The value of a wall of iron

[Cheiromancer]

That doesn't make sense to me - the less mines there are the MORE iron is going to be worth. The harder something is to get a hold of, the more it is going to cost - without fail.

If iron from mines costs 1 sp per pound, then magically created iron (at about 2 cp per pound) would bankrupt the iron mines. I have no idea what iron production was in the middle ages, but I bet it doesn't take very many wizards to equal it.

Maybe "natural" iron is cold iron, and the regular stuff has its origin in somebody's wall of iron spell.

 

[Crothian]

A labourer with an adamantine axe would handle that in mere rounds.

-Hyp.

lot of labourers in your game that just happen to have adamantiner axes??? I think they would at least charge more then 3sp a day for their work

 

[Hypersmurf]

lot of labourers in your game that just happen to have adamantiner axes??? I think they would at least charge more then 3sp a day for their work

The adamantine axe is supplied by the wizard doing all the conjuring. You don't expect a lab technician to bring his own spectral analyzer to work in the morning, right? It belongs to the company he works for; he just uses it to do his job.

-Hyp.

 

[Jack Simth]

The adamantine axe is supplied by the wizard doing all the conjuring. You don't expect a lab technician to bring his own spectral analyzer to work in the morning, right? It belongs to the company he works for; he just uses it to do his job.

-Hyp.

So... you are going to trust a man who earns three times minimum wage (modern equivalent of about $15-20 an hour US, $120-160 for a "full" 8-hour workday) with a piece of fairly portable equipment that weighs in at a little over 10,000 times his daily wage (call it $1,200,000 to $1,600,000 US)? What do you think the turnover on those axes will be?

Also, a wall of Iron with Caster level 12th, with it's thickness halved, is still 1.5 inches thick, 45 HP. Even with the hardness gone, that's still going to take some hefty hacking (of course, that 45 HP is for making a hole big enogh to go through (a "breach"), not removing a workable sized chunk)

 

[Kurotowa]

So... you are going to trust a man who earns three times minimum wage (modern equivalent of about $15-20 an hour US, $120-160 for a "full" 8-hour workday) with a piece of fairly portable equipment that weighs in at a little over 10,000 times his daily wage (call it $1,200,000 to $1,600,000 US)? What do you think the turnover on those axes will be?

So either the wizard takes the Leadership feat, gaining trustworth followers, or applies a Charm Person, gaining the same thing.

Also, a wall of Iron with Caster level 12th, with it's thickness halved, is still 1.5 inches thick, 45 HP. Even with the hardness gone, that's still going to take some hefty hacking (of course, that 45 HP is for making a hole big enogh to go through (a "breach"), not removing a workable sized chunk)

Let's say a handaxe, doing 1d6 damage, used with Str 14. Ten rounds a minute, with an average of 5.5 damage a round, that's 55 damage a minute. Even with a fairly conservative figure, if 45 damage will cut you a hole large enough for a medium creature to fit through, we're only talking a hour's work to break the wall down.

This is why I like Eberron as a setting. It solves this problem by the optimally simple method, making 11th level Wizards rare enough for this not to be an issue. Outside of Eberron the spell could be tweaked so that the iron rusts at an accelerated rate. Or you can use it as a plot point, where the lost empire used this trick to sustain its war machine, and wizards now self police to prevent a return to those bloody days. Or you can file this one with things like "What effect does adventurers flooding the local economy with thousands of gold have?" and "How do all those creatures in a dungeon actually eat?" and agree not to think about it.

 

[sullivan]

Or you can file this one with things like "What effect does adventurers flooding the local economy with thousands of gold have?" and "How do all those creatures in a dungeon actually eat?" and agree not to think about it.

Or my all-time favourite; "Why don't you get a piling on effect as other creatures hear the sound of battle?" If you apply Listen checks, especially on dungeons that have few doors, even with the distance penalties, there should be a good number of oppotunists converging within a round or two. With "Battle" at a base DC of -10 you need 100' (100/10=+10) that includes two closed doors (5+5=+10) just to have a 50/50 change of not being heard by the most lead-eared of critters.

 

[Kelleris]

So... you are going to trust a man who earns three times minimum wage (modern equivalent of about $15-20 an hour US, $120-160 for a "full" 8-hour workday) with a piece of fairly portable equipment that weighs in at a little over 10,000 times his daily wage (call it $1,200,000 to $1,600,000 US)? What do you think the turnover on those axes will be?

Nonexistent, as long as you hire people with a wisdom in the double digits. Ganking that axe from a party of 12th-level characters would be like stealing the CIAs satellite codes - you get something absurdly valuable. You're also committing suicide unless you happen to be a super-spy.

We're not talking the office pencils here, after all. No Commoner 1 in their right mind is going to try to steal something like that under the even half-watchful gaze of the wizard who just conjured a solid slab of iron worth a small fortune out of midair.

