The Plutomancer – A Re-Imaged Version of the Golden Alchemist [3.5e, PEACH]

[JanessaVR]

I was fascinated with the Golden Alchemist class originally posted here by Magicyop, and then again here by rferries, who cleaned up the older post (much thanks for that).

However, reading it gave me some different ideas on where I wanted to take this kind of class, and thus I present my re-imaged form of the Golden Alchemist – the Plutomancer, a magician centered around the acquisition and manipulation of wealth, even it’s not in the form of gold.

$$$ - The Plutomancer - $$$

“Money makes the world go around
It makes the world go 'round.

A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound
A buck or a pound
A buck or a pound
Is all that makes the world go around,
That clinking clanking sound
Can make the world go 'round.”

-Cabaret, 1972

Class Features

Hit Die: d4

Class Skills: Appraise (Int), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Diplomacy (Cha), Equivalent Exchange [NEW SKILL] (Cha), Knowledge – Arcana (Int), Profession (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int).

Skill Points at 1st Level: (2 + Int Modifier) x4

Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int Modifier

Starting Gold: 10d10 x 10 gold pieces

Levels Guide

• Apprentice is levels 1 to 8.
• Journeyman is levels 9 to 14.
• Master is levels 15 to 20.
• Grand Master is levels 21 to 30.

Table: The Plutomancer

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special
1st	+0	+0	+0	+2	Summon Treasure I
2nd	+1	+0	+0	+3	Appraisal Bonus, Calculate Treasure, Sense Treasure
3rd	+1	+1	+1	+3	Summon Treasure II
4th	+2	+1	+1	+4	Treasury I, The Lure of Wealth I
5th	+2	+1	+1	+4	Summon Treasure III
6th	+3	+2	+2	+5	Equivalent Exchange I
7th	+3	+2	+2	+5	Summon Treasure IV
8th	+4	+2	+2	+6	Shrine to Wealth I
9th	+4	+3	+3	+6	Summon Treasure V
10th	+5	+3	+3	+7	Treasury II, The Lure of Wealth II
11th	+5	+3	+3	+7	Summon Treasure VI
12th	+6/+1	+4	+4	+8	Equivalent Exchange II
13th	+6/+1	+4	+4	+8	Summon Treasure VII
14th	+7/+2	+4	+4	+9	Shrine to Wealth II
15th	+7/+2	+5	+5	+9	Summon Treasure VIII
16th	+8/+3	+5	+5	+10	Treasury III, The Lure of Wealth III
17th	+8/+3	+5	+5	+10	Summon Treasure IX
18th	+9/+4	+6	+6	+11	Equivalent Exchange III
19th	+9/+4	+6	+6	+11	Summon Treasure X
20th	+10/+5	+6	+6	+12	Shrine to Wealth III
21st	+11/+6/+1	+6	+6	+12	Summon Treasure XI
22nd	+11/+6/+1	+7	+7	+13	Treasury IV, The Lure of Wealth IV
23rd	+12/+7/+2	+7	+7	+13	Equivalent Exchange IV
24th	+12/+7/+2	+8	+8	+14	Equivalent Exchange V
25th	+13/+8/+3	+8	+8	+14	Summon Treasure XII
26th	+13/+8/+3	+9	+9	+15	Equivalent Exchange VI
27th	+14/+9/+4	+9	+9	+15	Equivalent Exchange VII
28th	+14/+9/+4	+10	+10	+16	Summon Treasure XIII
29th	+15/+10/+5	+10	+10	+16	Equivalent Exchange VIII
30th	+15/+10/+5	+11	+11	+17	Shrine to Wealth IV

Appraisal Bonus (Su)
Your class level is a bonus to your Appraise skill, and you can appraise objects at a glance.

Calculate Treasure (Su)
You can instantly calculate the number and nominal value of any form of treasure that you can either see visually or sense with your Sense Treasure ability. For instance, you could gaze at a dragon’s hoard and confidently state that there are 24,678 gp, 54,365 sp, and 87,269 cp present there, and even what the type and country of origin they are.

Equivalent Exchange (Sp)
You have the ability to conjure nearly any item you can imagine out of thin air…but, it’s not free. You must pay fair value for each item, and you must also succeed in a skill check to obtain them. At higher levels, you can use this ability to pay for the benefits of some magical services as well. You must have the necessary money immediately within reach to make the trade; money in your Treasury space (see below) counts as being immediately accessible for this.

