How to make a sustainable income as a high level wizard

[Melcar]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

[Skysaber]

Casting Wall of Salt and/or Wall of Iron (with or without Fabricate) are your typical go-tos for a high level wizard to earn some money.

Cast the wall spell, sell the salt/iron.

If you want to go the extra step, throwing a Fabricate on top of that iron will grant you longswords, steel shields, breastplates, etc, out of the iron. They won't be fancy stuff, like masterwork or dwarvencraft or anything adventuring fighters go after, but perfectly fine for soldiers.

And if you flood the market with armaments then you go for other things, like lanterns and cookware. As we see from mondern-day, there is basically no limit to people's appetite for more stuff, so long as it's useful (or can be sold to them as such).

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Buy a cow for 10 gp, cast Flesh to Salt from Sandstorm, sell it for 5 gp per pound. Or just cast Stone to Flesh on a boulder, then Flesh to Salt on that. You can even cast Transmute Mud to Rock, cast Stone to Flesh on it, then Flesh to Salt.

[Glimbur]

Sell your spell slots. Check the rules for buying NPC casting, and you're pretty well set for the RAW. Less powerful than selling salt but less likely to get banhammered.

[Kalkra]

Even if you need to buy the raw materials, Fabricate will still let you outdo any mundane craftsmen, and since Fabricate goes by volume and not by value you can buy some gold or diamonds or whatnot and Fabricate it into something for triple the value.

On a completely different note, you could use Prestidigitation to make the world's best food. People pay a lot for that kinda thing.

[Mike Miller]

How high level do you consider high? Killing dragons is a pretty fast and easy way to accumulate wealth if you are as high level as I consider high.

[AvatarVecna]

A generalist Wizard 20 with Int 30 (probably a little low, but eh) and nothing else boosting their slots is looking at 4/7/7/6/6/6/6/5/5/5 slots to prepare. If you're located in a sizeable enough city, you can probably find 57 people willing to buy one or more spell slots for the day. Any day you don't spend adventuring or using your slots for some other BS, you can sell as spellcasting services, making about 50k per day. Even if you downcast to the minimum CL to keep your prices competitive with lesser mages, you'll still be making about 28k. And that's assuming none of these spells needed expensive components, those cost extra.

Alternatively, as pointed out, mid-level dragons are both rich (triple standard for their CR) and absurdly-easy for you to kill and loot, and as a bonus you're helping cull the dragon population (which is great if they're one of the non-shiny varieties). The key here will be finding a dragon just tough enough that you'll still get XP for slaying it, without it being so tough that it gives you trouble (but then, what creatures of such low CR could really give a wizard of your stature trouble? ). A "Young Adult Red Dragon" is CR 13, and can be taken down fairly simply: Teleport in to surprise it, cast Maximized Shivering Touch, and you've got a 95% chance it's helpless for the next two minutes (longer, depending on interpretation). If you can get something letting you reroll attack rolls, you can make that 99.75% instead. Kill it (maybe with 19 coup de grace attempts with a dagger until it nat 1s? lol), then loot its 29k worth of crap. Hell, the only reason to go with smaller dragons is that they won't have the magic chops to really make this strategy fail, but if you're confident enough in your abilities, snipe bigger dragons for more XP/Loot.

[noob]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

A great thing is that spell research probably allows you to get some benefits from selling copies of the spell you researched: get a bunch of scribes to copy the new spells(or use a spell to copy the written spells) and sell them.
You can probably get a huge amount of money from spell selling if the caster population is high.
Although later you should not be surprised to see opponent npcs using your spells because gms likes messing up with players like that.
Furthermore you can probably replace your guards by a bunch of spells which will do the role of guarding stuff better.
If your apprentices are actually able to get item crafting feats you might set up a low level magic items shop (just use one of the ways to provide crafting xp to your apprentices).
Also buy animals and sacrifice them for dark crafting xp, dark crafting gold and wishes if you are evil aligned(you can use those to help with your finances).
If you are good aligned buy dead animals and use the feat that allows to add a domain to your spell list then turn the dead animals into undying(good aligned undead) then make a charity and use a portion of the money you are given to create more undying(since undying are good aligned creatures they are quite likely to participate to your charity once they get a job).

