a "GP Limit", which is the most expensive price you could possibly find in town - but based on DMG rules, basically anything not over that price is at least theoretically available in town. Additionally, each settlement has a buy/sell limit, which is a function of GP Limit multiplied by population divided by 20, which is basically the maximum amount of gp worth that can be exchanged before the town just can't do more. So if the town has a GP limit of 50 gp and a population of 1000 people, the buy/sell limit is 2500; so if you came to town looking to buy weapons worth 50 gp, the town could only sell you 50 of them...and if you came to town to sell weapons worth 50 gp, the town could only buy 50 of them.

Obviously, if you took this rules too literally in actual play and pushed those limits constantly, it wouldn't make any sense at all. But for most trades that just take place on the individual scale, you check the values: if what the PCs are trying to buy/sell is over the GP limit, they can't buy/sell it; if what the PCs are trying to buy/sell is over the buy/sell limit, the town can't buy/sell all of it, only some of it...and even if it's within their capabilities, they might not be comfortable basically buying all the extra adventuring crap in exchange for literally all their money. The fact that the weapons are worth the same doesn't mean the apple seller is gonna sell them apples for shortbows, for example.

But in a metropolis, when the total of your spellcasting is worth 550 gp/day? The GP limit is almost 200 times that, and the buy/sell limit is 200000 times that. It's a lot of money, but for a metropolis? It's a drop in the pool. Every caster in the entire metropolis could sell all their spells every day and it wouldn't come close to reaching the buy/sell limit for years on end.

[unseenmage]

At high enough levels my personal go-to is just resetting magic traps of true creation making gold.

Animating that gold and sending it off via greater teleport/greater plane shift so it exchanges itself for goods and services is a tad bit trickier.

[Destro2119]

FWIW, there's actually some very basic rules for economy in the DMG, although they're honestly pretty bad. A given settlement has a "GP Limit", which is the most expensive price you could possibly find in town - but based on DMG rules, basically anything not over that price is at least theoretically available in town. Additionally, each settlement has a buy/sell limit, which is a function of GP Limit multiplied by population divided by 20, which is basically the maximum amount of gp worth that can be exchanged before the town just can't do more. So if the town has a GP limit of 50 gp and a population of 1000 people, the buy/sell limit is 2500; so if you came to town looking to buy weapons worth 50 gp, the town could only sell you 50 of them...and if you came to town to sell weapons worth 50 gp, the town could only buy 50 of them.

Obviously, if you took this rules too literally in actual play and pushed those limits constantly, it wouldn't make any sense at all. But for most trades that just take place on the individual scale, you check the values: if what the PCs are trying to buy/sell is over the GP limit, they can't buy/sell it; if what the PCs are trying to buy/sell is over the buy/sell limit, the town can't buy/sell all of it, only some of it...and even if it's within their capabilities, they might not be comfortable basically buying all the extra adventuring crap in exchange for literally all their money. The fact that the weapons are worth the same doesn't mean the apple seller is gonna sell them apples for shortbows, for example.

But in a metropolis, when the total of your spellcasting is worth 550 gp/day? The GP limit is almost 200 times that, and the buy/sell limit is 200000 times that. It's a lot of money, but for a metropolis? It's a drop in the pool. Every caster in the entire metropolis could sell all their spells every day and it wouldn't come close to reaching the buy/sell limit for years on end.

A bit of a tangent: how can the "average" spellcaster (sor/wiz, etc) optimize his spell slots to get the most spells per day in these four scenarios?

1st scenario: 21st level

2nd scenario: 18-20th level

3rd scenario: 9th-10th level

4th scenario 1st-3rd level

Please direct me to outside sources if necessary.

[Destro2119]

At high enough levels my personal go-to is just resetting magic traps of true creation making gold.

Animating that gold and sending it off via greater teleport/greater plane shift so it exchanges itself for goods and services is a tad bit trickier.

Could you use that money to build an Eclipse Phase style replicator? What about creating raw materials since you eventually will crash the universe's gold market?

[unseenmage]

Could you use that money to build an Eclipse Phase style replicator? What about creating raw materials since you eventually will crash the universe's gold market?
Lotta things eat wealth. Literally. Rust monsters, dragons, and spheres of annihilation eat plenty enough to keep material based wealth pretty stable. As stable as a GM wants to anyway.

And yeah, you could definitely make a replicator.

[Harrow]

I only know how to make it work with a combination of Pathfinder and 3.5 material, but you can BE a replicator if you really want.

Start out by casting Blood Money as a swift action. This is a 1st level Pathfinder spell where you do Strength damage to yourself in exchange for not needing a material component for a spell you cast by the end of the turn, getting about 500 gold per point of Strength damage you deal to yourself. Then, use Uncanny Forethought to cast Fabricate as a full-round action. The material component for Fabricate is whatever crafting materials you need, which you'll be subbing out to use the Blood Money component instead. Because of how spells work, the fake component is destroyed and a real item is made, effectively laundering your Blood Money and making up to 10 cubic feet per caster level of whatever you want if making non-minerals and 1/10th that for minerals.

You could put Blood Money and Lesser Restoration on a magic item like a trap and not have to worry about spell slots, but the only way I know of reducing the casting time of Fabricate, which is necessary to pair it with Blood Money, is to actually cast it out of your own slots with Uncanny Forethought. You could supplement this by Fabricating the materials to make Pearls of Power 5, especially if you're using Pathfinder crafting rules or have some other way around the XP requirement.

