William Bryan
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I'm brainstorming into what practical everyday businesses a group of specialist wizards would excel at.
For example....
Necromancers would be great in the fertilizer business (gross but effective)
Evokers would excel at making fireworks or arms dealers.
Any ideas about the other schools of magic?
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Set
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Illusionists would be great as entertainers, obviously, but also instructors (since they can create a perfect visual representation of the subject of discourse, even one that students can interact with, in some cases).
Conjurers would likely specialize in transportation services, starting at low level with mount spells and phantom steeds, and ramping up to using summoned / planar bound flying outsiders to deliver small packages around town (which any wizard would theoretically be able to do with raven, owl, hawk, or bat familiars, but those with more potent creatures might be able to do safer), and finally, where the real action is at, teleportation, for when your package absolutely needs to get there *now,* and 'there' is 1000 miles away through enemy-controlled territory...
Diviners would make decent private investigator types, or spymasters.
Abjurers, in theory, would make good bodyguards against magical attacks, or designers of magical defenses for the homestead, but, practically speaking, don't have the strongest rules support for those tasks (particularly since counterspelling is so weak, making, IMO, the 'wizard secret service' kind of an uphill slog).
Necromancers have the free labor thing down pat, thanks to skeletons and zombies. They don't even have to be defiled human(oid) dead. The bones of horses and cattle can provide infinite energy turning millstones or whatever.
A slightly more expensive version of the exact same 'free labor' principle would use transmuters and permanent animated objects. (Without the bones and possible sacrilege.)
Everyone sees the fireballs, but don't always notice that 0 level cantrip, ray of frost, that an evoker can cast at will, and which will change how food can be effectively stored, and totally upend the faux medieval setting, since everyone can now have an 'icebox' in their basement, and once a week, some 1st level schlub from the guild working his apprenticeship comes by and casts ray of frost a half dozen times on the tub of icewater in the basement, so that the 'freezer' stays cold and the meat and veggies stored down there keep fresh longer. The fancy schmancy folk don't even have to use a guild-apprentice, they can splurge for a 'magic item' that just keeps the water frozen, and their cool things cool without pulling a Caesar and sending the army off into the mountains to return with chests of snow to make chilled treats. Lots of practical magic in evocation, like creating lights, or fire on demand, or, I guess, blowing stuff up, when there's a job that calls for that (mining, for instance).
Charles Scholz
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Prestidigitation - The perfect dry cleaning business.
| zza ni |
Ice-cream peddlers? ray of frost + prestidigitation = any flavor you can dream of in any color ever invented (and some not named yet!).
-any kind of food maker or chef. same as above.
porters (ant's haul ,unseen servant etc last for hours).
scribes (i mean they can scribe even magical scrolls at level 1 so common shouldn't be that hard).
Lumberjacks (animate object on axes and ant's haul etc).
hunters (divination to find and web\sleep to catch).
any kind of crafter\fixer (mending and valet familiar archtype).
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Set
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porters (ant's haul, unseen servant etc last for hours).
EN World had a 3.X supplement that included apprentices working their tuition on the docks of the magical city-state with floating disk spells, including special researched upgrades (to make them more 'work' friendly as opposed to 'carry loot out of the dungeon' friendly) and a ridiculously specialized Prestige Class that had developed around those spells and special techniques to carry more, control multiple disks, etc.
It is kind of amazing what simple relatively common spells can do to utterly change things.
"We need to get the marble statue of the hated king we just stole across town to erect over the dungsweeper's guild to tell everyone what we think of him, but it's too heavy to teleport and too noticeable to transport openly! Shrink item on it, and have the owl familiar carry the shrunken cloth outline of it across town!"
Yet another spell meant to allow PCs to drag home heavy loot, shrink item is even better than floating disk and ant haul, for caravan masters and ship's captains.
And purify water. Oy. Never have to carry fresh water again on a long sea voyage. Just toss a bucket over the side and purify some seawater.
Just make sure nothing bad happens to the adept...
| Andostre |
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Prestidigitation - The perfect dry cleaning business.
Or for dental hygienists!
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William Bryan
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A friend of mine were talking about medical/surgical applications of using certain specialties of wizardry.
Enchantment: anesthesiologist
Illusion: 3D mapping of the humanoid body
Evocation: the actual surgeon
Divination: Pre and Post op information for surgeons and family
Necromancer/Cleric: creating HP buffers for patients to raise their endurance
Abjuration: creating protections like mini-shields and mage armor to protect the patient
| Andostre |
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Evocation: the actual surgeon
I think this one requires elaboration.
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Set
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William Bryan wrote:Evocation: the actual surgeonI think this one requires elaboration.
Cutting blades made of magical force sound like they'd be perfectly sharp and perfectly sterile and have an absolutely 0% chance of leaving behind fragments or slivers in the wound. Plus (carefully controlled!) fire magic would prove useful for cauterizing wounds.
But yeah, the initial visual sounds incongrous.
Evoker in the ER: "He's coding! Lightning bolt, CLEAR!"
| Fox Soul |
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If you think of the normal setting in the game, I imagine the everyday village NPC are lvl 1 through 3. The daily grind doesn't give them life experience is advance through levels quickly, which would mean a wizard NPC would focus on something early in their life, and wouldn't really look into new areas of business as they level. This would because they already got a foothold in the economy.
Looking at feats available up to level 3 for item creation, this would make Craft Wonderous items, craft potions, and inscribe runes. Which if you look at the stores ingame, these are somewhat common magical items you can find.
However, when looking at some of the other feats a unique business comes into play.
Haunt Scavenger, which makes me think of a wizard that performs "Exorcisms" by casting protection from evil and junk.
| Meirril |
Job for an Abjurer? Personal or Head Butler.
Assuming a 1st level Abjurer and a 14 int. Cantrips to do most of the work. Endure Elements for the Butler and Master so they can be comfortable in any weather. 2 more spells should be available per day. Unseen Servant would be very popular, but if you're going to insist on only abjuration spells how about Peacebond to ensure guests don't draw their weapons? Or Hold Portal to buy time for a master to escape? Or alarm for a lot of reasons. Though 4 castings of Endure Elements would be a good choice as well in summer and winter.
Nightdrifter
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Enchanter: Profession (Barrister)
What advantage could charming a judge possibly have on your case?
| Melkiador |
This is an interesting thought experiment, but spell casting services themselves are already a good source of money. And most schools of magic have spells that people will want enough to buy from you.
I think transmutation could have a high entertainment value. Imagine "sky diving" with feather fall. Or "scuba diving" with water breathing. How much would you pay in the real world for just 5 minutes of time with the fly spell?
| Ryan Freire |
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Diviners: Merchant. Knowing where products are needed and when droughts and famines are coming ...
| shadram |
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Andostre wrote:William Bryan wrote:Evocation: the actual surgeonI think this one requires elaboration.Cutting blades made of magical force sound like they'd be perfectly sharp and perfectly sterile and have an absolutely 0% chance of leaving behind fragments or slivers in the wound. Plus (carefully controlled!) fire magic would prove useful for cauterizing wounds.
But yeah, the initial visual sounds incongrous.
Evoker in the ER: "He's coding! Lightning bolt, CLEAR!"
And if anything goes wrong, Fireball makes it easy to clean up (or cover up) the mess.
| Doktor Weasel |
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Prestidigitation does mean that no apprentice is without a valuable skill. It's really the most amazing day-to-day spell. Dry cleaning clothes, quick janitorial services, spicing up drab food. And it's a cantrip, so you can cast it all day. Unseen servants can also help with similar activities, but not require active use by the wizard for every little thing. Mending is also a great little service cantrip. Fix household objects while you wait. Repair everything from ripped pants to broken plows.
