For repeating spells, there are several options:
1.) Eternal Wands, from Magic Item Compendium. They have a little bit of an extra surcharge on them from the DMG formula, but gives 2/day casting of spells levels 1-3.
2.) Magical traps using the DMG rules for recharge and stuff. Note that if you want precedent for magical traps that are beneficial, look at the Boon traps in Dungeonscape.
3.) Drow House Insignia sorts of items, explained in the book Races of Faerun, pg 175. They were updated to be more pricey in Drow of the Underdark. This gives a specific form, 1/day limitation, and certain spell levels, I think 1-3.
4.) Minor Schema, from the book Magic of Eberron (A way to cast spells lvl 1-6, once a day. Further, these work better for Artificers, who can apply their class features to this. If An Artificer makes a Schema of Wall of Iron, and he has a Lesser Rod of Invisible Spell, he could -- for example -- make Invisible Iron...)
5.) Generic wondrous items that cast spells, per the DMG rules for custom magic items. ESPECIALLY go for infinite use, use activated ones once you have the money.
6.) Spell Turrets, from Dungeon Master's Guide II
7.) Spell clocks, from here:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...cmp=ILC-RSSDND
Of course use as many of the Cost Reduction techniques as is viable, especially from the Cost Reduction Technique Handbook.
An Artificer could, of course, use techniques to get spells more cheaply, perhaps using the Bargain bin list, perhaps.
Of course, a traditional Wizard or Cleric or Archivist could simply use scrying techniques to seek these sorts of people out, and pay them to help cast their cheaper spells into the devices (or the prayerbook, for the Archivist). Remember, people can work together to craft!
Here are some of the spells you use to put in things, or to just cast yourself, depending on how you use it:
Wall of Iron
Wall of Stone
Wall of Salt
Stone Metamorphosis
Greater Stone Metamorphosis
Clearstone
Permanency
Plant Growth
Ironwood
Transmute Rock to Mud
Transmute Mud to Rock
Transmute Metal to Wood
Transmute Stone to Sand
Transmute Sand to Stone
Transmute Sand to Glass
Transmute Metal to Wood
Transmute Rock to Mud
Transmute Mud to Rock
Soften Earth and Stone
Move Earth
Unseen Servant
Hardening
Unseen Crafter
Shape Metal
Metal Melt
Stone Shape
Greater Stone Shape
Fabricate
Nature's Rampart
Magecraft
Planar Ally
Planar Binding
Lesser Planar Ally
Lesser Planar Binding
Also use Decanter of Endless Water, Decanter of Endless Sand, Lyre of Building, planar bind or planar ally things all the way from Lantern Archons for infinite continual flame to Djinn for infinite of ANY plant based items (soarwood, serrenwood, darkwood, densewood, fey cherry wood, duskwood, livewood, bronzewood, other plant based things things like lacquer, deisel, rubber, resin, glue, paper, cardboard, cumin, silphium, coffee, saffron, tobacco, pepper, oil, chilies, paprika, cacao, anise, poppy, marijuana, etc. etc.), to efreeti or noble djinn for full Wishes (which get 25k worth of mundane stuff or 15k worth of magic stuff a pop). Of course you will want to Simulacrum some of them, especially the 'Ha ha you're screwed' Efreetis and Noble Djinn's.
Of course if you don't want to do the full Wish Economy, then you might want to research custom spells to do work, using the rules in the DMG to do so. Unseen Laborer (a Profession variant of Unseen Crafter; profession: Miner, perhaps? Profession: Lumberjack?) would be useful. Also a few more 'Transmute' spells perhaps, to get better metal than low quality Iron. I would suggest trying to research a Transmute Iron to Greensteel (fiendish codex 2), the closest thing D&D has to a very high quality modern steel that is actually functionally different than Iron. This is something that could conceivably be used on, say, breech loading cannon and firearms (it's strong enough for it).. And once you get your truly modern machine shop (see later parts of this post) set up, it would be FANTASTICALLY easy to make firearms that are at least as good as the Winchester Rifle. Remember that lots of spells can be stacked to improve knowledge checks, should you need an epic knowledge check in order to bypass several hundred years of real world firearms design in a few days worth of design and writing down ideas with alchemy, mechanics, etc.
Remember, D&D material science is potentially better than the material science in our real life world, so take advantage of that fact (check out the Crafting Handbook for lots of ideas for mundane crafting).
Create several perpetual motion machines, make advanced machine shops (I have a design for one that uses a simple repeating trap of a blockade spell, a LEVEL 1 SPELL, that looks like a Ferris wheel, and is about as powerful as a V6 engine at high RPM). Get repeating traps of things that help quality of life and productivity, like:
Endure Elements
Prestidigitation
Create Food and Water
Purify Food and Drink
Good Hope
Make Whole
Lesser Restoration
Panacea
Low Light Vision
Superior Darkvision
Mount
Another good trick to get wayyyyy more work than a Decanter of Endless Water or that Blockade Ferris Wheel is a Ring Gate. Put one in a big pool of water, the other shooting back into that big pool of water. Put a turbine next to the output one... bam, infinite power. If you haven't figured out capacitors or electricity or batteries or generators yet, just put it into flywheels. Now you're thinking with portals and all that!
Also for cheap and easy birth control, set up a trap device of 'Bestow Curse - Infertility' and one of 'Remove Curse', if your population boom from all the free food threatens to overwhelm your infrastructure creation.
Use an Elation / Good Hope / Distilled Joy (make sure to get someone like a Factotum to cast the Distilled Joy into the trap as a SLA) to extract infinite amounts of Ambrosia for crafting. Alternately, an Artificer who gets access to a 1/day item of Ironwood or a Boon trap of Ironwood could simply create magical Ironwood breastplates and drain those for crafting XP. Or you could just get the Wood Shape / Wall of Iron / Transmute Metal to Wood / Ironwood combo going for unlimited +1 Ironwood weapons and armor for your entire civilization -- that's always nice and useful.
Of course if you are gong to be doing the crafting YOURSELF, you will need Craft Construct or Craft Homunculus to make hosts and hosts and hosts of mass Dedicated Wrights to do all of this work,what with your unlimited wealth and supplies and infinite XP. This opens up constructs to be a large part of the area you are uplifting as well. Use the ideas from the Mechonomocon handbook to figure out how to do construct crafting most effectively!
Generally, Effigies work really well, even if you don't go insane with the Mr. Roboto trick. Also, Homunculus can have customized skills, so you could make one which could perpetually play your Lyre of Building and just get huge massive amounts of labor done wherever that creature goes. Of course, there are several ways of giving constructs intelligence; my favorite is simply to embed an intelligent item into the construct, and tell the construct to do what the item says.
Basically, what you have with all of this set up is the ingredients for basically no one to ever need to do manual labor, and an economy where no actual 'things' are scarce, and everyone has lots of built things and magic items and stuff, and there is no disease or illness and no one needs to sleep if they don't want to, etc. etc. -- you know, a civilization that has more in common with Star Trek than the Middle Ages...
Re: The Definitive Guide to the Tippyverse, By Emperor Tippy
