Minting gold! How to?

[Max Caysey]

I’m interested in two overall things in this post.

1) how does one by RAW start minting gp, and how much can be made by level 1-4 gold smelters per week?

2) how to incorporate this, in an actual game, as a player, without breaking the monetary system on the game?

I assume the raw is that you pay 100gp worth of raw gold material and by the crafting rules turn that into 300 gp with of coins? Use those 300 gp to buy 300 gp worth of raw gold and turn that into 900 worth of gold coins… so on and so forth, 2700, 8100, 24300….

If I wanted to do this in game, for the obvious reasons, and because it would fit the character which is build around being an opportunistic entrepreneur/ criminal, how would I best go about doing/ presenting this to my DM, and what would be some good/ reasonable limitations to put on this? I’m thinking raw gold availability… I would need miners/ prospectors, and how would one go about determining how much one could actually mine in a given area - and how long would it take to mine.

Also what would such an operation entail and cost??

I want to do this, but I’m not looking to break any game, just wants some extra money flowing in steadily! Any thought would be great!

Cheers!

[Beni-Kujaku]

The Craft rules would definitely not apply here. During the Middle Ages and antiquity, the value of a gold coin was more or less the same as the value of its weight in gold. In d&d, it's basically the same, with a 1lb gold ingot being worth 50gp (with one gp weighing 1/50th of a pound). I guess you could make some money out of it, but you should use the Profession chart instead (one Profession check per week of work, you gain half of that in gold pieces for your work).


Edit: If you want to make it a large-scale business, there are rules for it in DMG2, p180. It's quite complicated but pretty interesting.

[Jack_Simth]

Pure gold is soft; it wears out quickly. Lots of (far from all) coins are debased for that reason (and to save on the valuable metal).

The RAW of a craft check mostly works if you assume one or more of:
Coins are debased, and the value comes from the King's stamp on it.
You're starting with raw ore, not pure gold, and refining is part of minting.

Same basic problem shows up with art objects and trade goods. But unless you're using Fabricate, supplemental books, or your FM sets the DC really high, crafting is quite slow (check result times dc in silver of progress per week - so if coins are dc 15, and you get a 30, you turn 15 gp of materials into 45 gp of coins for a full week of work - there is a rush option if you can make that taking ten, though)

[Telonius]

How I'd run it: Craft check x 10 to determine how many GPs you can mint that week. The gold isn't yours, it belongs to the king (or whoever). How much you earn for doing that would be worked out ahead of time (probably your level times some number of gp, or possibly something like a tiny percentage of the coins you make).

[Jack_Simth]

How I'd run it: Craft check x 10 to determine how many GPs you can mint that week. The gold isn't yours, it belongs to the king (or whoever). How much you earn for doing that would be worked out ahead of time (probably your level times some number of gp, or possibly something like a tiny percentage of the coins you make).

That would be the "earn a living" option of Craft, which is 1/2 the skill check result in gp per week for the minter in service of the king, if you want to play it with the written rules.

[Max Caysey]

The Craft rules would definitely not apply here. During the Middle Ages and antiquity, the value of a gold coin was more or less the same as the value of its weight in gold. In d&d, it's basically the same, with a 1lb gold ingot being worth 50gp (with one gp weighing 1/50th of a pound). I guess you could make some money out of it, but you should use the Profession chart instead (one Profession check per week of work, you gain half of that in gold pieces for your work).


Edit: If you want to make it a large-scale business, there are rules for it in DMG2, p180. It's quite complicated but pretty interesting.

Yeah, I don't know if the profession skill is worth it. It would seem that with even very high skill checks, the gain is very limited. I know I wrote a steady income, but I would like for it to still be a fairly substantial income - ergo be worth the time.

Lets assume I set my level 1 followers to work using this rule. I don't have a lot so I dedicate 3 level 1 smelters/minters to start working. I can get their skill to about 10 + taking 10 so each follower would earn 10gp per weak. For that to become an attractive business setup, I would need to dedicate 30-50 followers. That is not an option currently. It will become when and if I reach higher levels, and gain more followers, but for now, its not.

If its not going to be more advantageous, I might just start crafting masterwork weapons, and sell them for 150 a peace. I can turn out about 2 of those per week, so that would already be much more advantageous. So, I don't feel profession skill is a viable option here.



Pure gold is soft; it wears out quickly. Lots of (far from all) coins are debased for that reason (and to save on the valuable metal).

The RAW of a craft check mostly works if you assume one or more of:
Coins are debased, and the value comes from the King's stamp on it.
You're starting with raw ore, not pure gold, and refining is part of minting.

Same basic problem shows up with art objects and trade goods. But unless you're using Fabricate, supplemental books, or your FM sets the DC really high, crafting is quite slow (check result times dc in silver of progress per week - so if coins are dc 15, and you get a 30, you turn 15 gp of materials into 45 gp of coins for a full week of work - there is a rush option if you can make that taking ten, though)

Being a criminal type, I was probably going to substitute large part of the gold for some other heavy metal like lead. Granted some might discover this lead core, because the coins might be lighter than normal, but if you have a handful of coins and a few are the forgeries, then probably not.

But that would depend on the amount of money that could be made from this... and how complex and encompassing a prospecting/ mining/ smelting/ minting operation would be to set up and run... Again, I can fairly easily make about 100 per week from selling weapons, so for this to be an attractive venture it would have to produce about the same amount at least.

I have a level 4 master smith, who can achieve a dc 50 check by taking 10, so it coins are DC 15 I could raise that dc to 45x50 = 2250 (x2 because of feats for at total of 4500. Which would net 450 gp.

That's one follower. The same follower who churns out about 2 master work swords per weak. So the question is, how much would it cost to make the 450 coins? It costs 95gp to produce one masterwork long sword so doing that would net 110gp per weak in profit.



That would be the "earn a living" option of Craft, which is 1/2 the skill check result in gp per week for the minter in service of the king, if you want to play it with the written rules.

Yeah, while I can see the idea when having a factory full of workers doing this, having only a handful seems very lackluster. Again I'm not trying to break anything here, but at least make more money that from crafting masterwork weapons.