[Iku Rex]

You could talk to your GM about using the DMGII business rules. Maybe you have, or could easily start, a "University" or "Service". It sounds like you've already put in quite a bit of money that could be considered part of the initial investment and minimum resource need.

You won't be making wall of salt-money, but it's a simple way to represent "making some money on the side". Even if you fail a few profit checks it won't cost you that much.


Edit: Pathfinder has some downtime rules as well: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemasteri...rules/downtime . I haven't really looked at them.

[DarkSoul]

Get a copy of Power of Faerun and start a trading company. Combine with the business rules from DMG2. IIRC the trading company is one of the biggest moneymakers.

[Gnaeus]

Sell your spell slots. Check the rules for buying NPC casting, and you're pretty well set for the RAW. Less powerful than selling salt but less likely to get banhammered.

Less broken (slightly) than selling salt, and if you aren’t allowed to just sell your casting, you can Polymorph any Object for more expensive animals. Like, buy goats or pigs and permanently polymorph them into horses, or even elephants (both animals, mammals, same Int).

[GrayDeath]

Or, if your GM finds all these options too cheesy/too purely mechanical, given you live in Silverymoon and are "too high level to find stuff to loot", just let yourself be hired as the Court Wizard.

Should give you enough money from the many random threats the city faces all the time to live comfortably ^^

[zlefin]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

How much money do you need? and what level are you?

As a basic rule: find challenges meant for a party ten levels lower than you are, like ruins or bandits or such. Go beat them up for treasure. You should be able to trivially do so at least once a day.

[King of Nowhere]

as others have said, selling spells is a good idea, and not too broken if you fix the absurdly high costs.
my favourite way to have wizards contribute to the world economy is teleport. Buy some bags of holding, put people in them so you can teleport dozens of people at a time, at reasonable prices. advertise that you are taking a trip between two major cities every day, or a more complex schedule involving more cities. start your personal airline that way.

but historically, keeps were funded by either taxes or economic revenues. if you have a keep, you should have one of those.

[Tvtyrant]

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Reason is, I'm not killing hordes of epic geared NPCs anymore, so there are not many items to keep, and not a lot to sell either. So I'm actually going bankrupt soon (like in about a year in-game) if I don't somehow come up with a plan/ scheme to make some gold fast!

My tower is placed within the city of Silverymoon, so I have a fair marked to work with... I don't really care at this point if its a cheesy option, but preferably an honest trade. Again, preferably within raw, but we do have a lenient DM, so most non-obscene things go! Again, any way of making some gold in a cost/time-efficient way, that makes a substantial dent in my account balance, is what I'm looking for.

Any ideas are welcome!


Thanks

Bind a Lantern Archon, begin selling cheap "modern" lighting systems.

Double thought bottle then make a ton of magic items, making a new thought bottle each time your XP runs out and then using the first one to get back to full.

Release Shadows or other self-reproducing monsters into a city so they will pay you to eliminate them, repeat in different cities every so often.

Sell Simulacrums of yourself or other high level adventurers to be constructs for midlevel parties/guard cities. Why use expensive golems that kind of suck when you can get 10th level wizards for cheap?

Give Simulacrums of yourself to parties in return for a cut of the loot.

Make permanent flying colossal Animated Objects and sell them. These can be used to pull flying boats, looking like a huge paper airplane with a boat underneath. With thoughtbottles or binding something with Permanence this is cheap to make. You can also make animated ships that can slowly swim and fight off attackers.

Smaller animated objects using the same tricks can be sold as industrial farm equipment or modern tech. Plows that pull themselves, delivery drones (smaller versions of the airship above), animated boats and horseless carriages.

Tell fortunes, you have scrying and future predicting powers.

Sell good weather to cities/farms. Control Weather a few times to prevent a storm is rather easy for you and good for them; no more hurricanes or sudden blizzards as long as they buy your storm insurance.

Wall of Stone/Wall of Iron for cheap building materials or to quickly make stuff. If you get higher op you can persist Undermaster to make entire cities in days.

Sell security systems, scaled to clientele. You could even make simulacrums and have them actually go cast the Glyphs and other defenses.

[RNightstalker]

Farm out said servants, guards and apprentices.

