The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg

[Ravingdork]

A thought just occurred to me. The Fabricate spell has a components line that says you need appropriate material components equaling the crafting cost of the item to be made. The Eschew Materials feat says you can ignore the material components if they are worth 1gp or less.

Take both the spell and the feat. Congratulations, you can now create gold coins out of sheer force of will. :P

What other useful items can you think of that might be crafted out of nothing in similar fashion?

[Gorbacz]

Oh dear, a classic Ravingdork Thread.

[Talonhawke]

Well with a little GM leeway you can take gunsmithing and now crafting gunpowder cost 1gp a dose to make which you can then sell for 5gp a shot after wards.

["Devil's Advocate"]

Fabricate:

School transmutation; Level sorcerer/wizard 5

Casting Time see text

Components V, S, M (the original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created)

Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Target up to 10 cu. ft./level; see text

Duration instantaneous

Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material. Creatures or magic items cannot be created or transmuted by the fabricate spell. The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication. If you work with a mineral, the target is reduced to 1 cubic foot per level instead of 10 cubic feet.

You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.

Casting requires 1 round per 10 cubic feet of material to be affected by the spell.

The Craft base material cost is 1/3, so if you got a bunch of copper coins (that are worth 1/3rd of a gp each) and transformed them to gold, you would have a lot of gold coins stamped as if copper. You could then manually recraft them, again at 1/3 the now gold price and needing a decent craft check, for a little profit, or travel somewhere that would accept them without needing to worry about possible forgery.

[Ravingdork]

Going through the equipment chapter and looking for things that cost 1gp or less, I noticed that firewood only costs 1 copper piece and weighs 20 pounds. That means, with a single casting of fabricate, I could create 2,000 pounds of firewood!

Imagine using that to block a passage, or even dropping it on someone's head! (As a transmutation effect, it isn't limited by the "no summoning in the air rule.")

I wonder what else I'll find, or what others might suggest.

EDIT: Could also make a 50 foot ladder. :P

[Movin]

Quarterstaves, Clubs and Slings are all zero cost. Have fun with that one.

[Ravingdork]

Movin wrote:

Quarterstaves, Clubs and Slings are all zero cost. Have fun with that one.

I thought of that earlier, but didn't realize the implications.

Forget the firewood! Just drown the whole world in clubs!

EDIT: Oh, I guess the volume limitations of the spell might limit this and the firewood trick. Oh well, there are still plenty of fine uses!

[maouse]

The real question is: can you Fabricate inside other people since its a ranged spell? (as long as we are power/metagaming with the whole (hole?) "it doesn't say we can't" idea)

[maouse]

ps.... the GM might consider an interpretation of this : The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication : to mean... if you eschew with nothing, you get nothing ... ahhh... sweet perfect nothing. And then you can dress the King in the FINEST CLOTHES imaginable!

[hewhocaves]

Re: the crafting gold coins. You still need to make a craft: coinage skill check. How many adventurers have that as a skill?

However, i wouldn't put it past a kingdom to have a coinage wizard and/or a magical coinage device that either transmutes baser materials into gold coins or gold ingots into gold coins. It certainly would explain the abundance of gold in most fantasy settings.

Additionally, the coinage wizard would be a excellent plot hook for an adventure - (doing tasks for the coinage wizard, rescuing the coinage wizard, protecting, et cetera... et cetera...)

John

[wargamer]

maouse wrote:

ps.... the GM might consider an interpretation of this : The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication : to mean... if you eschew with nothing, you get nothing ... ahhh... sweet perfect nothing.

So a wizard could use fabricate to create literally nothing, ie. a vacuum.

I can think of a lot of uses for emptying a room of air.

[wargamer]

maouse wrote:

ps.... the GM might consider an interpretation of this : The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication : to mean... if you eschew with nothing, you get nothing ... ahhh... sweet perfect nothing.

So you could use Fabricate to create areas of total vacuum? combined with wall of force to stop the air rushing back in and you can suffocate entire rooms full of enemies instantly.

[Trikk]

Selling your level 5 slot for spell casting services is worth a lot more than 1 GP.

Fabricating from nothing also is a problem when we consider the third sentence of the spell description.

[VRMH]

How 'bout something slightly different: a singing and dancing goose?

Assuming the object here is to Get Rich Quick & Easy: a 1st level Summoner could give his Eidolon a +8 bonus to Perform checks and a 12 base Charisma. Once you can afford a Masterwork Instrument, you're looking at:

• Roll 1-3: Routine performance. 1d10 cp/day.
• Roll 4-8: Enjoyable performance. 1d10 sp/day.
• Roll 9-13 (or take 10): Great performance. 3d10 sp/day.
• Roll 14-18: Memorable performance. 1d6 gp/day.
• Roll 19 or 20: Extraordinary performance. 3d6 gp/day.