[Maat Mons]

According to traditional crafting rules, you sell the results at 1/2 value, and pay 1/3 value for raw materials, so you net 1/6 or the total value of goods produced in profits. So if you’re producing 450 gp-worth of goods, you’re netting 75 gp in profits. You could argue that that minting gp violates the selling at 1/2 value assumption. But it should also violate the assumption that you only pay 1/3 in raw materials. By the more reasonable assumptions that you can sell a gp for 1 gp, and the weight of gold needed to make a gp is equal to the weight of the gp, you’re netting no profit at all.

If you’re making counterfeit coins, then they don’t actually have the same value as real coins. If you’re selling these to a criminal organization that’s working to launder them into real money, they’re certainly not paying you 1 gp for each fake gp. In that case, you’re back to the baseline assumptions for craft, including selling at half value. If you’re not selling these to a criminal organization, then your profits are limited by how fast you can launder the fake coins into real money. That’s going to be a profession check. You could have all the fake coins in the world, but there’s only so fast you can sneak them into other transactions without getting caught.

Just so you know, if you can finagle a skill check up to 50 when taking 10, you can earn 300 gp per week using the rules for running a business in DMG2.

[Lapak]

The Craft rules would definitely not apply here. During the Middle Ages and antiquity, the value of a gold coin was more or less the same as the value of its weight in gold. In d&d, it's basically the same, with a 1lb gold ingot being worth 50gp (with one gp weighing 1/50th of a pound). I guess you could make some money out of it, but you should use the Profession chart instead (one Profession check per week of work, you gain half of that in gold pieces for your work).To expand on this, the whole POINT of coins was that the entity making them was establishing a standard of 'this is X amount of silver, all of them are the same.'

Related: the issue with making money by counterfeiting them is that it undermines the validity of the kingdom's actual coinage, which is the kind of thing that gets whatever the full force of the law is to come down on you but hard. Counterfeiting absolutely happened, and kings would sometimes debase their own coinage in order to pump cash into their economy, but an outside entity doing it pretty much jumps to the top of the local government's enemy list in a hurry once the false coins start coming to light.

[Jack_Simth]

According to traditional crafting rules, you sell the results at 1/2 value
Neither 3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm) nor Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/craft/) craft rules mention selling. That comes from the general loot rules (3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#sellingLoot) or Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/#TOC-Selling-Treasure)), which have an exception for trade goods (sell at full). And of course, with coins, you simply spend them.

, and pay 1/3 value for raw materials, so you net 1/6 or the total value of goods produced in profits. So if you’re producing 450 gp-worth of goods, you’re netting 75 gp in profits.
If you're making things like swords, sure. If you make trade goods instead, you invest 100 gp on a 300 gp value trade good, and use it as 300 gp, netting 200 gp profit. And you don't need to worry about the king's agents wanting to question you on why you're putting his face on coins.

You could argue that that minting gp violates the selling at 1/2 value assumption. But it should also violate the assumption that you only pay 1/3 in raw materials. By the more reasonable assumptions that you can sell a gp for 1 gp, and the weight of gold needed to make a gp is equal to the weight of the gp, you’re netting no profit at all.

I listed two different easy possibilities for why 1 gp costs less than 1 gp in raw materials to make, which could make the existing Craft rules make sense. Why are you picking ones that don't?

I have a level 4 master smith, who can achieve a dc 50 check by taking 10, so it coins are DC 15 I could raise that dc to 45x50 = 2250 (x2 because of feats for at total of 4500. Which would net 450 gp.

That's one follower. The same follower who churns out about 2 master work swords per weak. So the question is, how much would it cost to make the 450 coins? It costs 95gp to produce one masterwork long sword so doing that would net 110gp per weak in profit.




Yeah, while I can see the idea when having a factory full of workers doing this, having only a handful seems very lackluster. Again I'm not trying to break anything here, but at least make more money that from crafting masterwork weapons.
Then your real gem is "trade goods". Few folks will argue that the Craft rules not being valid for them, and they're not going to upset anyone when you use them (they're as legit as anything - unlike coins, there's seldom going to be one "official source" for flour, paper, linen, silk, and so on).

[Jay R]

Until you get to the level of debasing the coins with lesser metals, coining is just some authority saying, "I guarantee that this is metal is pure, and has this value." You aren't increasing the value of the gold, just defining it. So there's not really any point to doing it a a private enterprise.


1) how does one by RAW start minting gp, and how much can be made by level 1-4 gold smelters per week?

Cold striking is pretty easy; the complicated part is making the dies; the expensive and limiting part is getting the gold. You make two dies, one for each side, with a design clear enough to be recognized, and complicated enough to deter counterfeiters. Put the right sized disc between them in a holder, strike once with a hammer, take the coin out. With this, and a supply of gold blanks, anyone can make a coin every ten seconds or so. That's over 2,000 gp coins in a day, even before you get into multiple dies.

The Venetian mint made roughly 20,000 coins per day. A hammer die lasts about 17,000 strikes, and the anvil die about 36,000, so they need to be replace every day or two.

But this is turning 20,000 gp worth of gold into 20,000 gp worth of verified gold; it isn't increasing its value.

More information can be found here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coining_(mint)).


2) how to incorporate this, in an actual game, as a player, without breaking the monetary system on the game?

Don't worry about breaking the monetary system. The average adventuring party would do much more damage to it coming back from an adventure.


If I wanted to do this in game, for the obvious reasons, and because it would fit the character which is build around being an opportunistic entrepreneur/ criminal, how would I best go about doing/ presenting this to my DM, and what would be some good/ reasonable limitations to put on this?

Well, the biggest limitation is that it is probably illegal, unless you have a commission from the government to make coins with the King's face. The actual money-making part is mining the gold, not the coining.


I’m thinking raw gold availability… I would need miners/ prospectors, and how would one go about determining how much one could actually mine in a given area - and how long would it take to mine.

In general, any known gold deposit is already being mined at pretty much capacity. You need to find a new, unknown gold strike (like California in 1849), and then keep other miners from finding out about it ([I]UNlike California in 1849).