Check out the profession skill and add as many bonuses to your checks as you can.

Or...since you're an adventurer...GO ADVENTURING AGAIN!!

[Jack_Simth]

Sell Simulacrums of yourself or other high level adventurers to be constructs for midlevel parties/guard cities. Why use expensive golems that kind of suck when you can get 10th level wizards for cheap?

Give Simulacrums of yourself to parties in return for a cut of the loot.

Letting simulacrums of yourself out into the world largely unsupervised is begging the DM to make them a plot point. Sure, they're utterly loyal to you... but they're created so, and it's an Instant effect. Which means if an entity hostile to you lands a Dominate Person on one, they get access to a rather lot of information about you. If there's a lot of them, and you're selling and/or renting them out, you're going to be known for it rather quickly. If you're known for leaving copies of yourself about, it "makes sense" for your enemies to take advantage of this.

But then: Cleaning up mistakes is adventure, so....

The other ideas are largely cheap and easy, though. Note that Polymorph Any Object can turn regular objects into the Animated Objects of themselves Permanently for free (Kingdom? Check. Size? Check. Int? Check. Probably a few others, but those three alone get you +9) - you'll need to double-check control clauses, though. Wall of Stone + Stone Shape (or Fabricate) + Polymorph Any Object = Tireless stone horse. Can also do cheap stone golems that way (better choice, as you're their "Creator" in all ways that they have one). But do ask the DM (via a quick test), and don't try to sell them as the real deal, sell them as tireless lifting / hauling equipment unsuitable for combat.

[Quertus]

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, feels your pain. His businesses operate at a loss, on top of his other expenses.

Personally, he solved his financial problems a) by adventuring; b) by a player in these boards wanting to pay for someone to create a planet.

But, whatever you do, don't sell Simulacra of yourself, unless you have absolutely no secrets, and all your allies can instantly tell the difference between you and your Simulacra.

Also, it's just bad business. The cost of a Simulacrum is based on HD, not CR. It is far more optimal to purchase a Simulacrum of a Paragon ½-Dragon… Illithid Savant who has eaten the brains of epic Wizards, than to buy 10th level Wizards.

[Crake]

To all the people recommending selling spell slots, that would actually be covered by a profession skill. It's the same way that the DMGII business rules use the same rules for running a magic shop as anything else (it assumes only a couple of sales per year or so), because people don't just buy spell services willy nilly, and you need to spend time marketing your skills, you can't just rock up into town and expect to get clients.

The same would technically go for something like fabricating iron or salt, you can have all you like, but there's only a certain amount of demand to be met, so the majority of the time is actually spent finding clientelle rather than actually producing.

The real question is: What do you need the money for? Ideally you should just be able to provide for yourself to the point where your expenditure should be 0. Anything mundane that you need should be self crafted with fabricate, if there's anything you need a significant abundance of, your best bet would be to craft an at-will fabrication machine in which you put in 100x the material component, for example, if you want lots of expensive inks and scroll scribing supplies, you can put in 1000gp into the crafting of the fabricate item worth of raw materials for inks and scroll scribing supplies, and it will be able to make 30gp worth per use. Then just have an automaton, like a homonculus, or some other cheap construct just constantly using it, to generate 432,000gp worth of inks and scroll scribing supplies per day. Congratulations, you can now scribe as many scrolls/spells into your spellbook as you like, with the only limiting factor being your xp.

You then can fix that by finding a way to generate 40 crafting xp per day, the best method being ambrosia. An at-will item of rapid spell distilled joy can make 1 ambrosia per hour from someone, that's 24 per day if there's no rest. Symbol of Pain and nippleclamps of exquisite pleasure are the go-to method for permanent, debilitating pleasure, and you only need 1 subject, and there's no mention on the subject needing to be intelligent, so you could theoretically just hook up an animal of some kind to the ambrosia machine. I'd recommend a ring of sustenance as well, so the creature in question can be left completely unattended while you just passively generate ambrosia.

So yeah, I guess, at that point, you're generating your own xp faster than you can spend it, you're generating the materials you need way faster than you can expend them, what exactly is there left that you need money for?

