Create an SCP Foundation-type Organization

[Destro2119]

So this is a theorycrafting challenge for you all, and the goal of it is to create, with all 3.X/PF resources at your disposal for use, an organization to rival/surpass the SCP Foundation in capability (note this is NOT a versus thread).

The general criteria your organization must meet are:
-ability to effectively contain subjects that have extreme reality warping abilities, to the point of deific level creatures
-ability to effectively contain objects with potentially incredible reality warping abilities (planetary+ level) that may have extremely obscure "neutralization requirements"
-ability to effectively gather revenue and agents
-ability to effectively test anomalous objects
-ability to effectively ascertain the uses/purposes of anomalous objects
-ability to store all contained subjects


You are allowed epic levels/mythic levels, but assume the majority of your entire organization will not be epic.

Also note that, due to the inherent natures of most DnD type settings (from Greyhawk to Starfinder), your organization need not be secret, and such beings and details such as normal magic, normal magic items, planes, demiplanes, devils, demons, angels etc etc (the "normal" outsiders and their ilk) are accepted as a part of reality. Rather, SCPs for this organization are counted as exceedingly powerful lost artifacts and eldritch beings from the Far Realms/evil gods and spirits/the normal weird SCP objects. This also means a normal cleric or sorcerer is not an SCP, but a guy who has, say, a color out of space trapped in his eyes that drains all life in his line of sight is.


I look forward to all your ideas!

EDIT: BTW, spell research into rituals and custom spells is allowed.

[Beni-Kujaku]

One of the most defining features of the Foundation, beyond its secrecy, is its access to a nigh-unlimited amount of money, be it because they take it from alternative universe or get subventions from the governments of the countries of the world. If such an organization were to be born in the d&d universe, I believe the Administrator/At least one of the O5 would be a level 10 Runecaster/Level 10 Cleric of Mystra. With (Greater) Anyspell, the runecaster can prepare almost any low level spell from any list, and put them into permanent "when read or passed" runes. That is what will allow the whole facility to function. A "when read or passed" rune can be easily activated by just sticking several runes together, some of them being there to make the whole object rotate, and others for the actual effects. At each rotation, the runes will be "passed" by whatever is inside the cell, and will activate as many magic effects as needed. Such as, notably, Resilient Spheres, Dimensional Anchor, Ethereal Chamber, Geas ("Stay in this cell, comply to everything a member of the Foundation asks you, never harm a member of the Foundation, do not try to escape either your containment or this Geas") and Invoke Magic. Plus Disjunction if it is necessary (since disjunction doesn't affect the caster, the agglomeration of objects on which there are multiple runes should be fine, because they touch the rune who casts disjunction). That will probably be enough to contain almost all anomalies that are not completely immune to magic as long as they are contained once in the first place. For creatures completely immune to magic (such as the Dragonbone Golem), of which almost all are non-sentient, and those who are epic enough that none of these spells would work, there are several things possible. First is the rough method. You put it in a box, then you increase the solidity of the box so much that whatever the thing does, it won't get out. Then you use Animate Rope to have it binded as much as possible, possibly with intangible creatures draining it from inside the floor to reduce its saves to a minimum.


That is my first idea. I will probably expand on it later.

[Destro2119]

One of the most defining features of the Foundation, beyond its secrecy, is its access to a nigh-unlimited amount of money, be it because they take it from alternative universe or get subventions from the governments of the countries of the world. If such an organization were to be born in the d&d universe, I believe the Administrator/At least one of the O5 would be a level 10 Runecaster/Level 10 Cleric of Mystra. With (Greater) Anyspell, the runecaster can prepare almost any low level spell from any list, and put them into permanent "when read or passed" runes. That is what will allow the whole facility to function. A "when read or passed" rune can be easily activated by just sticking several runes together, some of them being there to make the whole object rotate, and others for the actual effects. At each rotation, the runes will be "passed" by whatever is inside the cell, and will activate as many magic effects as needed. Such as, notably, Resilient Spheres, Dimensional Anchor, Ethereal Chamber, Geas ("Stay in this cell, comply to everything a member of the Foundation asks you, never harm a member of the Foundation, do not try to escape either your containment or this Geas") and Invoke Magic. Plus Disjunction if it is necessary (since disjunction doesn't affect the caster, the agglomeration of objects on which there are multiple runes should be fine, because they touch the rune who casts disjunction). That will probably be enough to contain almost all anomalies that are not completely immune to magic as long as they are contained once in the first place. For creatures completely immune to magic (such as the Dragonbone Golem), of which almost all are non-sentient, and those who are epic enough that none of these spells would work, there are several things possible. First is the rough method. You put it in a box, then you increase the solidity of the box so much that whatever the thing does, it won't get out. Then you use Animate Rope to have it binded as much as possible, possibly with intangible creatures draining it from inside the floor to reduce its saves to a minimum.


That is my first idea. I will probably expand on it later.

Cool concept! I can't wait to see what you elaborate on.

PS: Beyond just defenses, do you have any ideas for employee hierarchy/class levels of employees (because O5 should not do everything). What magic items/tech do they employ? Do they/could they make magitech robots? Also, remember the Foundation has things like Scranton Realty Anchors and Riemann space expansion and telekill alloy. Can your guys make stuff like that?

[Beni-Kujaku]

I believe one of the goal of the Foundation is to not being breakable by anything, even the Gods. This is why I think the Runecaster should not be a cleric, since any god can remove the power they gave to a cleric, but instead an Ur-Priest, with Catalogues of Enlightenment allowing him to create one permanent rune of Greater Anyspell, usable to prepare as many runes of Anyspell as possible. (That also means you can create runes at a very low caster level, meaning it's cheaper). And, yeah, just to be sure, make him have an assistant with exactly the same classes, but using the Shadow Weave. Both use Thought Bottles liberally or otherwise use the tortured D-classes to extract agony.

How can you protect sites from incoming invaders/anomalies? First, illusions. It is quite hard to pile illusions on a moving object, but on a fix location? Oh boy can you pile them. Then put the site itself in a demi-plane in the Astral. Then put an Halastor's Teleportation Cage around the whole Demi-Plane. Which means that where there should be a site, not only is there nothing physical immediately accessible, but the only way to a site is a portal, somewhere in the sky, that you can't see, sense, hear, scry or detect, and whose location is only known by the known and trusted translocators of the Foundation. That also means that if an anomaly somehow escapes and threatens to destroy an entire site, you can just close the portal and the anomaly gets trapped in the demi-plane with no way to get out.

