What's more important to me is that gp can't immediately be converted at the magical megamart into power, past 15K.
As I said above, I agree -- the idea of having magic stores is dumb. But the idea that item X can be bought with money (because it costs less than 15K gp) but slightly more expensive item Y can't be bought with money, or even traded for multiple copies of item X, is dumb too.
If anyone could come up with a reasonable real-world analogue of this multi-currency system, I'd find it more plausible.
As for Frank's "idea of multiple systems of representing valuable items with absolutely, positively no way of translating between one and the other, ever", something similar already exists in 3.x. They are called artifacts. They have a value that is beyond gold.
No, they don't have a gp value because the DMG suggests: "Artifacts are extremely powerful. [..] No table has been included to randomly generate specific artifacts, since these items should only enter a campaign through deliberate choice on your part." The "15K" system is saying that a +3 sword is extremely powerful and should only enter a campaign through deliberate choice on the DM's part, which I disagree with. If a player wishes to swap two +2 swords for a +3 sword, why not? A +3 sword is not a plot device.
With regard to what both of you have stated, I have no objection to a DM requiring a player to deal with all the details involved in these schemes nor with presenting them with unforeseen complications and interruptions. In fact, I encourage it. I am also willing to go on record as saying that the DM does have the option of disallowing these exploits.
My issue is not with Rule 0, but with the argument that because a DM can disallow something that is clearly a flaw in the rules that the rule is just fine as it is and does not need to be fixed. It seems I communicated this badly.
You're missing my point again. I'm not talking about Rule 0 at all (i.e. changing the rules). There is no rule that talks about instantly being able to sell an item for cash. There is no rule that allows it, and there is no rule that forbids it. So whichever choice you make in your campaign, it's a house rule. It's not a matter of ignoring an existing rule at all.
First off, a challenge for the mathematically inclined/ rules gurus. I want your very best estimate, based on evidence, be that your assumption of number of adventurers and at what levels, at number of towns and wealth ratings of said towns, #of dragons modified by age of dragons, whatever method you choose, your best estimate to answer the question:
How many Gold Pieces are in Golarion? [do not include things such as a silver chair worth 2,000 gp. That is not currency. Do not include trade goods with 'value' again, they are not currency. Do please include things like silver peices, platinum, and copper]
Now that that's done, and since I have no hope of answering that myself, lets get down to comments others have made. I really think the wall of iron exploit was meant just as an example, way too much time has been spent adressing it. The point was, there are lots of exploits.
Why not just simply add the rule into the RAW that states something to the effect of:
3. If an object is brought into existence from a spell, that object can not be used for anything other than a direct application of the spell's function (walls for walls. Flesh to stone + flesh to salt are merely flavorful ways of killing/disposing of someone). If any such thing should be attempted, the item immidiately crumbles into dust.
Granted you would still have to fix the 10 foot ladder/ 10 foot pole thing, but that could be done easily by simply switching the costs of the items. I'm pretty sure that #3 can be used to get rid of 99% of the wealth exploits.
I really liked 2. at first, but I'm not seeing the logic behind it. why *cant* planar currency be transferred into material currency? If a poor down-on-his luck farmer finds a 1,000 gp soul gem burried in his feild, are you telling me he *cant* find somebody to buy it and give him his 1,000 GP? Surely an adventuerer, in the system you mention, would be more than happy to give the farmer his 1,000 GP in return for a soul gem which s/he can use for powerful magic items. What about inter-adventuerer trade of planar currency? A 5th or 6th level adventuerer would eagerly sell a 'useless' soul gem they found to a 14th level adventuerer, maybe for double gold even, so they could be that much closer to making their axe +2.
In the above cases, what this comes down to is really only a matter of price, not of the inability to buy and sell "planar currency".
I'm not really sure that I want to move into making spells only have very specific, "encounter" based applications that, by the rules, can't be used for anything else. I've seen that in play, and while it can work, it snowballs and alters the landscape of the game.
The only reason that I spelled out everything I did in my last post was to show that these exploits take time and effort, and in most campaigns, its not too hard for an adventuring life to get in the way of actually doing this sort of thing.
Also, I wouldn't be too unsympathetic to a DM that said, "okay, after spending months harvesting your spells to make yourselves rich, other adventurers have tamed this region, but you can live in a nice soft home and enjoy your gold . . . since there isn't any adventuring going on, the campaign is over."
Why do people mine metal when spellcasters can create it? Because it's economical!
Wall of Iron is a 6th level spell, so you need wizards of 11th or greater level to cast it. One 5ft*5ft*3inch square has a weight of 90 pounds, which is worth 9 gp. Twelve of these would be worth 108 gp.
The fee to have a 12th level caster to cast that spell ist 770 gp. I'm no expert, but for that price you can pay 100 miners for one week and I'd assume they could produce more than 1080 pounds of iron.
And it's really no problem to get 100 miners for even the cheapest feudal lord. Getting your hands on a spellcaster who is willing to cast wall of iron every day is much more difficult (that is, assuming a setting were less than 10% of all people are level 5 or above).
Conjuring iron is much, much faster than mining it, but you make huge losses with it in economical situations.
And I think that's just one example of many more. You could do a lot of things, but on a local, regional, or national economical scale, it's just not economical.
