Abusing downtime

[Laesin]

Has anyone else had a party take significant downtime to go into the construction industry with a lyre of building and a druid for landscaping?

When we did the maths after a few years we had 5 million gold each to spend (based on the average wage of an artisan) on useful stuff before we restarted the campaign.

Any other abuses are welcome

[Dark Knight Renee]

I'm wondering why the DM allowed that sort of downtime abuse. It's easily fixable by throwing trouble their way...

In my games, there is often not enough downtime to use effectively, much less abuse.

[Yvian]

Where do they put the cash?

I mean, are you going to live like paupers? No! You buy a big house, land, etc. Get a spouse, have a few kids, etc. Then you are a target for every last theif....

[TheOOB]

I can do you one easier, mass produce quarterstaves (you can make an arbitrayly large number in an arbitarily small amount of time) and find a way to sell them :P

[kjones]

I can do you one easier, mass produce quarterstaves (you can make an arbitrayly large number in an arbitarily small amount of time) and find a way to sell them :P

I've seen this "infinite quarterstaves" thing before, but it's not obvious from the Craft rules how it works. Per RAW, how are you supposed to do this?

I think an obvious "abuse" would be of the perform skill. How hard can it be to get +50? Then you can turn indifferent crowds into Helpful ones, and thence to Fanatics the next day... Oh God.

[DaMullet]

You see, kjones, the craft skill is based on the price of the item. A quarterstaff is a stick, so the fools at WotC didn't give it a price. Thus, by a VERY literal reading, you can make as many as you have trees, in an arbitrarily small time.

It's a munchkin thing.

[dorshe1]

GMs need to use intelligence and determine whether or not the society can support that type of craft work. Just because a source book says that you could use the skill to make x gold, doesn't mean that your country would pay that much, or have enough demand to do it every day.

For example, if you are at a seedy tavern, you could roll 328348234 on your perform check, and you still won't make more than $30 gold because that is all the gold in the inn.

As a DM I usually allow for about a month to two months down time at a time. Enough to craft a few items, but not enough to settle down.

[Laesin]

Yvian: that cash was after those expenditures. even before the downtime my character was a baron, he had bought over 100,000 acres of prime land in that downtime and still had 5 mil to spend on items. the campaign was non time sensitive at that point as the BBEG was my characters supposedly executed father who was observing me for possible recruitment.

[TheOOB]

Note that I would never condone such cheese as the insta quarterstaff...or the leadership+craft quarterstaff railgun.

[Laesin]

GMs need to use intelligence and determine whether or not the society can support that type of craft work.

We were building Castles and fortresses as well as town houses, manors and mansions. Cash wasn't a significant problem, demand was why we limited it to a few years. In the process we put virtually every mason in the empire out of business.

[Diggorian]

I've never had much trouble with downtime like this, and there's alot of it near mid-level for my games (since high XP encounters grow infrequent). PC's settle.

For Laesin's builders I'd see the market drying up fast as the market is small (nobles mainly). A fad would break out, but how many summer cottages do ya need? The Carpenter, Stone Mason, and Gardener guilds can become interesting enemies for the undercutting PC's.

Other druids may conflict with landscaper for prostituting out his gifts, if the nature Goddess doesnt dry them up herself.

[kjones]

GMs need to use intelligence and determine whether or not the society can support that type of craft work. Just because a source book says that you could use the skill to make x gold, doesn't mean that your country would pay that much, or have enough demand to do it every day.

For example, if you are at a seedy tavern, you could roll 328348234 on your perform check, and you still won't make more than $30 gold because that is all the gold in the inn.

As a DM I usually allow for about a month to two months down time at a time. Enough to craft a few items, but not enough to settle down.

This is absolutely true, but the title of the thread is "Abuse". Look at it as a way to know what to avoid in your games.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Read the description of Wall of Iron. It costs 50 gold to produce. It makes several hundred pounds of iron. Iron costs something like 25 gold per pound as a luxury good.

How many 6th+ spells do you have available * how many days you have available * (price of all that iron - 50 gold) = how much profit you can get from this trick.

[melchizedek]

Read the description of Wall of Iron. It costs 50 gold to produce. It makes several hundred pounds of iron. Iron costs something like 25 gold per pound as a luxury good.

How many 6th+ spells do you have available * how many days you have available * (price of all that iron - 50 gold) = how much profit you can get from this trick.

But again, this is limited by the laws of supply and demand. If you are pumping thousands of pounds of iron into the market, the price is going to fall very quickly. The more iron there is, the less it is worth.

Also, if groups were interested in trying this tactic, I think it would be interesting to play around with long time effects of this. A huge amount of iron would result in more easily available iron implements such as weapons and armor. Easily available weapons and armor could cause peasants to be willing to rebel as they gain the ability to fight their oppressors. Now, the players have a war on their hands caused by their actions.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

But again, this is limited by the laws of supply and demand. If you are pumping thousands of pounds of iron into the market, the price is going to fall very quickly. The more iron there is, the less it is worth.

Also, if groups were interested in trying this tactic, I think it would be interesting to play around with long time effects of this. A huge amount of iron would result in more easily available iron implements such as weapons and armor. Easily available weapons and armor could cause peasants to be willing to rebel as they gain the ability to fight their oppressors. Now, the players have a war on their hands caused by their actions.

Logically, yes. By RAW? No. What the Op is trying for, I believe, isn't what would realistically happen, but methods of exploiting rules.

[Dawgas]

Now, the players have a war on their hands caused by their actions.

Who says this is a bad thing? The players may get to become rulers... or beat by rulers. To death. That pop into existence magically because they're free.

[Dorni]

A campaign of mine once traded places with the BBEG during downtime. We were only a few levels into epic when we "defeated" the BBEG and thought the campaign over and went to settle down. I played a wizard who had leadership and founded a new order of mages during the campaign. I then used Genisis to create a new plane for this order of mages rather than simply building a castle for them. To allow easy transportation, the wizard placed a Permanency on a Gate to Waterdeep. The order helped support itself by selling magic items, and my wizard understood supply and demand. He then created permanencied several Gates to major cities accross the map in order to sell to more people. After he realized that merchants were using his plane as a quick jump to get into the region of their markets, cut their journey time, and avoid bandits, he started charging a toll. He also realized that he had a stranglehold on world trade and was able to negociate treaties with various nations using his enconomic importance as leverage. In the space of 2 years of downtime, my wizard did something no BBEG has ever successfully accomplished: take over the world by accident. Economics turned out to be the best weapon of them all.

Only a few years later it turned out that the BBEG we had thought destroyed had survived and was plotting his revenge. The campaign started anew, only this time he was trying to overthrow us

[Helgraf]

Well, the ultimate throwdown is anything the PCs can abuse, the NPCs can abuse better. The cavaet that follows - the world's been around longer than the PCs. Any exploit for easy money the PCs can use from the rules has been tried before by NPCs in the past, and guilds and other higher-level organizations would know what to look for and how to shut it down.

Using a dupe trick once in a novel manner, no big deal. Trying to 'loop-exploit' the rules for a continuing or 'infinite' wealth stream? Good way to learn just why 'cheating' is a losing proposition in the long run. Because if it isn't 'cheating' it will already be done in the game world - and a world with infinite quarterstaves isn't going to pay you jack for one, for example.