Butter

[drogan]

Butter is 2 sp per pound a player wants to buy 2000 pounds of butter how much should i charge

[Rynjin]

2x2 = 4

Now add the zeroes back on

[Keltest]

Nothing. Nobody has that much butter sitting around, even if they do ordinarily sell the stuff.

[drogan]

they want to make a butter golem

[Keltest]

they want to make a butter golem

I cannot begin to list all of the problems with that idea.

[Kish]

I think butter is a thing where the amount people are willing and able to sell would be a hard limit, one that they can't be bribed to increase. So either you charge 4000 silver--whatever that translates to in your current edition (in 3.5, it would be 40 platinum). Or you tell the player that no one has that much butter on hand and make them travel the length and breadth of the continent buying as much butter as is for sale in various places. (Or you tell them up front that they can't make a butter golem and see if that dissuades them.)

[spectralphoenix]

Don't get too wrapped up in figuring out rules for this stuff. The question you need to answer is do you want to let him make a butter golem. If you do, just say it has the same stats as a flesh golem (maybe less DR and fire weakness but some kind of grease effect?) and costs the same with the same requirements to make (the butter is only a small part of the total cost - all kinds of magic ingredients are necessary.) If you're feeling questy, maybe he has to find and milk a half-fiend dire cow to get the cream to form the Heartbutter that makes it tick.

If you don't want him making a butter golem? Then he can't make a butter golem, and the lack of refrigeration in the pseudomedieval era means he'll be very unpopular with his neighbors if he spends more than an afternoon trying. But just tell him it's impossible up front - tell him he can't get enough butter and he'll find a way to get enough butter.

[Algeh]

I think butter is a thing where the amount people are willing and able to sell would be a hard limit, one that they can't be bribed to increase.

This also makes sense to me in most settings. If butter comes from milk, and milk comes from cows, it's not something you can change your production level of on a dime since making more cows takes time. Most places would only have enough dairy cows for their regular needs, and not produce much surplus since it wouldn't store well and it's perishable.

Given modern food preservation methods, a large butter stockpile is certainly possible (I'm pretty sure I could buy 2000 pounds of butter by driving to enough grocery stores in a major metro area in real life), but that doesn't fit with the typical "fake medieval" D&D setting in terms of scale.

A determined adventurer with suitable extra-dimensional storage space should be able to build their own butter stockpile for this purpose by buying up excess butter in every town they pass through for a while. At higher levels, I suppose they could do so quickly by teleporting to various towns and cities on market days over a large region, which makes me want to think about D&D economic/trade in ways that would break things, so I'll stop there.

A sufficiently high-level adventurer in a sufficiently-silly campaign where a butter golem wouldn't be out of place to start with should be able to accomplish this by teleporting to the Only-Vaguely-Elemental Plane of Dairy and harvesting the needed butter there through a series of suitable encounters, of course.

[LibraryOgre]

Nothing. Nobody has that much butter sitting around, even if they do ordinarily sell the stuff.

You say this, but it was not uncommon in medieval Iceland to pay church tithes in butter. One bishop was estimated to have several tons of it in storage.

[Kaptin Keen]

Players pay a fortune for huge amounts of butter. Go through much rigamarole and arcanery to enchant said butter to create a golem. Golem melts in the sun.

The end.

[Keltest]

You say this, but it was not uncommon in medieval Iceland to pay church tithes in butter. One bishop was estimated to have several tons of it in storage.

Im going to want to see a citation on that. Butter doesn't store that well even with the refrigeration available to them at the time, and as noted producing extra is a non-trivial task.

[GloatingSwine]

I cannot begin to list all of the problems with that idea.

If you gave your top five, you'd probably hit at least three of the reasons a player would want to do it.

[LibraryOgre]

Im going to want to see a citation on that. Butter doesn't store that well even with the refrigeration available to them at the time, and as noted producing extra is a non-trivial task.

I'm looking, but it's been 20 years.

[GloatingSwine]

Taxes and tithes in Iceland were commonly paid in butter, cheese, livestock and other farm products

Insufficient precious metals to produce coinage, so produce was currency (standardised around the weight of a certain length of cloth).

[Keltest]

Taxes and tithes in Iceland were commonly paid in butter, cheese, livestock and other farm products

Insufficient precious metals to produce coinage, so produce was currency (standardised around the weight of a certain length of cloth).