Spoiler: Equivalent Exchange by Level

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Level I:	You can purchase any mundane item from any source book your GM allows for your game, paying the listed price. The skill check is (DC 1 per 1,000 gp of the item’s price); obviously, success is automatic for any typical items in the PHB, but more expensive items might be beyond your reach at lower class levels. Alternately, you can pay to have items repaired or modified. The cost for this is the GM’s call, depending on how badly an item is damaged or what modifications you want made to it.
Level II:	You can dispose of unwanted items at a cost of 1 gp per lb. If you try this against a living creature, it gets a Fortitude Save to resist what is effectively a Disintegrate spell, and the cost is (100 gp per HD of the creature). You can acquire the Spell Focus feat to make this effect harder for your target to resist their destruction.
Level III:	You can purchase any (non-Epic) magic item from any source book your GM allows for your game, paying the listed price. The skill check is either (DC 5 * the highest level spell used to make the item), or (DC 5 * its “plus” value), whichever is higher.
Level IV:	You can heal yourself or others by paying for healing, as per the rules for NPC Spellcasting. The cost of such spells is (your class level * 10 gp per level of the healing spell).
Level V:	You can be teleported (as per a Greater Teleport spell) at a cost of 1 gp per mile (per person you want to take with you, including yourself).
Level VI:	You can be transported to another plane (as per a Plane Shift spell) at a cost of 1,000 gp (per person you want to take with you, including yourself).
Level VII:	You can summon mercenaries (as per a Summon Monster spell) at a cost of (100 gp * the combined HD of all the summoned creatures).
Level VIII:	You can purchase any Epic magic item from any source book your GM allows for your game, paying the listed price. The skill check is either (DC 5 * the highest level spell used to make the item), or (DC 5 * its “plus” value), whichever is higher.

Sense Treasure (Su)
If you concentrate, you can sense all treasure within a radius of 10 meters per class level.

Shrine to Wealth (Su)
You can establish your equivalent of a wizard’s laboratory or a cleric’s temple. In your case, it’s really more of an expensive office, or possibly a whole building. This is your place of power, and your plutomantic effects are more potent when performed here. Another benefit is that inside its walls, any rituals will continue by themselves once initiated, freeing up much of your time during the day.

Spoiler: Shrine to Wealth by Level

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Level I:	Provides a +5 bonus to Equivalent Exchange skill checks, and costs at least 50,000 gp.
Level II:	Provides a +10 bonus to Equivalent Exchange skill checks, and costs at least 250,000 gp.
Level III:	Provides a +20 bonus to Equivalent Exchange skill checks, and costs at least 1 million gp.
Level IV:	Provides a +40 bonus to Equivalent Exchange skill checks, and costs at least 5 million gp.

Summon Treasure (Su)
You have the ability to summon treasure, seemingly out of thin air. It will arrive in any form you wish – coins, bars, gems, etc. Each summoning is an hour-long ritual for which you receive an amount of treasure depending on your level of this ability (see below). You can spend a maximum of 10 hours per day “working at the office” summoning treasure. The source of this treasure is anywhere it won’t be missed – unmined deposits in the earth, lost treasure hoards, etc.

Spoiler: Summon Treasure by Level

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Level I:	You receive 1 gp per ritual summoning.
Level II:	You receive 2 gp per ritual summoning.
Level III:	You receive 4 gp per ritual summoning.
Level IV:	You receive 8 gp per ritual summoning.
Level V:	You receive 16 gp per ritual summoning.
Level VI:	You receive 32 gp per ritual summoning.
Level VII:	You receive 64 gp per ritual summoning.
Level VIII:	You receive 125 gp per ritual summoning.
Level IX:	You receive 250 gp per ritual summoning.
Level X:	You receive 500 gp per ritual summoning.
Level XI:	You receive 1,000 gp per ritual summoning.
Level XII:	You receive 2,000 gp per ritual summoning.
Level XIII:	You receive 4,000 gp per ritual summoning.

The Lure of Wealth (Sp)
You can compel others to accept (and rationalize) bribes from you in exchange for doing you favors. You must openly display your bribe to your target for this effect to work. Treat these attempts as roughly equivalent to Enchantment spells, which are resisted by Will Saves. You can affect a maximum number of targets equal to your class level; you must pay each target separately. As you advance in level, your compulsion becomes harder to resist (but more serious favors cost more money). You can acquire the Spell Focus feat to make this effect harder for your target to resist.

Note: Depending on what you ask of them, your target gets a bonus to their Will Save. A minor favor gives the target a +2 bonus to their Will Save, a major favor gives them a +4 bonus, and an epic favor gives them a +8 bonus. The target will also automatically refuse any suicidal or obviously harmful “favors.”