The people who get rich in mining towns aren't the miners; they are the merchants selling mining equipment, food, etc.


Also what would such an operation entail and cost??

I don't know, but if you can make big money doing it, somebody else can buy the same equipment, and then sell gold for slightly less than you do. Then you will lower your price below theirs, and that's why the merchants are the ones making big money.


I want to do this, but I’m not looking to break any game, just wants some extra money flowing in steadily! Any thought would be great!

The only example I know of breaking a monetary system with coinage is the Spanish Price Revolution, after the discovery the New World. Spain brought back tons of gold, and, instead of making jewelry or other valuables, they made huge amounts of coins. This gives the government a one-time boost of money, but since the money supply went way up, and the amount of goods stayed the same, there was soon rampant inflation. But the damage came from the influx or gold. Unless you greatly increase the amount of gold being mined, you aren't really affecting things that much.

If you get a gold mine, don't set up a mint. Either supply the miners, or use Craft to turn the gold into jewelry, which is more valuable than the equivalent weight in coins.

[Thane of Fife]

The 2e Complete Book of Dwarves has some rules for mining. Obviously, they don't use the 3e skill rules, but you might be able to use them for rough economics.

Very roughly, they look something like this:

Assuming you have a location for a gold mine, your operation requires miners, overseers, and smelters. One miner produces ore that can be smelted down to be worth, on average, 300 gp each week. The overseer must make a check each week or the total output is halved (or worse). Then the ore has to be smelted. The size of the smelter bought determines how fast you can smelt the ore and how much it costs to run the smelter. So, something like six people could, in theory, be producing about 1200 gold pieces per week. It's not too clear if you need more people for excavating and maintaining the mine or if the miners do that.

Note that the main limitations on this are probably that it is difficult to find a valuable mining location and that most mines will play out very quickly if intensively mined (there are rules on those things, too).

[Particle_Man]

I wonder if the fabricate spell could be used for this and whether it would be worth it to do so?

[Melcar]

I wonder if the fabricate spell could be used for this and whether it would be worth it to do so?

It can, if you can bypass the material component!

[Maat Mons]

Psionic Fabricate needs no material component. You still need the raw materials, to serve as the target of the power. But at least you don't need double the raw materials, like with regular Fabricate.

[Max Caysey]

According to traditional crafting rules, you sell the results at 1/2 value, and pay 1/3 value for raw materials, so you net 1/6 or the total value of goods produced in profits. So if youÂ’re producing 450 gp-worth of goods, youÂ’re netting 75 gp in profits. You could argue that that minting gp violates the selling at 1/2 value assumption. But it should also violate the assumption that you only pay 1/3 in raw materials. By the more reasonable assumptions that you can sell a gp for 1 gp, and the weight of gold needed to make a gp is equal to the weight of the gp, youÂ’re netting no profit at all.

If youÂ’re making counterfeit coins, then they donÂ’t actually have the same value as real coins. If youÂ’re selling these to a criminal organization thatÂ’s working to launder them into real money, theyÂ’re certainly not paying you 1 gp for each fake gp. In that case, youÂ’re back to the baseline assumptions for craft, including selling at half value. If youÂ’re not selling these to a criminal organization, then your profits are limited by how fast you can launder the fake coins into real money. ThatÂ’s going to be a profession check. You could have all the fake coins in the world, but thereÂ’s only so fast you can sneak them into other transactions without getting caught.

Just so you know, if you can finagle a skill check up to 50 when taking 10, you can earn 300 gp per week using the rules for running a business in DMG2.

I can reach that high crafting because I use cleric earth dwarves, who gets a +12 bonus to crafting for that combination + apprentice crafter. I can only get to about +10 for profession.

I don't mind at all doing criminal activities, in fact his business venture/ quest of becoming a ruler somehow will most likely entail all kinds of clandestine activities including forging grants, titles, counterfeiting money extortion and racketeering.


To expand on this, the whole POINT of coins was that the entity making them was establishing a standard of 'this is X amount of silver, all of them are the same.'

Related: the issue with making money by counterfeiting them is that it undermines the validity of the kingdom's actual coinage, which is the kind of thing that gets whatever the full force of the law is to come down on you but hard. Counterfeiting absolutely happened, and kings would sometimes debase their own coinage in order to pump cash into their economy, but an outside entity doing it pretty much jumps to the top of the local government's enemy list in a hurry once the false coins start coming to light.

Again, not a problem in and of itself. I have or will have agents that can help subvert such challenges.


Neither 3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm) nor Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/craft/) craft rules mention selling. That comes from the general loot rules (3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#sellingLoot) or Pathfinder (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/#TOC-Selling-Treasure)), which have an exception for trade goods (sell at full). And of course, with coins, you simply spend them.

If you're making things like swords, sure. If you make trade goods instead, you invest 100 gp on a 300 gp value trade good, and use it as 300 gp, netting 200 gp profit. And you don't need to worry about the king's agents wanting to question you on why you're putting his face on coins.

I listed two different easy possibilities for why 1 gp costs less than 1 gp in raw materials to make, which could make the existing Craft rules make sense. Why are you picking ones that don't?

Then your real gem is "trade goods". Few folks will argue that the Craft rules not being valid for them, and they're not going to upset anyone when you use them (they're as legit as anything - unlike coins, there's seldom going to be one "official source" for flour, paper, linen, silk, and so on).

What would suggest specifically. I want it to be a craft skill, since I have or can easily optimize crafting skill, thus netting higher possible DC and thus higher income. But I don't know what trade good might be good... Suggestions?


Until you get to the level of debasing the coins with lesser metals, coining is just some authority saying, "I guarantee that this is metal is pure, and has this value." You aren't increasing the value of the gold, just defining it. So there's not really any point to doing it a a private enterprise.



Cold striking is pretty easy; the complicated part is making the dies; the expensive and limiting part is getting the gold. You make two dies, one for each side, with a design clear enough to be recognized, and complicated enough to deter counterfeiters. Put the right sized disc between them in a holder, strike once with a hammer, take the coin out. With this, and a supply of gold blanks, anyone can make a coin every ten seconds or so. That's over 2,000 gp coins in a day, even before you get into multiple dies.

