Using magic to make money

[Lord Crimson]

Basically, I'm advising that based on the hint of subtext of "I wouldn't let them get away with it" that I heard, to be mindful of bad DMing pitfalls. to consider what you're really against, and whether it's your right to do so as GM.

Oh... it's always your right to be a bad GM. Just not necessarily a GM-with -happy-or-even-continuing-to-play-with-you-players.

 

[Janx]

Really? So conversely: So maybe the local shopkeeper just knows the local tax laws, supply and demand and his trade. But the minute he takes up a sword and decides to be an adventurer, it would be poor form for the DM to have him stumble into REAL danger outside the little world of a shopkeeper that he lives in?

I know something about just about every general topic, from plumbing, medicine, hunting, farming, engineering, chemistry, exercise, fighting, taxes, law, religion, geography and government.

I'm not an expert in all of those (or even most of those), let alone skilled enough to pass a college test all of them.

But I am saavy enough to know what sounds technically correct to that topic, and to what I would do more research.

Thus, I may not know the actual tax laws and forms to file for a business. But I am aware that such things exist, and that as part of my "go buy an inn and retire" I would do more research into that topic rather than jump right in.

I assume the InnKeeper is also not a moron, and knows, there are monsters out there. That's why adventurers carry weapons. Before I go out to the dungeon, I should aquire a weapon and get some training in it. he doesn't actually have to KNOW about adventuring or dungeons to know it is dangerous and he must learn more before he can become an adventurer.

He still might suck at it. But he's not just going to trade his inn for a sword and head down to the nearest dungeon.

 

[Janx]

Oh... it's always your right to be a bad GM. Just not necessarily a GM-with -happy-or-even-continuing-to-play-with-you-players.

good point. people are free to suck.

I don't really think anybody in this thread is a bad GM.

I do challenge the thinking behind "not letting it work".

 

[Wik]

Waaaaay back when, in the 2e days, I had a wizard in a (mostly) solo campaign. At one point, at around 2nd level, he decided to use his small nest egg saved from a few dungeon crawls to start up a restaurant.

I figured, after all, that since I didn't have to buy supplies, I could undercut my competition and make a fortune.

So I cast Grease each day, and used cantrips and flame spells to heat up the grease. I bought the fish and potatoes, and basically had my wizard sell fish and chips. This was a fun little side business that sort of helped define the character (and, eventually, the campaign - trying to defend your little fish and chips stand against city mobsters and revengeful sahuagin is hard work!).

In that same campaign, I had a fellow party member (it was only MOSTLY solo, you see, with the GM running numerous one-on-ones that were all connected in the same city) who was a minotaur. Because the city was very much pro-human, and had a sort of "shoot on sight" rule when it came to non-humans (as opposed to demi-humans), he couldn't do things like buy gear, sell loot, etc.

So I made all his purchases, and instead of taking a percentage, I used him as cheap labour, helping acquire resources and fuel my other business endeavours. Again, a lot of fun.

***

I've seen this done in other games, though not to the same degree. I had a gambler wizard who used magic to aid him in his gambling. There was a magician "private eye" in a game a few years back. And I remember a Shadowrun hermetic wizard who was also a paramedic, though I don't remember who played him (if memory serves, his partner was a rigger who drove the bus through the city). In all three of those cases, though, these occupations were less a "sideline" and more along the lines of "adventure seeds".

 

[Kaodi]

I yet hold out hope for the day when I can break out a transmuter fabricator and proceed to great wealth, riches, and developed lands. Especially in a Kingmaker game, though any sandbox style game could do.

I mean, consider: The basic unit of fabricate is the 1 sqaure foot of raw materials. Now, 1 square foot of iron I think I estimated before ways about 400 lbs. The price of iron is 1 sp/lb, so you could buy a cubic foot of iron for 40 gp. So, for 40 gp, you could potentially make 400 Masterwork Daggers, for instance, to a theoretical profit to the tune of (400 x 302)/2 - 40 = 60360 gp. Even, if, for the sake of argument, the DM ruled that your saturation of the market drove prices down by a whole magnitude, that would still be a profit of 6000 gp for a mere 400 lbs of iron. And the fact is that you could probably diversify what you created, and keep your prices up. So, let us just imagine that you could make anywhere from 10-30000 gp from 400 lbs of iron. Raw materials become your only limit.