Continual flame is another great one. Those ever-burning torches would have practically limitless demand. Who doesn't want a light source that requires no fuel, and won't risk burning down your house? Get one for every room, or better yet, two! Put up street lighting all through town. ETC. I remember seeing an estimate once of the candle and torch usage of historical castles. It was a lot. Like hundreds if not thousands of pounds of candles and torches every year. Replacing them with ever-burning torches would pay for itself fairly quickly.
Item creation is also another great source of income. One of my favorite business uses of magic items is a combination of Bird Feather Tokens and Chest Feather Tokens. Use the chest to pack up a lot of goods into an extra-dimensional space, then use the bird to deliver the key to the customer. Customer turns the key and recovers goods. A great mail and courier service item. Also great for smuggling.
A higher value item is Decanter of Endless Water. There would be amazing demand for these. Set up running water for cities. They'd be great for sanitation. Drought-proof your crops. Perfect water source for sieges.
Teleportation magic is of course perfect for a shipping business. Set up a network of permanent teleportation circles and you can move large quantities of goods absurdly faster. And over time would be much cheaper than ships.
Potions are great, but honestly, there would probably be more demand for cleric or alchemist potions than wizard ones. Having some healing potions for first aid would be something anyone who can afford it would probably do. Likewise neutralize poison for someone of high profile, and remove disease for bad situations. Polypurpuse Panacea is an amazing wizard potion.
Wall of stone and wall of iron are great for construction. With enough Wall of Stone's memorized, you could put up a simple house in minutes. Move Earth is also great for leveling the ground for construction.
Fabricate for quick industrial production. You can't compete with a Wizard blacksmith who can create custom metalwork in seconds.
Here's a weird one, mineral butcher. Cast Stone to Flesh on normal rock and you've got meat you can sell. And you don't need to pay all the expenses or take the time of taking care of the animals and waiting for them to mature. I'd even say this meat is vegan, no animals were harmed in it's production. Plus you can combine this with a mining or tunneling operation. Turn the stone you want to dig through into meat, and it's much easier to dig out. Then prestidigitation to clean out the bits of rock dust and dirt. Meat mine!
Also for mining, you've got things like Detect Metal to find nice ore deposits. Stone Shape to get to them easier, or disintegrate. Paasswall is good for tunneling too. Air bubble can be good for emergancies with toxic gasses, or begin trapped in a cave-in.
Locate Object, lost your keys? I'll find them!
Locate Creature, search and rescue. Also find lost pets and livestock.
Not a wizard, but druids and rangers casting Plant Growth on local crops would be very much sought after. I had a ranger who spent downtime randomly casting Plant Growth on the local fields. Farmers originally tried to run him off, then they saw the results and started leaving offerings to him to encourage him to visit their fields. He could have charged for it, but it was more of a hobby than a business for him.
The possibilities are pretty much endless. A clever spellcaster should never hurt for legitimate work. And the limited nature of spell slots, combined with the major effects of the spells, means your work day can be pretty short too. Cast some Walls of Stone to build a house, and you've earned your rent for the month at least. So you can have a lot of time for research or pursue a hobby.
| lemeres |
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Prestidigitation - The perfect dry cleaning business.
Also, a different kind of "cleaner".
I can easily imagine a failed wizard apprentice (1 level wizard, and only enough int for cantrips) becoming a serial killer or assassin. Successful murders come down to the small details, and prestidigitation is all about the small details.
Removing blood, planting blood on someone else, changing the temperature of body parts to throw off time of death, changing the taste of food to hide less subtle poisons, changing the color of disguising capes to throw off guards, etc.
| Volkard Abendroth |
I'm brainstorming into what practical everyday businesses a group of specialist wizards would excel at.
For example....
Necromancers would be great in the fertilizer business (gross but effective)
Necromancers would excel at any business requiring large amounts of mindless labor away from the general public.
Tireless laborers that mine, tend fields, man sweatshops, etc. 24/7/365 with minimal supervision from their intelligent undead foremen. Never complaining, never striking, never slacking off, requiring no sustenance and minimal upkeep.
| Doktor Weasel |
William Bryan wrote:I'm brainstorming into what practical everyday businesses a group of specialist wizards would excel at.
For example....
Necromancers would be great in the fertilizer business (gross but effective)
Necromancers would excel at any business requiring large amounts of mindless labor away from the general public.
Tireless laborers that mine, tend fields, man sweatshops, etc. 24/7/365 with minimal supervision from their intelligent undead foremen. Never complaining, never striking, never slacking off, requiring no sustenance and minimal upkeep.
There's at least one guy doing basically this in one of the published Pathfinder Adventures.
Plus it's Geb's shtick. They have hoardes of undead working the fields, and their living population is fairly small. So they make a lot of money exporting food.
| Coidzor |
Magical hair removal services should be within the grasp of Necromancy, judging by the 1st level spell Depilate. Basically just need a more focused and controlled version.
I suspect that one of those old 1001 uses for Prestidigitation articles that ran in Dragon Magazine over the years probably also addressed that kind of thing, so I could imagine something in the way of a cantrip that replicated shaving or waxing while longer lasting or permanent options would be higher level.
| Meirril |
To me, the idea of looking at Wizards running a business is only interesting for low level wizards. In Galorian finding a 1-3rd level wizard is fairly simple. Every town probably has one or two. When you start talking about 5th-9th level adventurers of any kind they become a lot more rare. These are talented individuals that local lords should be very interested in. Most will be directly or indirectly employed by a noble of some kind.
When you're talking about 10+ NPCs that fits the level of a Major NPC. We're talking about the rulers of cities, kingdoms, large organizations. The idea of such a person just running a business (other than selling magic services) is a major waste of talent.
Adventurers (the PCs) are exceptions, not the rule. Gifted individuals that are destined to leave a mark on history. While there are high level NPCs they don't tend to act like adventurers. And the people around them put a lot of value on their exceptional skills. If a Wizard is going to cast a 5th level spell they will get paid for the casting, not paid as a day laborer.
| Coidzor |
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I went through and looked at some Wizard schools and their spells, going up to character level 5. Here are the Elemental Schools to start with.
Aether
School Spells of note: Floating Disk, Unseen Servant, Ablative Barrier, Pilfering Hand, & Tiny Hut
So they have a spell for hauling heavy loads, doing simple tasks hands-free, protecting other people who go into hazardous situations, snatching things from people from a distance, and creating a small, secure area that a select group of people can move in and out of that's free from wind and weather.
Air
If nothing else, the Air Elementalist Wizard can act as an elevator and get down from high places safely and quickly.
The lightning blast class feature is probably too little to provide useful electrical power even if you did the necessary engineering to collect and store it.
School Spells of note: Alter Winds, Feather Fall, Elemental Speech, Glide, Gust of Wind, Whispering Wind, Fly, & Gaseous Form
So they can change the wind in an immobile area, turning either no wind into light wind or light wind into either no wind or moderate wind up until 5th level when they can turn moderate wind into light wind or strong wind. That might be useful for helping a wind mill operate consistently. If it travels with a ship, which I can't remember offhand, it would be useful for powering sails.
Feather Fall would allow them to, say, facilitate adrenaline junkies who would like to go sky diving or base jumping.
They can talk to elementals and elementally-aligned creatures as well as flying, swimming, or burrowing monsters for short periods of time.
They can glide and eventually can make themselves or others fly for short periods of time as well as levitate objects and other creatures.
Whispering Wind allows them to send messages within a few miles.
Gust of Wind requires some engineering and a higher level Wizard to cast Permanency, but that can provide a fair amount of power to a wind mill which could then be used to accomplish a number of things using mechanisms and such or even producing electrical power. It could also come in handy for curtailing the damage caused by an industrial accident in an area with gases or vapors, such as a carbauxine forge, perhaps.
