Magical Manufacturing

[RUMBLETiGER]

I'm looking into the ways to manufacture objects using D&D's magic. I'm imagining a small workshop with a large warehouse run by a few retired, higher level casters that have decided it's better to make gold from production rather than risking one's life in dungeons.

-Wall of Stone + Fabricate = Stone objects. The material component for the spells can be produced by former Walls of Stone.

-Wall of Stone + Transmute Stone to Sand + Transmute Sand to Glass + Fabricate = Glass objects. The material components are produced by previous spells.

-Wall of Iron + Fabricate = Iron objects. This requires the additional material component of 50gp gold dust, which could be supplied by the Major Creation spell. Major Creation would only require a tiny amount of actual gold.

-Wall of Iron + Transmute Metal to Wood + Wood Shape or Fabricate + Ironwood = Wood objects with extra durability, or Magical gear with +1 enhancement. Still requires the gold dust for the process.

-Create Water= water.

-Create Food and Water= meals.

...are there any other ways to produce permenent objects?

 

[Jack Simth]

I'm looking into the ways to manufacture objects using D&D's magic. I'm imagining a small workshop with a large warehouse run by a few retired, higher level casters that have decided it's better to make gold from production rather than risking one's life in dungeons.

-Wall of Stone + Fabricate = Stone objects. The material component for the spells can be produced by former Walls of Stone.

Totally doable.

-Wall of Stone + Transmute Stone to Sand + Transmute Sand to Glass + Fabricate = Glass objects. The material components are produced by previous spells.

I'd have to double check the durations on some of those, but for the most part, you want to double-check and make sure that all involved spells are Instant, rather than Permanent.

-Wall of Iron + Fabricate = Iron objects. This requires the additional material component of 50gp gold dust, which could be supplied by the Major Creation spell. Major Creation would only require a tiny amount of actual gold.

Negative on the Major Creation for gold dust for Wall of Iron - Major Creation "functions like minor creation", which includes the clause "Attempting to use any created object as a material component causes the spell to fail."

So no using Major Creation to create material components for you.

-Wall of Iron + Transmute Metal to Wood + Wood Shape or Fabricate + Ironwood = Wood objects with extra durability, or Magical gear with +1 enhancement. Still requires the gold dust for the process.

A couple of things....
1) Ironwood has a duration. The extra durability and magical stuff will go away after some number of days.
2) You can skip Wall of Iron and Transmute Metal to Wood. Get a small tree, and use repeated castings of Plant Growth on it for the seed materials.

-Create Water= water.

-Create Food and Water= meals.

Create Food and Water additionally, isn't permanent; the food spoils and becomes inedible on a very specific schedule.

...are there any other ways to produce permenent objects?

Let's see...

If you don't mind abusing Planar Binding and making slaves of intelligent creatures, your stock Genie has an at-will spell-like Major creation, with an addendum that vegetable matter is permanent. If kidnapping someone out of their home to make them a slave to your will gives you moral quandries, then Simulacrum gets you an Instant creature that inherits many of the abilities of the base creature. Still a slave, but not one ripped out of their home.

Wish can, of course, create most mundane and (with the 3.5 version) all magical goods, but I imagine that's out for practical considerations of the XP cost (although there are ways of bypassing this, if you have enough available sources - the Dweomerkeeper from the Complete Divine Web Enhancement is really handy that way; there's also a number of critters that have Wish available as Su or Sp abilities usable reasonably often that could be enslaved or duplicated).

 

[Dandu]

Polmorph Any Object comes to mind.

Through use of Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, and PAO, you could build yourself a city.

On the moon.

With frikkin' lasers.

 

[Sekhmet]

I second Dandu. Use Fabricate or Wall spells to create a base object of the same material, kingdom, and relation, and then Polymorph Any Object it into what you need it to be.

An example being turning a rock into a massive stone wall. 100 cubic feet /level is a lot of wall.

 

[Samloyal23]

Polmorph Any Object comes to mind.

Through use of Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, and PAO, you could build yourself a city.

On the moon.

With frikkin' lasers.

And with a permanent Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion you could hide the whole city in a door-sized slab of rock nobody would notice. This would supply you with all the air, water, and food you need to survive...

 

[Dandu]

 

[trancejeremy]

BECMI D&D had spells just for Magic-Users to build strongholds (and other things) with.

Woodform at 5th level, Stoneform at 6th, and Ironform at 7th.

The first two would create 1000 cubic feet of wood/stone anyway the MU wanted it, and the latter would 500 cubic feet of iron

(Fabricate made it over from there, surprised those didn't)

Of course, in the old days, retired wizards could get by just off of fees for turning stoned adventurers back to flesh

 

[Sekhmet]

[MENTION=924]trancejeremy[/MENTION] That last sentence brings back good memories.

 

[Samloyal23]

To really be "manufacturing" you need to be able to rapidly produce duplicates of a product in large numbers and do it cheaply. I don't really see a spell in the canon that can do that...

 

[Jack Simth]

To really be "manufacturing" you need to be able to rapidly produce duplicates of a product in large numbers and do it cheaply. I don't really see a spell in the canon that can do that...

Well... if you want to do mass manufacturing, you don't do it as a spell, you do it as a Timed automatic reset magic device trap of the spell you want.

That said:

Given the Craft Rules as they stand in D&D, someone who can reliably spit out a 1,650 gp set of masterwork full plate once a day (a generalist Wizard-9 with an Int score of 21 - that's base int 15, +1 int at 4th and 8th, and a +4 Int item - quite feasible at 9th, using the elite array - who bothered to take ranks in Craft(Armor)) for less than the cost of a traditional craftsman's materials (Wall of Iron mitigates a lot of it) would seem like mass manufacturing to the Dwarven Int-21 Expert-9 with Skill Focus(Craft(Armor)), max ranks in Craft(Armor), masterwork tools, and two assistants giving Aid Another (check modifier: +28) who takes ten in his crafting (result 38), accelerates twice (for DC 38) on most of the armor, and once on the 'masterwork' portion (DC 30), and takes 10 weeks, 4 days to make one suite of masterwork full plate. The Wizard will have outfitted a small army in that time (74 suits of full plate, assuming for some odd reason that he needs to recast Wall of Iron each day).