That spell is just awesome. I could imagine a scenario in which you had to help defend a village or town from marauders. Yet, the group can not stay in town all of the time. So you say, " Gather up everything made of iron and hardwood that you can spare in the village, and put it in a pile in the centre of town. I will take care of the rest. " You cast fabricate, and suddenly the villagers are outfitted with masterwork spears, daggers, chain shirts and crossbows. Instant army.

 

[Celebrim]

I mean, consider: The basic unit of fabricate is the 1 sqaure foot of raw materials. Now, 1 square foot of iron I think I estimated before ways about 400 lbs. The price of iron is 1 sp/lb, so you could buy a cubic foot of iron for 40 gp. So, for 40 gp, you could potentially make 400 Masterwork Daggers, for instance...

Don't you have to make craft checks to create anything finely detailed with the spell? So that's what, ~6000 separate DC 20 checks? And any failed check ruins the material you are working on?

to a theoretical profit to the tune of (400 x 302)/2 - 40 = 60360 gp. Even, if, for the sake of argument, the DM ruled that your saturation of the market drove prices down by a whole magnitude, that would still be a profit of 6000 gp for a mere 400 lbs of iron.

Yeah, for the sake of argument, if I'm your DM:

-1) I've already modified the fabricate spell to cover this issue so that the difficulties and limits of what you can craft (in or out of combat) are clearly specified.
0) You can't make steel from iron. Unless you obtain real ingredients, like forge hammered bar iron in various grades, you end up with gray iron daggers that are exceptionally brittle. Hardness is reduced by 5, and hitpoints are halved. What do real ingredients cost? That's easily enough answered - 1/3rd of the sell price. Says so right in the text. Sure, maybe you could do multiple castings of fabricate to work the ingredients through stages, but that adds time and effort to your plan.
1) Regardless of how many masterwork daggers you have, you can only sell 2-8 a day, because really, how often do people buy masterwork daggers. It's pretty much a just a dress accessory for some nobles, and a kit for a few assassins in town. And that's assuming of course your product is high quality, and why aren't sheaths included in the price like Master Xoppe's Shoppe down the road. You can make sheaths, right?
2) Before you can sell even that many, you'll have to get a shoppe and devote at least 8 hours a day to salesmanship. This means overhead and taxes. If you try to sell them on the street, you'll quickly end up being investigated as a possible thief or con artist.
3) After a week or two of this, you start getting market saturation. Prices are falling, demand is slacking off. Word gets out that this guy has hundreds of identical masterwork daggers. The local Weaponsmith Guild 101 wants to investigate. Where did all this crap come from? They pretty quickly figure out you magic'd them up, so they begin a rumor campaign against you - the daggers are stolen property and you are a fence, the daggers are cursed and will eventual revert to raw iron, or more honestly - do you want to depend on an item that reverts to raw iron the minute someone casts 'Break Enchantment'? Meanwhile, the Guild complains to the local sovereign that there government back monopoly is being threatened; hopefully you paid to join the Guild first, and even if you did you might get fined or kicked out if they find out you've been magicing the daggers into shape.
4) A good long term plan would be to start selling them to ship owners or caravan masters to expand your market. You could concievably sell lots of these at say a 50% discount to wholesalers, but eventually even that is going to bring you trouble.

 

[Eric Tolle]

Back in the AD&D days, my wizard who was a minor noble engaged in a profitable intrigue by polymorphing chickens into heavy war horses to be sold cheaply to a rival nation (the idea being, that if they took any damage, the rider would abruptly find himself astride a chicken). This alone eas profitable.

Also, due to the nature of the spell, few chickens would survive attempted polymorphing, so Dynadin found himself with a large quantity of dead chickens. He decided to get some hirelings, and opened a chain of Dynadin's Chicken Huts, selling deep fried polymorphed chicken pieces.