I'm sure someone more clever than I am could figure out some way that using Gaseous Form to get into some tight space that ordinarily couldn't be entered could be used advantageously. If nothing else, if there was something like a mining tunnel collapse and an airhole could be made, the wizard could go in and rescue people one at a time.
Earth
School Spells of note: Expeditious Excavation, Elemental Speech, & Shatter
So a few times per day they can dig a 5' cube hole in 6 seconds when ordinarily that would take 62.5 man-minutes (2 minutes per cubic foot using shovels). A single unskilled laborer could dig you that much hole almost 8 times over in a single 8-hour day and do it for 1 silver piece. So about 1.25 copper pieces worth of work.
They can also talk to elementals, elementally aligned creatures, and anything that can swim, fly, or burrow. For a few minutes a day.
They can also smash a lot of objects at once in a short period of time. So they could convert rocks into gravel in short order or they could potentially accelerate the process for turning diamonds into diamond dust, etc.
Fire
They also have a decent way of setting creatures on fire, which probably means they can use it to set objects on fire just fine.
School Spells of note: Dancing Lantern, Pyrotechnics, Campfire Wall
So they can have hands-free Bullseye Lantern level light for several hours a day, they can create pyrotechnical displays, and they can provide semi-secure-ish camping in areas where there might be some minor hazards but nothing too serious in terms of monster problems.
Metal
School Spells of note: Mending, Make Whole, Shatter, Greater Magic Weapon
So they can fix stuff and also smash it to bits.
They can also make a weapon, say, someone else's, magical for a few hours a day, or they can do it for a siege engine or siege engine ammo.
I could see a retainer being paid by a city to some local Wizards to be able to provide that service as necessary.
Void
School Spells of note: Continual Flame, Masterwork Transformation, See Invisibility, Share Memory, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Dispel Magic, Nondetection, & Seek Thoughts
So they can create permanent light sources, turn ordinary stuff Masterwork, see invisible things for a moderate amount of time each day, share memories or view the memories of others, scry on locations within a relatively short distance to themselves, counteract ongoing magical effects, hide themselves or others from divination magic, and figure out if people are thinking about a topic or the like.
Water
They can also blast with coldness, which could potentially be argued to help chill things out, I suppose.
School Spells of note: Ray of Frost, Touch of the Sea, Elemental Speech, Slipstream, & Water Breathing
So they can freeze small objects and they can make themselves and others able to breathe under water. They can also give people swim speeds for short or moderate lengths of time.
They can also talk to elementals and elemental aligned creatures and creatures that can swim, fly, or burrow like several of the other.
Some spells like Touch of the Sea or Slipstream, while short duration, could potentially be combined with Water Breathing in some kind of aquatic recreation setting.
Wood
Splintered Spear, on the other hand, is potentially the ability to create a whole bunch of splinters that may or may not eventually be able to build up into a significant quantity. Not sure what you could do with the ability to slowly generate a pile of splinters, though.
School Spells of note: Alter Winds, Charm Person, Whispering Wind, Tongues, & Tree Shape
So the Wizard can alter the wind conditions around a fixed point, so they could provide consistent power to a wind mill outside of powerful windstorm conditions. They can make people trust them for hours out of the day at least some of the time. They can send messages within a few miles without having to hire a fast runner. They're able to understand and speak any languages for a moderate amount of time each day.
They're also able to turn into a tree and creep on people and their conversations.
Ice subschool of Air/Water
School Spells of note: No change from the base school
Smoke subschool of Air/Fire
School Spells of note: As whichever parent school.
Magma subschool of Earth/Fire
School Spells of note: No change from the base school.
Mud subschool of Earth/Water
It may also create lasting mud, but probably not.
School Spells of note: No change from the base school.
| Saffron Marvelous |
The mafia in my setting has the wizard laundry business on lockdown and will break your knees if you try to set up shop without giving them their cut.
Being able to ship meat all over the place should be lucrative enough to employ a lot of wage mages for casting Preserve (or gentle repose if you've got a small number of really big things).
| Mark Hoover 330 |
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If you're looking at Craft or Profession skills to base a career on and have a Wizard, regardless of specialization, they have Mending and Prestidigitation which are the 2 most employable out-of-combat spells you can have.
You can clean, mend, and generally maintain any small, physical object in reality. As you gain levels you can use Mending on bigger objects. Think about that - you could make a fortune just running a simple salvage company, 10 minutes at a time.
Throw in Cantrips like Create Water, Mage Hand or Spark and suddenly you have little need for much other than a basic set of tools to run a workshop. Take the Familiar option, give yourself a Valet archetype Familiar and you've got an instant helper on all your projects.
| Volkard Abendroth |
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The idea of such a person just running a business (other than selling magic services) is a major waste of talent.
Who knows how many wizards have achieved immortality and, after growing weary of the limelight, simply retired to being simple, anonymous shopkeepers, farmers, or wandering merchants?
Even if only 1 every few generations, the number would still accumulate over time. You would have no way of knowing until some idiot bandit or adventurer decided to go pick a fight with farmer Bob and never came back.
| Coidzor |
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Looking over the school powers of the various traditional schools of magic, Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, Transmutation, Universalist, etc., it seems like only a couple of them have school powers that would be relevant to making a living.
Abjuration's Resistance ability could potentially have some use in working with various substances or working environments, but I can't think of any forms of environmental or contact energy damage that isn't at least 1d6 damage. Anything that dealt, at most, 5 damage, would be something that an Abjurer could be immune to, though.
Maybe casual contact with electricity while messing around with learning how to harness it to do work even when not available to cast spells at a problem?
Conjuration's Infernal Binder subschool's Planar Knowledge ability gives an untyped +3 to Knowledge: The Planes, allowing them to make 3 more silver pieces per day when making a living as a Sage by Earning Capital in the Downtime system.
Enchantment's Enchanting Smile ability gives them a +3 to Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate by level 5, which will also translate into an extra 3 silver pieces when using those to Earn Capital. And have benefits when it comes to things like negotiation that aren't as easy to reduce into a direct amount of money.
Illusion's Extended Illusions ability could be potentially of use in entertainment or advertising, I think, but it's such a very, very short time, even at higher levels that I just don't see anything but very, very niche cases beyond performing before a live audience. I believe that would be adhoc Circumstance Bonus territory, probably somewhere between +1 and +5 without some exceptional creativity. Going by Perform, it might push a level 5 character from getting about a 20 when Taking 10 to getting about a 25, which would be an average increase of about 1.85 gp going by daily Perform checks. Alternatively, +1 to +5 sp per day using Downtime to Earn Capital.
Necromancy's Power over Undead ability gives you between 1 and 5 HD of undead, which can then be used to power a mill or possibly Aid Another to add ~0.55 * 5 * 2 = ~+5.5 to a skill check. Or engage in other tasks as have been addressed at length by others in other threads and touched upon in this thread. Like Command Undead, the spell, it does have the issue of needing to find a source of useful undead to take over.
Transmutation's Physical Enhancement ability plays against type, but a +2 to any physical ability score is a real, if minor, boon to doing a number of things. Still probably not worthwhile compared to using their brain muscle or spellcasting, though, without a fairly unusual Wizard build.
Universalists' Arcane Crafter subschool's Metacharge ability gives a crafting feat or metamagic feat and the ability to more easily create metamagic items. I'm sure there's something there, but I'm not quite familiar enough with crafting metamagic items to say.
None of the others really struck me as having much potential.
Arcane Discoveries have a bit of fertile ground to them. For instance, Arcane Builder's 25% speed boost to crafting would allow a crafter to create more wealth in the same amount of time as others. I'm not exactly sure how exactly you'd model the speed boost. If you look at the total number of days and multiply it by 0.75 or if you multiply the amount of gp progress per day by 1.25 or what.