The illusions are carried out by the simili-Memetics and Infohazards Division, since most illusion-based classes also offer protections against illusion. And put on as many Mind Blanks as possible. On every employee after they have been extensively tested, if possible. This is a world where charm-person, Domination and Geas exist. You do not want one of your translocators to switch to an opposing group.

One of the most important parts of the Foundation is to know when and where a new anomaly arises. And for that, there should a whole squad of Void Disciples (all of them arcane. Not only are there less means to protect specifically from arcane than there are from divine, it fits the theme of "if you refer to a God, then you are not loyal enough to the Foundation"). With their Sense Void ability, they will be able to spy on any GoI known to the Foundation, or even on the population of a big city, while possibly bypassing mind blanks and other protections. If they are high enough level, they can even read the thoughts of people there. That allows them to get intel on if a mind-affecting anomaly exists and is spreading, or if any GoI recently obtained new anomalies, as long as they don't hide on other planes. They are assisted by some employees/D-class that use the Aid action to help them get to the DC 25 check to scry up to 1000 miles. I think there should be around 10 000 of them on each plane the Foundation is implanted in. That should be doable. It should also be doable to have each and every one of them be linked by a two-ways permanent Rary's Telepathic Bond (2,500 XP is a lot, but not if you have a permanent rune of Permanency! Yes, that's a lot of permanence).

Finally, there is the question of capturing and containing anomalies. I personally believe that in the world of D&D, where magic exists, anomalies are not seen as incomprehensibly out of our understanding, but just as dangerous, powerful creatures and items that you can't let free. That's why I believe the Foundation would use anomalies to capture others, more dangerous anomalies more liberally than the one in our world. It would be a little bit closer to the Chaos Insurgency. They would probably train useful anomalies to become even more effective at their job. For example, Outsiders loyal to the Foundation and entering a Mobile Task Force could be trained as a Forsaker to be used against magic-type anomalies (with the 2 SR stacking). The Foundation should know what they are up against by the use of golems, expendable MTF or D-class (kinda what they do in our world), then prepare a countermeasure against the anomaly.

And finally, there's the science part of this. And there, there really isn't much to use. Science in D&D is really not prominent (except researching spells, and even that is very marginal). So I think they would do it the same way they do in our world: send D-classes at the thing until one of them dies, then try to understand why!

[Destro2119]

I believe one of the goal of the Foundation is to not being breakable by anything, even the Gods. This is why I think the Runecaster should not be a cleric, since any god can remove the power they gave to a cleric, but instead an Ur-Priest, with Catalogues of Enlightenment allowing him to create one permanent rune of Greater Anyspell, usable to prepare as many runes of Anyspell as possible. (That also means you can create runes at a very low caster level, meaning it's cheaper). And, yeah, just to be sure, make him have an assistant with exactly the same classes, but using the Shadow Weave. Both use Thought Bottles liberally or otherwise use the tortured D-classes to extract agony.

How can you protect sites from incoming invaders/anomalies? First, illusions. It is quite hard to pile illusions on a moving object, but on a fix location? Oh boy can you pile them. Then put the site itself in a demi-plane in the Astral. Then put an Halastor's Teleportation Cage around the whole Demi-Plane. Which means that where there should be a site, not only is there nothing physical immediately accessible, but the only way to a site is a portal, somewhere in the sky, that you can't see, sense, hear, scry or detect, and whose location is only known by the known and trusted translocators of the Foundation. That also means that if an anomaly somehow escapes and threatens to destroy an entire site, you can just close the portal and the anomaly gets trapped in the demi-plane with no way to get out.

The illusions are carried out by the simili-Memetics and Infohazards Division, since most illusion-based classes also offer protections against illusion. And put on as many Mind Blanks as possible. On every employee after they have been extensively tested, if possible. This is a world where charm-person, Domination and Geas exist. You do not want one of your translocators to switch to an opposing group.

One of the most important parts of the Foundation is to know when and where a new anomaly arises. And for that, there should a whole squad of Void Disciples (all of them arcane. Not only are there less means to protect specifically from arcane than there are from divine, it fits the theme of "if you refer to a God, then you are not loyal enough to the Foundation"). With their Sense Void ability, they will be able to spy on any GoI known to the Foundation, or even on the population of a big city, while possibly bypassing mind blanks and other protections. If they are high enough level, they can even read the thoughts of people there. That allows them to get intel on if a mind-affecting anomaly exists and is spreading, or if any GoI recently obtained new anomalies, as long as they don't hide on other planes. They are assisted by some employees/D-class that use the Aid action to help them get to the DC 25 check to scry up to 1000 miles. I think there should be around 10 000 of them on each plane the Foundation is implanted in. That should be doable. It should also be doable to have each and every one of them be linked by a two-ways permanent Rary's Telepathic Bond (2,500 XP is a lot, but not if you have a permanent rune of Permanency! Yes, that's a lot of permanence).

Finally, there is the question of capturing and containing anomalies. I personally believe that in the world of D&D, where magic exists, anomalies are not seen as incomprehensibly out of our understanding, but just as dangerous, powerful creatures and items that you can't let free. That's why I believe the Foundation would use anomalies to capture others, more dangerous anomalies more liberally than the one in our world. It would be a little bit closer to the Chaos Insurgency. They would probably train useful anomalies to become even more effective at their job. For example, Outsiders loyal to the Foundation and entering a Mobile Task Force could be trained as a Forsaker to be used against magic-type anomalies (with the 2 SR stacking). The Foundation should know what they are up against by the use of golems, expendable MTF or D-class (kinda what they do in our world), then prepare a countermeasure against the anomaly.

And finally, there's the science part of this. And there, there really isn't much to use. Science in D&D is really not prominent (except researching spells, and even that is very marginal). So I think they would do it the same way they do in our world: send D-classes at the thing until one of them dies, then try to understand why!

