Reserve Feat - Dimensional Reach

[Dannyalcatraz]

Won't work.

Sure it could: 1 or more casters casting from concealment- or possibly using things like still spell or silent spell, or items- to avoid detection, with a team of urchins to do the mid-stampede grabbing.

Thievery of this kind often involves teamwork.

One of my other hobbies* is jewelry design. I get a lot of my raw materials from Intergem trade-show vendors. The setting is essentially an indoor bazaar, with 100+ vendors with their wares set up on tables and some in locking cases. Typically, there will be 2-4 people working an average booth.

Foot traffic is in the thousands, and some booths may have a score or more customers at a time.

Since I started going to their shows in the mid-1990s, security has changed a great deal. After a couple of families got caught using their baby strollers as theft aids, no strollers were allowed. After a couple of families got caught using their older kids as either distractions/screens or as the primary thieves, they barred all kids under 8.

Do thefts still occur? Sure. But they're down.

Still, despite there being tens of millions of dollars of stuff in these shows, there is relatively little armed guard presence. A team of armed robbers could probably do pretty well there, but they don't even try. (Those that do usually hit the vendors on the show's closing day, in the parking lot.)

Better protecting the show from armed robbery could be done. The vendors would appreciate it: a lot of industry insurance lowers or voids payouts if you don't resist when you're able.

But with armed robberies in the halls being so rare, why would they? It would cost them too much.

Likewise, the feat you claim is the only thing it does well- and does it SO well, it would destroy the bazaar business model- is the purview of casters who are already pretty damn powerful, demographically speaking. Why use this feat when a Major Image or a summoned lion will net you a bigger haul? Why defend against this feat when there are so many more obvious threats- easier by far to simply do what merchants have always done to offset the costs of petty thievery: raise prices, distributing the cost of "shrinkage" across your thousands of customers.







* yes, I have many hobbies.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure it could: 1 or more casters casting from concealment- or possibly using things like still spell or silent spell, or items- to avoid detection, with a team of urchins to do the mid-stampede grabbing.

Thievery of this kind often involves teamwork.

The more resources you are collecting to perform the job, the more problems you have. Teamwork and coordination on that scale is hard and requires a lot of practice. You also need a bigger payout to pay all your participants. If you have a team of that size, you are essentially talking a whole thieves guild pulling the scam. This scam is flashier, but it's arguably not more effective than hitting the target with a similar sized team of all rogues with appropriate tradecraft. If you are talking about something like a silent still major image, you've got to have a 9th level wizard to pull that off. If you have teams of 9th level wizards equipped with magical items to pull this off, backed up by some 5th level wizards, backed up a bunch of 1st level rogues, you could pull the same crime as a standard armed robbery with an equivalent team of leveled fighters - multiple 9th level fighters, multiple 5th level fighters, and a bunch of 1st level fighters could roll most small town city watches with relative ease. So again, basically you are talking about a large force of bandits at this point. Eventually yes, you'll have enough magical prowess to roll a marketplace by brute force. Forget silent still major image to create panic, you might as well be telling me how a team of 9th level wizards with wands of lightning bolts and appropriate retainers could rob small towns. Yes, probably so. I'm not expecting a small town to be able to defend against that much concentrated force.

Your team is going to draw a bunch of attention. I mean, in my campaign world, the players started play in the city state of Amalteen - roughly 300,000 residents. In the entire country, there were only 2 characters above 9th level. Pulling off a stunt like that where multiple 9th level characters were pulling off wondrous feats would become a rumor of regional scale. Millions of people would soon be talking about this rumor. Several major cults would intervene, as would the nation state itself. It might be a fairly even match, but your team of crooks would be a regionally important BBEG. Similar things are true of the real world. If you hit a gem trade show with enough force to pacify a target of that size for a grab job, you'd make the national news and have the FBI all over you.

Pulling this off with a team with slightly less force is possible, but if you do, the amount of force required to stop you is equivalently less and the amount of coordination needs to be even higher and more perfect. You'd get away with it a couple of times, but eventually enough would go wrong that you'd be in trouble. It would be similar to the bank robber periods in the 1870's or 1930's. Things would either go wrong by chance, or you'd run into an ambush where they set you up and things would go to heck in a hurry.