If you're looking at Craft or Profession skills to base a career on and have a Wizard, regardless of specialization, they have Mending and Prestidigitation which are the 2 most employable out-of-combat spells you can have.
You can clean, mend, and generally maintain any small, physical object in reality. As you gain levels you can use Mending on bigger objects. Think about that - you could make a fortune just running a simple salvage company, 10 minutes at a time.
Throw in Cantrips like Create Water, Mage Hand or Spark and suddenly you have little need for much other than a basic set of tools to run a workshop. Take the Familiar option, give yourself a Valet archetype Familiar and you've got an instant helper on all your projects.
That reminds me of how it costs 1/5th the item's price to repair it yourself when an item has the broken condition while it costs 1/10th the item's price to hire someone else to repair it, although it might cost more than 1/10th depending upon the extent of the damage.
10 minutes per 1d4 hp is a lot faster than 1 hour per hp, though. On average it's literally 15x faster, since 6d4's average result is 15.
A Spyglass is 1000 gp and weighs 1 pound, so even just charging 1/10th the price to fix it up is still a cool 100 gp earned in 10 minutes.
Admittedly, most light items aren't quite that valuable, but there are a fair number with very good value to weight ratios.
If one could get around the sell for half rule, though, then there could definitely be a profit made by buying a broken item for 75% of the price, casting Mending on it for free, and then selling it for 100% of the price.
Meirril wrote:The idea of such a person just running a business (other than selling magic services) is a major waste of talent.Who knows how many wizards have achieved immortality and, after growing weary of the limelight, simply retired to being simple, anonymous shopkeepers, farmers, or wandering merchants?
Even if only 1 every few generations, the number would still accumulate over time. You would have no way of knowing until some idiot bandit or adventurer decided to go pick a fight with farmer Bob and never came back.
Who knows how many adventurers whose parents died horribly in order to give them a backstory justification for adventuring were actually just manipulated by immortal wizard parents who decided to fake their own deaths?
| haremlord |
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I just thought that I would add this. It's a day by day accounting of an NPC commoner who retrains into a wizard and what he does every day using the downtime rules. I think he's doing better than any PC I've played :-D
Edit: I realize he isn't a specialist, just thought it should be mentioned... carry on.
| Coidzor |
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I went through and looked at Abjuration and Conjuration spells between 0th and 3rd level for Wizards between 1st and 5th level. I didn't go super in-depth with anything, but I think I did a bit more than a surface treatment on at least some of these.
Will probably go through the other spell schools at some rate, but probably won't be going all that quickly.
Abjuration
I don't see a way to really make money off of Resistance or for it to even be all that much of a benefit to running or operating a business.
And that's apparently the only Wizard cantrip that's Abjuration.
Alarm could be cast as a spellcasting service to supplement mundane night watchmen and the like. 5 gp of Cold Iron used as a material component will also boost the CL by one, offering a max of 12 hours of duration to a 5th level Wizard that doesn't otherwise invest in CL boosters.
Endure Elements is an easy one. Either for selling as a spellcasting service OR casting on employees or one's self to be better able to operate in hot or cold environments. Unfortunately I can't think of any particularly interesting things offhand, and appropriate
Fastidiousness provides an obvious benefit for dirty jobs, since it literally provides a bonus against diseases. If it weren't Personal range, it'd be great for getting on retainer with a noble or the like. Also handy for always being presentable at court or official settings.
Incendiary Runes has some limitations on where it can be put, both due to its nature as a trap that has to be read AND because it will start fires, but it's a free trap-creating spell that you can set up for others.
Obscure Poison is useful to any poisoner.
Punishing Armor would be helpful for (cheating at) some forms of prize-fighting... Provided there's a way to build a Wizard to be competent at that kind of thing.
Shield Speech can create the foundation of a secure message-delivery system.
Theft Ward can aid someone at catching pickpockets or for more securely delivering sensitive packages.
Waterproof has to have some kind of use, what with that 24 hour duration. Would be helpful for underwater maintenance in conjunction with some way to breathe under water or even just really long breathing tubes, I suppose.
Arcane Lock is, unfortunately, only useful for personal use, but it is a useful enough theft deterrent, I think. Maybe there's some low level magic items that enable you to, say, give someone a key to get through a specific arcane lock or set of them so that you could see them this as a service along with the keys.
Book Ward can be sold as a spellcasting service and will last for 3-6 days depending upon whether 5 gp of Cold Iron is used.
Crimson Confession will let you make a restricted area that's permanently marked, though all it does it make it really easy to identify whoever went back there unless they're good at Fortitude Saves. It is Permanent, though. I don't see a whole lot of way to sell this to others, but if you have an area that you can't keep Arcane Locked off but don't ever need anyone going into, this will work for that to some extent. OTOH, you could use it and just have a certain number of your servitors who are supposed to have bright red skin? Since it's a relatively small area, you can probably layer things so that eventually someone who was good at Fortitude Saves would probably nat 1 and fail.
Diminished Detection would be a useful spell for sneaking, since it lasts for hours. I'm not sure if it would reduce the range of something like See Invisibility, or if it's literally just spells with Detect as the first word in the name or what, though.
Endure Elements, Communal could be even more effective from the running a business standpoint, as a single 2nd level spell slot will ward 3 creatures for a full 8 hour shift or 4 for 6 hours.
Escape Alarm has a 24 hour duration by default, so that's useful from the moment the spell can be cast. 5 gp of Cold Iron allows a 5th level Wizard to allow 6 people other than themselves to not trigger the alarm, so it should be more than possible to make it work as a spellcasting service. It would also be a good way to
Obscure Object might be able to be used to some effect or sold as a spellcasting service, but even Extended it's still only 16 hours of duration for a single spell slot. Probably most useful if you have 3+ spell slots and are holding onto hot goods that you need to hold onto for a few days before you try to liquidate them and make that someone else's problem or are able to reduce a valuable object into its component parts or the like. So probably more useful for thievery than legitimate business enterprise. Maybe it would help with smuggling, too?
Protection from Arrows has a long enough duration (hours) that it could be sold, and it could protect against up to 60 points of damage if a 5th level Wizard used up 5 gp of Cold Iron on it. Could also be useful in certain kinds of performances where none of the ranged attacks could deal more than 10 points of damage even if some kind of accident happened and the creature was actually hit.
Radiation Ward has some obvious utility in working with radioactive substances and detecting irradiated areas. It is only partial protection, however, but it does last for hours.
Discharge may be able to make certain kinds of electrical objects depower enough to be safely worked with, but I don't remember enough about PF technology to say anything for certain on that front.
Dispel Magic has a fair amount of potential as a spellcasting service, especially sold to Adventurers who somehow don't have access to it. So many kinds of spellcasters have access to it, though, that there'd be a lot of potential competition, I suspect.
Explosive Runes can run into issues with potentially blasting apart rooms, but at least it won't risk setting fire to them, ordinarily, at least, as long as there are no heat/fire sources that aren't eliminated as part of the 6d6 Force Damage. Could definitely be sold as a spellcasting service since you can instruct any number of creatures to not get blasted by them. Can also be used to help provide lethal-to-potentially-lethal levels of security in appropriate places in your own locations.
Guardian Monument, Lesser seems at first glance like a spell that's mostly useful for humans to protect other humans during sieges by non-humans. It could also be used to give human employees a measure of protection against minor scrapes, tears, cuts, bites, etc. Admittedly, I can't think of any example businesses where this would be particularly helpful, other than maybe one dealing with handling Tiny or smaller creatures that make weak attacks but could otherwise gang up on someone, but not actually form a Swarm.