TBH, I am talking less the stasis riddled FR type worlds and more like the PFverse (Golarion, etc.), where a. science, tech, and magic are known and advancing (they have working germ theory, etc etc) and b. magic is a science basically and can be advanced (as seen in Starfinder and even somewhat in edition shifts)

Also, remember, in this verse O5, or at least one of O5, could very well be an actual deity. In some canons, SCP Foundation was actually founded by deity-types. In this light, I would think clerics/divine magic of whatever "approved gods" would 100% be on the table.

Also, in 3.PF (what I assume) you don't need xp to make magic and you can mass produce magic items too (handled in lore).

Also, do they have answers to reality warping beings/objects like 871/the Daevite history books? What about psion threats like 2664?

Also, do they have equivalents of Scranton Reality Anchors/telekill alloy? What about "resets" for when all goes wrong (a la 2000)?

I would love to hear more!

EDIT: Also, interesting link (scroll down): https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/what-worlds-could-survive-a-scp-001-when-day-breaks-scenario.932769/

[AvatarVecna]

1) It is not difficult to set up an adjustable hyperbolic time chamber, where time inside is vastly different from time outside (arbitrarily slow or fast, as desired). It is not difficult to build this time chamber in such a way that time inside stops and starts at your discretion. The custom item rules are pretty flexible, and can accomplish this without much trouble (although it'd be relatively expensive, even for a standard low-epic character).

2) Undead are age-immortal.

3) Undead have a small-but-gradually-growing chance to gain an iteration of the Evolved Undead template every 100 years they remain alive.

4) The Evolved Undead template increases CR, and can stack with itself indefinitely.

5) A machine that can generate skeletons or zombies is not particularly difficult - probably a spell clock that can both generate corpses and animate them, ideally where the spell clock is outside the hyperbolic time chamber and shooting the spells into it.

In this fashion, a simple Human Skeleton appears in the middle of the hyperbolic time chamber. It spots you and runs to engage cuz it's a complete mindless idiot and that's something NI iterations of Evolved Undead can't change. In the single round it takes to escape the chamber, it's aged as long as you want it to have aged. Its touch AC, HP, saves, and DR have not changed, so it's a relatively simple matter to smash it to pieces. Since it's not controlled and not somebody else's summon, you get XP for the defeat. Since CR is scaling indefinitely, so is XP...and so is level.

The spell clock and time field are set up for timings based on your current level, such that it takes 1 round for the skeleton to age the amount you want. At that point, it can act, and it escapes towards you (the only direction to go, and it's mindless so no better strategies than charging). Your turn in the following round is spent killing it. You then spend 2 rounds adjusting the spell clock and the time field if necessary, or chilling if not necessary. In this way, you go through 1 fight per 4 rounds against the toughest CR you can legally receive XP from.

Since you're on your own, your effective party level is 4 lower than your character level. The maximum CR that can grant XP is 7 higher than party level, so character level + 3. Thus, the XP from a single fight will be equal to (X-4)*3200, where X is your character level. That can be rephrased as 3200X-12800. Because of the XP requirements necessary to level up, every fight will end up giving you a level. There is no explicit requirement for rest or a break to achieve a level-up within the system.

With a ring of sustenance, a human could keep this machine running 20 hours per day (12000 rounds), and thus would level up 3000 times. A year of this would get them to level 1095021.

idk let's call it 10000 levels each in 100 base classes, including the like...30ish caster classes? That's a million levels gone. The other 95k will be put into any PrCs you qualify for, granting you basically whatever abilities you want to have as long as you can meet all the prereqs. Biggest issues is going to be conflicting alignment prereqs. Make sure to be a cleric of a cause rather than a deity. You get 365k feats, and +45.6k to each attribute on average.

At some point you picked up a level of Factotum, so all skills are class skills and thus maximum ranks are at full character level even if they cost double because a particular class still doesn't have it as a class skill. That doesn't matter, because with Int 45600 or whatever you get maximum ranks in all skills, including every obscure craft, knowledge, perform, or profession you could possibly think of, even if you're paying double for all skills.

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000 spells in the game IIRC, and almost all of them are either arcane by default (since wizard has like 2500 alone) or you can use certain classes to make them into arcane spells for your purposes. This makes them viable to take with Arcane Thesis. 500 feats for Arcane Thesis, a few hundred for Improved Metamagic, a few hundred to take every metamagic feat, and now you can apply any metamagic to any spell for free.

Since we've got NI slots to work with, more or less, we can go ahead and take Innate Spell a few thousand times to get our favorite metamagic-heavy version of a spell as an at-will SLA, while still having absurd numbers of slots for the purposes of actually casting normally. That gives us both the staying power of at-will SLAs, but if two standard actions per turn just isn't enough for us (Factotum, remember?), we can bust out a few thousand quickened spells per round thanks to Multispell epic feat.

Infinite money is relatively simple: Sigil explicitly doesn't have community limits so you can trade basically anything there - infinite market, infinite supply and demand balancing out, I suppose. Anyway, buy base materials for crafting stuff, and use your +2212855 (Item Familiar wooooo) or so to a given craft skill to make...whatever you want, basically. Unchained Craft means we can make magic items directly and mundane crafting is 14 times faster. Alchemical Savant gives x7 mundane crafting speed for Craft (Alchemy), and there's a mythic ability that doubles magic item crafting speed if you have the proper feat for it. So final money per week is DC x check result x 196 in silver pieces. Use enough iterations of Quick Creation (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#craft) to get the DC just high enough that you barely pass on a 1, so DC 2212856. This gives you 95975897492048 gp of equivalent market value in a week. Regardless of what it is, it was crafted with standard craft rules, so 1/3 market value is spent in costs, and 1/2 market value is gained from selling, giving us a profit of 1/6 market value. This is a hair under 16 trillion in profit from a week of effort on your part; assuming 8 hours of crafting per day, this is ~2.8 billion gp of market value (and thus, ~476 million gp of profit) created per round you spend crafting magic items with Craft (Alchemy).

Frankly, though, making money like this shouldn't really be what you personally are spending your day on - that's what you've got an organization for. They collectively can't make money as fast as you can, even with their absurd numbers advantage, but they can make enough money to support the organization in the day-to-day stuff, and you can take a week off to make them 16 trillion if you need to - remember, you've got that hyperbolic time chamber you can screw around with.

