Though I have to say...the whole plague zombie act probably would have been frowned on by the good PCs in the group. Also local good churches and druids would have...Well I did say "nefarious". It would just be a spiteful way of getting back at those cattle barons who decided to ruin your business's good name. It would also depend heavily on which lore you were using for the zombies. Pre-PF zombies aren't really killing machines because they just stand around waiting for orders. Even the PF zombies contradict their behavior in their own description (it notes they can do little more than follow orders, then in the next sentence says that when left unattended willingly hunt down living creatures to slaughter and devour; which makes 0% sense).
So if you're not using the "zombies slaughter everything despite being unthinking automatons that are incapable of taking actions of their own accord" fluff for them, then you would just dump a few plague zombies into the herd, give the plague zombie orders to poke the other cows occasionally so they can get the zombie plague; then a few weeks later the cattle barons go to drive the cattle and find a bunch of undead cattle just standing around lookin' stupid. At this point, they're probably not getting those cattle moved without the help of a cleric or three.
:P
I tend to go with the whole undead are abomination against nature route...also spreading any plague...I think would cause a up raor with any good person...but you are right I did miss the 'nefarious'.
Undead make great villains, but the "all undead are evil just 'cause" is really kind of dumb. It doesn't hold up to logical or philosophical scrutiny, especially since we can literally see the way the world works in D&D/PF. There's really no reason skeletons or zombies should be any more evil than golems (hell, the creation of golems requires enslaving an elemental spirit).
In everything up 'till 3.5th Edition, mindless things weren't evil. Skeletons and zombies were neutral. Just tools to be used. Now people are trying to make mindless robots made out of negative energy into things that eat babies. Doesn't make much sense. It was even admitted (I believe on a WotC web article) that undead were made evil just to give Paladins smite-targets.
The worst part? Is they did it in the clunkiest way possible.
EDIT: Then again, I guess you could go the more moral route and just bomb the bovines from space with liberal applications of fireball, until you wipe out about 90-100% of a rival's herds and ruin them financially forever.
Then again, I suppose that a bunch of undead cows actually would make good pack animals. :)
Undead make great villains, but the "all undead are evil just 'cause" is really kind of dumb. It doesn't hold up to logical or philosophical scrutiny, especially since we can literally see the way the world works in D&D/PF. There's really no reason skeletons or zombies should be any more evil than golems (hell, the creation of golems requires enslaving an elemental spirit).
In everything up 'till 3.5th Edition, mindless things weren't evil. Skeletons and zombies were neutral. Just tools to be used. Now people are trying to make mindless robots made out of negative energy into things that eat babies. Doesn't make much sense. It was even admitted (I believe on a WotC web article) that undead were made evil just to give Paladins smite-targets.
The worst part? Is they did it in the clunkiest way possible.
EDIT: Then again, I guess you could go the more moral route and just bomb the bovines from space with liberal applications of fireball, until you wipe out about 90-100% of a rival's herds and ruin them financially forever.
Then again, I suppose that a bunch of undead cows actually would make good pack animals. :)
I tend to agree with you...please not I said undead are aborent to nature not evil....as would be constructs that trap elemental to power them, there is a difference. Although I would say alot of cultures would have problems with raising the dead as mindless undead as tools. People are sensitive about things like that...but not evil..more of just bad form.
I would not mind continueing with this topic. But I think it is off topic...so if you want to start another thread...I'll join you there.
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As has been mentioned, the easiest 'infinite money loop' is just selling castings of cantrips and orisons - even at level 1 they're worth 5gp a pop, and cost you nothing...
... If you happen to have infinite customers, all lined up, money in hand...
The system isn't designed for in-depth economics because, let's face it, they're not the stuff of great fantasy epics. The 'you can sell stuff for half cost' rule is designed to be quick and dirty exactly so you don't have to mess about with market forces, supply and demand, and all that tosh. That doesn't mean the rule should be applied whole-cloth to absolutely anything the PCs happen to want to sell, no matter how useless it would be to normal people (unless you happen to have a magic-fueled version of e-bay, but I digress...).