In the real world, there are people in industrial nations who live (historical and global seen) extremely comfortable lives with 500€ a month. Still there are "goods" and "items" that have a price of 3,000,000,000 € like an aircraft carrier or 4,000,000,000 € for a skyscraper.
When a poor man makes 36 gp per year and a huge castle costs 1,000,000 gp and a +5 weapon 500,000 gp, that seems much more reasonable to me.
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But the idea that item X can be bought with money (because it costs less than 15K gp) but slightly more expensive item Y can't be bought with money, or even traded for multiple copies of item X, is dumb too.
I agree, it's terribly arbitrary. "15,000 gp? Sure, we have it right here. 15,001gp? Whoa! What're you talkin about stranger? Them's powerful magics!"
So yes, it's gamist and artificial. But no more artificial than the current rule system as written that allows powerful magics to be bought and sold with literally tons of bits of precious metal changing hands (assuming DM doesn't enforce Rule 0). So if I were to choose one arbitrary, gamist economy over another... I'll go with the 15K one.
Just my 2 bits of precious metal.
[EDIT] And, to be fair, this was never a game-breaker for me. I'm still not blown away by arguments that much of anything is "broken." It could be, sure, if you let it. But the 15 K rule seems interesting and useful to me. So if we're fixing things that could be broken, let's consider it.
I agree, it's terribly arbitrary. "15,000 gp? Sure, we have it right here. 15,001gp? Whoa! What're you talkin about stranger? Them's powerful magics!"So yes, it's gamist and artificial. But no more artificial than the current rule system as written that allows powerful magics to be bought and sold with literally tons of bits of precious metal changing hands (assuming DM doesn't enforce Rule 0).
As opposed to the real world's economic system which allows power to be bought and sold with literally tons of bits of precious metal (or the equivalent) changing hands, which is perfectly realistic.
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As opposed to the real world's economic system which allows powerful equipment to be bought and sold with literally tons of bits of precious metal (or the equivalent) changing hands, which is perfectly realistic.
Well, I think instituting a paper note system in a fantasy world is certainly reasonable. But mounds of coins is so much cooler!
[EDIT] So we're on the same page with the megamagic market, it seems. The 15K to me seems a nice solution to that problem. What is your solution then?
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Fabricate only changes 1 cubit foot per level when dealing with minerals. The 12th level wizard would need to use 7 fabricate spells to process his wall of iron.
[Edit]
Sorry, this was incorrect. The fabricate spell would simply fail because of insufficient capacity. The target has to be within the target range of effect.Sam
Yes, you target 11 cubic feet or whatever with each casting.
Besides, its not that hard to cut into pieces with an adamantine blade. Like slicing through butter.
I just fail to see any real problems with this whole thread.
An 11th level or higher wizard decides he wants to spend his life making iron instead of adventuring. So what? Just retire the character and be done with it.
An 11th level caster can make a block of iron 5 feet by 5 feet by 5 inches. So not even 5 cubic feet. He can use Fabricate on it maybe.
Seems to me the problem is the DM allows the Wizard to have a adamantine blade (which does NOT chop through iron with no effort- so I assume this is some kind of magically enhanced vibro blade), to set up shop to cast these spells instead of adventuring, allows the wizard to sell the material for 1/2 book even without a buyer... all sounds like a poor DM to me.
And ummm Flesh to Salt... been scanning the SRD and cannot find it anywhere. If you are going to complain about a splat book spell of 3PP go to the publisher and gripe about it. Paizo can do nothing about other people's spells. Heck I can make a nice spell called Earth to Gold if I wanted to and no one can do anything about it.
Sorry but this is a huge non-issue
Well, I think instituting a paper note system in a fantasy world is certainly reasonable. But mounds of coins is so much cooler![EDIT] So we're on the same page with the megamagic market, it seems. The 15K to me seems a nice solution to that problem. What is your solution then?
In practice? As a DM I don't worry about it too much, and my players haven't complained. After all, we're playing Dungeons & Dragons, not Merchants & Merchandise.
So, for instance, in my Shackled City campaign, there's a "magic shop" in Cauldron that has a few cheap trinkets (stuff less than 2000 gp, say). For anything more expensive or rare, the owner can send a message to Sasserine ("the big city") to see if they have one. If not, one can be made to order (I've reduced magic item crafting times greatly in my game). But that's just fluff. What it comes down to is that the players can buy whatever they want (with gold, letters of credit, whatever) within reason.
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This is a very interesting puzzle but I suspect that is less a problem with the rules and more a style of play issue. I doubt that in the majority of games out there that these loopholes are really a problem. I would suggest a section in the running the game portion of the rule book or a side bar that could offer constructive advise to DMs for handling these complex economic issues.
In the RAW you can go into town and hit the local Sears for a new +5 Craftsman Adamantine Vorpal Great Axe of Wounding if it doesn't exceed the GP limit for the town. Some games are okay with that, other games limit what you can find in town because of the economic impact. It's a matter of style not necessarily a break in the rules. Same goes for these loopholes.
I have found letting my PCs get away with one of these ploys once but with the caveat that doing it again would seriously disrupt the economy curtails further shenanigans. I know that approach may not work for every DM. This is why I favor something be included in a game supplement somewhere (if not the main rule book) but I would prefer the included content not be new rules so much as advice.
