Selling Spellcasting During Downtime

[Hassassin]

My current campaign has quite a lot of downtime, during which I let the players use skills such as Crafts, Perform, Professions and Sleight of Hand to make money. However, a Wizard wanted to sell his spellcasting services.

My temporary answer was to let him use Spellcraft in the same manner as Profession, but I'm wondering if there are any guidelines to do something like in Table: Spellcasting and Services, but in reverse. Any thought out house rules on this would also be interesting.

 

[Jhaelen]

I think PHB2 (or was it DMG2) has some rules for players trying to start businesses. However the rules aren't very good, imho. Basically, it's impossible to make a profit.

This is somewhat understandable since you must be careful about pcs gaining significantly more wealth than what is given in the DMG guidelines. If you want to allow a pc to make a profit you'd basically have to reduce treasure in the next adventure.

 

[Hassassin]

I think PHB2 (or was it DMG2) has some rules for players trying to start businesses. However the rules aren't very good, imho. Basically, it's impossible to make a profit.

I had never read those rules, but nothing lost apparently. Really, 116,000gp startup cost to run a protection racket in a town...

I'm also looking for something more light weight.

This is somewhat understandable since you must be careful about pcs gaining significantly more wealth than what is given in the DMG guidelines. If you want to allow a pc to make a profit you'd basically have to reduce treasure in the next adventure.

I'm not terribly concerned about "balance" here, but adjusting treasure is easy.

 

[Rhun]

I believe the DMG has rules for how much it costs for players to buy NPC spellcasting...I would assume it would sort of work in reverse.

Some related questions:

1 - Would the character set up a storefront? If so, he is going to have costs associated there.
2 - Is there a Mage's Guild or such? If so, the PC would either have to join and pay dues, or may get run out of business by the guild.
3 - Is he in a town or city or such? It is likely the PC would have to pay a portion of his revenue in taxes to the local lord.

 

[Greenfield]

Three considerations:

1) Check the aforementioned Spellcasting Services table from the SRD.
2) Check the available wealth in any given town from the DMG's section on world building.
3) Decide how much money he/she should be allowed to make, to stay in balance with your campaign.

Number 3 kind of outweighs #1 pretty heavily, and #2 puts a top cap on the whole thing.

The thing to remember is that just because spell casting services have a listed price doesn't mean that your PC has steady traffic at his or her door.

They might try to draw more business by cutting prices, but that will cause them troubles with the local guild members, the ones who normally make a living at this.

In the end, I'd let them make enough to make the effort worthwhile, but I'd limit the end results based on how much raw cash I want to introduce, and let that be the deciding factor, no matter what the various tables say.

Ultimately, if I were in your shoes, I'd look at all these things, all the opportunities involved, at the schemes the PCs want to concoct, and I'd be making notes. Plot hooks abound in situations like that.

 

[Rhun]

The thing to remember is that just because spell casting services have a listed price doesn't mean that your PC has steady traffic at his or her door.

This is a very good point. The average commoner probably can't afford to even spend a couple of gold pieces to have a spell cast, meaning that the only ones likely to patronize such a business are the very rich and adventurers. And adventurers generally have a spell-caster in their group, so unless they are looking for a very specialized spell, it is unlikely they would be patronizing the business as well. This leaves the character with a business that can only cater to the richest people in the region.

 

[Greenfield]

We ran into this in game recently.

The game world is under a curse that amounts to slow death. A cloud of smoke and ash has covered the sky, and stayed there for a couple of years now. The PCs are trying to lift the curse. Think "Nuclear Winter", if you will.

As they entered a particular area, they noticed that most farm fields were stunted, while some few looked as if a geometer had taken a compass and drawn a perfect circle in them. The inside of the circle was rich and green, while the rest looked like the other fields, kind of gray-green or brown.

It seems that the nobles who own farmlands can afford to pay the Druids' fees for a Plant Growth spell. Thus they have good crop yields, and make more come harvest time. This, in turn, allows them enough profit to pay the Druids' fees next time, and...

The PCs were thinking about having their Druid do it for the others, since ultimately everyone needs to eat. Their Druid wasn't yet high enough level to cast that spell, which is actually a good thing. They would have been in trouble not only with the local Druid circle, but with the Nobles who paid full price, counting on their crops bringing a premium price to make the investment repay.

Ah, the simple joys of supply and demand, and their impact on politics and local economic trends, all wrapped up into a simple knot for PCs to unravel.

 

[Hassassin]

I haven't really used the wealth limits ever, just the GP limit for individual item availability.

From the town wealth table a small city with 10,000 people has a GP limit of 15,000 gp. That means "ready cash/item value" of 1,000*7,500 = 7,5 million. So by the book someone there could find 750,000 10gp short swords - i.e. citizens would sell 75 shortswords each on average. Or the PCs could sell twice that number before exhausting the city's gold.

What am I doing wrong here? This makes no sense...

 

[Vegepygmy]

The thing to remember is that just because spell casting services have a listed price doesn't mean that your PC has steady traffic at his or her door.

This, exactly. This is why attempts to earn money as a "professional spellcaster" should be resolved using the Profession (spellcaster) skill.

Allowing PCs to use their Spellcraft skill like the Profession skill would be a kind, generous ruling by the DM. I wouldn't do it, but diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks and all that.

 

[jefgorbach]

IMO the various good-n-services tables works in either direction on the presumption the NPCs are essentially "other" players working during their own downtime, with the tables representing the base market value established by the local guilds for the items in question who expects a predetermined profit% of any transactions.

Likewise, more civilized communities likely impose a modest licensing and transaction charges for operating there. However, like modern yard sales, both could be reasonably ignored on an occasional basis, but any routine/robust flouting of the established order WOULD eventually draw notice and repercussions.

Personally, I use a diplomacy(Indifferent:Indifferent) result as = 100% base market price per the tables, with each step representing a +/- of 10%, further modified by the player's/DM's intent.

For instance the player doesn't particularly care who casts a given spell so approaches the first NPC Wizard posting he's available, who likewise is merely seeking to profit from some downtime and doesn't know anything about the PC. The base price is per the tables since both are indifferent and neither bothered haggling (via the diplomacy check).

Alternately, say they did haggle with a final result of "friendly"... The adjusted price would now be 90% of the table. However during their discussion, the NPC recognizes the PC likewise graduated from a particular academy so cuts him a break and drops his final price to 85% of the table; plus city and local guild imposed surcharges.