Nondetection can get up to a 6 hour duration from a 5th level Wizard with 5 gp of Cold Iron. That'd likely be enough to sell it as a spellcasting service for some purposes, but that would be 305 gp at market value, 300 without the Cold Iron. 255-260 gp with False Focus. Although a DC 17 caster level check wouldn't exactly be the most difficult to beat, although a DC 21 caster level check when used for one's self could be of use to a sneaky spellcaster.
Protection from Arrows, Communal is probably a bit less able to be sold due to the shorter duration, but I could see some areas paying a retainer to have the spell available to prepare law enforcement for storming a position defended by a lot of ranged weaponry.
Rune of Warding is another trap-creating spell that can defend a Wizard's stuff or place of residence with lethal force. Security is a little permeable due to the fact that the password can be shared or discovered by eavesdropping, but that same quality also means that it's more able to be sold as well, because the person buying the spell doesn't have to bring the Wizard back every time they want someone additional to be able to access a specific area. Bonus points is that I'm reasonably sure a Blast Glyph that deals Sonic damage also will conveniently double as an audible alarm to some extent.
Selective Alarm is basically Alarm, but better, since it can be more fine-tuned.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Conjuration
There are two Conjuration cantrips on the Wizard list.
Acid Splash was specifically rewritten when converting from the D&D 3.5 SRD to PF 1st Edition in order to prevent spellcasters from bottling it during downtime and selling it or stockpiling.
Drench is supposed to be a major pain in the butt to obtain in the first place, as a rare cantrip. It either creates water that soaks the target and then after the 6 seconds are over, the water ceases to exist, or all the water except for the water soaking the target disappears after the spell ends. Either way, not a whole lot of economical use that it can be put to, though it is good at fighting small-scale fires
Arcane Pocket is a means by which to potentially smuggle some things on the small scale. It's relatively easily foiled by any kind of magical scrutiny or even basic mundane measures that could be put in place by anyone who knew of the spell's existence, though security checkpoints are going to be relatively limited in most games. The Extradimension subschool of Conjuration would extend the duration by 1 to 2 hours for a Wizard between levels 1 and 5.
Celestial Healing is not a good healing spell, but it is most certainly a healing spell.
Corrosive Touch gets right back into the "can you bottle it?" question that Acid Splash had once upon a time. Even if you can't, one might be able to use it to avoid having to buy some forms of acid for certain purposes, though mundane acid is still probably cheaper and better in the long run than trying to spam out spell slots for Corrosive Touch or making a magic item that does it several times a day or what have you.
Expeditious Construction is the lowest level spell that creates a permanent wall. Over the course of a few days, even a low level Wizard could produce the most expensive part of a house, and a level 1 Wizard could help a group of people establish a serviceable fortification more quickly than they would otherwise. It's also not stupid expensive to sell as a spellcasting service. Depending upon the limitations on the nature of the stone, it could also potentially produce up to several hundred gold pieces worth of masonry stone (5 cp per lb) 3 x 3 x 10 = 90 cubic feet of loose stone or packed earth before CL 6. 160 lb/ft^3 x 90 cu.ft. = 14,400 pounds. 14,400 pounds x 0.05 gp/lb = 720 gp.
Infernal Healing is a much better healing spell than Celestial Healing, weirdly enough.
Instant Portrait has some measure of potential, I'm sure, but I'm not 100% sure just on what that might be. It could certainly be useful for preparing an area for the Enter Image spell, of course. I suppose one could put the image on a plate that could then get etched and used to print wanted posters, but that would require having the wanted person present while the Wizard cast this spell... or someone using Illusion magic to disguise themselves as the wanted person.
Mage Armor would be pretty niche, but could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service, especially at higher levels with Extend Spell.
Mount could be used for the standard selling a horse that will cease to exist in a few hours trick, of course, but it could also be sold as a one-way travel service or used by the Wizard themselves to operate a cab service without having to arrange for the care and feeding of horses and only having to worry about the physical people-transporter itself.
Mudball produces mud that sticks around permanently. Eventually mud dries out and becomes dirt. So if you ever end up in Water World or some other environment where dirt is a scarce resource, think of Mudball.
OG Snowball lets you basically create a snowcone that you could choose to throw at someone to deal cold damage or you could... not. You'd still have wanted to make a magic item that cast the spell if you wanted to sell any real quantity of snowcones, though.
Unseen Servant can do any number of things for you. It could, say, operate a 10 gp Hand Rotary Quern for you to convert 8 pounds of Wheat into 8 pounds of Flour, effectively making you a profit of 8 copper pieces per hour and paying off the Quern after a mere 125 hours (25 castings at CL 5). Other, more creative uses, assuredly exist and have probably been expounded upon at length by others, and some of those might even be relevant outside of adventuring and intrigue contexts. Still, there are probably worse things you can do as a Wizard with your leftover spell slots at night than to lull yourself to sleep to the gentle sound of a bunch of unseen servants grinding grain into flour.
Alter Summoned Monster may very well have some use here in the level 1-5 range, but I don't really see all that much you can usefully get, though using it in conjunction with Mount as the base spell is still a pretty decent duration. Something like a Celestial Ape or Aurochs or a small Elemental might not be bad for disposable bodyguards if nothing else. A SmalL Earth Elemental's Earthglide and a Small Air Elemental's flight are not to be discounted too easily, either, and could be used as couriers if nothing else.
Apport Object has some possibilities to it, but they escape me at the moment, mostly due to the short range allowed, between 25 and 35 feet for a Wizard of level 1 to 5.
Arrow Eruption is a bit complicated to use, but at its core, it's an item duplication spell. By my reading of the spell, you can literally duplicate magical arrows and then use other magic to repair the broken ones so that they regain their magic and can be sold. More toned down, you can duplicate Durable Arrows. Would ideally work in conjunction with Communal Protection from Arrows to protect the secondary targets, but live rats are 1 copper apiece and there's also Summon Minor Monster. If a solid Golden Arrow or Crossbow Bolt was used, one could literally create gold(50 gp/lb), and this might just explain a possible provenance for all of those solid gold crossbow bolts certain Abadarans carry around with them. Similarly, Cold Iron(50 gp/lb), Adamantine(300 gp/lb), and Mithral(500 gp/lb) could be created in small quantities, though naturally any special materials would require investment on the part of the would-be arrow duplicator. Duplicating Durable Arrows is probably the tamest thing that could be done with it.
Cushioning Bands has a certain amount of value for anyone who is going to be doing some serious climbing, and it does last for hours. So this could conceivably be sold as a spellcasting service. The Damage Reduction could also be of some small use. I could see some sneaky types taking advantage of the spell to elude pursuers by jumping off of something high that would otherwise do a prohibitive amount of damage to them.
Lead PLating has a very short duration, but it does allow limited interaction with radioactive material with basically perfect protection. At the very least, it would allow one to remove radioactive material form somewhere that it isn't wanted in stages, or to load it up, one piece at a time, into a lead container for transportation.
Mount, Communal will act as Mount, but you could have 2 of them out for 4 hours of overlapping time at CL 4+.
Mud Buddy is Unseen Servant, but visible, explicitly Small-sized, and stronger. Also, it can go underwater and swim.
Retrieve Item works a bit better than Aport Object, due to having a better range if nothing else, though the object has to be pretty small and light. One use that I can envision is that you could use it as a courier to basically seal an message inside of a container and then retrieve it. That seems like a bit too much bother for what it actually does, though.
Shackle would be useful for prisoner transport and I could see a Wizard being paid a retainer to keep spells ready for that purpose.
Slipstream could have its uses in terms of entertainment and leisure activities, though it'd be pretty expensive to buy just for that purpose at standard spellcasting service rates.