In any case, if the PCs want to go into business to make some ca$h then there's quick and dirty rules for that too - the Craft and Profession Skills. Want to earn some ca$h for making stuff? No problem - make that weekly Craft roll! Want to earn some ca$h for rendering a service? No problem - make that weekly Profession roll!
Selling self-made Holy Water? Roll your 'Profession (Cleric)' or 'Profession (Holy Water Salesman)' or even 'Profession (Merchant)' Skill to see what profit you make. Casting spells for people in exchange for ca$h? Roll your 'Profession (Wizard)' Skill, or whatever other relevant Profession Skill you may have... that's what it's for. Selling sausages made out of Stone-to-Flesh'ed rocks? Profession (Butcher) or Profession (Meat Wholesaler)...
Don't let 'em default to Spellcraft or other such skills (which have their own uses) - Craft and (especially) Profession are the Skills which include the character's business expertise within them: if they want to make ca$h the old fashioned way (via working, not mugging orcs in the woods) then point 'em towards the Skill that let's 'em do just that. If they try to sell all that magically produced meat without any relevant skill... well, they're left with a lot of unsold meat which is rapidly turning rancid...
Or... you could write or adapt a more complex economic model if your players happen to think the wheeling and dealing is fun (and it can be - underhanded methods from the rival Butcher's Guild trying to discredit and put the PCs out of business could be fun!)... but mostly they'll spend a week's downtime earning a little gold and no experience and get right back to that orc-mugging which was going so well for them up to the point they came up with their 'brilliant' money making scheme...
All, as always, IMHO. :)
Undead make great villains, but the "all undead are evil just 'cause" is really kind of dumb. It doesn't hold up to logical or philosophical scrutiny, especially since we can literally see the way the world works in D&D/PF. There's really no reason skeletons or zombies should be any more evil than golems (hell, the creation of golems requires enslaving an elemental spirit).
In everything up 'till 3.5th Edition, mindless things weren't evil. Skeletons and zombies were neutral. Just tools to be used. Now people are trying to make mindless robots made out of negative energy into things that eat babies. Doesn't make much sense. It was even admitted (I believe on a WotC web article) that undead were made evil just to give Paladins smite-targets.
The worst part? Is they did it in the clunkiest way possible.
EDIT: Then again, I guess you could go the more moral route and just bomb the bovines from space with liberal applications of fireball, until you wipe out about 90-100% of a rival's herds and ruin them financially forever.
Then again, I suppose that a bunch of undead cows actually would make good pack animals. :)
I tend to agree with you...please not I said undead are aborent to nature not evil....as would be constructs that trap elemental to power them, there is a difference. Although I would say alot of cultures would have problems with raising the dead as mindless undead as tools. People are sensitive about things like that...but not evil..more of just bad form.
I would not mind continueing with this topic. But I think it is off topic...so if you want to start another thread...I'll join you there.
Sure. I'll start one on the General Discussion. It's one of my favorite topics. ^-^
The most disturbing scheme like this I have see is Wall of Stone....Stone to Flesh...instant meat. That failed when it was revealed where exactly he was getting this meat.Why did it fail again? I'm sure the hippies (druids) wouldn't mind since it's meat without murder. Then there's the rest of us who don't care as long as it's meat.
Oh sure I might complain if I break a tooth on a pebble while eating, but I'm under the impression that's not likely.
Doesn't the spell just create "a fleshy substance," though? Flesh is not technically meat. Most commoners are rustic types, who I would imagine have hands-on experience with actual meat, and would not take kindly to being offered a big chunk of skin-stuff.
I hate to say it... it's coming... you asked for it...
"WHERE'S THE BEEF?!"
Meat = the muscley parts. Not the flesh.
The most disturbing scheme like this I have see is Wall of Stone....Stone to Flesh...instant meat. That failed when it was revealed where exactly he was getting this meat.Why did it fail again? I'm sure the hippies (druids) wouldn't mind since it's meat without murder. Then there's the rest of us who don't care as long as it's meat.
Oh sure I might complain if I break a tooth on a pebble while eating, but I'm under the impression that's not likely.