Speaking of our organization...Leadership, Extra Followers, Might Makes Right, Epic Leadership, Legendary Commander. This gives you leadership score ~1140000 depending on what things you have boosting Str or Cha, and the little weird leadership bonuses you can get from feats and circumstance. This gives you followers like this:



Level
Quantity


1
2279940000


2
227994000


3
113997000


4
56998500


5
28499250


6
14249625


7
7124813


8
3562407


9
1781204


10
890602


11
445301


12
222651


13
111326


14
55663


15
27832


16
13916


17
6958


18
3479


19
1740


20
870


21
435


22
218


23
109


24
55


25
28


26
14


27
7


28
4


29
2


30
1



For the actual Special Containment Procedures...

You have Int 46500+, and effectively +2 million to all knowledge skills. You can absolutely figure out the right way to perfectly and permanently contain and study any given anomaly. But because of how weird SCPs get, standard spells aren't always going to cut it, and you're going to need custom nonsense. Fortunately...you have Epic Spellcasting. With your +2 million to Spellcraft, or thereabout, you craft spells that cost 18 billion gp, 720 million XP, and take 360000 days to craft. Our gold generation will be enough for whatever epic spells we need, that much XP will cost you about 5 hours of skeleton murder in the time chamber, and we can use the time chamber ourselves to spend 1000 years (from our perspective) developing the spell.

If we get bored, or we need the spell ready tomorrow and the chamber isn't really available, or we need a much bigger spell to properly contain the given anomaly, we can get our organization to pitch in some spell slots. If everybody donates a spell slot, we can get -3.34 billion to the spellcraft DC, allowing use to design epic spells capable of basically anything without spending money, XP, or time.

What I don't have a direct solution to here is Divine Ranks, which outrank even a million class levels. You're going to need tricky tactics or access to divine ranks yourself to achieve that. I think there's rules somewhere that indicate what divine rank you can receive based on the number of people who worship you, and I'm sure your 2.7 billion should be plenty for a hefty rank.

[Destro2119]

1) It is not difficult to set up an adjustable hyperbolic time chamber, where time inside is vastly different from time outside (arbitrarily slow or fast, as desired). It is not difficult to build this time chamber in such a way that time inside stops and starts at your discretion. The custom item rules are pretty flexible, and can accomplish this without much trouble (although it'd be relatively expensive, even for a standard low-epic character).

2) Undead are age-immortal.

3) Undead have a small-but-gradually-growing chance to gain an iteration of the Evolved Undead template every 100 years they remain alive.

4) The Evolved Undead template increases CR, and can stack with itself indefinitely.

5) A machine that can generate skeletons or zombies is not particularly difficult - probably a spell clock that can both generate corpses and animate them, ideally where the spell clock is outside the hyperbolic time chamber and shooting the spells into it.

In this fashion, a simple Human Skeleton appears in the middle of the hyperbolic time chamber. It spots you and runs to engage cuz it's a complete mindless idiot and that's something NI iterations of Evolved Undead can't change. In the single round it takes to escape the chamber, it's aged as long as you want it to have aged. Its touch AC, HP, saves, and DR have not changed, so it's a relatively simple matter to smash it to pieces. Since it's not controlled and not somebody else's summon, you get XP for the defeat. Since CR is scaling indefinitely, so is XP...and so is level.

The spell clock and time field are set up for timings based on your current level, such that it takes 1 round for the skeleton to age the amount you want. At that point, it can act, and it escapes towards you (the only direction to go, and it's mindless so no better strategies than charging). Your turn in the following round is spent killing it. You then spend 2 rounds adjusting the spell clock and the time field if necessary, or chilling if not necessary. In this way, you go through 1 fight per 4 rounds against the toughest CR you can legally receive XP from.

Since you're on your own, your effective party level is 4 lower than your character level. The maximum CR that can grant XP is 7 higher than party level, so character level + 3. Thus, the XP from a single fight will be equal to (X-4)*3200, where X is your character level. That can be rephrased as 3200X-12800. Because of the XP requirements necessary to level up, every fight will end up giving you a level. There is no explicit requirement for rest or a break to achieve a level-up within the system.

With a ring of sustenance, a human could keep this machine running 20 hours per day (12000 rounds), and thus would level up 3000 times. A year of this would get them to level 1095021.

idk let's call it 10000 levels each in 100 base classes, including the like...30ish caster classes? That's a million levels gone. The other 95k will be put into any PrCs you qualify for, granting you basically whatever abilities you want to have as long as you can meet all the prereqs. Biggest issues is going to be conflicting alignment prereqs. Make sure to be a cleric of a cause rather than a deity. You get 365k feats, and +45.6k to each attribute on average.

At some point you picked up a level of Factotum, so all skills are class skills and thus maximum ranks are at full character level even if they cost double because a particular class still doesn't have it as a class skill. That doesn't matter, because with Int 45600 or whatever you get maximum ranks in all skills, including every obscure craft, knowledge, perform, or profession you could possibly think of, even if you're paying double for all skills.

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000 spells in the game IIRC, and almost all of them are either arcane by default (since wizard has like 2500 alone) or you can use certain classes to make them into arcane spells for your purposes. This makes them viable to take with Arcane Thesis. 500 feats for Arcane Thesis, a few hundred for Improved Metamagic, a few hundred to take every metamagic feat, and now you can apply any metamagic to any spell for free.

Since we've got NI slots to work with, more or less, we can go ahead and take Innate Spell a few thousand times to get our favorite metamagic-heavy version of a spell as an at-will SLA, while still having absurd numbers of slots for the purposes of actually casting normally. That gives us both the staying power of at-will SLAs, but if two standard actions per turn just isn't enough for us (Factotum, remember?), we can bust out a few thousand quickened spells per round thanks to Multispell epic feat.