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So, for instance, in my Shackled City campaign, there's a "magic shop" in Cauldron that has a few cheap trinkets (stuff less than 2000 gp, say). For anything more expensive or rare, the owner can send a message to Sasserine ("the big city") to see if they have one. If not, one can be made to order (I've reduced magic item crafting times greatly in my game). But that's just fluff. What it comes down to is that the players can buy whatever they want (with gold, letters of credit, whatever) within reason.
Gotcha. Sounds like there's more of a in-story process for "buying" high-level items, which I like. I'm thinking for my new campaign I'd like to have more limits on buying high-level stuff to avoid the min-maxing "fill every slot perfectly" style of play (unless they craft, but that's fine, that's what the feat is for). I want to make the items they find all that more special (I tend to tailor treasures to my group anyway, another arbitrary DM hand-waiving technique).
Accordingly, I still like the 15K idea that noone in possession of a +4 flaming holy sword is going to possibly part with it for any amount of wealth, and that even if they did, you'd need a few mack trucks to transact the deal (if you don't use notes like you do). Granting a favor, pursuing a quest, or the old fashioned go-and-kill-the-beast-whats-got-it seems a more reasonable process than gold exchange.
Plus, the 15K idea sidesteps any loopholes and exploits of arbitrary wealth, which is the idea, anyway. Go ahead, make as much money as you want with your walls of iron and fabricates. You just can't convert that wealth into unending magical power.
I liked the way they spelled this out in the Magic Item Compendium, where you had to basically ask around to find a given magic item, and the DC was 15 + the item level to find an existing item that someone had and was willing to part with.
I extended this to being able to find someone ready and willing to actually make the item as well. The point was, a given town might have items of that gp level available, but that doesn't mean that you can automatically find the exact item you want to buy for that gp amount.
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I'm sure I've read at least one article in Dungeons and Dragons that went along the lines of "You're going into ironmongering and not adventuring? Enjoy your retirement. Would you like to roll up a new character now?".
I agree that the 'fix' seems easy. Once the wall suffers x# of hp, the magic that created the wall is undone. The metal cannot be reforged or smelted for any use.
Next?
Though I do like the other suggestion of the iron coming from somewhere. I imagine a group of angry, unionized dwarves and an entire town crumbling into a pit because the local wizard has been cornering the iron market. It sounds like something from Nodwick.
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Why do people mine metal when spellcasters can create it? Because it's economical!
Wall of Iron is a 6th level spell, so you need wizards of 11th or greater level to cast it. One 5ft*5ft*3inch square has a weight of 90 pounds, which is worth 9 gp. Twelve of these would be worth 108 gp.
The fee to have a 12th level caster to cast that spell ist 770 gp.
A cubic foot of iron is around 490 pounds. It can vary down to 445 pounds per cubic foot for grey cast iron and 485 pounds per cubic foor for carbon steel.
That 5 ft. x 5 ft. x 3 in. section is 6.25 cubic feet, and would weigh a minimum of 2,780 pounds.At that rate, a 12th level wizard would create iron at about a cost of 2.5 to 3 cp per pound. That is rather economical.
Of course if you want to get excessively RAW, you cannot use that iron to fabricate weapons or armor.
Why?
Fabricate requires materials equal to the normal cost of crafting. A long sword, which weighs 4 pounds and costs 15 gp, requires 50 sp worth of materials to craft. That would make it difficult for 50 pounds of iron to qualify as the proper raw materials, and the player will have to scramble for proper materials.
Of course the sheer legwork to come up with all of that should be a prime indicator of why the whole thing should be casually handwaved into a simple background factor, and nobody should be worrying about where the iron is coming to fuel their economy.
As for players doing it and getting too much equipment, if they are really that obsessive to want to sit around and cast spells like that, let them. Just adjust any adventure to give them no loot for anything they kill so they stay somewhere vaguely near the wealth per level guidelines. Or overwhelm them with the time it takes to craft all the cool new toys they want to buy so that the adventure is "over" by the time they are ready. Or tell them that the evil NPC wizard figured out the same trick, and now all his 1st level guards have 500,000 gp worth of equipment that is only usable by evil flunkies, dissolves in sunlight, and a bunch of other silly modifiers that make it useless to the PCs but which can actually be found in the RAW.
The game is about wandering about and adventuring, not casting wall of iron to become abnormally wealthy. If they want to play that game, then they should understand the bad guys play it too. I can demonstrate a similar stress point with hiring flunkies:
Hire 10,000 peasants.
Give each a crossbow and 20 bolts.
It does not matter that they are not proficient, a natural 20 always hits.
It does not matter that they have a BAB of +0, a natural 20 always hits.
At most you might have to cast a pack of greater magic weapon spells on their bolts because some silly monster has DR x/magic. To make our reductio totally absurdum, let us in fact assume we have an ancient red dragon with DR 20/magic as our target so we have to do that.
The dragon shows up.