Ok, paying in butter along with other produce and goods seems a lot more plausible to me. Im still not sure I believe that thing with the bishop though. Butter doesn't have a long enough shelf life even refrigerated for that much butter to stay viable for very long.

[Psyren]

1) What system? Construct creation rules vary widely.

2) Finding sufficient people "willing and able to sell butter" may also be unnecessary depending on system, due to spells like Fabricate or Major/True Creation.

3) Some kind of fire vulnerability seems appropriate, like a Wax Golem has.

[Algeh]

Ok, paying in butter along with other produce and goods seems a lot more plausible to me. Im still not sure I believe that thing with the bishop though. Butter doesn't have a long enough shelf life even refrigerated for that much butter to stay viable for very long.

Butter keeps for a very long time frozen, though, so if that was a possibility in Iceland in that era it would change ease of storage considerably. I don't know if Iceland has a permafrost layer like Alaska does that lets you basically build a freezer by digging a basement deep enough, though.

[LibraryOgre]

Taxes and tithes in Iceland were commonly paid in butter, cheese, livestock and other farm products

Insufficient precious metals to produce coinage, so produce was currency (standardised around the weight of a certain length of cloth).

And Jesse Byock was someone I read a lot of back then.

[Keltest]

Butter keeps for a very long time frozen, though, so if that was a possibility in Iceland in that era it would change ease of storage considerably. I don't know if Iceland has a permafrost layer like Alaska does that lets you basically build a freezer by digging a basement deep enough, though.

Iceland is volcanic, so while it does get cold in winter as per the rest of the Nordic regions, dig too deep and you actually get warmer, not colder.

[veti]

Four words: Create Food & Water. Of course it will go off quickly, but frankly that's going to be just as big a problem with normal butter.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Ok, paying in butter along with other produce and goods seems a lot more plausible to me. Im still not sure I believe that thing with the bishop though. Butter doesn't have a long enough shelf life even refrigerated for that much butter to stay viable for very long.

An icehouse is something I would think would be doable in a medival setting, especially a world with magic.

[Pleh]

Do the players have Exotic Butter Proficiency?

[The Glyphstone]

And what kind of butter are we talking? Butter made from cow or goat milk is probably normal, but what if your butter comes from displacer beast milk or something similarly weird/magical?

[Kareeah_Indaga]

And what kind of butter are we talking? Butter made from cow or goat milk is probably normal, but what if your butter comes from displacer beast milk or something similarly weird/magical?

Now I want to see a golem made from displacer beast butter.

[Mendicant]

Now I want to see a golem made from displacer beast butter.

I'm sure watching someone milk a displacer beast would be quite the show. Does the milk get displaced too? Either the milk appears to come out of thin air or it looks like the milker is doing mime.

[Stan]

I'm sure watching someone milk a displacer beast would be quite the show. Does the milk get displaced too? Either the milk appears to come out of thin air or it looks like the milker is doing mime.

"What are you doing? NO! Don't pull on That!"


The original question is one of supply and demand. To provide a bigger demand, the price will go up, to account shipping it in from nearby towns, using magic, etc. They'll cause a price spike. So, it'd be at least 1000 gp, maybe twice that.

[Telok]

Storage time depends on heat, humidity, and pests. I've got butter sitting in a dish on my kitchen counter that's going on it's third week and is doing just fine. Of course I'm in a place with low humidity, where three days of 75 ℉ temps is a heatwave, and the block is in a heavy ceramic dish that's functionally self sealing.

Seal the butter in some jars and store it in a stream or river. If you use a glacier fed water source then hotter weather gets you more cold water.

I would totally green-light the golem. Because it gives me an excuse to make a toast golem.

Waffle golem?

[Epimethee]

Actually, and of course according to climate, production and mode of conservation, making butter, just like cheese, was a way of lenghtening the life of dairy products : Look at the bog butter or the north african smen that could last for many years( here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smen).

[Mr Beer]

Less than 4000sp because bulk buying should get a discount.

Butter golem sounds great, I would definitely allow this. While vulnerable to hot knives, they are better at swimming than the more traditional golems.

[Xuc Xac]

Less than 4000sp because bulk buying should get a discount.

Counterpoint: More than 4000sp because nobody has that much available for purchase in bulk. The more you buy and stockpile, the more you'll have to pay because you're driving up demand and driving down the local supply. The last pound will be much more expensive than the first pound you buy.