Infinite money is relatively simple: Sigil explicitly doesn't have community limits so you can trade basically anything there - infinite market, infinite supply and demand balancing out, I suppose. Anyway, buy base materials for crafting stuff, and use your +2212855 (Item Familiar wooooo) or so to a given craft skill to make...whatever you want, basically. Unchained Craft means we can make magic items directly and mundane crafting is 14 times faster. Alchemical Savant gives x7 mundane crafting speed for Craft (Alchemy), and there's a mythic ability that doubles magic item crafting speed if you have the proper feat for it. So final money per week is DC x check result x 196 in silver pieces. Use enough iterations of Quick Creation (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#craft) to get the DC just high enough that you barely pass on a 1, so DC 2212856. This gives you 95975897492048 gp of equivalent market value in a week. Regardless of what it is, it was crafted with standard craft rules, so 1/3 market value is spent in costs, and 1/2 market value is gained from selling, giving us a profit of 1/6 market value. This is a hair under 16 trillion in profit from a week of effort on your part; assuming 8 hours of crafting per day, this is ~2.8 billion gp of market value (and thus, ~476 million gp of profit) created per round you spend crafting magic items with Craft (Alchemy).

Frankly, though, making money like this shouldn't really be what you personally are spending your day on - that's what you've got an organization for. They collectively can't make money as fast as you can, even with their absurd numbers advantage, but they can make enough money to support the organization in the day-to-day stuff, and you can take a week off to make them 16 trillion if you need to - remember, you've got that hyperbolic time chamber you can screw around with.

Speaking of our organization...Leadership, Extra Followers, Might Makes Right, Epic Leadership, Legendary Commander. This gives you leadership score ~1140000 depending on what things you have boosting Str or Cha, and the little weird leadership bonuses you can get from feats and circumstance. This gives you followers like this:



Level
Quantity


1
2279940000


2
227994000


3
113997000


4
56998500


5
28499250


6
14249625


7
7124813


8
3562407


9
1781204


10
890602


11
445301


12
222651


13
111326


14
55663


15
27832


16
13916


17
6958


18
3479


19
1740


20
870


21
435


22
218


23
109


24
55


25
28


26
14


27
7


28
4


29
2


30
1



For the actual Special Containment Procedures...

You have Int 46500+, and effectively +2 million to all knowledge skills. You can absolutely figure out the right way to perfectly and permanently contain and study any given anomaly. But because of how weird SCPs get, standard spells aren't always going to cut it, and you're going to need custom nonsense. Fortunately...you have Epic Spellcasting. With your +2 million to Spellcraft, or thereabout, you craft spells that cost 18 billion gp, 720 million XP, and take 360000 days to craft. Our gold generation will be enough for whatever epic spells we need, that much XP will cost you about 5 hours of skeleton murder in the time chamber, and we can use the time chamber ourselves to spend 1000 years (from our perspective) developing the spell.

If we get bored, or we need the spell ready tomorrow and the chamber isn't really available, or we need a much bigger spell to properly contain the given anomaly, we can get our organization to pitch in some spell slots. If everybody donates a spell slot, we can get -3.34 billion to the spellcraft DC, allowing use to design epic spells capable of basically anything without spending money, XP, or time.

What I don't have a direct solution to here is Divine Ranks, which outrank even a million class levels. You're going to need tricky tactics or access to divine ranks yourself to achieve that. I think there's rules somewhere that indicate what divine rank you can receive based on the number of people who worship you, and I'm sure your 2.7 billion should be plenty for a hefty rank.

How exactly do you set up the "time chamber"?

Also, this is pretty commensurate with the upper end of what the foundation could do, yeah. If you wanted to make a more "lower powered" version you could. The "epic" Gleaners organization from ELH could be one place to go off of.

Also note that due to the rules of 3.PF you no longer need xp to do anything.

EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure a Divine Rank is not equal, mechanically, to a "million class levels". At all. Lore wise is the power with Divine Ranks. And of course power of both kinds scales pretty quickly.

[AvatarVecna]

I thought of another method for making money that doesn't require your constant attention or action: the business rules in DMG2. The basic plan here:

1) You spend a week getting your 12 trillion gp.

2) You buy a simple house and basic supplies for starting a shop...somewhere deep in the wilderness. You're basically buying abandoned houses out in the woods or wherever and filling them up with stuff with price tags, and then leaving to never return. This requires no other employees and costs you 3000 gp, in exchange for a -10 to the profit check. You buy 4 billion such houses and fill them with such supplies in this manner.

3) After a month of doing no work on your shops, you make a profit check. You take something like a -30 or whatever for never being there to work on it and for it being in the middle of nowhere and having no advertising. You roll your Profession (Shopkeeper) +2212825 check, and subtract 25 from the result. You multiply that number by 50, and that's the gp that business made this month. Average will be 110640525 gp per business, for a total monthly profit of 442 quadrillion gp.

4) You can reinvest the money from step three into more businesses the same way you did in step 2, and at some point you'll have more money than a given organization could ever possibly spend.


How exactly do you set up the "time chamber"?

The Far Realm is a place where time flows arbitrarily compared to our own reality, where any X:Y time ratio is feasible in some part or another because travel to and from the Far Realm just isn't predictable enough. This is mostly important to us in that it makes it clear that time traits of absurd magnitude are perfectly rules legal - it maybe be ridiculous, but it's not illegal for a plane to exist such that a creature residing in it for one round of real-world time will have aged a million years or whatever.

The "Genesis" spell can create a demiplane with whatever Planar Traits you want. An item of At-Will Command Word "Genesis" CL 17 would cost 775400 gp, and lets you create a new demiplane as a standard action.

The "Gate" spell allows you to create a big portal to any particular point in any particularly plane. An item of At-Will Command Word "Gate" CL 17 that can only provide the transport function would cost 275400 gp.

However you end up combining both spells into a single item, it's not gonna be more expensive than 1326200 gp. A lot for low-epic, but certainly available. You can probably get it cheaper if you buy the spells built into architecture via some rules in the Stronghold Builder's Guide (where the catch is that you can't take the item with you, it can only be used in that room).


Also, this is pretty commensurate with the upper end of what the foundation could do, yeah. If you wanted to make a more "lower powered" version you could. The epic Gleaners organization from ELH could be one place to go off of.

The goal was to create an organization that can rival/surpass the Foundation and I'm kinda aiming for the latter. If this is commensurate with the upper end of the foundation, I'm inclined to go further, not back. :smalltongue:


Also note that due to the rules of 3.PF you no longer need xp to do anything.