Stone Discus will create stone with the ability to bypass Damage Reduction as if it was both Magic and Silver. While this can't really be sold except for at the rather low cost that Stone Weapons can be sold at (1/4 market value then halved for the sell for half rule to be 1/8 market value of standard weapons), it can still be useful for outfitting one's minions and employees, if such properties are at all useful. Otherwise it's just a standard self-defense blasting spell that leaves behind some permanent stone.
Summon Cacodaemon lets one turn a dead creature into a soul gem. IIRC, while soul gems were nerfed at some point, they still have some value and ways that they can be used.
Web Shelter is a bit too short of duration to allow a Wizard of 5th level or lower to have an on-demand place to sleep at night without Extend Spell, but with Extend Spell, it could be offered as part of a travel service to provide a secure shelter to sleep in at night while on the road. A level 5 Conjurer with several spell slots spent on Mount could take a small group of people from settlement to settlement and have them sleep each night inside the Web Shelter, for instance.
Conjure Carriage continues on from the use of Mount to run a cab service.
Evaluator's Lens allows a business Wizard to mostly get away with not having ranks in the Appraise skill, or just be much, much better at it even if they do, since it protects against the worst results of a failed Appraise check to some extent.
Ice Spears create ice. While no price is given for ice that I'm aware of, it's still something that would have value, though that value would vary depending upon what part of the world you were in. You can also combine it with Expeditious Construction to create an ice palisade and earthern rampart to make a fort in a frigid region. Might take a bit of extra work to get your unseen servants to shave it down into shaved ice or the like, though, because it is harder than ordinary ice.
Infernal Challenger could be offered as a spellcasting service to adventurers or others who were looking to gain some experience.
Iron Stake creates a quantity of permanent cold iron. If it produces an item idential to a Cold Iron Iron Spike then that's simultaneously 50 gp of cold iron by weight and 1 sp of Light Simple Melee Weapon. If it produces something heavier, then that's more than 50 gp worth of Cold Iron created.
Irradiate produces a burst of low radiation. This may have some use, depending upon the exact rules for radiation and how much real world knowledge we're willing to apply. For instance, could this be used to alter the coloration of certain gemstones to change their value?
Knell of the Depths is basically the curse on the protagonist of the game Psychonauts. I'm sure that a seedier spellcaster could find a use for the spell as a supplement to Alchemical Cement Shoes. It might also be part of a lesser punishment than outright execution in a culture where being able to swim and/or be seafaring was important. Perhaps amphibious aquatic creatures would exile members of their species to the land using this spell.
Phantom Driver could be used in conjunction with Conjure Carriage if one were using Conjure Carriage to run a service between settlements and there was some expectation of potentially needing the carriage to be able to be driven during dangerous situations. Or to allow Conjure Carriage + this spell to act as a getaway driver for a heist for Wizardly types on the wrong side of the law.
Phantom Steed can be used as a one-way service similar to Mount, but for a level 5 Wizard, it's just not going to be able to compete due to the lack of special abilities, lower speed, and shorter duration. About the only edge it has is that ordinary animals will refuse to attack the phantom steed itself.
Planar Inquiry is a knowledge-gathering spell, and like any knowledge-gathering spell, this could either be cast for one's self to potentially be used to enrich the caster in some way or it could be cast as a spellcasting service on behalf of another.
Secret Coffer could be used for smuggling, courier work, or just secure storage. It could also be cast on behalf of someone else as a spellcasting service.
Sepia Snake Sigil is a trap-creating spell that naturally has use in protecting a Wizard's home or place of business, etc. There's also the Lissalan Snake Sigil variant, though only the nauseated condition causing one is Conjuration.
Silver Darts may or may not permanently create silver, which is 5 gp per lb. Otherwise a damaging blast spell.
Spectral Scout can be used to case a joint or otherwise gather information or spy upon people or places.
Storm Step allows a 5th level caster to teleport up to 35 feet. Has some damaging creatures and objects limitations that hamper its use for sneaking and infiltrating, but there are definitely some places where one could use this without damaging anything and if one is making a quick exit, one probably doesn't care about damaging things anymore.
Unseen Engineers can be used to make mechanical traps for one's own use or to be sold to others. It also arguably can be used to dig really deep pits really, realy, really quickly, which could have applications beyond just traps. For instance, it could potentially quarry a bunch of stone in one go. Sold as a spellcasting service, this would be cheaper than paying for the completed trap in many if not most or all cases.
Waves of Blood may or may not create a huge quantity of blood. Which may or may not be of any use to, say, Stirge-farmers.
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I just thought that I would add this. It's a day by day accounting of an NPC commoner who retrains into a wizard and what he does every day using the downtime rules. I think he's doing better than any PC I've played :-D
Edit: I realize he isn't a specialist, just thought it should be mentioned... carry on.
Thank you, that was a pretty interesting read, and I'm not even into the first February yet.
| Coidzor |
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Here's a look at Divination and Enchantment.
I learned a thing or two about Read Magic and Memorize Page that I don't think I had ever realized before and that I think may allow for minor exploits.
Divination
Dew of Lunary is the alchemical power component for Divination spells. It's 20 gp to power up a spell with it. I believe the +1 to CL is an across the board boost, so it increases duration, too.
Detect Fiendish Presence is admittedly, fairly niche, but would still be useful in the arsenal of a mage providing security services. Should probably cover all divine spellcasters that serve fiends, but, what can you do about wording?
Detect Magic can be sold as a spellcasting service to ID magic items as well as be useful in providing security by screening people for at least the more basic forms of spells cast upon them.
Detect Poison would not only be useful in court to prevent intentional poisoning, but also act as a health inspector to make sure that food stores aren't contaminated, etc.
Grasp is helpful to sneaky spellcasters who want to climb up somewhere for any number of clandestine reasons.
Read Magic allows for easier identification of magic glyphs and the like, which can synergize with a bunch of other spells that allow for one to dispel them more easily. It also allows for trivial identification of spell scrolls, which could be sold as a spellcasting service and I believe it allows a Wizard to use someone else's spellbook without having to make any spellcraft checks.
Authenticating Gaze allows a business Wizard to, eventually, get away without having put points into Appraise, but for the levels I'm looking at here, it's merely a nice buff. It's also handy for finding magical texts in a library setting. Beyond that, it also has use for detecting if something is a forgery, which can be useful not only on the side of the authorities that want to catch forgeries before they do any real damage but it's also a way to test how good of a forgery someone else made for them prior to them trying it out in the wild. Either of those could lead to some level or form of employment.
Comprehend Languages allows a Wizard to be a translator if nothing else, although it would be very literal translation. It's also useful for referring to reference material written in a language the Wizard doesn't know.
Cultural Adaptation in either form can be of use in a wide variety of small ways, though nothing in particular comes to mind as a big way to use the spell directly. Mostly it'll grease the wheels, particularly on schemes and intrigue.
Detect Charm is, like Detect Magic and Detect Poison, of use for spellcasters who are providing security services.
Detect Metal would be a boon to any would-be prospector, at least looking for native metals rather than ores. Although a particularly loose interpretation of metal object as object made of metal could lead to ores being detected as well. Also helps make sure you don't miss any gold dust when gathering up the sawdust off the floor from saloons in boom towns.
Detect Radiation is more convenient than the other forms of radiation detection that rely on exposing yourself to the radiation first before you can detect it. The exact uses for this spell, though, are beyond me at the moment, beyond seeking out ores of uranium or concentrations of radon gas, or detecting radiation leaks when you're already working with high technology. I suppose it would help people who were looking for natural sources of viridium to exploit.
Detect Secret Doors would be useful to not only spies and criminals but also detectives. Could also be sold as a spellcasting service to people as part of a buidling inspection when real estate changes hands.
