How to make profit with crafting

[Ichneumon]

Alright, this is one of the only way I have discovered to actually make money in Dnd without breaking the rules.

First, look at the cost of an "Everburning torch", it costs 110 gp. So you could sell an "Everburning torch" for 55gp. What is an "Everburning torch", you ask? I quote:

This otherwise normal torch has a continual flame spell cast upon it.

So, normal torches cost 1 cp... Casting continual flame on them, and thus creating an "Everburning torch" costs 50 gp. Now, you could sell it, you gain 4gp and 99 cp.

[Hunter Noventa]

You could knock it up to a 5gp profit by using a rock or some such item with no cost as your torch.

[Mojo_Rat]

Im not sure what you mean by 'make a profit' with magic items. All magic items are effectively a 100% markup, probably more so in many cases. While this is due to the Xp cost in alot of cases paying 600xp for something that nets you 15-20k gold over your cost to make is well worth it.

Obviously i pulled those numbers out of nowhere just as an example.

[Ichneumon]

Everburning torches do not cost xp, you only cast a spell that takes up 50gp on material components and cast it on an object that costs 1 cp. As soon as a torch has the spell cast upon it, it becomes an everburning torch (read the description, it says so exactly, no doubt about it). You can sell such a torch for more than the 50gp and 1 cp. Thus you can earn a living.

[Worira]

Umm... Crafting items costs 1/3rd the market price. Loot sells for 1/2. There really aren't any acrobatics necessary here.

Link edited in here.

[Ichneumon]

Umm... Crafting items costs 1/3rd the market price. Loot sells for 1/2. There really aren't any acrobatics necessary here.

Wait, crafting materials cost 1/3 the market price? Could you show me where it says so, this is new for me.

[Kiirseva]

Step 3 of the Craft skill.

[Hasivel]

If you're honestly trying to break the WBL and make some money, skip the crafting. Play a caster. Take Planar or Exalted familiar and get a Lantern Archon for your familiar. It can cast continual flame at will. As it's an SP ability, it costs 0 in spell components.

Whenever you're in town between jobs, spend a spare hour before bed putting your familiar to work as you hand it random sticks to turn into ever burning torches. 55GP a round, 550GP a minute, 33,000GP an hour. Maybe you'll want two hours at those rates. Keep your Lantern Archon happy by donating every 10th torch to the church or some random charity of it's choice.

Of course no town can handle so many thousands of ever burning torches at once, the influx would be absurd. That's why, for your convenience, Lantern Archons can teleport at will and take 50 pounds of goods with them, more than enough to take a load of torches and bring back a sack of coins to all sorts of places where they might want ever burning torches.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Or you can do the Wall of Iron cheeze and glut the Iron market...

Wall of Iron - costs 50 GP to cast. Makes a permanent wall of iron.

And here it shows Iron as being 1sp/pound.

Since the Wall of Iron weighs significantly more than 50 lbs... profit galore!

[Iku Rex]

I laugh at your wall of iron trick. Reposted from another thread:

Get the wall of salt (lv4) spell from Sandstorm instead. At level 12 you can create 12 5 ft. squares of 12 inch thick pure salt crystal. 12*5*5*1= 300 cubic feet. At 135 lbs per cubic foot, that's 300*135= 40 500 lbs of salt. The salt is real - the spell does not have a duration.

Each pound of salt has a value of 5 gp. Thus, each casting gets you 40 500*5 = 202 500 gp. If you cast the spell 10 times per day you'll get 2 025 000 gp/day, or 739 125 000 gp/year. You'll probably want to hire a few people to help you sell the salt, but profits will still be substantial.

Any cheating attempts by the DM to introduce silly stuff like "supply and demand" to the campaign should be met with resolute thumping on the RULEbook. If he insists you'll just have to accept making a few million gp less.

[Douglas]

If you're talking about making profits by crafting and selling magic items, that generally requires a DM willing to listen to some logic about what "market price" means and why loot sells for only half value by RAW.