Doesn't the spell just create "a fleshy substance," though? Flesh is not technically meat. Most commoners are rustic types, who I would imagine have hands-on experience with actual meat, and would not take kindly to being offered a big chunk of skin-stuff.
I hate to say it... it's coming... you asked for it...
"WHERE'S THE BEEF?!"
Meat = the muscley parts. Not the flesh.
Admittly I am not a expert on biology to what incorporates flesh...but I think it is more than just skin....or the the spell would not be much use in reversing pertification. Anybody can give us the more scientific defination of flesh?
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The most disturbing scheme like this I have see is Wall of Stone....Stone to Flesh...instant meat. That failed when it was revealed where exactly he was getting this meat.Why did it fail again? I'm sure the hippies (druids) wouldn't mind since it's meat without murder. Then there's the rest of us who don't care as long as it's meat.
Oh sure I might complain if I break a tooth on a pebble while eating, but I'm under the impression that's not likely.
Doesn't the spell just create "a fleshy substance," though? Flesh is not technically meat. Most commoners are rustic types, who I would imagine have hands-on experience with actual meat, and would not take kindly to being offered a big chunk of skin-stuff.
I hate to say it... it's coming... you asked for it...
"WHERE'S THE BEEF?!"
Meat = the muscley parts. Not the flesh.
So you're saying we can make leather?
It depends on how you define the mechanics of undead. What if in order to create a zombie, you essentially summoned the spirit of the person forcibly back into it's body and enslaved it to be an enemy of the living, driving the spirit insane with pain and grief. Outwardly it might not show any difference in it's actions or intelligence (or lack of same) but most people would still think of such a creation as an essentially evil act. Many of the Undead listed in the Bestiary are clearly spirits of the living chained to a horriffic existence which denies them the peace of the afterlife. No matter how you slice, that's Evil.
The problem with this is that it's 100% inaccurate. Because of the amount of material published on things like the planes, souls, afterlife, and so forth, we can tell these things are false. This idea would make a good fluff reason for them to be evil mechanically, but it is 100% ascribed independently from the rules.
Now for many undead these sorts of ghastly or terrible soul twisting things are part of them are accurate. Stuff like shadows, wights, allips, and so on and so forth. However, skeletons and zombies in game terms are corpses that are empowered with negative energy but lack a mind and for all intents and purposes a soul.
Likewise, the argument that animating the dead traps the soul of the creature you're animating, it's trivially easy to prove that this isn't the case, even with something as easy as casting stone to flesh on a statue and then animating the statue into a skeleton or zombie (unless people want to argue that the inanimate stone statue has a soul that is now tortured, in which case I'd say they were being asinine).
FLESH
–noun
1. the soft substance of a human or other animal body, consisting of muscle and fat.
2. muscular and fatty tissue.
3. this substance or tissue in animals, viewed as an article of food, usually excluding fish and sometimes fowl; meat.
Time is money and a flask only holds 1 pint.
Build up a respectable spellbook whose spells are cumulatively worth more than the crafting cost of a Blessed Book. Take Craft Wondrous Item and craft a Blessed Book. Copy all your spells into the Blessed Book for free. Sell it (at its sell price PLUS the value of all the spells you put into it). Rinse and repeat.
It takes time to scribe spells and craft Blessed Books, but you can retire from adventuring while living off your extreme wealth.
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Wall of Stone: Instantaneous... check.
Stone to Flesh: Instantaneous... check.
Flesh = Meat... check.
Meat can be eaten... check.
Meat tastes like... granite?.. check. :)
Build up a respectable spellbook whose spells are cumulatively worth more than the crafting cost of a Blessed Book. Take Craft Wondrous Item and craft a Blessed Book. Copy all your spells into the Blessed Book for free. Sell it (at its sell price PLUS the value of all the spells you put into it). Rinse and repeat.
It takes time to scribe spells and craft Blessed Books, but you can retire from adventuring while living off your extreme wealth.