The Venetian mint made roughly 20,000 coins per day. A hammer die lasts about 17,000 strikes, and the anvil die about 36,000, so they need to be replace every day or two.

But this is turning 20,000 gp worth of gold into 20,000 gp worth of verified gold; it isn't increasing its value.

More information can be found here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coining_(mint)).



Don't worry about breaking the monetary system. The average adventuring party would do much more damage to it coming back from an adventure.



Well, the biggest limitation is that it is probably illegal, unless you have a commission from the government to make coins with the King's face. The actual money-making part is mining the gold, not the coining.



In general, any known gold deposit is already being mined at pretty much capacity. You need to find a new, unknown gold strike (like California in 1849), and then keep other miners from finding out about it ([I]UNlike California in 1849).

The people who get rich in mining towns aren't the miners; they are the merchants selling mining equipment, food, etc.



I don't know, but if you can make big money doing it, somebody else can buy the same equipment, and then sell gold for slightly less than you do. Then you will lower your price below theirs, and that's why the merchants are the ones making big money.



The only example I know of breaking a monetary system with coinage is the Spanish Price Revolution, after the discovery the New World. Spain brought back tons of gold, and, instead of making jewelry or other valuables, they made huge amounts of coins. This gives the government a one-time boost of money, but since the money supply went way up, and the amount of goods stayed the same, there was soon rampant inflation. But the damage came from the influx or gold. Unless you greatly increase the amount of gold being mined, you aren't really affecting things that much.

If you get a gold mine, don't set up a mint. Either supply the miners, or use Craft to turn the gold into jewelry, which is more valuable than the equivalent weight in coins.

Ok, so jewelry is better than coins unless I'm counterfeiting directly. So we are talking buying 1 lbs of raw gold material and turning that into a necklace worth 150?


The 2e Complete Book of Dwarves has some rules for mining. Obviously, they don't use the 3e skill rules, but you might be able to use them for rough economics.

Very roughly, they look something like this:

Assuming you have a location for a gold mine, your operation requires miners, overseers, and smelters. One miner produces ore that can be smelted down to be worth, on average, 300 gp each week. The overseer must make a check each week or the total output is halved (or worse). Then the ore has to be smelted. The size of the smelter bought determines how fast you can smelt the ore and how much it costs to run the smelter. So, something like six people could, in theory, be producing about 1200 gold pieces per week. It's not too clear if you need more people for excavating and maintaining the mine or if the miners do that.

Note that the main limitations on this are probably that it is difficult to find a valuable mining location and that most mines will play out very quickly if intensively mined (there are rules on those things, too).

While I like 2nd ed books, and would have no problem porting things from it - which I often do if I DM, I'm not sure my DM would want to start delving into 2nd ed books. But I'll look into it for inspiration for sure!

[redking]

There was a similar question elsewhere (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/80172/can-i-use-fabricate-to-turn-gold-coins-into-ingots-worth-three-times-as-much-gol) about turning gold pieces into gold ingots, using only 1/3 the weight (the "raw materials") - that is 16.6gp - to produce an ingot with the same weight as 50gp - that is 1 pound. This is where the rules, which are just guidelines really, break down and the DM has to step in. Obviously crafting cannot increase the mass of the end product.

The Craft skill allows you to make items. This is called "the basic function of the Craft skill". However, making money from the Craft skill is determined via a Craft skill check. "You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work". It doesn't matter what you are making, whether you are minting coins, weaving baskets, or building ships, your earnings are about half your Craft skill check in gold pieces per week.

If you want to produce a nice bow using raw materials including a tree branch, strong string, and tools, then you can do that using the rules for crafting these items. If you want to do that as a business, your profits are constrained by your Craft skill check.

[Jack_Simth]

What would suggest specifically. I want it to be a craft skill, since I have or can easily optimize crafting skill, thus netting higher possible DC and thus higher income. But I don't know what trade good might be good... Suggestions?If your DM lets you stack the +10 DC increase multiple times? Basically any of the items off the lists (Pathfinder Trade Goods (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/goods-and-services/furniture-trade-goods-vehicles/#table-foods-spices) or 3.5 Trade Goods (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins), as appropriate to your game) should be fine. Linen is on both (it's made from flax, a plant) at 4 gp per square yard.

If your DM does NOT let you stack the +10 DC multiple times, then - with that take 10 result of 50 - you want whatever you can find with the highest DC. No DC's are listed, so you'd have to ask your DM.

[Jay R]

Ok, so jewelry is better than coins unless I'm counterfeiting directly. So we are talking buying 1 lbs of raw gold material and turning that into a necklace worth 150?

That would make sense under real-world assumptions. But the rules are clear – you have to pay 1/3 of the item's cost as raw materials.

Either talk your DM out of using those rules, or assume that those materials include gems, other metals, clasps, flux, or other materials.

The base rule of 1/3 gp cost in materials is known to be factually wrong as a simulation – like hit points, AC, discrete levels, etc. But our simulation is intentionally more simplistic than reality, or it would be too complicated to run a game.



I don't recommend coinage as a tool to get rich, because it isn't. Originally the coin was [I]supposed to be the same value as the raw materials. Similarly, "crafting" one pound of gold into a gold bar stamped "one pound" doesn't increase its value; it authenticates it.

Your DM could ignore that fact and simply say that you need 1/3 as much gold as you will make coins. That is the rule, after all.

But in the real world, making jewelry out of gold increases its value, and making coins out of gold doesn't.

Also, to make jewelry you could just buy the gold, with no need for a mining operation. Making coins out of mined gold is the same as making bars, or just selling raw gold. Neither coins nor bars are valuable, separate from the metal value.

So the real increase in value is the mining, not the coining.

In any case, it's highly unlikely that staying home and making coins, or jewelry, would get more money than the equivalent time spent adventuring. When my PCs make things, it's so I, or another party member, can have them. [Fabricate is one of my go-to spells.]