This is actually the reason why there are no wizards messing with the economy in my setting, because... why? They can become entirely self sufficient, realistically they can source anything they need with something like true creation to create their initial fabricate devices, without spending xp, because they just scribe scrolls of it, and use the ambrosia instead of xp.... Basically, it becomes a time vs money scenario. If you have time, you don't need to spend money, and wizards are excellent at extending the amount of time they have. My personal favourite is just remaining permanently shapeshifted, your shapeshifted body ages, at which point you just shift into a new form, though other methods exist. A contingent last breath to reincarnate you is another popular method, usually achieved through the limited wish spell (which again you can bypass the xp cost with your excess ambrosia and crafting it into a scroll).

Honestly, once you have your free scroll scribing via an at-will fabricate item and 24 free daily ambrosia, you can basically make whatever you want given enough time.

[Quertus]

The real question is: What do you need the money for?

Answered in the OP:

So after a few years break, we have started our old high level party again. However, I find that I'm loosing money fast, without really gaining any. I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

Paying for these things for years of downtime with no adventuring income really adds up.

(EDIT: Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, needed money because of all of the businesses he was funding, including a spell component shop in Waterdeep, and a multi-planar Adventurers' Guild. All of which operates at a loss. Quertus' financial acumen was matched only by his tactical brilliance )

[Crake]

Answered in the OP:


(EDIT: Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, needed money because of all of the businesses he was funding, including a spell component shop in Waterdeep, and a multi-planar Adventurers' Guild. All of which operates at a loss. Quertus' financial acumen was matched only by his tactical brilliance )

It was more of a rhetorical question, the answer basically being that a wizard should never actually need money once they reach a certain level, they should just become entirely self sufficient, assuming they don't have an active adventuring campaign that's putting them under a time pressure.

[Quertus]

It was more of a rhetorical question, the answer basically being that a wizard should never actually need money once they reach a certain level, they should just become entirely self sufficient, assuming they don't have an active adventuring campaign that's putting them under a time pressure.

So… pay your household staff with fabricated goods? I considered that maybe you meant something like this, but, since you didn't explicitly state it, I figured it best to point out the exact problem to solve, and await clarification.

Because "self sufficient" and "able to pay retainers" are not necessarily synonyms.

[Eldariel]

You could just charge tuition fees for your magical university, sell gated/bound creatures on whatever grounds you feel like or some such. Just find wealthy clients and you can get good deals. Or yeah, you can always gank some demon or dragon or whatever and take their stuff. Killing demons carries the bonus of nobody really liking them so them having very few allies who would care enough to get in trouble for one of their subordinates/allies/whatever. They're also infinite.

[Lapak]

Since the standard D&D world is a weird kinda-but-not-actually medieval/feudal setting, lean into that by signing on with the local ruler as a court wizard and/or noble. Nobility's whole shtick is basically a protection racket, where the rest of the community supports them in exchange for being the Guy Capable of Defending The Place. Get whoever holds power to subsidize your household and research in exchange for knowing that if a dragon shows up or a demon army knocks on the gate you'll be there to drop 9th-level spells on them until they go away.

[unseenmage]

Get some Spell Clocks or Resetting Magic traps.
Set them in a circle all affecting the same space and/or target.

One makes material, one sculpts material, one enhances material, one animates material, one programs animated material.

Animated material moves to new circle.
New circle equips material and sends it away to any one of the numerous planar metropolises where it can purchase the components for assembling a new set of circles.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The details vary, I can help if you'd like. Simulacrums, Constructs, even Undead can be used in such.
Back when I did it they were Constructs and as an Artificer both divine and arcane magics were accessible. For an arcane caster though one could just buy spellcasting services.

The initial cost of setting up a self replicating wealth generating Spell Clock circle is admittedly staggering. However, it generates ever increasing amounts quite efficiently.

Alternatively, get a Mirror Mephit that makes Sims of more Mirror Mephits and have all the new ones make Clerics who True Creation gold pieces for you. Poof, you made money.
Or Runic Guardians with Fabricate.
Or Spellsong Nightingales with Create Water + Water to Acid (sell the acid) and Elation + Distilled Joy.
Or a Spell Turret of the above.