Our crossbow horde fires, and scores 500 hits. 25 of those actually confirm as critical hits. That gives us an effective total of 525 hits. Each light crossbow bolt (we were a bit cheap) does 4.5 average damage, +1 for the pathetically wimpy GMW we had cast, for a total of 5.5 damage per hit. They deliver 2,887.5 damage. That is enough to not only kill our 660 hit point ancient red dragon, but his three ancient red dragon homeboys, with enough left over to critically injure their adult red dragon chronicler (he will have all of 48.5 hit points left, as we want to be sure the ancients are at -10).
We must therefore completely rewrite the rules on hiring mercenaries, or even servants, because a lunatic like me is capable of crunching enough numbers to break the combat system. (Maniacal laughter upon doing so is thrown in for free.)
It is a wargame with numbers.
It is a simple algebraic model.
I CAN, as an absolute statement of ability, break it.
I am hardly unique in that ability.
It does not prove a flaw in the underlying mathematical model.
It demonstrates a minor stress point in the difference between playing the intended game and playing number cruncher.
The solution is at most a minor note in the rules to find a group that wants to play a heroic fantasy RPG and not one that wants to sit around doing algebraic equations until they can prove that by not rolling a 1 for their first attack, they automatically defeat every possible encounter until they ascend and replace all the deities, so you may as well just give them a signed notice that they have won so they can track someone else down and force him to submit.
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I'm sure I've read at least one article in Dungeons and Dragons that went along the lines of "You're going into ironmongering and not adventuring? Enjoy your retirement. Would you like to roll up a new character now?".
I agree that the 'fix' seems easy. Once the wall suffers x# of hp, the magic that created the wall is undone. The metal cannot be reforged or smelted for any use.
Next?
Though I do like the other suggestion of the iron coming from somewhere. I imagine a group of angry, unionized dwarves and an entire town crumbling into a pit because the local wizard has been cornering the iron market. It sounds like something from Nodwick.
better yet, a group of angry, unionized dwarves hiring a diviner to figure out who is "stealing" their iron, and showing up to demonstate how well adamantite axes cut through flesh...
I counter 'magic items are special' with 'magic items are necessary'. After all, everyone is highly magic dependent. Period. The ones who can't cast it have to make up the balance with items. Any sort of 'magic items are special, so this is going to be hard to get' therefore weakens the already weakest types.
Now, making this Wish economy, or Soul economy, whatever you want to call it. That's fine. It means gold can be used for story stuff, even if you don't trust your players not to sell story award mansions to buy more shinies. That makes non one dimensional wealth systems more accessible. But the magic items are special mentality only contributes to imbalance.
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I counter 'magic items are special' with 'magic items are necessary'. After all, everyone is highly magic dependent. Period. The ones who can't cast it have to make up the balance with items. Any sort of 'magic items are special, so this is going to be hard to get' therefore weakens the already weakest types.
Now, making this Wish economy, or Soul economy, whatever you want to call it. That's fine. It means gold can be used for story stuff, even if you don't trust your players not to sell story award mansions to buy more shinies. That makes non one dimensional wealth systems more accessible. But the magic items are special mentality only contributes to imbalance.
Oh, of course they're necessary, I'm not arguing that. The characters are going to get them, or they're going to die before too long. But, in-story, I want them to be valued for more than a "+4". I don't think "special" is mutually exclusive with "necessary."
Accordingly, I still like the 15K idea that noone in possession of a +4 flaming holy sword is going to possibly part with it for any amount of wealth, and that even if they did, you'd need a few mack trucks to transact the deal (if you don't use notes like you do). Granting a favor, pursuing a quest, or the old fashioned go-and-kill-the-beast-whats-got-it seems a more reasonable process than gold exchange.
Go for it. Use whatever fluff you want in order to get magic items into a player's hands; that's the DM's prerogative. But that's just what it is -- fluff, not "RAW". Whether you kill a dragon, take the dragon's gold, and buy your magic item, or whether you take a quest from MacGuffin the Archmage to kill a dragon and receive a magic item as payment -- it doesn't matter, the end result is the same.
Plus, the 15K idea sidesteps any loopholes and exploits of arbitrary wealth, which is the idea, anyway. Go ahead, make as much money as you want with your walls of iron and fabricates. You just can't convert that wealth into unending magical power.
It doesn't really sidestep anything -- it just switches the "real" currency from gold to (ugh) solar's tears or astral diamonds or whatever. And we're still stuck with the case where you can donate 1,000,000 gp in (useless) coins (castles, fine art, whatever) to the Church of Pelor, saving thousands and thousands of people from hardship and misery, and they still won't like you enough to let you use a Mace of Disruption they might have lying around.
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It doesn't really sidestep anything -- it just switches the "real" currency from gold to (ugh) solar's tears or astral diamonds or whatever.
Well, I think this is the point we're stuck on, and I'm fresh out of talking points. It seems to make sense to me, but I've clearly failed to convince, and I'm not convinced either. Oh well.
Oh, of course they're necessary, I'm not arguing that. The characters are going to get them, or they're going to die before too long. But, in-story, I want them to be valued for more than a "+4". I don't think "special" is mutually exclusive with "necessary."I counter 'magic items are special' with 'magic items are necessary'. After all, everyone is highly magic dependent. Period. The ones who can't cast it have to make up the balance with items. Any sort of 'magic items are special, so this is going to be hard to get' therefore weakens the already weakest types.