[Endarire]

You can also mimic spells via shadow conjuration, shadow evocation, wish, miracle, and other spell reproduction abilities to reduce casting times.

The short answer on how to manipulate money ("for money answers all things") is to magically make it. Sometimes this is using genesis to make a demiplane of gems/precious metals/plutonium/expensive things. Sometimes it's using true creation to make stuff directly. Sometimes it's making/using auto-resetting traps (or using other loops, like infinite gate loops for Solars, genies, etc.) to wish/will the stuff into existing. Sometimes it's mind controlling or otherwise persuading societies to buy only from you directly. If you can envision a means of getting paid, the rules as written almost certainly support it!

To some degree, it's like the game Cookie Clicker (https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/). You normally start off by manually clicking the cookie for currency, then you invest in people and structures to generate revenue for you. This starts somewhat logically (grandmas bake cookies) and escalates into the more extreme (excavating cookies from underground, and in space, and in other dimensions, from light, and from the past!). Effectively, you will cookies into existence by the endgame.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

If you're the DM, you could set up a EA scam pay-to-play plan so the players buy upgrades, loot box style.

[Destro2119]

If the system explicitly allows you to literally make money, then telling us in a thread about making money that we're not allowed to make money seems kinda ridiculous, honestly.

Spells like simulacrum and ice assassin allow you to flat-out create new spellcasters with spell slots you can sell spells with. They can sell spellcasting services as well as anyone of that level can, which is nice, passive income for you, since the critters you create using a one-and-done spell effect require almost nothing for themselves and can (and will, if you tell them to) give you everything they earn without complaint (implicit or otherwise).

Alternatively, going out and using dominate spells on some spellcasting critters does something very similar, only you have to renew the dominate effect periodically. Of course, if you have a spell trap, you can let it do it for you, as you command your new minion to come back every couple of days to subject itself to your trap several times for overlapping dominate spells in case the spell doesn't take the first time, or someone tries to dispel it (in which case they'll have to dispel several times while your minion is attempting to resist, on your orders).

Or you could use planar binding and its ilk to pull in spellcasters that you can then proceed to debuff the heck out of (while buffing yourself) and forcing them to agree to long-term servitude. In which case you can sell their spellcasting services.

Or you can go kidnap small children evil, evil bad guys to manifest mind seed on. They then become you at a lower level, can sell their services, and then all pool their money together with you to help build your shared empire.

Leadership, thrallherd, Undead Leadership, etc. do the same as above.

You could craft repeating spell traps, restrict access to them, and sell the services from the traps. It's like how De Beers collected all the diamonds they could get their grubby mitts on to create an artificial dearth of them, then started an ad campaign to convince everyone that these little rocks are rare and you need to buy them to celebrate matrimonial unions, else you don't love your significant other. The fact that there are literally thousands of tons of the things under lock and key has no relevance, I'm sure. Anyway, just use healing traps and demand money in return. You can be Phantasy Big Pharma.

There are plenty more, I'm sure, but these are just off the top of my head.

Note that a lot of them could continue the cycle on their own. For instance, a dominated wizard could further dominate others. Or a simulacrum that has simulacrum itself could make more simulacrums of you (which could themselves make more).

Genesis is a 9th level spell that allows you to set the parameters of the demiplane you create out of whole cloth. And if that cloth happens to be made of platinum...

Size-altering effects that can turn small models into giant fortresses. It's easy to work on something at 1/10,000 scale, then super-size it. For instance, turning it into a +1 sizing weapon would allow you to turn your scale model of the Taj Mahal into a full-sized one.

There's also this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?246396-Another-Addition-To-The-Tippyverse). It allows you to clone magic items ad infinitum.

Genesis can't do that. It only allows you to change minor environment details like weather. It can't make constructions.

[Destro2119]

You can also mimic spells via shadow conjuration, shadow evocation, wish, miracle, and other spell reproduction abilities to reduce casting times.

The short answer on how to manipulate money ("for money answers all things") is to magically make it. Sometimes this is using genesis to make a demiplane of gems/precious metals/plutonium/expensive things. Sometimes it's using true creation to make stuff directly. Sometimes it's making/using auto-resetting traps (or using other loops, like infinite gate loops for Solars, genies, etc.) to wish/will the stuff into existing. Sometimes it's mind controlling or otherwise persuading societies to buy only from you directly. If you can envision a means of getting paid, the rules as written almost certainly support it!

To some degree, it's like the game Cookie Clicker (https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/). You normally start off by manually clicking the cookie for currency, then you invest in people and structures to generate revenue for you. This starts somewhat logically (grandmas bake cookies) and escalates into the more extreme (excavating cookies from underground, and in space, and in other dimensions, from light, and from the past!). Effectively, you will cookies into existence by the endgame.

No genesis can't do that. Read this quote: the caster determines factors such as atmosphere, water, temperature, and the general shape of the terrain. This spell cannot create life (including vegetation), nor can it create construction (such as buildings, roads, wells, dungeons, and so forth). The spellcaster must add these things in some other fashion if he or she desires.

So no gems or infinite platinum.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Genesis can't do that. It only allows you to change minor environment details like weather. It can't make constructions.Materials are not constructions. Constructions are things like buildings. Unless you consider natural ground and the things in it to be constructed?

[Destro2119]

Also, True Creation is a bad spell overall since not only does it charge a material component, it also needs a craft check.