All it takes is finding someone with the ca$h and inclination to actually buy the book you're selling. It costs you 6,250gp to craft a Blessed Book, so you'll want, what, a spellbook worth 14,000gp so that you can sell it for 7,000gp and make a bit of profit, right? Okay - the Skill to determine your mercantile abilities is Profession. You're an average adventuring Wizard who never got a real job (damn hippies!), so you have no ranks, and no Wisdom bonus. Even if the DM skips the 'no Profession Skill = 1sp per day' rule you're looking at earning 5gp per week. Since that's all tied up in the 7,000gp worth of book you're trying to sell, it means you'll take a little under 27 years to find a buyer and ca$h in for your whopping 750gp total profit payoff...
Which is to say - trying to use the 'fast and dirty' selling stuff rules to just make a profit (above and beyond the item's normal 'half value' worth) shouldn't be allowed by any sane DM: if you want to try a 'cunning' business venture, then by all means do so... just make sure you invest the Skills and Feats which will help to make it happen.
A better way to introduce PC mercantile activities into the game is as part of the on-going plot. For example, the usual 'long journey' type series of adventures could just as easily be the PCs taking their wares across the world by a dangerous trade route: they have set-backs and adventures along the way, and get a payoff if and when they finally reach their destination and sell their cargo (instead of the usual 'dragon's horde' just left lying about by the final bloke they happen to murder...).
I love all these schemes to try to exploit the economic rules in the game to get rich "quick."
I've never understood them though. First of all, gold is perhaps the least important thing in the game. Experience is worth far more than gold. If I'm a wizard, all the gold in the world isn't going to let me cast fourth level spells, but experience will.
I suppose you could say that gold is important for classes that need lots of magic items, but it's always seemed to be faster to gain treasure AND magic items by adventuring than by setting up a kiosk in the merchant square of the local village and sell magical trinkets.
Plus why the heck would you want to role play that? I've got an actual job where I eke out a living in REAL LIFE. Why would I play a game where I just have another job?
I suppose some players would want to say "My character does this for two years, now he's got 100,000 gold. I wanna go shopping." As a DM I'd veto this in a heartbeat.
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The fact that playing the 'Papers and Paychecks' RPG is generally boring is pretty much the reason why the mercantile rules in the game are fast and dirty. The advantage of having ranks in Craft or Profession (or even Perform) is that when the DM says '... Sixth months later...' you get to make some rolls for free ca$h (whilst your less employable friends are stuck with their 1sp per day labourer's wage). At minimum it helps to offset the (equally fast and dirty) cost of living rules.
I read once that stone to flesh on a statue produced a soulless corpse. Shaping the stone as the intended form of meat animal, should get your past the bland weird meat problem.
Where does all this infinite gold come from? What resources are available? Seems to me the things with the most cash are the bad guys. Are you selling potions to the local evil people eating Red Dragon?
S.
Who said anything about infinite gold? Communities have GP limits last I checked*. Sell everything to your heart's desire until you reach the community's limit, then move on.
Metropolises could handle millions of coin (effectively limitless as far as the game is concerned).
* My memory is terrible, and it's possible this rule no longer exists, or was changed, in Pathfinder.
I have fiated money out of my game.
I don't track it.
I don't bother with prices for meals and rooms for the night.
I assume the characters have money available to cover expenses unless there is an ingame reason why they wouldn't.
So all the infinite money loops in the game don't matter.
+1
And I also liked the post by another poster on pafe 1, about allowing the player money schemes to work.
It is not GM vs. Players, and unless you are in a gaming circle that restricts money progress, then it really is just a matter of deciding between you what kind of game you want to run.
It is not possible to break the game. GM's defaulting to; "Rocks fall, everyone dies." are doing it wrong. Players with resources tend to make their own goals. As a GM you can use this.
Step 1) Candle of Invocation
Step 2) Noble Djinni
Step 3) ????
Step 4) Profit
How about this infinite money scheme?
1. Be a souleater, have more then 8 possible points in soulpool, have staff of restoration and a victim capable of surviving more then 8 negative levels, have some crafting feats.
2.Give at least 9 neg levels to victim.
3. Use staff of restoration on victim.
4. Use 8 soul points to refill staff of restoration, use the rest to reduce the cost of a magic item you want to craft.
5. Repeat 2-4 as needed.
6. Craft item for free.
7. Sell item, or just keep it.
8. Win game.