Honestly, would you even be tempted to steal something from someone who knows chain lightning?

 

[Jack Simth]

Or my all-time favourite; "Why don't you get a piling on effect as other creatures hear the sound of battle?" If you apply Listen checks, especially on dungeons that have few doors, even with the distance penalties, there should be a good number of oppotunists converging within a round or two. With "Battle" at a base DC of -10 you need 100' (100/10=+10) that includes two closed doors (5+5=+10) just to have a 50/50 change of not being heard by the most lead-eared of critters.

You can make dungeons with vaugly workable ecologies:
Perhaps somebody left a few Sustaining Spoons in a tipped over jars somewhere, and vermin (mice, rats, et cetera) raid it regularly, and are in turn hunted down and eaten.

Perhaps a bunch of Continual Flame torches are illuminating hardy, edible plants that can deal with a light level of "torchlight" continuously.

Perhaps there's a fruit tree that formed when a seed sprouted in a Ring of Sustenance that had fallen into some dirt.

Perhaps bats frequent the dungeon (bringing calories in from outside), and are hunted down.

Perhaps there are just a lot of undead that don't need to eat.

Perhaps some of the monsters leave and come back, using the dungeon as a home-base for dropping off stuff that they don't want to carry continuously, and the scraps such lose feed many of the others; the monsters you encounter in the dungeon just happen to be the ones that are "home" at the moment (also explains rooms that are empty of anything but some treasure - they are "away" at the moment).

As for what flooding an economy with gold does, well, that depends on the character of the Powers That Be in the city (most of whom are the ones you will be giving that gold to - the master craftsmen, the spellcasters, the merchants). If they have a big spending bent, then yeah, things could get pretty ugly. If they have a "save up for a rainy day" bent, then it need not have much effect at all.

As for opportunists, have you looked at the DC adjustment for "through a stone wall" (and what thickness of stone is that +15 for? Six inches? Two feet? What about your "thin" 5-ft thick dungeon walls?), and the penalty for sleeping? Okay, the ones in the room right next door would likely hear, but around just one or two bends and you wouldn't hear much at all.

But yeah - an adamantium axe could make reasonably short work of such a wall, couldn't it?

 

[Jack Simth]

Nonexistent, as long as you hire people with a wisdom in the double digits. Ganking that axe from a party of 12th-level characters would be like stealing the CIAs satellite codes - you get something absurdly valuable. You're also committing suicide unless you happen to be a super-spy.

We're not talking the office pencils here, after all. No Commoner 1 in their right mind is going to try to steal something like that under the even half-watchful gaze of the wizard who just conjured a solid slab of iron worth a small fortune out of midair.

Honestly, would you even be tempted to steal something from someone who knows chain lightning?

Ah, but there's a catch to that - the original figures up at the top assume that the spellcaster making the wall was hired to do the job - potentially by a 3rd-4th level character with around a thousand gold to burn and a day or two to do it in - for an obscene (at that level) money multiplier. For 12th level PC's, it really isn't too much of an issue - 3k isn't much when compared to the 88k starting wealth at that level, or the 9.8 k treasure for a matching CR 12 encounter... and the encounter is usually more fun for it's time. At 4th, a CR 4 encounter only yields up 1.2k, and the starting wealth is only 5.4 k. At that level, a low-risk operation in a Metropolis sounds a little more attractive (that 2.9 k profit is over half your starting gold, for what amounts to a day or two's work - could really give you an edge in the equipment department... so tempting to twink your character like that....).

 

[Kelleris]

Ah, but there's a catch to that - the original figures up at the top assume that the spellcaster making the wall was hired to do the job - potentially by a 3rd-4th level character with around a thousand gold to burn and a day or two to do it in - for an obscene (at that level) money multiplier. For 12th level PC's, it really isn't too much of an issue - 3k isn't much when compared to the 88k starting wealth at that level, or the 9.8 k treasure for a matching CR 12 encounter... and the encounter is usually more fun for it's time. At 4th, a CR 4 encounter only yields up 1.2k, and the starting wealth is only 5.4 k. At that level, a low-risk operation in a Metropolis sounds a little more attractive (that 2.9 k profit is over half your starting gold, for what amounts to a day or two's work - could really give you an edge in the equipment department... so tempting to twink your character like that....).

And a 3rd-4th level character would have better things to do with any adamantine battle-axes that crossed his path. And he would still be able to keep a Commoner 1 from stealing his axe, he'd just have to be a much more watchful overseer for the whole hour it takes to carve up the wall.

Now, flashing around a shiny new adamantine weapon would possibly attract unfortunate attention, but that's a different problem.

3k starts to be pretty decent when you can pull it off a half-dozen times, too. That almost gets you to the next level-bracket of gp.