This is when one of the other players accused him of turning evil.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Back in the AD&D days, my wizard who was a minor noble engaged in a profitable intrigue by polymorphing chickens into heavy war horses to be sold cheaply to a rival nation (the idea being, that if they took any damage, the rider would abruptly find himself astride a chicken). This alone eas profitable.

Also, due to the nature of the spell, few chickens would survive attempted polymorphing, so Dynadin found himself with a large quantity of dead chickens. He decided to get some hirelings, and opened a chain of Dynadin's Chicken Huts, selling deep fried polymorphed chicken pieces.

This is when one of the other players accused him of turning evil.

For some reason, that made me think of this from Red Dwarf (Episode "Tikka to Ride"):

CAT:
Chicken's good!

LISTER:
Yeah, yeah. Pretty good.

KRYTEN:
That's not chicken, sirs.

CAT:
What is it?

KRYTEN:
It's that man we found.

LISTER:
What?

KRYTEN:
Well, it seemed such a waste just to leave him lying there when he'd barbecue so beautifully.

(RIMMER sniggers evilly. LISTER and CAT slowly spit out the human meat)

KRYTEN:
Did I do wrong? I didn't get any error commands. Obviously I thought about it because without my guilt chip or moral imperatives I had nothing to guide me. But it seemed to me that if humanoids eat chicken, then obviously they'd eat their own species, otherwise they'd just be picking on the chickens.

So...maybe he wasn't evil...just without guilt.

 

[AeroDm]

There was a spell that allowed you to duplicate any liquid you had a sample of. In some published module was a 200 year old cask of dwarven ale worth 50 gp and my low level wizard immediately realized the value. I took a sample to a brewing guild and threatened to flood the market unless I got a one-time payout of 1,000 gp. We negotiated, I cast the spell a few dozen times and gave them the output, got my 1000, and went back to adventuring.

 

[Kaodi]

Don't you have to make craft checks to create anything finely detailed with the spell? So that's what, ~6000 separate DC 20 checks? And any failed check ruins the material you are working on?

In Pathfinder especially, having a 20 Int at 9th level, and a +5 bonus from a 1st level spell, and even a single rank in the relevant Craft skill nets you a +14 bonus, and I never claimed to only put in single ranks (or a merely 20 Int).

1) Regardless of how many masterwork daggers you have, you can only sell 2-8 a day, because really, how often do people buy masterwork daggers. It's pretty much a just a dress accessory for some nobles, and a kit for a few assassins in town. And that's assuming of course your product is high quality, and why aren't sheaths included in the price like Master Xoppe's Shoppe down the road. You can make sheaths, right?
2) Before you can sell even that many, you'll have to get a shoppe and devote at least 8 hours a day to salesmanship. This means overhead and taxes. If you try to sell them on the street, you'll quickly end up being investigated as a possible thief or con artist.
3) After a week or two of this, you start getting market saturation. Prices are falling, demand is slacking off. Word gets out that this guy has hundreds of identical masterwork daggers. The local Weaponsmith Guild 101 wants to investigate. Where did all this crap come from?

I did already account for the fact that you could not really sell that many daggers. However, if you were equipping an army, you would be laughing all the way to the bank...

They pretty quickly figure out you magic'd them up, so they begin a rumor campaign against you - the daggers are stolen property and you are a fence, the daggers are cursed and will eventual revert to raw iron, or more honestly - do you want to depend on an item that reverts to raw iron the minute someone casts 'Break Enchantment'? Meanwhile, the Guild complains to the local sovereign that there government back monopoly is being threatened; hopefully you paid to join the Guild first, and even if you did you might get fined or kicked out if they find out you've been magicing the daggers into shape.

This is the second time this has been mentioned in this thread. Where the heck do people get the idea that " break enchantment " works on items? The spell, in both 3.5 and Pathfinder, explicitly says, " up to one creature per level, all within 30 ft. of each other " . And even if you could, it costs 450 gp to get someone to cast break enchantment. This is hardly an economical strategy, even if you could round up the daggers all in once place.

Edit: Also, it should be impossible to do anything to materials using fabricate that can not be undone with more fabricating if necessary.

Edit Two: It has just occurred to me as well that there is no requirement that everything fabricated by the spell be identical.