But talk to your DM. Ask about how much gold you will need to make gold coins, and how much you will need to make jewelry. This takes judgment calls, and that means the DM will decide.

[Jack_Simth]

In any case, it's highly unlikely that staying home and making coins, or jewelry, would get more money than the equivalent time spent adventuring. When my PCs make things, it's so I, or another party member, can have them. [Fabricate is one of my go-to spells.]

OP clarified:This is followers working, not the PC in This Post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25563567&postcount=6)

[rel]

If you want to make big money from crafting as a shady underworld merchant prince I recommend poisons.

There are alternate poison crafting rules in 3.5 (DotU I think) that let's you craft them a lot more quickly and possibly more cheaply.

Craft poisons. Sell them. Rinse, repeat.

As an added bonus, there are plenty of obvious complications that can come from such and enterprise, the adventures practically write themselves.

[Max Caysey]

There was a similar question elsewhere (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/80172/can-i-use-fabricate-to-turn-gold-coins-into-ingots-worth-three-times-as-much-gol) about turning gold pieces into gold ingots, using only 1/3 the weight (the "raw materials") - that is 16.6gp - to produce an ingot with the same weight as 50gp - that is 1 pound. This is where the rules, which are just guidelines really, break down and the DM has to step in. Obviously crafting cannot increase the mass of the end product.

The Craft skill allows you to make items. This is called "the basic function of the Craft skill". However, making money from the Craft skill is determined via a Craft skill check. "You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work". It doesn't matter what you are making, whether you are minting coins, weaving baskets, or building ships, your earnings are about half your Craft skill check in gold pieces per week.

If you want to produce a nice bow using raw materials including a tree branch, strong string, and tools, then you can do that using the rules for crafting these items. If you want to do that as a business, your profits are constrained by your Craft skill check.

Hmm... that kind of makes sense, if you want to simplify it. Because if I start a business where there are 100 smith churning out about 150 master work long-swords per week, I would not like to only be making 25x100... when I could be making 75 gp per sword... But thats neither here nor there, since I have 2 crafters atm not 100.




OP clarified:This is followers working, not the PC in This Post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25563567&postcount=6)

Indeed... It will be my followers who will be doing this while I do adventuring and other things...



If you want to make big money from crafting as a shady underworld merchant prince I recommend poisons.

There are alternate poison crafting rules in 3.5 (DotU I think) that let's you craft them a lot more quickly and possibly more cheaply.

Craft poisons. Sell them. Rinse, repeat.

As an added bonus, there are plenty of obvious complications that can come from such and enterprise, the adventures practically write themselves.

Poisons you say... that's a really interesting idea. I have never really checked out poison crafting... could you elaborate? Like how would one do that?

[redking]

Hmm... that kind of makes sense, if you want to simplify it. Because if I start a business where there are 100 smith churning out about 150 master work long-swords per week, I would not like to only be making 25x100... when I could be making 75 gp per sword... But thats neither here nor there, since I have 2 crafters atm not 100.

D&D is not designed to be an economic simulator, but to the extent that it has economic simulation, it comes through Craft and Profession checks. It is these checks that determine how much money you will make.

The other part of the crafting rules is for actual crafting, which isn't really part of the economic simulation. It's this that you are using in your money making scheme.

While I don't approve of doing this, if I were to do this I would make an artistic composition instead.


Creating an Artistic Composition: In addition to concrete goods, Craft covers artistic endeavors such as writing and musical composition. As with the standard use of the Craft skill, the DC, your check results, and the value of the composition determine how long it takes to compose a musical or written work. The table below summarizes DCs and values for common types of compositions. All the values are expressed as ranges. You can choose your target value for your composition.

The only raw materials required for a written composition are pen, ink, and parchment. In the course of one week's work, you spend about 2 gp on materials. Use this cost rather than the cost of the normal materials (a total of one-third of the item's price). If you are making checks by the day, you spend about 3 sp per day.



Composition Type Value Craft DC
Poem 5 sp-2 gp 12
Novel 5 gp-15 gp 15
Reference book 25 gp-100 gp 18
Epic 50 gp-500 gp 20
Song 5 sp-5 gp 12
Quartet or quintet composition 5 gp-15 gp 15
Symphony 25 gp-100 gp 20
Dramatic monologue 1 gp-5 gp 15
Comedic play 10 gp-30 gp 15
Dramatic play 15 gp-50 gp 15

[rel]

Poisons you say... that's a really interesting idea. I have never really checked out poison crafting... could you elaborate? Like how would one do that?

Checked my books. Complete adventurer page 97 has expanded rules for craft.
Using those rules, you can make a craft (poison making) check to craft a poison using normal craft rules with the following modifications:
1) weekly check produces GP of progress instead of SP
2) if you have access to the plant or animal that has the source of the toxin, raw materials cost only 1/6 of market price.
3) you may be able to create multiple doses per week depending on your check result.

All this means that assuming you can find a poison with a DC that matches your take 10 check result, a price that is a factor of your GP of progress, and a GM that allows modification #3, you can generate (1/3)x(check result)^2 gp per week.

For a more realistic example, you have a bonus of +20, your take 10 result is 30. You decide to make terinav root, DC 25.
You have a root farm so materials cost 750/6 = 125.
Your check result of 30 nets you 30x25 = 750gp of progress, you make
a single dose in a week. you sell the dose for 750/2=325gp.
Total profit 325-125=200gp.

And like I said, adventures write themselves:
Town guard have had enough of your shenanigans
Theives guild have had enough of your shenanigans
You need to secure a monstrous source of raw materials
Your monstrous source of raw materials escaped / got stolen
Market is saturated, time to infiltrate another city
Poach a master crafter from some bad doods

Plenty of great possibilities!

[Ashiel]

I’m interested in two overall things in this post.

1) how does one by RAW start minting gp, and how much can be made by level 1-4 gold smelters per week?

2) how to incorporate this, in an actual game, as a player, without breaking the monetary system on the game?

I assume the raw is that you pay 100gp worth of raw gold material and by the crafting rules turn that into 300 gp with of coins? Use those 300 gp to buy 300 gp worth of raw gold and turn that into 900 worth of gold coins… so on and so forth, 2700, 8100, 24300….