That's useful, particularly for any item crafting that would need to get done. Again though, unlike other builds, this one doesn't really have much issue spending a giant pile of XP on things, because it makes XP so easily - ironically, because it levels by killing impoverished skeletons over and over, that million level PC would still have basically no personal loot...at least until they started pulling money tricks.


EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure a Divine Rank is not equal, mechanically, to a "million class levels". At all. Lore wise is the power with Divine Ranks. And of course power of both kinds scales pretty quickly.

You're right, it's not equal, that's kinda the problem. A million class levels is great and all, and I can certainly kick the ass of any given deity statblock if they're played in a straightforward fair fight, but divine abilities allow them to not engage in a straightforward fair fight unless they want to, and I can't force a confrontation on my own terms without having Divine Ranks of my own. At the very least, if I wanted to properly engage deities without gaining Divine Ranks myself, I'd need to get much deeper into the specifics of how to deal with divine abilities using spells and wits, and I'm not really looking to put that much effort into the nitty gritty for this build. All of this has kinda just been off the top of my head, and I'm sure there's more efficient methods to accomplish most of this.

[unseenmage]

3.x? Smoky Confinement spell.
PF? Scribe's Binding spell.

Spam those and viola, containment achieved. Use the PF tech version against magic immune creatures and the magic version against tech immune creatures.

And I do mean spam. 3.x's Runecaster enchanting some bullets should do the trick. Have the runes set to go off on proximity rather than on a hit so you're not attacking AC.
Everything (just about) fails its save on a one.. eventually.

Oh and you can build gods (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?546460-PF-How-to-Craft-a-Pantheon) using PF tech.

[Destro2119]

3.x? Smoky Confinement spell.
PF? Scribe's Binding spell.

Spam those and viola, containment achieved. Use the PF tech version against magic immune creatures and the magic version against tech immune creatures.

And I do mean spam. 3.x's Runecaster enchanting some bullets should do the trick. Have the runes set to go off on proximity rather than on a hit so you're not attacking AC.
Everything (just about) fails its save on a one.. eventually.

Oh and you can build gods (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?546460-PF-How-to-Craft-a-Pantheon) using PF tech.

Could you explain the point about "PF tech version against magic immune creatures and the magic version against tech immune creatures"? I mean, what is the difference? What do you mean by "PF tech version"? AFAIK there is only the Technology Guide for actual tech items.

If anything, 3.PF just means that magic is a science and thus can be industrialized and stuff in that vein.

[Destro2119]

I thought of another method for making money that doesn't require your constant attention or action: the business rules in DMG2. The basic plan here:

1) You spend a week getting your 12 trillion gp.

2) You buy a simple house and basic supplies for starting a shop...somewhere deep in the wilderness. You're basically buying abandoned houses out in the woods or wherever and filling them up with stuff with price tags, and then leaving to never return. This requires no other employees and costs you 3000 gp, in exchange for a -10 to the profit check. You buy 4 billion such houses and fill them with such supplies in this manner.

3) After a month of doing no work on your shops, you make a profit check. You take something like a -30 or whatever for never being there to work on it and for it being in the middle of nowhere and having no advertising. You roll your Profession (Shopkeeper) +2212825 check, and subtract 25 from the result. You multiply that number by 50, and that's the gp that business made this month. Average will be 110640525 gp per business, for a total monthly profit of 442 quadrillion gp.

4) You can reinvest the money from step three into more businesses the same way you did in step 2, and at some point you'll have more money than a given organization could ever possibly spend.



The Far Realm is a place where time flows arbitrarily compared to our own reality, where any X:Y time ratio is feasible in some part or another because travel to and from the Far Realm just isn't predictable enough. This is mostly important to us in that it makes it clear that time traits of absurd magnitude are perfectly rules legal - it maybe be ridiculous, but it's not illegal for a plane to exist such that a creature residing in it for one round of real-world time will have aged a million years or whatever.

The "Genesis" spell can create a demiplane with whatever Planar Traits you want. An item of At-Will Command Word "Genesis" CL 17 would cost 775400 gp, and lets you create a new demiplane as a standard action.

The "Gate" spell allows you to create a big portal to any particular point in any particularly plane. An item of At-Will Command Word "Gate" CL 17 that can only provide the transport function would cost 275400 gp.

However you end up combining both spells into a single item, it's not gonna be more expensive than 1326200 gp. A lot for low-epic, but certainly available. You can probably get it cheaper if you buy the spells built into architecture via some rules in the Stronghold Builder's Guide (where the catch is that you can't take the item with you, it can only be used in that room).



The goal was to create an organization that can rival/surpass the Foundation and I'm kinda aiming for the latter. If this is commensurate with the upper end of the foundation, I'm inclined to go further, not back. :smalltongue:



That's useful, particularly for any item crafting that would need to get done. Again though, unlike other builds, this one doesn't really have much issue spending a giant pile of XP on things, because it makes XP so easily - ironically, because it levels by killing impoverished skeletons over and over, that million level PC would still have basically no personal loot...at least until they started pulling money tricks.



You're right, it's not equal, that's kinda the problem. A million class levels is great and all, and I can certainly kick the ass of any given deity statblock if they're played in a straightforward fair fight, but divine abilities allow them to not engage in a straightforward fair fight unless they want to, and I can't force a confrontation on my own terms without having Divine Ranks of my own. At the very least, if I wanted to properly engage deities without gaining Divine Ranks myself, I'd need to get much deeper into the specifics of how to deal with divine abilities using spells and wits, and I'm not really looking to put that much effort into the nitty gritty for this build. All of this has kinda just been off the top of my head, and I'm sure there's more efficient methods to accomplish most of this.

On the topic of the Time chamber, another method could be to make a double time demiplane using the Create Demiplane spell and then making a custom device that can adjust the time flow (though this is kind of the discount method). Or even cheaper and just for personal use, make a timeless demiplane then cast Time Stop for effectively infinite time.

But on the topic of how your version functions, am I right in assuming that it creates a plane, using Genesis, where the time effects are massively dilated? How does this practically work again? Won't your guys just be aged to death? Also, is the Gate portion of it just how you access the demiplane? Does/can your organization keep track of all the different frequencies/planar addresses?