Now, making this Wish economy, or Soul economy, whatever you want to call it. That's fine. It means gold can be used for story stuff, even if you don't trust your players not to sell story award mansions to buy more shinies. That makes non one dimensional wealth systems more accessible. But the magic items are special mentality only contributes to imbalance.
MIC. Items that do more than staple +x to y stats, while being priced right (most of the time) so as to be worth getting. Unlike the DMG's take on the same things, which are wastes of ink and page space.
Even if you don't use the MIC directly, applying the same logic to magic item design gives you cool but not required, so it doesn't become the soldier's gun, or the carpenter's hammer - necessary to do their job, not special even if it's a super gun or an adamantine hammer.
Edit: Artifacts can't be bought, but better than normal magic items? I think not. Most of them are lucky if they aren't A Trap. See DoMT for examples.
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A number of posts here have made the assumption that these items dont change value as they have a fixed value in the rules book.
Well PC's have a fixed value in the game as well. Wealth by level (WBL as some of you have coined it). This is the foundation of assigning loot to encounters in order to keep players balanced for the CR, for as pointed out, magic items and gear are essential for long term survival.
So, if your level 12 wizard or whatever is going to start mining his walls of iron he does really well, and then stops at his alotted maximum gold allowable for his level.
If you're going to enforce the rule that values of items are fixed in the rules (ie not responding to economics), you also have to enforce the rules that states what a PC should have for their level.
Problem fixed.
If however you're willing to concede that a GM can manipulate prices to fit the nature of the game then you also allow them to use GM fiat. If you want your GM to allow you to be infinitely rich, despite what the rules say, then you are allowing the argument that the GM can also arbitrate this infinte wealth rule.
Once again
Problem fixed.
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If however you're willing to concede that a GM can manipulate prices to fit the nature of the game then you also allow them to use GM fiat. If you want your GM to allow you to be infinitely rich, despite what the rules say, then you are allowing the argument that the GM can also arbitrate this infinte wealth rule.
And, once again, we come back to a difference in perspective between those who think a loophole is a problem because a DM would have to respond to it in an intelligent way, and those who think a loophole is no problem because DMs should respond to it in an intelligent way.
Assuming the absurdest scenario of Wall of Iron (the cut-off for gold/planar wealth), one can calculate a day's profit for a caster dedicating themselves to conjuring Iron, minus costs of bringing that Iron to market: it's not 'INFINITE', and profits would decline in proportion to it's use. Thus I don't see how to actually achieve non-convertability between gold and 'souls', since at ANY point rational actors could agree on SOME exchange rate (Gold profits aren't infinite).
Further, spice (hell, all) prices are based on local scarcity, yet teleport effects exist, earlier than Wall of Iron.
Pathfinder's[/B] actual take on trade goods {emphasis mine}, which]Merchants commonly exchange trade goods without using currency. As a means of comparison, some trade goods are detailed on Table 7–3.
This aspect doesn't need to be detailed in the rules, because it's an ADVENTURE game, not ECONOMIC SIMULATION. The rules also don't cover your chances to make babies. I see the 'book prices' as QUICK GUIDES for PCs NOT DEDICATING THEIR ACTIONS TO COMMERCE, in "average" market conditions. Once those assumptions change, prices would also change.
The Great Beyond exists as a tremendous layered nesting sphere. Every plane within the Great Beyond is made of a finite but unimaginably immense hollow sphere of varying thickness and diameter. At the heart of the sphere lies the Material Plane.
So it sounds like Pathfinder is not going with the "infinite planes" or infinite expanse of those planes. However that relates to this. I think I just noticed similar style arguments being made in other threads, which seemed mostly about 3.5 Lawyering, instead of addressing Pathfinder SPECIFICALLY, whose raison d'etre is 'telling stories we'd like to tell'.
If PCs wanted to exploit this for monetary wealth in a game I was running, I'd think it a great opportunity to introduce things like social chaos, upset Outer Plane Elementals and/or Githyanki Cartels who've already been running this scam.
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If however you're willing to concede that a GM can manipulate prices to fit the nature of the game then you also allow them to use GM fiat. If you want your GM to allow you to be infinitely rich, despite what the rules say, then you are allowing the argument that the GM can also arbitrate this infinte wealth rule.And, once again, we come back to a difference in perspective between those who think a loophole is a problem because a DM would have to respond to it in an intelligent way, and those who think a loophole is no problem because DMs should respond to it in an intelligent way.
Actually, I'm not pointing out a difference in perspective, I'm trying to point out some peoples willingness to bend one rule but then demand another remains in place. The rest of my post (not quoted above) pointed out that PC wealth by level is fixed. Yet people explaining an infinite wealth loop are happy to break this. Those same people don't want you to change the value of said trade items though. In other words, break one rule but enforce all others to make an apparent loophole that doesn;t exist if you enforce ALL the rules as written.
Can't have it both ways.
Can't have it both ways.
Word.
Isn't it a bizarre exercise of one's imagination to go think of wild schemes, then feign surprise when doing so necessitates equally imaginative responses (by the DM)? It sounds like a pretty good co-creative process to me...