If I wanted to do this in game, for the obvious reasons, and because it would fit the character which is build around being an opportunistic entrepreneur/ criminal, how would I best go about doing/ presenting this to my DM, and what would be some good/ reasonable limitations to put on this? I’m thinking raw gold availability… I would need miners/ prospectors, and how would one go about determining how much one could actually mine in a given area - and how long would it take to mine.

Also what would such an operation entail and cost??

I want to do this, but I’m not looking to break any game, just wants some extra money flowing in steadily! Any thought would be great!

Cheers!
Have the workers perform profession (mining) checks (I recommend simply taking 10). They produce 1/2 their check result per week in gold pieces worth of trade goods. In this case, the trade goods are unrefined and impure gold, worth only a fraction of actual pure gold (say 1/3rd the value of gold of equal weight). This is handed off to the smiths to refine, crafting it into pure gold which is the trade good we all know and love. During the smelting process, the coins are minted (no additional cost, they're just pouring the coins into a mold and pressing them as part of the refinement process). The now pure gold is worth 50 gp per pound, exactly the same as 50 coins. Whether you minted them immediately or poured them into ingots is irrelevant.

How much can you extract? However much your minions can extract with their take-10 Profession checks.

A simple idea as to how much the operation would cost would be nothing for the miners (they are being paid in their weekly income, which you're breaking even on since you're giving them some trade goods of some sort for an equivalent exchange), then supplying the smiths with the raw materials to triple in value into a crafted trade good. A simple method to handle this would be to let the smith keep the cost of the materials (which comes out to the same as them taking-10 on their Craft checks to earn a living). You pocket the rest.

For example, let's say you employ 10 laborers with a +0 Profession (mining) modifier. That means each earns 5gp each week taking 10, or 50 gp worth of materials per week.
Then you turn that 50 gp worth of raw ore over to a group of smiths, who then convert it into 150 gp worth of coins.
You then pay the smiths 50 gp and you keep the other 100 gp (making 50 gp in profits after counting the miner pay). Congratulations, you now have a brand new 50 gp worth of actual mint-grade gold. This would amount to +200 gp in profits (but 36 lbs. of total gold worth of business) per month of operation. You can scale the operation up or down as manpower and spacing allows. How long you could mine the area would be determined by some maximum value of resources present in the mine, set by the GM (I wouldn't even worry about it as a GM, as fully extracting all the value from a mine could take years).

For a simpler conversion, just take the take-10 results of your laborers. It maths out pretty much the same (your end result as valuable as the take-10 values of the two steps beneath you). So if you have 20 followers with a +4 bonus to their profession/craft skills working your operation, just take 14/2 = 150 gp per week. This would give you 600 gp worth of profit generated per month (and a total of 1,800 gp worth of wealth generated in the community). You could then put that gold towards exchanging for goods, services, and other trade goods for your enterprise (even re-investing it into similar projects that aren't gold, such as funding moving farmers into a village to create wealth in the form of dry grains and livestock, setting yourself up as the leader of a village, paying guards, etc).

If anyone is concerned about this being overpowered (it isn't), this is pretty much chump change to anyone who routinely sacks orc bandit camps or goes on adventures regularly. What it actually is, is a neat narrative activity. Especially as it pertains to things like setting up villages and their activities.

This is pretty old but you might find some use out of it.
♦♦ Ashiel's Basic d20 Economics (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xZ6kCAXEjKv1145XMgaYL6f-t_raGU6V/view?usp=sharing) ♦♦

EDIT: Fixed a math error from forgetting to subtract the wages of the miners during the profit determination step. Also tried to better distinguish between profits generated and wealth generated. Wealth generated is the net total of the entire chain, while profits generated is simply your cut after all the wages and expenses (for example, in the process of going from miner to smith to investor, 15 gp worth of wealth is generated, but only 5 gp of that wealth is profit for each of them). Fixed some errors I created while fixing errors. :smalleek:

[Max Caysey]

Checked my books. Complete adventurer page 97 has expanded rules for craft.
Using those rules, you can make a craft (poison making) check to craft a poison using normal craft rules with the following modifications:
1) weekly check produces GP of progress instead of SP
2) if you have access to the plant or animal that has the source of the toxin, raw materials cost only 1/6 of market price.
3) you may be able to create multiple doses per week depending on your check result.

All this means that assuming you can find a poison with a DC that matches your take 10 check result, a price that is a factor of your GP of progress, and a GM that allows modification #3, you can generate (1/3)x(check result)^2 gp per week.

For a more realistic example, you have a bonus of +20, your take 10 result is 30. You decide to make terinav root, DC 25.
You have a root farm so materials cost 750/6 = 125.
Your check result of 30 nets you 30x25 = 750gp of progress, you make
a single dose in a week. you sell the dose for 750/2=325gp.
Total profit 325-125=200gp.

And like I said, adventures write themselves:
Town guard have had enough of your shenanigans
Theives guild have had enough of your shenanigans
You need to secure a monstrous source of raw materials
Your monstrous source of raw materials escaped / got stolen
Market is saturated, time to infiltrate another city
Poach a master crafter from some bad doods

Plenty of great possibilities!

I really like this, mostly just for - as you said - the quests writes themselves. I want to do as much as I can to not make this caracter er burden! Its a cool scheme and it really fits well!



Have the workers perform profession (mining) checks (I recommend simply taking 10). They produce 1/2 their check result per week in gold pieces worth of trade goods. In this case, the trade goods are unrefined and impure gold, worth only a fraction of actual pure gold (say 1/3rd the value of gold of equal weight). This is handed off to the smiths to refine, crafting it into pure gold which is the trade good we all know and love. During the smelting process, the coins are minted (no additional cost, they're just pouring the coins into a mold and pressing them as part of the refinement process). The now pure gold is worth 50 gp per pound, exactly the same as 50 coins. Whether you minted them immediately or poured them into ingots is irrelevant.

How much can you extract? However much your minions can extract with their take-10 Profession checks.