And all you have to do, is sit somewhere nearby and spend it all (after saving up for that masterwork instrument of course).

[Trikk]

A paladin could sell his horse and then call it back after the buyer has traveled for a day or something.

[Humphrey Boggard]

Ravingdork wrote:

A thought just occurred to me. The Fabricate spell has a components line that says you need appropriate material components equaling the crafting cost of the item to be made. The Eschew Materials feat says you can ignore the material components if they are worth 1gp or less.

Take both the spell and the feat. Congratulations, you can now create gold coins out of sheer force of will. :P

What other useful items can you think of that might be crafted out of nothing in similar fashion?

Sweet. So a 9th level wizard can take a feat that allows him to create a few gp at a time using a 5th level spell. How could the game designers have missed such an obvious exploit?!

[Ravingdork]

Trikk wrote:

A paladin could sell his horse and then call it back after the buyer has traveled for a day or something.

Well, once. :P

Humphrey Boggard wrote:

Sweet. So a 9th level wizard can take a feat that allows him to create a few gp at a time using a 5th level spell. How could the game designers have missed such an obvious exploit?!

From a PC's perspective, it's hardly anything at all. A high level caster might make 20-30gp a day this way, and even then only by expending all their high level slots.

However, to the local commoners, being able to make gold from nothing, even in small quantities, would be nothing short of a miracle. A single golden egg (gold coin) could buy a farmer and his family 50 chickens or 50 loafs of bread!

[Ravingdork]

It totally hearkens back to the old childhood stories I grew up with. :D

[Knight Magenta]

If we go from the profession skill, a commoner actually makes about 5-7gp a week. So a singl gold piece is not that much.

I found this blog post that breaks PF economics down: Pathfinder Economics.

[Ravingdork]

Awesome article! Totally spreading that one around.

[Brambleman]

I had a though of a jolly old wizard doing the old coin out of your ear trick for real. Be real popular with the locals.

[Paladin of Baha-who?]

Gold is clearly more common in Golarian, for example, than in real life. This can easily be explained by wizards with the power to access the elemental plane of earth dumping massive amounts of gold into the economy.

[Skerek]

Ravingdork wrote:

Trikk wrote:

A paladin could sell his horse and then call it back after the buyer has traveled for a day or something.

Well, once. :P

I might be considered a bad GM for this, but for me, that'd risk falling, not straight away, but you'd be getting a stern talking to from your god and a 'quest' to right the wrong you just did

[deuxhero]

Eschew Materials? No, you are thinking too small (No seriously, you really are, you get far more money out of selling your casting directly).

False Focus, which lets you ignore the value of your holy symbol (max 100) worth of components is better, and even then, as mentioned above, your 300 GP in profit still fails compared to just casting 5th level spells for people at 450 a pop.

As for the fire-wood trick, there are dedicated spells that do that better at your level like Wall of Stone.

It still has uses for utility and pulling ANY item you want.

Fabricate (firearm) Bullets, even without False Focus actually does give a (tiny) compared to casting level 1 spells for people (28/30 GP vs 10).

[oneplus999]

So at the end of the day, your GM just lets you come across plenty of people to sell all your unused spell slots? That's pretty generous.

[deuxhero]

It's about as likely as finding someone to buy what you Fabricate out of thin air.

[Atarlost]

Skerek wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Trikk wrote:

A paladin could sell his horse and then call it back after the buyer has traveled for a day or something.

Well, once. :P

I might be considered a bad GM for this, but for me, that'd risk falling, not straight away, but you'd be getting a stern talking to from your god and a 'quest' to right the wrong you just did

Fraud is definitely a willful evil act.

Replace Paladin with Antipaladin and you've got yourself a trick.

[Drejk]

Actually the neither the Eshew Materials nor False Focus will help. The materials you affect are target of the spell. If you provide 0.0 cubic foot of gold you create 0.0 cubic foot of coins.

In fact listing the materials to be affected in components line is false information. (M)aterial component by definition is consumed by spell while in the case of fabricate transmutes some amount of one substance into crafted object. That substance does not fulfill the condition of being consumed by the spell so it should not be listed as component in the first place.

[oneplus999]

deuxhero wrote:

It's about as likely as finding someone to buy what you Fabricate out of thin air.

Except an item can go in a bag of holding and be sold whenever, while a spell has to be sold on the day of, and yes a cheap mundane item is more likely to find a buyer. Worst case you make some diamonds and find someone to buy them wholesale. So actually yes, it would be way easier to sell the product of a fabricate spell.

Not that it matters, I assume the OP wasn't actually suggesting that any PC do this, just pointing out a funny combination of rules.