And remember that due to the paradigm of 3.PF, magic doesn't need xp and is a science, with all the benefits of that (see Starfinder for some cursory possibilities). One benefit of this is that manufacturing times can be greatly sped up from the "hand-craft" system we see in base 3.5. Like, on industrial levels, which is certainly possible with your org's abilities.

I do note that the money your organization is making would put it at not only on a highly, highly developed material plane world's level, but also on the interplanar level. Which is cool.

[AvatarVecna]

But on the topic of how your version functions, am I right in assuming that it creates a plane, using Genesis, where the time effects are massively dilated? How does this practically work again? Won't your guys just be aged to death? Also, is the Gate portion of it just how you access the demiplane? Does/can your organization keep track of all the different frequencies/planar addresses?

1) Time-immortality isn't that hard to get. Case in point, I could become undead to avoid perishing (in fact, I would get a marvelous power upgrade from going in).

2) It would only threaten to age us to death if we actually entered it ourselves, but we're not. We're using magic items to cast the spell through the gate at a safe-ish distance.

3) The demiplane isn't a full plane proper, it's like a bubble floating somewhere in the infinite of the Ethereal Plane.

4) I have Int 45600+ and billions of employees. Keeping track of a million bubbles of spacetime shenanigans is not only within our capabilities, it's basically the job description. Heck, with magic as science, we can have a computer database keep track of where we left them. And because the ethereal is infinitely big, we can put them so far out that nobody will ever find them without deity-level senses.

5) I can put up Walls Of Force and Forbiddance around it afterwards if I need to. It's not like I'm sending my followers in anyway.


And remember that due to the paradigm of 3.PF, magic doesn't need xp and is a science, with all the benefits of that (see Starfinder for some cursory possibilities). One benefit of this is that manufacturing times can be greatly sped up from the "hand-craft" system we see in base 3.5. Like, on industrial levels, which is certainly possible with your org's abilities.

I'm aware of how magic item crafting can be industrialized, I was in that thread of yours too.


I do note that the money your organization is making would put it at not only on a highly, highly developed material plane world's level, but also on the interplanar level. Which is cool.

And again, that's basically the level of money assuming I stop at 1 million levels or thereabout, but I don't have to stop there.

[AvatarVecna]

I'm aware of how magic item crafting can be industrialized, I was in that thread of yours too.

As an example of the kind of industrialization this specific build could perform, Craft check makes ~14 trillion gp worth of magic items per week (or ~96 trillion if its Craft Alchemy). This could be a series of 3D Printers that can print any magic item, the kind of thing that would be worthy of being an SCP in its own right.

Using 3.5 Wish since that one can make magic items.

At-Will Use-Activated "Wish" CL 17, "XP" limit 21000. Final Cost: 10806000 gp, can create any magic item up to 200k gp market value. Can also upgrade any existing magic item to be worth 200k more on the market than it currently is.

With a week's worth of effort on my part, I could pump out ~9 million of these things.

[unseenmage]

Could you explain the point about "PF tech version against magic immune creatures and the magic version against tech immune creatures"? I mean, what is the difference? What do you mean by "PF tech version"? AFAIK there is only the Technology Guide for actual tech items.

If anything, 3.PF just means that magic is a science and thus can be industrialized and stuff in that vein.

IIRC Either the Technology Guide or the Iron Gods adventure path has a paragraph or two about how tech versions of magic items can be crafted (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/technological-equipment/) using the analogous tech crafting feat.

Which basically means that there is potentially a tech version of every magic item and with that every magic effect.

So against creatures with magic immunity or antimagic the tech versions of those magic effects are really potent.
Same goes for the magic version jn an antitech field.

[Destro2119]

IIRC Either the Technology Guide or the Iron Gods adventure path has a paragraph or two about how tech versions of magic items can be crafted (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/technological-equipment/) using the analogous tech crafting feat.

Which basically means that there is potentially a tech version of every magic item and with that every magic effect.

So against creatures with magic immunity or antimagic the tech versions of those magic effects are really potent.
Same goes for the magic version jn an antitech field.

Wait, so does this mean you can make a magic/magitech starship or AIs or computers, etc.?

[Destro2119]

As an example of the kind of industrialization this specific build could perform, Craft check makes ~14 trillion gp worth of magic items per week (or ~96 trillion if its Craft Alchemy). This could be a series of 3D Printers that can print any magic item, the kind of thing that would be worthy of being an SCP in its own right.

Using 3.5 Wish since that one can make magic items.

At-Will Use-Activated "Wish" CL 17, "XP" limit 21000. Final Cost: 10806000 gp, can create any magic item up to 200k gp market value. Can also upgrade any existing magic item to be worth 200k more on the market than it currently is.

With a week's worth of effort on my part, I could pump out ~9 million of these things.

Yeah, the thing with DnD is that things scale so quickly that even low epic characters have the capabilities to do some crazy setting engineering. Like, founding intergalactic and interdimensional empires by 20th level is very easy.

By 30th level you have effectively won DnD and can take down anything short of the gods. And even that is if all the people loyal to you haven't given you a divine rank by then (but at that point making up an epic ritual to give yourself one by force is also fairly easy).

Heck, by level 40 not only do you have the same amount of levels as gods, you can take Innate Spell to give yourself infinite actions. Among other unstated things, like being able to play with the basic laws of the multiverse to your heart's content, or transcending into a being of pure magic that is also a god. And so on.

[AvatarVecna]

Yeah, the thing with DnD is that optimization scales so quickly that even low epic characters have the capabilities to do some crazy setting engineering. Like, founding intergalactic and interdimensional empires by 20th level is very easy.

By 30th level you have effectively won DnD and can take down anything short of the gods. And even that is if all the people loyal to you haven't given you a divine rank by then (but at that point making up an epic ritual to give yourself one by force is also fairly easy).

Heck, by level 40 not only do you have the same amount of levels as gods, you can take Innate Spell to give yourself infinite actions. Among other unstated things, like being able to play with the basic laws of the multiverse to your heart's content, or transcending into a being of pure magic that is also a god. And so on.