A simple idea as to how much the operation would cost would be nothing for the miners (they are being paid in their weekly income, which you're breaking even on since you're giving them some trade goods of some sort for an equivalent exchange), then supplying the smiths with the raw materials to triple in value into a crafted trade good. A simple method to handle this would be to let the smith keep the cost of the materials (which comes out to the same as them taking-10 on their Craft checks to earn a living). You pocket the rest.

For example, let's say you employ 10 laborers with a +0 Profession (mining) modifier. That means each earns 5gp each week taking 10, or 50 gp worth of materials per week.
Then you turn that 50 gp worth of raw ore over to a group of smiths, who then convert it into 150 gp worth of coins.
You then pay the smiths 50 gp and you keep the other 100 gp (making 50 gp in profits after counting the miner pay). Congratulations, you now have a brand new 50 gp worth of actual mint-grade gold. This would amount to +200 gp in profits (but 36 lbs. of total gold worth of business) per month of operation. You can scale the operation up or down as manpower and spacing allows. How long you could mine the area would be determined by some maximum value of resources present in the mine, set by the GM (I wouldn't even worry about it as a GM, as fully extracting all the value from a mine could take years).

For a simpler conversion, just take the take-10 results of your laborers. It maths out pretty much the same (your end result as valuable as the take-10 values of the two steps beneath you). So if you have 20 followers with a +4 bonus to their profession/craft skills working your operation, just take 14/2 = 150 gp per week. This would give you 600 gp worth of profit generated per month (and a total of 1,800 gp worth of wealth generated in the community). You could then put that gold towards exchanging for goods, services, and other trade goods for your enterprise (even re-investing it into similar projects that aren't gold, such as funding moving farmers into a village to create wealth in the form of dry grains and livestock, setting yourself up as the leader of a village, paying guards, etc).

If anyone is concerned about this being overpowered (it isn't), this is pretty much chump change to anyone who routinely sacks orc bandit camps or goes on adventures regularly. What it actually is, is a neat narrative activity. Especially as it pertains to things like setting up villages and their activities.

This is pretty old but you might find some use out of it.
♦♦ Ashiel's Basic d20 Economics (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xZ6kCAXEjKv1145XMgaYL6f-t_raGU6V/view?usp=sharing) ♦♦

EDIT: Fixed a math error from forgetting to subtract the wages of the miners during the profit determination step. Also tried to better distinguish between profits generated and wealth generated. Wealth generated is the net total of the entire chain, while profits generated is simply your cut after all the wages and expenses (for example, in the process of going from miner to smith to investor, 15 gp worth of wealth is generated, but only 5 gp of that wealth is profit for each of them). Fixed some errors I created while fixing errors. :smalleek:


So, I also really like this. Challeging something like the Iron Throne for marked values because I start mining, and having to maybe fight different conglomorates for mining rights, could be fun too!

Also, using the profession skill that way, to calculate the value of the extracted ore, which is then turned into ingots of gold or some other metal is a damn cool way of doing it!

A few question tho...

1) Do you have to pay your followers? I thought they volunteered?

2) Could I somehow make a cleric miner with the Commerce domain? And have that bonus apply to my mining - as in how much ore I can extract as part of earning a living? The wording is a little special!


Long story short! I really like both suggestions! So, I will attempt to incoorporate both when I get enough followers! Not entirely sure which one to start with...

[Ashiel]

So, I also really like this. Challeging something like the Iron Throne for marked values because I start mining, and having to maybe fight different conglomorates for mining rights, could be fun too!

Also, using the profession skill that way, to calculate the value of the extracted ore, which is then turned into ingots of gold or some other metal is a damn cool way of doing it!

A few question tho...

1) Do you have to pay your followers? I thought they volunteered?

2) Could I somehow make a cleric miner with the Commerce domain? And have that bonus apply to my mining - as in how much ore I can extract as part of earning a living? The wording is a little special!

EDIT: Adding the following note since the previously responded was edited and another question asked (trying to avoid double posting).
I'm going to give the answers in reverse order to minimize editing.

Q2 - "Could I somehow make a cleric miner with the Commerce domain? And have that bonus apply to my mining - as in how much ore I can extract as part of earning a living?"
Anything that increases your Profession or Craft check results will increase the productivity at both stages by +0.5 gp per +1 bonus. For example, if you supplied a bunch of miners with masterwork mining tools (+2 bonus to their checks) they would produce an extra +1 gp worth of value each week. If you cast a spell on them that granted a +10 bonus to the skill, they would produce an extra +5 gp worth of value each week.

Q1 - "Do you have to pay your followers? I thought they volunteered?"
The method I presented uses the core d20 mechanics and does not need you to track their wages (it's assumed based on the value they earn as part of their check). I believe this is ideal for a number of reasons.

1. The followers can act autonomously (they will buy their own food, clothing, shelter, and so forth as a normal person, without you having to track their specific wages and micro-managing how you're supporting a bunch of people working full time volunteer-style). It also works great fore hirelings because you don't have to figure out what others are competing to pay. It reduces the necessary bookkeeping significantly mundane things like what you're feeding them, repairs or new clothing that occurs from time to time, etc. All that is simply left up to them to do with as they please with the money they make in the process.

2. It reduces unnecessary bookkeeping immensely. You do not need lists of the daily or weekly wages of NPCs across a wide range of professions. It can quickly and easily adapt to whatever NPCs you pay for services. For example, the weekly wages for a typical alchemist (who must be able to make a DC 20 check taking-10 to practice their trade) would be 10 gp per week, while someone like a weapon smith (who routinely has to make DC 15 checks) would make about 7.5 gp per week, and someone who performs entry level work (DC 10 checks) will make only about 5 gp per week. You can very easily employ a wide variety of individuals across many different fields of expertise with this simple formula based on the needs of their professions.

3. The d20 Craft/Profession mechanics are an abstraction. The wealth generated by the skill results does not need to be in literal gold pieces. It's likely that often the wealth comes in the form of trade goods or services. For example, if you have a farmer producing 5 gp worth of value each week, that might be in the form of growing crops, livestock, selling milk and eggs, or whatever else have you. In a village where gold pieces are scarce, or even trading is more common, the local farrier may be paid in some combination of trade goods and/or services. Maybe in exchange for shoeing the horses, the farrier is paid in a mixture of copper pieces, milk, cheese, and other things.