And, once again, we come back to a difference in perspective between those who think a loophole is a problem because a DM would have to respond to it in an intelligent way, and those who think a loophole is no problem because DMs should respond to it in an intelligent way.
The thing is, I've seen little evidence these critiques come from actual experience playing games, but simply context-less 'what-if' extrapolation of the rules. Perhaps Paizo should add a clause to the front of the book "CAUTION: IMAGINATION REQUIRED These rules are only intended for actually playing fantasy roleplaying games, any other use is unauthorized" :-)
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Edit: Jason:
Its not intended to be arbitrary items, but rather a defined set of planar currencies, like souls, which powerful creatures actually treat as valuable. These objects become the default currency of high level games. Now, some creatures may well prefer certain types of currencies, but they're still universally recognized as *currency*. Similarly, these materials are magically potent (one of the reasons they have value), which is why you need them for crafting.So its not 1st ed levels of arbitrarium. Rather, it separates gold from power at high levels. Because we really do want the adventurers to have to cart the gold out when they kill a dragon. In wagons. Lots of wagons. Its not very epic when the dragon's wealth is smaller than a...
It's true, that it's not solely arbitrary. It's simply putting a quantum line between wealth and dross, which I don't fundamentally have a problem with. My reference to specific 1st Ed. style 'special components' was more along the line of a walk down memory lane of a similar type of economy (special comps must be found or won, rarely or never bought) but one with a different design conceit (the DM ultimately controls what specials show up, vs. it being a secondary universal economy).
In my DMing, at a certain level, wealth is found in discrete amounts, so many coins and thus and so many gems and these objects d'art, etc., but the total valuation of it ends up being rendered in what we call GUMUs - Generic Universal Monetary Units. I have run campaigns where there are local and regional coinage systems and really run the values of things down to the nth degree, but I've either become too lazy, too jaded, or too busy to worry as much about that as I used to. At low levels, yeah, I care about encumbrance and exactly what form your wealth takes. At high levels, I am all too happy to hand-wave away the distinctions and just let it be GUMUs.
But, that's kind of a side point, other than to say I suppose you could conceive a credit marketplace where GUMUs and gold are not equivalent, as I have used them, but are the parallel currency - some GUMUs are souls, some are planar tears, some are broodwiches - whatever - you find some, you deposit them in the Mercane Bank of Sigil and you get a credit for N number of GUMUs. That way you don't have to cart your bucket of souls/tears/broodwiches around with you. Since you're living in the land of the high rollers, only the little people shuold have to actually CARRY money. Losers.
One thing I was going to say, though, was I was surprised you did not respond to the disproof of the adamantine cutting I posed. I say surprised in that you have, in my experience, been surprisingly reasonable in your conversation with folks on the board compared to a number of CharOp type folks that I encounter. One of their distinguishing characteristics (and one that grates so on others) is their refusal to acknowledge when their pet exploit has been disproven.
Take the infamous "Pun-Pun," for instance, whose construction can be trivially proven a cheat - the infinite stat bump trick relies on the use of the Wu Jen spell giant size under the presupposition that the spell increases your Strength score, thereby enabling you to bestow that super-strength score on your familiar with the Sarrukh super-cheat ability, then your familiar to use it back on you, then you on it, rinse repeat, etc. (which you then can replicate onto your other stats by use of the void disciple and tattooed monk abilities).
But giant size doesn't change your Strength score. Not in Complete Arcane and not in Oriental Adventures. It gives you a size BONUS to your Strength score. Your familiar has 2 Str, you cast GS to make it Huge (which shows another cheat of the build - Pun-Pun's caster level is only = to HD, so he's only 5th level, which makes the target Huge; he'd have to be 19th to become Colossal), giving a +16 size bonus to Str.
But his Str score doesn't change. He still has a 2 Str, with a +16 size bonus. He acts in most respects as a creature with 18 Str, but his actual score doesn't change. Even if he did make himself colossal, he'd still have a Str of 2, with a +32 size bonus. The sarrukh ability lets you raise another's ability score up to YOUR ability score. It doesn't confer any bonuses. By this logic, if the sarrukh was wearing a +6 periapt of wisdom it could raise your Wisdom beyond its own. And when it takes the periapt off, you keep the stat boost.
Most of the Pun-Pun concept revolves around mega-stats as the basis for its mega-cheats, but they all hinge on a deliberate house-ruling assumption about the sarrukh ability, that it raises another creature's stat as high as your own stat PLUS ANY BONUSES. Which it doesn't say. At all.
Of course, the open-ended reading of the sarrukh power is that it can grant any ability. At all. Not just any ability IN the game, but any ability it can imagine. If you want to read it like that, then any argument is pointless, because if it can do anything then rules are irrelevant.
Now, obviously, the adamantine slicing bit only complicates the WoI exploit and slows it down, rather than removing it entirely.
I just say all of the above to say that, it is most common that CharOp folks I've run into don't take criticism well and/or tend to hand-wave away any reading of the rules that would disprove their exploit. You have been very rational in most of your posting and discussion and haven't seemed to fall into that pattern, so I guess I expected some response to that part of the post, not just the bit about the cockles of my 1st Ed. DMing... :)
PS - I will certainly not try to pretent final authority on all things D&D. I wasn't paying attention and repeated an error I had heard about the gate spell in another thread, an exploit that isn't really true, so don't take this as talking down with an assumption of always being right.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Being dirt poor is not fun … Lots of disposable wealth is fun … Infinity wealth is not fun.