That's all true, given a particular level of optimization; if you're trying hard enough, infinite everything is achievable at lvl 1, and leveling up is really more a process of reducing how hard you have to cheese the system to get the desired result. The point of my build isn't accomplishing things that can't otherwise be accomplished within the system - for all that my money hacks are pretty cool to be pulled off with the Craft skill and weird PF magic item crafting, an Artificer 7 who's cheesing things hard enough could totally make a 1/day Wish item that can gradually make itself more powerful. After about a month, it's powerful enough to make an at-will Wish ring, and from there you have infinite wishes of NI power at your disposal to create the army of 3D-Printing Machines like I've done here - or whatever else you want to do with your infinite wishes of NI power.

Even the business thing? Realistically, the most you can possibly get is a -60 penalty or something close to that from both default business stuff and event penalties. If you can hit a +85 or so, you can keep your business going without ever being there, and it'll slowly make a profit and build towards you being able to buy another wilderness shop exactly like the first one - and then those two will afford another, and then another, and that'll spiral until you have all the shops and all the money. If you can hit +76 or so, that's enough for you to make a profit more often than not even in the worst month of your businesses life. A real easy way to hit +76 is 23 ranks, +23 from item familiar, and +30 from magic item. Boom, enough bonus that you'll inevitably make money at business even if you're never there and it's buried deep in the wilderness. Sure, it takes longer to hit a quadrillion than the other method, but it's certainly possible. I'm sure if enough effort was put into maintaining your businesses, a lvl 1 character could just as easily turn D&D into a Cookie Clicker Simulator.

[unseenmage]

Wait, so does this mean you can make a magic/magitech starship or AIs or computers, etc.?

Not sure I understand the question.

Sadly a basic computing unit (as well as a lot of other simple tech that would've made a WHOLE lot of sense) was never presented with any kind of stats.

On the one hand PF tech is analogous to magic. So advanced that it is almost mystical.

On the other hand it is described as being very much analogous to our own ideas of computer banks and memory and processing so it always bugged me that they didn't provide basic computer stats.

Combining magic and tech is detailed in those rules too though so yeah, you can definitely make magic tech.

[AvatarVecna]

AI isn't complicated and even plays into some popular sci-fi tropes: if you can use tech rules to create a tech version of any magic item...how about an intelligent magic item? Complete with ego scores you gotta wrestle with and maybe lose control of them?

[unseenmage]

AI isn't complicated and even plays into some popular sci-fi tropes: if you can use tech rules to create a tech version of any magic item...how about an intelligent magic item? Complete with ego scores you gotta wrestle with and maybe lose control of them?

They have that. (https://legacy.aonprd.com/technologyGuide/ai.html)

Fun question is, what happens when one item has both kinds of intelligence?

[Destro2119]

Not sure I understand the question.

Sadly a basic computing unit (as well as a lot of other simple tech that would've made a WHOLE lot of sense) was never presented with any kind of stats.

On the one hand PF tech is analogous to magic. So advanced that it is almost mystical.

On the other hand it is described as being very much analogous to our own ideas of computer banks and memory and processing so it always bugged me that they didn't provide basic computer stats.

Combining magic and tech is detailed in those rules too though so yeah, you can definitely make magic tech.

In a campaign I once played in, what we had was basically super high science fantasy, and a TON of magic+science.

So we had ninth level spells and stuff like timeless demiplane factories/infinite energy demiplane powered starships/cities, etc.

We also simulated advancements in magic and over classes by using our customized Corefinder RPG, and the GM even let us make our own advancements. Over the course of the campaign we had modified the magic system, advanced spells and made magical martial arts, and a ton of magic/magitech goodies. Like a massive nanoswarm made of fine sized rune guardians all of whom were modified to be able to cast higher level spells, like fireball and that incorporated a variant magic AI that was a hive mind. To name one.

The whole topic of magitech and all is basically the thing my gaming group loved. We took a lot of inspiration from Cthulhutech, Eberron, Starfinder, and a book called Magical Industrial Revolution.

[Destro2119]

That's all true, given a particular level of optimization; if you're trying hard enough, infinite everything is achievable at lvl 1, and leveling up is really more a process of reducing how hard you have to cheese the system to get the desired result. The point of my build isn't accomplishing things that can't otherwise be accomplished within the system - for all that my money hacks are pretty cool to be pulled off with the Craft skill and weird PF magic item crafting, an Artificer 7 who's cheesing things hard enough could totally make a 1/day Wish item that can gradually make itself more powerful. After about a month, it's powerful enough to make an at-will Wish ring, and from there you have infinite wishes of NI power at your disposal to create the army of 3D-Printing Machines like I've done here - or whatever else you want to do with your infinite wishes of NI power.

Even the business thing? Realistically, the most you can possibly get is a -60 penalty or something close to that from both default business stuff and event penalties. If you can hit a +85 or so, you can keep your business going without ever being there, and it'll slowly make a profit and build towards you being able to buy another wilderness shop exactly like the first one - and then those two will afford another, and then another, and that'll spiral until you have all the shops and all the money. If you can hit +76 or so, that's enough for you to make a profit more often than not even in the worst month of your businesses life. A real easy way to hit +76 is 23 ranks, +23 from item familiar, and +30 from magic item. Boom, enough bonus that you'll inevitably make money at business even if you're never there and it's buried deep in the wilderness. Sure, it takes longer to hit a quadrillion than the other method, but it's certainly possible. I'm sure if enough effort was put into maintaining your businesses, a lvl 1 character could just as easily turn D&D into a Cookie Clicker Simulator.

Yeah, DnDverse is up there with Marvel and Creation in terms of hax and OCPs.

Check out this article: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2

A single artificer could be a setting mechanic in and of himself, let alone the plethora of classes and levels in 3.PF. And it gets even more out there when you add in industrialization et al into the mix.


EDIT: Just came up with another idea for the actual Foundation: All of O5 are deities, with domains and portfolios relating to the Foundation's goals, ie containment, protection, artifice, magic, etc etc. This should be easily doable, by dint of the fact that A. the Foundation has the sanction of pretty much every nation, B. The Foundation has TONS of supporters, and C. In the lore of DnD/PF it's not rare for multiple gods to share a planet anyways.

This should basically give the organization enough firepower/hax/wherewithal to take on the higher OP things in terms of SCPs.