You can see this in action where we are assuming that the miners create 5 gp worth of wealth from their profession. We are choosing to interpret this wealth as 5 gp worth of unrefined/impurified gold ore with a value of 5 gp. We are taking that in exchange for whatever their wages are (you might be paying them in hard currency or you might be providing an equivalent exchange of some other factors such housing, food, clothing, etc). At this stage we have "broken even" (we got 5 gp worth of ore for 5 gp worth of wages). We hand those off to our smiths to refine. They use the 5 gp worth of ore to craft 15 gp worth of trade goods. This equals out to the exact same amount they would make taking-10 on their check to earn a wage, so we assume 5 gp worth of the trade goods go to them as payments (so 5 gp to the miner, 5 gp to the smith) and that leaves 5 gp in profits for us who is making the whole thing happen. The end result is 15 gp worth of new gold coins have been minted (you may even have all 15 gp in currency and paid them in equivalent trade goods such as sacks of flour, clothing, etc).


♦♦ Additional Considerations ♦♦
You can actually easily use this system to get an idea as to how much wealth is being generated and passed around in a given community. You don't even have to use gold at all, due to the way the abstraction works. Let's get a quick idea as to how something like this might look if we wanted to build a community really quickly. We'll build a village of 200 people and figure out where most of the wealth is coming from, where it is going, and how it factors in to the adventurers getting paid for smiting some goblins.

The Town of Econoville
Our hypothetical town of Econoville is ruled by a single noble lord, the honorable if slightly rotund Lord Eatsmore Pieswallow of House Pieswallow. As has been customary for most of human history prior to the industrial revolution, something like 80% of a population was usually devoted to keeping the other 20% of the population from starving to death right up through the 1700s, with most farming being subsistence farming. So for our purposes, we will assume more or less the same here. That means about 160 of our 200 citizens in the town are probably spending most of their days doing rural agricultural work or are children or assistants to trade professionals. That leaves us about 40 people left over to fill out purposes for things like the town constabulary, government, and specialty work such as artisans and innkeepers.

Let's say out of those 40 people who aren't working the land, we've got the following:
- About 20 town guards (equating to 10% of the community as law enforcement and defenders).
- About 5 town servants (record keepers, tax collectors, librarians, scribes, etc).
- About 5 house servants for lord Eatsmore (maids, butlers, cooks, etc).
- A blacksmith and his family
- An alchemist and his family
- A local wizard and his family
- A cleric tending to a temple of a god
- A cleric tending to a temple of a different god
- An innkeeper and his staff
- Lord Eatsmore and his family
And whomever else you wanna include.

Most people in the community will just be assumed to have average statistics and no special training, with some being above average and/or with training, and some being below average, but those will usually cancel each other out, so we can simplify the general wealth generation of the town to the same 5 gp / person. That means each week, the entire town generates about 1,000 gp worth of total wealth.

Assuming Pathfinder's monthly cost of living (poor = 3 gp, average = 10 gp, wealthy = 100 gp), we can see that about 500 gp per week is then consumed by the costs of living (food is eaten, clothes and tools wear out and need to be replaced, maintenance needs doing on houses, animals pass away, etc). Leaving 500 gp per week in actual wealth accumulation (permanent trade goods, shelf-stable foods like dried grains, all manner of artisanry, literal currency like coins, etc).

Also, the cost of living assumes local taxes, so it would be fair to say that about half the cost of living (5 gp) gets funneled up to Lord Eatsmore. This means that the ruler of the land is amassing about 250 gp per week in taxes. The nobleman then pays the cost of the guards, town scribes and tax collectors and so forth out of this (20 guards, 5 civil servants, and 5 house servants, at an average of 5 gp = 150 gp / week). Leaving about 100 gp / week for the noble family. The cost of living a wealthy lifestyle is 100 gp / month, so the monthly gains of the nobles is about 300 gp / month.

We could also assume that 10% of the town's after-cost generated wealth (50/500 gp) goes to tithes to the local churches, split between them (this village has 2), which would give each of the churches about 25 gp / week in donation income (which could be hoarded up in the form of beautiful art pieces and/or to fund paladins or to provide services such as holy water for heroes or services to the local community who can't afford it themselves).

If this is a kingdom, we might decide how much of the remaining wealth is taxed. For example, they might have 15, 25, or 35% of their wealth beyond their local taxes collected and sent off to the king to rule the country and fund armies and heroes and champions. We'll meet in the middle and say that 25% of the remaining wealth is taxed for king and country (500gp x 0.25 = 125 gp). That leaves about 325 gp of profits left over.

325 gp divided by the population of the town leaves about 1.62 gp worth of average wealth generation per week per citizen (so over the course of a week, the average citizen will have about 1 gold, six silver, and 2 copper pieces worth of wealth stored away to the green to do with as they see fit). They're not getting rich but they're doing okay for themselves as long as some grubby orcs and goblins don't come sacking their town. But of course, that's what Lord Eatsmore is supposed to protect them from, and since he's banking about 300 gp per month (or 3,600 gp per year), if trouble starts brewing it is quite reasonable for him to enlist the services of some specialist individuals for several hundred or maybe even a thousand gold worth to ensure that goblins aren't stealing the children, the manticors aren't eating the cows, and the dragon's aren't dating his daughter.

If the town has to take up a collection among the citizens themselves (say the party doesn't perform a task for the lord but really touches the citizenry by saving Mr. Barnowners barn from a fire, or rescued little Timmy the Unobservant from a well that he fell into), the town could probably amass up to about 325 gp worth of goods over the course of the week to give to the party as thanks. Often times these goods would be in the form of small coins, art objects, maybe an old set of silverware, a few yards of silk, or a box of assorted alchemical goodies, rather than actual gold pieces. Heck, they might even instead offer the party livestock like horses or a share of their lands for a homestead.