Ampersand: Monsters, Minis, Ammo

[avin]

Make the players find a way to answer A B C and D should be be a damn find adventure, granted that some DMs dislike adapting their games to such creativity.

I love when my players start something like that! All the hooks! All the plots! All the foes thinking they should steal player's Rust Monsters!

 

[D.Shaffer]

If the players CAN and do go through all the shenanigans involved with answering A-D...then yes it'll work. And after all the trouble involved they'll likely get just as much GP in profit from it as if they had adventured the normal way, what with paying off the fines and damages and loss of income when they dont harvest the things fast enough.

 

[andarilhor]

All those ideas of rust farms (in a a countryside where you don't find so much metal easyly) made me think about a D&D version of Jurassik Park .... RUST MONSTER PARK! Imagine, the panic, the horror, the total party kill.... bwahahahahahaha

 

[ppaladin123]

Make the players find a way to answer A B C and D should be be a damn find adventure, granted that some DMs dislike adapting their games to such creativity.

I love when my players start something like that! All the hooks! All the plots! All the foes thinking they should steal player's Rust Monsters!

It'll be tough to do. The magic ring in question is a level 24 item (worth 525,000) so the players will have to be epic-level or somehow acquire that sum before epic level (it might not be available for sale either). Then there is the problem that the ring only provides the "half-price" benefit once per day and only after a milestone.

So..you can only gain the benefit once per day and after two combats the DM deems difficult enough to be considered a milestone. You might be able to make/find several rings but this will add considerably to your business start-up costs.


Then you have to answer these questions: How long does it take a rust monster to mature to the age where it can consume an entire magic item? How many magic items can it consume a day? How long does it take for the rust monster to digest a magic item? How often do rust monsters mate? How many rust monsters are produced in a litter? What is the daily upkeep cost for rust monsters thatyou don't kill?


example:

Rust monsters cannot eat items above 10th level. Once per day you can feed a rust monster a level-10 sword, kill it and make a new level 10-sword using half the residuum collected (after engaging in 2 epic tier battles). the next day you can make another level-10 sword after your requisite combat using the remaining residuum. On day three you can feed two rust monsters the two new swords and kill them. You now have four level 10-swords worth of residuum assuming you engage in four days worth of epic combat and complete the ritual four more times.

So far you've spent one week and killed three rust monsters. You've gone from one 5,000 gp sword to four 5,000gp swords.... 20,000gp! Only you've most likely gained far more than that simply battling those epic tier monsters that are required to give the ring the power to power those half-cost rituals.

It expands from there....more and more dead rust monsters. Now you need to kill another 4 rust monsters. (how quickly can you replace them?)...further weeks of effort...8 more days to produce 8 more swords. 8 epic level battles against dragons and demons etc. (then 16....then 32 and so on).

 

[Byronic]

Rustmonsters are 4Es Wall of Iron (at heroic levels) and totally screw the in game economy. Now you can get a 100% return on magical items when you have access to rust monsters.

Screw it... or correct it?

I see it less as a "screw the economy" which has the silly 20% rule and give players a chance to swap one item for another of the same level. Or trade in an old and unwanted magical item for moonshine and Dust for rituals.

Hell, maybe you're a band of adventurers that struggles to find Rust monsters so you can convert magical items to Dust. When you and the rest of your Order have enough dust you shall combine it all together for one Huge Ritual to resurrect a dead God

 

[Cadfan]

I think Derren nailed it. The rust monster is 4e's wall of iron.

Which means that all of us who never had a problem with the wall of iron can rest easy. Did anyone really have a campaign where someone created unlimited walls of iron to sell for scrap metal?

 

[ferratus]

Derren points out that PC's might try to abuse the rust monster by penning them up and feeding them old magical items to get the full value of residuum. Some people are trying to disprove this, but all I can say is dear God in heaven and his virgin mother, I hope he's right.

First of all, the only thing they can do with the residuum is rituals and crafting other magical items. I don't give a damn if the PC's have extra residuum for rituals, because I want to encourage more rituals in the game. I love rituals like "seek rumor" and "silence" and "tenser's floating disk" and all the other utility spells and find them a little too expensive to show up as often in the game as I'd like.

For crafting magical items, you can't craft items of a higher level than you are, and the exponential cost of magical items pretty much puts the kaibosh on using residiumm from a bunch of old items into a residuum for a new item. The only thing a rust monster allows you to do is reconstiute a magical item of the level of the item you've lost, which is deliberate so you don't wind up losing your favourite magic item forever (just for awhile).

However, if a PC tries to capture several rust monsters for breeding, it can make a good subplot for at least 3 levels of adventures in which a PC tries to find rust monsters, contain them in a stronghold, and try to breed them. The output of fresh rust monsters will be fairly slow (since you have to kill a rust monster to retrieve the residuum, thus reducing the herd) if one assumes a breeding pair can lay 1 egg a year, and rust monsters live about 20 years or so.

You could perhaps get a small advantage from using raise dead on a rust monster, as long as the magical item was worth more than 1/5 -500gp that you'd gain in residuum. You couldn't buy magical items for this purpose, because you'd lose 500gp above the cost of buying the residuum in the first place.

Really, getting 100% residuum on heroic tier just seems to be a delightful way to compensate the PC's for all the trouble they are going through. They'll cast more rituals, and they'll take more interest in something other than dungeon crawling and killing loot. It is all full of win!

 

[ppaladin123]

I forgot another cost....travel. You need to engage in two epic-level combats a day to reach a milestone so you can use the ring to craft half-cost items. Where are those epic battles? If you have to travel the planes to find these epic level threats you might need to use "true portal," to get back to your rust monster ranch to feed them, kill them, and collect the residuum.....that's 50,000 gp a pop and thus not profitable. I suppose you could move your rust monster ranch into the elemental chaos or shadowfell or where ever else you are commonly adventuring...then you can use linked portal at 135gp per casting. Of course then you have to figure out how to set up a ranch on another plane.

Really this whole endevour reminds me of the Underpants Gnomes:

1. Phase one: collect rust monsters
2. Phase two: ??????
3. Phase three: profit.

 

[tomBitonti]

NPC Rust Farmers

So ... why do the adventurers need to be doing all the farming?

Depending on the density of PCs, seems that an enterprising businessman would already be in the business of farming the buggers.

Also, wouldn't there be a huge market for captured rust monsters?

The only way that I can see that the 4E economy would continue with the preset exchange rates, in the presence of rust monsters, would be for the cost of breeding the monsters to approach the difference in value in the amount of dust that can be obtained from one.

(Besides -- isn't the original idea that rust monsters are a part of a "standard wizards defense package, option 1B? Originally, capturing rust monsters alive was of value.)

 

[chaotix42]

Wow, you guys sure are noobs at this rust monster breeding thing. Been there, done that, lesson learned. Don't you know that rust monsters in captivity make caged panda bears look horny?

We've already broken the 4e economy wide open anyway - trollskin *anything*. Shoes, jackets, hats, greeting cards - you name it, you can skin a troll & make it. They get up the round after, ready for more! Instant win.