Owning castles, and raising armies are fun as a character. What is not fun is having enough wealth to own all the castles, land and men in the entire multiverse with your cubic kilometres of gold. Regardless of whether you can convert these into measurable, effective magical power, the ability to buy everything mundane in the world hits the point where verisimilitude breaks down.
I think what we need here is a “selling items commercially” sidebar which clarifies the diminishing returns of item sales (extra overhead to sell, local taxes, rent on shopfronts, security, advertising, drops in price to meet demand, hiring additional fiendish staff in extraplanar metropolises etc.). I would suggest something like:
For the sales of small quantities of items the price guide in Chapter X can be used. If the PCs encounter a commercial quantity of items or goods use the following to simulate the sale process.
The sale price of xth unit sold in a month = base price x demand multiplier^(x-1).
The sale of infinity items will return a total profit = base price/(1-demand multiplier).
Depending on the demand for the item, the multiplier may be as low as 0.50 (Total profit of 2xbase) or as high as 0.999 (Total profit of 1000xbase). A standard demand multiplier is around 0.95.
For example, if you find two masterwork swords you can sell them for 315gp each without any problems. If you defeat an army of a thousand masterwork longsword wielders you can sell the lot for 20x315 = 6,300gp in one month. Similarly when selling iron (1sp per pound) the most you can make is 100gp in a month (highest demand multiplier). If you fabricate the wall of iron into masterwork full plates you can make at most 3,300 gp per month (lowest demand multiplier).
The demand multiplier is a complete DM handwave, but it is then at least a guideline on the limits of wealth generation through commercial trade. The quantum of the money made here is the same as a normal professional or performer, and is easily subsumed into the general WBL guidelines if the PCs adventure during the same period or ignored if they spend it on castles or fancy dresses.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Jason:
Sorry, I was under limited time the first time and then didn't get back to it. Consider this a concession of the adamantine point - although I generally make the logical simulationist argument that ignoring hardness means you can just cut things into whatever shape you want pretty easily. I suppose it also depends on what you think the metaphysics of damage are. I tend to take a real-world interpretation with objects - and cutting is simply applying a powerful shear stress on the object at a single point in a particular direction, and breaking the object along that direction. But yes, the rules don't specifically cover the situation in enough detail to derive this. (Though for all those "The DM should get involved" people, this should be a logical extrapolation, more so than any of the other 'DM involvement' arguements.)
Understood. No biggie. Life is life.
My point was just that silly exploits based on RAW as the Holy Grail have to include everything about RAW, no matter how silly. If you're going to ban rational DM intervention then you have to ban all of it.
Everyone:
You know, I honestly don't care to continue to debate if or how the Wall of Iron exploit works specifically. I don't care to debate the workings of any one or few spells or exploits. Clever players will find ways to generate arbitrary amounts of gp. New material will introduce new tools for doing so. Thus we can't address this at the source of the actual exploit itself, because we will *never* catch them all, and there will always be more.Hence why I presented a solution which solves the actual problem (arbitrary money -> arbitrary power) rather than trying to fix the innumerable root causes.
I also think the general tactic of requiring the DM to intervene and knowing the proper way to intervene is counterproductive. Yes, the DM could just *ban all the relevant spells* and *have rocks fall* on the heads of PCs who try to generate free wealth. This is not a rules solution, and it is not a good general solution. Rule 0 is for altering aspects of the game for preference, not fixing loopholes. Loopholes are a rules problem, and need a rules solution.
There will always be another cheat. Just like with performance-enhancing drugs or anything of the sort. Trying to fix every individual hole is chasing your own tail to an extent.
A broader general statement might help, like someone upthread's specific limitation on commercial use of magic or some such. I'm making dinner so I'll have to think on it and do more later.
I really liked 2. at first, but I'm not seeing the logic behind it. why *cant* planar currency be transferred into material currency? If a poor down-on-his luck farmer finds a 1,000 gp soul gem buried in his field, are you telling me he *cant* find somebody to buy it and give him his 1,000 GP? Surely an adventurer, in the system you mention, would be more than happy to give the farmer his 1,000 GP in return for a soul gem which s/he can use for...
And there's the problem. Items - especially rare ones - will ALWAYS have some sort of price attached to them. And since "Planar Currency" will more then likely be a very rare commodity, there will always be a market for it amongst people of power somewhere. It doesn't matter if you're talking about Soul Gems, Golden Peaches, or Treant Knuckles. At some point, someone trading in this currency is going to get tired of going out and collecting it for themselves and will shell out some "regular currency" for some "planar currency" and you'll eventually end up with a median purchase price for that commodity.
The same principle applies to magical items. But the thing is that your GM can easily set the price and the regularity by which a magic item or other rare item hits the market. He/she can even implement restrictions on hiring spellcasters to craft items for you by demanding that you have to fulfill special quests for them (and the cost of the new item comes out of the treasure that would have been allocated for that adventure) or jacking the commission price up through the roof. But if you let players buy and sell magical items like they were at Wal-Mart, they'll spend all of their cash on magical items and won't bother to do anything interesting with their cash.