By comparison, if you have 1 5th level wizard with this reserve feat there are no obvious counter measures. The closest equivalent I can think of is in the 1990's, when they first figured out that you could use LED's to confuse the coin counters in slot machines and a single grafter with a light stick could walk the strip pulling a few hundred from each casino and make $5000 a day with basically no chance of being caught until the casinos worked out what was going on (mostly because some guys got too public with it). Guys were pulling $1 million a year out of the casinos with almost no skill required. If that had kept up, if there was no counter measure, they would have just closed the slot machines down.

Fifth level wizards are fairly rare in my game, but they are not that rare. In my game, many of them are 'hedge wizards' - essentially working tradesman. If you could learn a trick like this? In my opinion that changes the entire culture of the world. There might be only one 10th level wizard in the 300,000 people of Amalteen, but there are probably 180-200 5th level wizards. Your 'scare 'em with spells' model is basically just banditry by wizards, and bandits are a problem but they have short life expectancies and are a known factor with all the sorts of countermeasures you can employ against bandits. This? This is walking out the door with anything left unattended, and I can't think of countermeasures in a world that is actually pretty thick with counter measures (those hedge wizards mostly make their living selling things to defend against magic). A couple dozen wizards learn this trick to be able to earn easy money? Yes, it changes the culture of the entire nation.

One of my other hobbies* is jewelry design. I get a lot of my raw materials from Intergem trade-show vendors. The setting is essentially an indoor bazaar, with 100+ vendors with their wares set up on tables and some in locking cases. Typically, there will be 2-4 people working an average booth.

My mom works jewelry shows in the Texas to Missouri area. Not sure if she visits the same shows. But she sells jewelry and buys some of her stones from vendors. Most of her stones though are from rock hounding though. My dad does cabochons and polishing of native stones - agates mostly.

Why use this feat when a Major Image or a summoned lion will net you a bigger haul?

I don't buy it. One illusion or one summoned creature is not going to net you a bigger haul without all that backup and help you mention. Even with that back up, you are going to have problems. It's the difference between trying to hit a casino and pulling a con on one. The kind of jobs you are talking about would require case work, planning, escape routes, cover stories, fronts operations, and logistic support. You've got a team of dozen people doing the front work, many of them kids. There is so many dang things to go wrong here, and covering up your trail is going to be a pain in the rear. I wouldn't even have to invent anything to stop the PC's. If they could run this operation, they'd earn their levels fair and square, but just the standard sorts of obstacles they'd have to overcome... I wouldn't expect most players I've gamed with to run it perfectly enough to keep in business.

This feat? Only an idiot would get caught.

 

[Dandu]

This scam is flashier, but it's arguably not more effective than hitting the target with a similar sized team of all rogues with appropriate tradecraft.

Give a man a knife, and he will rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he will rob the world.

White collar crime is where it's at.

A couple dozen wizards learn this trick to be able to earn easy money? Yes, it changes the culture of the entire nation.

I'm inclined to argue that, like hacking, you could use hacking to make money, but most hackers get better money, and benefits, from legitimate employment.

Leaving aside the fact that a 5th level wizard doesn't have to worry about food or shelter, so it's unclear what he'd need low level wares for. At their level, their spellbook will be worth more than the Shire and everything in it.


Out of curiosity, I decided to check the SRD to see what a 5th level wizard would have reasonable access to.

First off, he could cast Rope Trick or Tiny Hut for shelter, if only overnight. He can get transportation via Mount (or Phantom Steed) and assistants via Unseen Servant.

He could get low level magic items, such as a Ring of Sustenance for 2500 gp, which removes the need to eat and reduces the need for sleep to two hours per day, and a Handy Haversack for 2000 gp or Bag of Holding I for 2500 gp. WBL for a 5th level character is 9000 gp, so this affordable at 5th level. (If we allow the MIC, we have Everlasting Rations for 350 gp.) For games without magic marts, we could say that a wizard could get these items on commission or in exchange for favors, ie, the church crafts them as payment for slaying monsters or heretics or what have you.

 

[Celebrim]

So the counter argument seems to be that power makes one incorruptible.

 

[Dandu]

So the counter argument seems to be that power makes one incorruptible.

Rather, it eliminates certain needs, so one is unliely to breal the law in pursuit of them. Wizards may still murder others for lost knowledge, artifacts, etc.