Detect Undead mostly is of use in security contexts. Some Necromancers could use it to help find a source of undead they can exploit for labor without having to animate them for themselves.
Discern Next of Kin is great for kidnappers and people doing shakedowns alike. A Wizard doesn't even need to be the direct kidnapper or source of intimidation, either.
Ears of the City is great for both getting on top of rumors to potentially be the first to exploit them for profit as well as selling it as a spellcasting service to the powers that be or even adventurers who are looking to get information quickly.
Heightened Awareness can make one a better sage if that's what one is using to make a living. It also combines nicely with using Ears of the City and other spells that rely on Perception or Knowledge checks.
Identify can be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers, if for some reason they don't already have access themselves.
Kreighton's Perusal doesn't have a use that can be directly monetized, at least not easily, but it could hasten research to further a number of aims. Compare with Skim.
Linked Legacy allows for accelerated teaching, which could help in tutoring and also in training employees and apprentices. Compare with Mindlink. It could also be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurer types to impart information to their minds directly as part of preparation for an adventurer, I think.
[url=https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Mindlink]Mindlink allows for accelerated teaching, which could help in tutoring and also in training employees and apprentices. Compare with Linked Legacy.
Pierce Facade can aid the Wizard or a creature they cast it on in weeding out people in disguise while vetting people who are seeking an audience with the king or mayor or some other notable figure that would warrant that layer of security. Lasting up to 100 minutes with Extend Spell in the picture, that can cover a hefty amount of time.
Rune Trace allows the Wizard to, if nothing else, be better at eliminating a magical rune type trap. And also means that the Wizard could get to charge for two spells, Rune Trace and Dispel Magic, in one go.
Skim allows the Wizard to read at 4x their usual rate, which can be improved by training their speed reading. Limited direct use in making money, although by reading more quickly they could process more paperwork more quickly if they had some kind of gig where they were paid by the page or document. Compare with Kreighton's Perusal when used for research purposes, though. Also buffs the Wizard's ability to decipher particularly difficult texts with an untyped +8 which is a pretty sizeable buff. Explicitly works with Research checks, too, but I'm not sure if that's directly useful in the context we're looking at here.
Speechreader's Sight is of use to a spy, since it lets them read lips with perfect accuracy.
Technomancy is Detect Magic, but for technology, unless one has the Techologist feat, in which case it's Identify, but for technology. This can aid a tech-scavenger or the like, or it could even be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers.
True Skill is a relatively short duration buff, but it's Insight and will work with any skill that can be used quickly, such as Knowledge skills. So it could be combined with Heightened Awareness to make a few Knowledge checks with an extra +3 to +4 from the two spells.
Aram Zey's Focus only confers trapfinding for a few minutes unless multiclassed, but that still may be enough for sneakier sorts. I believe there are also some ways that trapfinding can be used to enable things other than just attempting to find and disable traps, but I can't remember any that are specifically relevant here offhand.
Blood Transcription provides a way to acquire rare or secret spells from others, which would then allow one to sell access to that spell to other Wizards so that there's less incentive to murder you for it, aside from the giant racial conspiracies that exist to have racial spells be a thing in the first place.
Carrion Compass will require some way to safely get within 30-35 feet of the undead creature and then back away from it without destroying it, and then assuring that it doesn't get destroyed in the meantime while you track back to whatever or whomever created it or was last controlling it... if they're within ~15,000 feet, 30K with Extend Spell. We're talking real niche here, but I can see some law enforcement agencies paying a Wizard for this as a spellcasting service or having spellcasters on retainer to provide occasional spells like this if there's an undead found but it hasn't actually caused problems yet. Although Pharasman Clerics could undercut you.
Commune with Birds is great for learning about an outdoor area, which can then segue into discovering a lot of things, depending upon whether one is bounty hunting, monster hunting, etc. or looking for natural resources or even valuable flora and/or fauna. It can also be good for trailblazing work and caravan wizards.
Create Treasure Map would be something that shadier sorts could have cast in order to find the location of an embezzler or thief's stash(es) after other means failed or they weren't able to take them alive. It's fairly open-ended, though, so the right target and a creative mind could discover a number of things that could directly lead to profit or that would ease the way to profit down the line or help with other financial endeavors.
Detect Magic, Greater is exactly what it says it is. Being able to ID who cast a spell up to several days after the spell ended would be useful in clandestine activities, law enforcement, criminal enterprise, and for figuring out who tried to mind control one of your employees to rob you so that you can go murderbucket them and take their stuff instead.
Detect Thoughts is not only useful for reading surface thoughts, but it's also a way to administer an IQ test in about 18 seconds. Which would be helpful for picking out potential apprentices or students or winnowing out pupils without the necessary base intellect to succeed at wizardry. It can also help with running security or spying to a certain extent.
Determine Depth could be helpful to shadier spellcasters who want to case a joint. Provided they can get up to a wall or the like and touch it for up to about half a minute. I believe it's of most use to casters that have a teleportation ability that doesn't rely on line of sight or that have access to something like Passwall or Stone Shape.
Enchantment Sight has some definite uses in terms of providing security.
Know Peerage could, especially with Extend Spell, be sold as a spellcasting service to people who are going to make their entrance into polite society. It could also be coupled with some mundane lessons as a crash course in "who is who" in the local social scene. Compare that usage with Mindlink and Linked Legacy, though Know Peerage will also allow the recipient to still have the spell ongoing when they go into the social event and thus able to help cover any surprise additions to the guest list, at least ones that don't show up more than fashionably late.
Locate Object helps you find things as long as you can narrow down their particular vicinity. That is very open-ended and could be of assistance to all kinds of services or enterprises.
Locate Portal is something that's definitely of interest to the powers that be, since, ideally, there are either 0 portals to other planes of existence or such planes are a known-quantity and under control to not be a threat. If they can't cast it themselves, someone is likely being paid a retainer to cast it at some regular interval.
Page-Bound Epiphany boosts those Knowledge checks for acting as a sage. Could work in getting customers to pay for the spellcasting service in addition to the information, too.
Psychic Reading would be very useful for providing security services and screening specific visitors of interest. The built in chance of error is definitely something that needs further magical or mundane means as a supplement, though.
Reveal True Shape is unupdated 3.5 content, but it's got very obvious uses in security services for seeing through illusions and transmutation effects.
Secret Speech has a large number of uses in facilitating clandestine and criminal enterprises.
Share Language can definitely be sold as a spellcasting service given its nice long 24 hour duration.
Share Memory can do a number of things, the most immediately obvious to me offhand is that it would be yet another very secure way of transmitting a secret or sensitive message.
Spell Gauge can be useful for someone offering security services in screening known spellcasters before they make an appearance.
Track Ship does what it says on the tin and can be a spellcasting service that merchants and trading companies regularly make use of, and thus, can be sold to them if they don't just have people on staff for that purpose. Insurance companies would also make use of this spell as well, I'm sure.
Undeath Sense can be sold as a spellcasting service to basically be a souped up version of Detect Undead to any would-be undead hunters.
Arcane Sight is souped up Detect Magic, and it can screen creatures for spellcasting abilities, thus allowing one to use it in conjunction with Spell Gauge.
Aura Sight combines with the 1st level See Alignment in order to be able to (potentially) determine any creature's exact alignment. This could conceivably be used in a manner similar to any individual use of the Detect Evil family of spells, if for nothing else, security purposes.
Blood Biography is of great interest to detectives, but criminals and spies would also likely have a use for it as well.
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance offers short duration spying opportunities if you can arrange for the right kind of venue to use it.