The real issue is with the item creation feats. As the rules currently stand, gold can be converted directly into magical power as soon as a character obtains an item creation feat. There's no market to deal with - you just pick an item, make sure you meet the prerequisites, spend your gold, and you now have a priceless treasure. And since there are a variety of ways that you can generate unlimited revenue once you hit certain levels (some of which are more dangerous then others), this just keeps feeding into itself.
Fix the magical item creation feats, and the rest will fall into line. I just haven't quite figured out how to fix them just yet...
Everyone:
You know, I honestly don't care to continue to debate if or how the Wall of Iron exploit works specifically. I don't care to debate the workings of any one or few spells or exploits. Clever players will find ways to generate arbitrary amounts of gp.
To be clear: clever players will find ways to generate arbitrary amounts of gp if the DM gives the players arbitrary amounts of undisturbed free time. (I.e., it's up to the DM if he wants his players to have more magical equipment than is appropriate for their level.)
So, unless you want to make rules about how often adventures must happen (and I certainly hope you aren't advocating that), mentioning control of free time is a *campaign style* choice, and we shouldn't make assumptions one way or the other. I'd argue that making some campaign style choices 'wrong' because having
Absolutely. If your PCs decide they want to get rich quick (and thus go up levels quick to balance things out), that's up to them, I suppose.
Or if the DM wants the players to have more than the recommended amount of wealth per level, that's a "campaign style" choice that he can make as well.
Like I said before -- this is all "fluff" for getting magical equipment into players' hands. Mandating one method of "fluff" over another is pretty silly.
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I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but there is a limit on how much of a given item you can buy OR sell in a community before you cannot do so anymore.
If I remember correctly, this is equal to 1/10 the population X 1/2 the gold piece limit.
That's a pretty hard limit on using salt or iron to produce infinite wealth. A good deal of wealth, but not infinite.
This does not prevent some abuses, but it does mean you eventually bankrupt a community by selling it goods.
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(Frodo spent *17 years* in the shire between gaining the Ring and leaving to head to Rivendell. Fortunately, he didn't have access to any arbitrary wealth exploits *and* he couldn't turn his wealth into arbitrary items, or the Barrow Wights may not have been so scary!)
But Frodo also possessed an artifact, that among other things was also a ring of permanent invisibility. That's a pretty powerful item, but there was fluff in place to prevent its abuse and "selling" it (even though most would pay all they had for it).
Here is the thing . . . I don't really want some of these things being "fixed" with a big fixing hammer. Why? Because some degree of player inventiveness is greatly appreciated. If a PC came up with a Wall of Iron type scheme to get them some gold once or twice, I don't think that's actually a bad thing.
What I don't want to see is it being assumed that its automatic that the Wall of Iron just gets cast and immediately turns into gold for the PC, so the PC can say they are taking a month off or so in order to gain a few million gold pieces to buy an epic level dancing +10 sword of dancing and throwing spells and an epic level staff of the arch spell slinger.
I wish that 3e hadn't used wealth, in addition to xp, as a measure of characer power. In my homebrew campign, I made PCs spend full xp on magic items they kept, as if they had crafted them; this slowed level advancement, divorced gold from character power (basing it all on xp), and provided a logical explanation why NPCs would be willing to craft items (they weren't spending the xp on them, rather, the buyer was). Mr. Trollman went ahead and listed a bunch of ways in which people who intentionally attempted to break this system could do so. I don't argue they couldn't. But it worked quite well for us.
P.S. For wall of iron, I take a cue from deCamp & Pratt's "Complete Enchanter." Namely, the iron begins to rust quickly unless it's kept oiled.
I wish that 3e hadn't used wealth, in addition to xp, as a measure of character power.
In every edition of D&D (that I know of -- maybe not Chainmail), wealth (as expressed in magic items) has always been a component of a character's power. Third edition is no different in that sense (other than making it explicit in a table).
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I wish that 3e hadn't used wealth, in addition to xp, as a measure of characer power. In my homebrew campign, I made PCs spend full xp on magic items they kept, as if they had crafted them; this slowed level advancement, divorced gold from character power (basing it all on xp), and provided a logical explanation why NPCs would be willing to craft items (they weren't spending the xp on them, rather, the buyer was). Mr. Trollman went ahead and listed a bunch of ways in which people who intentionally attempted to break this system could do so. I don't argue they couldn't. But it worked quite well for us.
P.S. For wall of iron, I take a cue from deCamp & Pratt's "Complete Enchanter." Namely, the iron begins to rust quickly unless it's kept oiled.
That's an interesting concept - like a character is giving up a portion of their life essence to use magical items. For really powerul items it can explain their destructive power, how they can "claim your soul".
What kind of conversion did you use? Did you use the crafting XP cost or some multiple of it?
Did you use the crafting XP cost or some multiple of it?
Crafting xp. It's a minor tax more than a major hurdle, but it still makes people think twice before they become christmas trees. A better system would be to reckon character level based on total xp (including xp worth of items), then use a multiple of the crafting cost (5x?) and redo the xp charts accordingly, to take standard items into account. But that would require a bunch of work that most people probably aren't willing to do.