Sorry, my $ making schemes are all so nigh 8nfinitely repeatable.
If you're worried about breaking economies, dont be. Unlike our world the D&D-verse has destruction of matter as well as creation. Roaming herds of rust monsters, umbral blots, and even flocks of material wealth burning dragons roam this gameworld.
Their economy will (probably) be fine.

[tyckspoon]

Rent out access to your resources as a high-level mage. Rent work-time in your workshop/lab space. Charge for access to your library. Contract out your apprentices to provide magical services that don't require high-level spells. Make it a condition of apprenticeship that any capable apprentices create one easily-saleable magic item a month (a potion or scroll of a common buff or utility spell, for example.) Set up a rental/lease program for low level adventurers to use your high-level items (Geas them to bring it back at the agreed upon end of contract if you want) - you aren't actively adventuring, but imagine how much use a starting party could get from being able to bring along your Staff of Ultimate Burnination to have CL 17 blasting support or your Widget of Efficient Armaments that casts Chain Greater Magic Weapon and Chain Magic Vestments. And if they happen to die anyways you can just teleport yourself into their adventure location, take your item back, and finish looting the place yourself/take the rest of their gear for your troubles. Find some place that is having trouble with their coinage and offer to use Fabricate to be their mint, take advantage of using magic to place some feature on the coins that would be difficult or near-impossible to counterfeit without magic (traditionally the mint is paid by being permitted to keep some fraction of their production.)

If I were your DM I'd just handwave that these and similar activities generate sufficient income to cover your day to day operational costs - feeding/housing/paying your retainers, non-specific 'magical research', etc. Would only make you come up with more money to cover specific game-relevant expenses, like if you actually created a new functional spell or were making a major magic item. And if you happen to run low on gold for those.. well, sometimes you need something to get you out of your comfy lab and out looking for an adventure

[3drinks]

Conjure monsters with long duration summons, then rent yourself out to slay them.

Capital idea, it's the perfect crime!

[Telonius]

Go into the insurance business.

"Nice kingdom there. It would be a pity if something ... happened ... to it."

[Fizban]

I'd ask how things got to this point in the first place. If you owned your own stronghold with control of some sort of profit*, you could invoke Stronghold Builder's Guidebook for 1% of the base cost per year. Instead you apparently own an expensive tower in the middle of a city full of other powerful mages with expensive towers, which you got by trading a pile of cash (magic items) rather than any sort of backing from the people in power? Well yeah, you're pretty much screwed then, just like any other noble or windfall merchant who squandered their money instead of investing it well enough to get the returns needed to pay for their lifestyle. Turns out that kinda cash doesn't just appear out of nowhere and once the damage is done, it's just a matter of time.
*or can convince the DM that you and your apprentices' mere presence is an exploitable source of profit.

Except in dnd cash does appear out of nowhere. The only appropriate answer is to get the money the same way you did before, and go hunting. Pop open a planeshift, go find some of the infinite extraplanar foes with standard loot generation, pick a fight with some that are a bit under your level and don't have friends or superiors, and make some money and xp. It's far more honest than spells that create money (even though they should have been written to not do that), or pretending you can somehow forcibly sell your daily slots when there's nothing close to a suggestion on the demand for them, or using the terrible DMG2 business rules.

You could also try incorporating. The PHB2's Affiliation rules are far better than DMG2's business rules. If you have Leadership, or the obvious fact that you lead a massive pile of stuff gets your DM to waive the requirement, you could just found a self-sustaining affiliation. It would mean technically relinquishing control of your tower and reassigning or hiring a bunch of employees that work outside the domestic servant role, and if you want them to enable spell research you'd have to stat that up as an affiliation power (there's already one for item creation), but the rules don't actually mention who's in charge first- presumably it must be the founder, and it will be some time before anyone in the organization could really challenge you for leadership. Of course the rate at which they could put out magic items or spells would be far lower than you are used to, but this way they aren't removed from the map so to speak.

[D+1]

I have a large household with apprentices, guards, servants... not to mention upkeep of library and lots of spell research and experimentation. Its has become a problem frankly.

A: If this is an active player character then go on adventures. Adventuring is your profession, not research and experimentation, and is what the game is intended to reward monetarily.
B: Obtain land, get people to live there under your rulership and tax them.