Think of histpry's great tyrants. How many of thm went around committing petty crimes? A great monster commits great crimes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

By comparison, if you have 1 5th level wizard with this reserve feat there are no obvious counter measures. The closest equivalent I can think of is in the 1990's, when they first figured out that you could use LED's to confuse the coin counters in slot machines and a single grafter with a light stick could walk the strip pulling a few hundred from each casino and make $5000 a day with basically no chance of being caught until the casinos worked out what was going on (mostly because some guys got too public with it). Guys were pulling $1 million a year out of the casinos with almost no skill required. If that had kept up, if there was no counter measure, they would have just closed the slot machines down.

The key difference here, though, is that the mechanism you're describing is essentially ubiquitous. Cheap and easy to acquire for a piddling sum for anyone so inclined.

In contrast, we're talking about a caster's 6th level feat- assuming the character is a full caster who didn't multiclass, because if not, it is an even higher level feat. IOW, this is a rare commodity that involves a great deal of personal growth and education. The number of casters choosing this feat would be astonishingly small. It is more akin to becoming an MD with the express goal of conning insurance companies and poor old widow-women than what you describe.

Rather, it eliminates certain needs, so one is unliely to breal the law in pursuit of them. Wizards may still murder others for lost knowledge, artifacts, etc.

Think of histpry's great tyrants. How many of thm went around committing petty crimes? A great monster commits great crimes.

There was a documentary done on how the Feds & NYPD made a few of their bigger mob busts. The surveillance teams not d how many of the "foot soldiers" worked hard committing petty crimes on a daily basis, including jacking phone booths for loose change. The bigger fish? They had operations to plan...though occasionally one would backslide if the right opportunity presented.

But your observation holds up: the small crimes generally aren't worth the time & effort to the more powerful real-world criminals. Why should fantasy miscreants behave differently?

My mom works jewelry shows in the Texas to Missouri area. Not sure if she visits the same shows. But she sells jewelry and buys some of her stones from vendors. Most of her stones though are from rock hounding though. My dad does cabochons and polishing of native stones - agates mostly.

Cool! Howzabout posting a thread with some pix of their work? Maybe find out where she shows in TX?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Guys were pulling $1 million a year out of the casinos with almost no skill required. If that had kept up, if there was no counter measure, they would have just closed the slot machines down.

Are you sure about that? From an economics standpoint, it seems like the machines would just become rare enough that it would no longer be profitable to try and scam them, and then the scam would become less popular as opportunities became less common. Once you get down to only one or two people pulling any given scam, it behooves them to not be so blatant about it that their source is shut off entirely. You'd need more than a handful of independent operators before the tragedy of the commons starts to apply.

But still, that's a simple trick that anyone could try, and only a small percentage of those eligible actually went through with it. Applied to a much smaller scale (level 6+ non-Lawful spellcasters), it's not a guarantee that more than one or two who even want to pursue that career option, and those few should have enough sense to not kill off their market by being too blatant. If they stole enough to make society re-evaluate the whole concept of a bazaar, then bazaars would end and people would simply stop taking this feat since there was no longer any obvious gain to be had, which means bazaars would come back a generation later when people forgot what they were afraid of, and it should basically stabilize out to the point where application of the feat wasn't significant enough to kill off the bazaar. Probably.

Of course, all of this is predicated on the fragile premise that sixth-level spellcasters are common enough to disrupt the market and ninth-level spellcasters are basically unheard of. While it might follow from that premise that bazaars wouldn't exist if you add this feat to the mix, that premise doesn't hold in all worlds. In some worlds, there will be dozens of high-level spellcasters available in any given city. In some worlds, even first-level spellcasters will be rare enough that they can't wreck the economy. Saying that the existence of this feat would guarantee bazaars don't exist is like saying the existence of Eladrin (in 4E) would guarantee that they are killed on sight since there's no possible way to detain them; it requires a fairly specific confluence of circumstances in order for it to logically follow.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Think of histpry's great tyrants.

I read that as, "Think of Hipstery's great tyrants."

 

[Dandu]

Youre not wrong...

 

[nijineko]

The Deflect Arrows feat chain, iirc, covers snatching (and return throwing if you obtain the dependent feat) of projectiles from mid-air.

So no, dimensional reach would not allow this in and of itself. However, assuming that you have it online already, I see no reason not to use it in your attempt to do so.

Personally, I'd allow anyone to try it (with or without the dimensional reach) even without the feat, with an appropriate penalty.