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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mouseferatu" data-source="post: 1491961" data-attributes="member: 1288">Some powerful groups probably do just that. (I've got an upcoming book that includes just such an organizaiton.) But the truth is, very few people are capable of managing it.First off, as you point out, spellcasters of that power are relatively rare. Sure, not as rare in some settings as others, but in none of them are high-level casters what you'd call "common."Second, getting gold/gems from the Elemental Plane of Earth isn't a matter of hopping over there and picking them up. It's mostly solid earth, remember. You've got to find an open space to work in. You have to dig through solid rock to find your veins of ore (assuming there's such a vein anywhere near your open space). You have to be able to maintain a work force in a hostile environment. You have to posess the means of transporting a lot of material/creatures across the planes. And you have to deal with native creatures--including some fairly powerful ones, like dao or greater xorn--who aren't going to be too happy about an invasion from the Material Plane.Even among the great mages, very few people are going to have the resources available to make such an operation work. Sure, you could probably gather enough material to make yourself rich, but not enough to supply a nation or destabilize an economy. In order to do that, you've got to have a huge supply of manpower and resources, and a large group devoted to nothing else. Sure, it can be done. But it's not easy, and even among the truly powerful, only a few can pull it off. Unless you've got a massive organization devoted to making such a thing work, it's actually more cost-effective in the long run just to find a mine on the Material Plane and conquer whoever owns it.</blockquote>

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