"Market price" is what the item will sell for if you set up shop and wait for a buyer to come to you. The buyer wants the item now, and if he's not willing to pay full value you are willing to wait until another buyer comes along who is. Wait long enough and a buyer will eventually show up who is willing to pay full price.

"Sell value", what you usually get for loot, is what you get when you just want to convert your new and not-so-useful stuff into cash quickly. You want to sell, you don't want to wait, and the buyer usually has no reason to want the item except to make a profit selling it to someone else. The storekeeper offers half price and you accept because getting anything more would require more time and effort than you want to invest.

To make significant profit from crafting and selling magic items you must take the role of the shopkeeper, be patient, and convince your DM that it should work.

[Armads]

Erudite 11. Pick the Convert Spell to Power variant, as well as Fabricate (with no material component cost, via Convert Spell to Power) as one of your unique powers. Then fabricate stuff into more stuff and sell it.

[Citizen Joe]

There are rules in the DMG to dictate how much money and goods are available in various town for purchase or sale.

Trade goods are the best, because they sell for full price... a yard of linen is a 'fungible' asset and thus can be sold at full price. So start with a third of the 'sell value' in raw goods (Flax) and make one large bolt of linen equal to the maximum available cash in town. Use fabricate or whatever spell to make it instantly... but even using craft skill you will make a better profit than other trade skills with the half markdown price.

I see now that the SRD states that you can make 1/2 your craft result in gold per week... That seems to be a no fuss way of dealing with it. Especially since all the sales stuff is kinda screwy....

[Jack_Simth]

I laugh at your wall of iron trick. Reposted from another thread:

Get the wall of salt (lv4) spell from Sandstorm instead.

A note:

Not all DM's permit all sources. The Wall of Iron infinite wealth trick is (other than looking up the weight of the iron) strictly by way of the Player's Handbook as written.

Trade goods are the best, because they sell for full price.

Sorta:

Merchants commonly exchange trade goods without using currency.

You don't sell the linen you make - you exchange it directly for whatever it is you are after - no coins involved.

[sikyon]

The key is greater teleport - it allows you to sell the stuff and avoid normal market economics like changing supply and demand.

[Randel]

Or, if you think you can cast Wall of Stone properly, you can try making stone walled houses or make paved roads for people to get from place to place faster.

Or you can create a permanent Wall of Fire to help keep a castle warm in cold winter times. Or a permanent wall of ice to help keep perishable foods cold.


Oh, and don't forget the enrichment feature of the Plant Growth spell, have a lord pay you to give his fields a plentiful harvest.


But, as for getting rich with crafting... see about joining a guild that supplies the merchants with the stuff they sell. The reason adventurers only get 50% their market price when selling magic items is because the shopkeepers have to appraise the item then and there and have no real guarantee the adventurer will be in town the next day if something happens.


Or get ranks in trapmaking and sell your services to people who need to have their dungeons in top shape.

Oh, and if you feel like being a real cheat. Try crafting a flask of acid... while using 1/3 of another flask of acid as your raw materials.

[Armads]

Or you can create a permanent Wall of Fire to help keep a castle warm in cold winter times. Or a permanent wall of ice to help keep perishable foods cold.

Except that it'll kill anyone who comes within 20ft of the wall?

[Jack_Simth]

Except that it'll kill anyone who comes within 20ft of the wall?

Make it a circle, focused inwards. Run a steel pipe with some water through the center to harvest the heat. Problem solved (other than pumping it - but you can get the water from a Decantur, and just set the whole mess running way up on the tallest tower, and let gravity do the work of distribution).

[tyckspoon]

Except that it'll kill anyone who comes within 20ft of the wall?

Walls of Ice don't radiate damage, although they can't be made permanent; you could use one casting to stock up a good sized ice-room. Should probably arrange to provide Resist Energy for the workers tasked with cutting up and transporting the ice so they don't get killed by working in the super-chilled air left behind by a broken ice wall.

Wall of Fire only causes damage on one side. I could see that being cast into a crawlspace between two walls; the wall the active side of the fire faces would be permanently warm and radiate heat into the room(s) it lined, like a version of the hypocaust heating system.