Spoiler: The Lure of Wealth by Level

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Level I:	You can adjust an NPC’s Attitude to Friendly (or at least closer to it, as per a Charm Person spell). This will only cost a few gp at most per person. The target’s Will Save DC is (13 + your CHA bonus). EXAMPLE: Buying a round of drinks for everyone in a bar, or buying someone a nice dinner.
Level II:	You can ask an NPC for a minor favor. These will cost you at least as much as your target makes in a day. The target’s Will Save DC is (16 + your CHA bonus). EXAMPLE: Getting a police officer to ignore a minor violation of the law, like a speeding ticket.
Level III:	You can ask an NPC for a major favor. These will cost you at least as much as your target makes in a month. The target’s Will Save DC is (19 + your CHA bonus). EXAMPLE: Getting a police officer to ignore a major violation of the law, such as being caught burglarizing someone’s home.
Level IV:	You can ask an NPC for an epic favor. These will cost you at least as much as your target makes in a year. The target’s Will Save DC is (30 + your CHA bonus). EXAMPLE: Getting a police officer to ignore a heinous violation of the law, such as being caught red-handed at the scene of a murder.

Treasury (Su)
You can store treasure (only) in a personal extradimensional space. You can access it either overtly or discretely; for instance, you can seemingly pull items from your pack when you’re actually calling the item forth from your Treasury space by mental command.

Spoiler: Treasury by Level

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Level I:	Your storage space is equivalent to a Bag of Holding with a 1,000 lb. capacity.
Level II:	Your storage space is equivalent to a Bag of Holding with a 2,000 lb. capacity.
Level III:	Your storage space is equivalent to a Bag of Holding with a 4,000 lb. capacity.
Level IV:	Your storage space is equivalent to a 10’ x 10’ Portable Hole.

Design Notes
There were things I liked and things I very much disliked about the original version of the Golden Alchemist. In recent years, I’ve found myself more drawn to less conventional support classes, rather than front-line “shoot them in the face” classes, so I found the basic concept very intriguing. Some features just didn’t sit right with me, however. A prime example would be the “Gilt Enigma” class feature. Would you like the actual Curse of Midas or be forced to become a living statue of gold? Um…how about neither of those horrible outcomes?! What say I just take a bonus feat and we call it even? Yikes.

There was also the sheer volume of gold the class seemed to entail – if you went around turning things to gold at the rates described, it should take you a day (or less) to accumulate more gold than the human race has mined in the history of the planet Earth; that’s currently about 190,000 metric tons, or a cube 21 meters to a side, and if you ran around town all willy-nilly touching everything in sight all day long, it wouldn’t take you that long to fill up that cube.

Now, I’ve quite deliberately broken the Wealth by Level chart (even using Pathfinder’s version, which has higher figures than the D&D 3.5e version), due to the Plutomancer’s abilities being literally fueled by money, but the Golden Alchemist is just off the charts into the range of massively devaluing gold for an entire world inside of a month. So I’ve toned things down a bit, and made certain that Plutomancers will have to put in some time and effort to fully realize the benefits of their class. In addition, major class abilities like Equivalent Exchange and The Lure of Wealth always cost money to use, forcing them to eat up their reserves if they want to stay relevant in their adventuring career.

Crunching the numbers, a 1st level Plutomancer can make 10 gp a day, or 3,650 gp a year. Not exactly wealthy, but they’ll certainly never go hungry. A 30th level Plutomancer can make 40,000 gp a day, or 14,600,000 gp a year. My extended version of Pathfinder’s Wealth by Level chart (which is about 20% higher the canon D&D 3.5e chart), tops out at 5,160,000 gp for level 30, so the Plutomancer is rocking triple normal wealth on an annual basis (if they work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week). Again, considering that their abilities eat up their fortune, I think this is within acceptable limits. If anyone with a finance background wants to crunch the numbers and has some different conclusions, I’d welcome them.

Stat-wise, this is basically a stripped-down and refurbished Sorcerer. Low HD and skill points, focusing on their magical abilities. You could easily flip it to be more like the Wizard, if you switched Equivalent Exchange’s associated ability to Int instead of Cha and swapped a few other class skills.

Their team function is a supporting role – a team with a Plutomancer on board will never be broke and hungry. Even if they’re a thousand miles from civilization and 20 levels deep in a dungeon, they have an infinitely long supply chain, which means less equipment to carry. Why bother to re-stock in town when you can just buy only what you need when you need it? And at higher level they’re secondary magical support as well. Combat-wise, they’re well-advised to wear the best armor they can, hang back, and fire weapons or wands from a distance.