Cleromancy can be used to give one's self a short duration buff using a Luck bonus that could be as high as +20 or as low as +5 as a CL 5 caster. This could allow one to really knock some Knowledge, Spellcraft, or Sense Motive checks out of the park, which are all kinds of checks that other Divination spells have called for so far. More likely it would be something like a +2 to +8 in intervals increasing by 2, but I don't know the probabilities of getting the same result of more than 2 out of 5 d4 dice offhand.
Detect Anxieties is both a potential tool for manipulating people and also for screening people based upon their Wisdom score. This could be useful for referring potential acolytes to one's faith or for screening for the best possible candidate for an apprentice. It can also detect if someone has a Wisdom score that is far higher than it has any right to be for security purposes.
Detect Desires is like Detect Thoughts and Detect Anxieties but for Charisma scores. Like those spells, it has a potential role in security services, and could reveal information that would be of interest to the employer of said security services for non-security reasons.
Detect Mindscape probably has some kind of use for something Inception style, but I really don't understand Mindscapes and the like well enough to really give any decent speculation here. I'd be very interested to hear anyone else's pitch, though.
Discern Value helps you figure out what's most worthwhile out of something that adventurers have brought back to you to appraise. It also helps if you're doing a smash and grab or otherwise pulling off a heist where you don't have time to leisurely take everything that isn't nailed down as well as anything where the nails could be prised up. It could also have some amount of utility while looking for valuable natural resources.
Domination Link has some pretty obvious utility to those providing security services as well as law enforcement.
Find Fault can be used, along with a secondary method to verify if a creature has Spell Resistance, to detect polymorphed, disguised, and illusion-clad creatures. This has some applications in the realm of security services.
Fortune's Path could potentially be useful, it has a 55% chance of a goodish result and a 20% of a bad result. I think it'll be pretty rare that it'll be economically useful, but a Diviner can probably spare 1 spell a week on that off-chance.
Gilded Whispers is a spy spell, through and through, but even criminals could make use of it even though it was originally developed to track them down.
Harrowing could be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers and can, if you're lucky, buff yourself.
Insect Scouts assist in casing a joint for spies and criminal activities.
Irriseni Mirror Sight is a spying or two-way communication spell.
Open Book could be of interest to court systems that have concepts such as probation and parole, making it easier to keep tabs on people. Ergo, some form of spellcasting services could be possible. More clandestine or criminal spying could also make use of this, but it'd be harder to pull off.
Pierce Disguise is another spell for defeating illusion magic and polymorph effects, at least low level ones, so it has its place in security services.
Revelation will combine with Aram Zey's Focus to be of use to a spellcaster who needs to deal with a trap with finesse.
Seed Spies is similar to Insect Scouts, but will get you a bit more information about a location.
Seek Thoughts would have potential applications in all kinds of endeavours, though security services, screening interviewees, clandestine stuff, private investigation, criminal enterprise, and law enforcement are the ones that immediately come to mind.
Shared Language, Communal lets you sell the service to multiple creatures that can share the costs in exchange for having a shorter duration.
Skyshroud would allow you to run a greenhouse underground or in some other location where it wouldn't immediately be obvious. Not sure about whether there are reasonably priced, permanent alternative magic items that would do the same thing offhand. The most obvious use I can think of for this would be to grow surface plants to sell to a subterranean society or as part of one or to grow plants that are illegal or so valuable that you have to have a lot of security to protect them.
Spherescry could have potential use, but it's incredibly unlikely that a 5th level Diviner would ever come into contact with a Sphere of Annihilation, etc., and most people aren't going to want to be around spheres of annhiliation anyway.
Threefold Sight could technically be a buff spell, in that it at least lowers the chance of a catastrophic failure on an important check, whether one is just making it mundanely or making it in conjunction with another spell.
Tongues has a shorter duration than Shared Language, but it's all languages, so there will be some cases where that's more desirable as a spellcasting service.
Unspoken Name is useful in clandestine and criminal contexts where an assumed identity or code phrase, etc. are involved.
Voluminous Vocabulary can be useful for a wizard engaged in just about any form of mundane business as well as be something sold as a spellcasting service. Compare with Shared Language, which is limited to languages that the Wizard already knows. It also has some further use in communicating with or even training nonsentient creatures.
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Enchantment
Pesh is the alchemical power component for Enchantment, and it costs 15 gp to increase the CL by 1 for duration. This would probably be most useful for Charm Person, Compel Language, and Suggestion, though any of the 10 minutes/CL duration spells combined with Extend Spell could also be potentially worthwhile.
Quicksilver is only 3 gp to increase the CL by 1 to extend the duration of all [mind-affecting] spells, while Cytillesh Spores are 5 gp to do the same for [charm] and [compulsion] spells.
Daze is the only Wizard Enchantment Cantrip. I don't see much use for this, especially since they're immune for a minute afterward.
Charm Fey is Charm Person but for Fey, so it's less likely to work or have situations come up where it would be useful.
Charm Person can get you basically anything out of a low Charisma individual if you've got a good Charisma score, especially if you buff yourself. A spell like Bungle could also be helpful as part of something you offer your new "friend" under false pretenses in order to talk them into things. The unethical and illegal uses for this spell probably outnumber the legal ones. Careful use must be made in using it, but it could facilitate all kinds of things.
Hypnotism can help plots and schemes along by getting random people to agree to requests that, on their own, are brief and reasonable, but add up to some larger goal.
Implant Urge is a useful manipulation tool as an alternative to Charm Person or Hypnotism, though it does rely upon actually rolling Diplomacy and cleverness in deciding what urge to implant and what requests to make.
Keep Watch lets the Wizard no longer need to sleep. Or sell the lack of a need to sleep as a spellcasting service. For example, to people on guard duty. The exact limits of what kind of light activity the recipient of this spell can do is a bit up in the air, but reading and writing are probably A-OK. So one could potentially literally moonlight as an accountant.
Memorize Page is great for making sure your employees know the rules by heart. It's also a way to securely store a message, provided the recipient of the spell can recreate what they have memorized. This arguably creates a workaround for using spells to scribe spells into a Wizard's spellbook without destroying them, so that could be a potential spellcasting service or just save the Enchanter money in the long run as they increase the size of their spell book.
Memory Lapse is a get out of free card for a failed negotiation, interrogation, etc. There are a lot of spheres where that could come in handy.
Moment of Greatness is a buff that buffs other buffs, in this case mostly of interest to boosting morale bonuses to skill checks or maybe ability checks. For example, Heroism would become a +4 morale bonus to a single skill check.
Reveal Secrets does what it says on the tin, you can find out if a creature has a secret involving a specific subject. This has obvious applications in court intrigues, criminal enterprise, and law enforcement, to say the least.
Sleep is a big help to would-be kidnappers, at least of low HD creatures that aren't particularly guarded or defended.
Sow Thought is Inception, the spell. Sort of. This is very open-ended and ultimately as powerful as the Enchanter's ability to get away with using the spell without being discovered.
Adoration is a buff to Diplomacy and Performance Combat, but is a nice change of pace from the lower level Enchantment spells in that the person benefitting from the spell is the person it is cast on, rather than the caster casting it on someone else to benefit themselves. Super short duration, but it could be a service that places that put on gladiatoral combat pay for as a matter of course, or at least for the main event of particular day. It's a Morale bonus so it works with Moment of Greatness, too.
Bestow Insight is another short duration buff that can be shared with others or used by the Enchanter themself.
Compel Tongue has the drawback of limiting the target to only speak in one language and a shorter duration, but it could be used in a manner similar to Share Language. Making a target only able to speak in a language that no one else but you understands could certainly be useful for unethical and illegal things, but I'm drawing a blank on any decent examples.
Compulsive Liar is more of a rival sabotaging spell than anything else, but it has a decently long duration, which could still allow for one to come ahead at some decisive moment.
Covetous Urge would be a great way to create a distraction or create a fall guy for some criminal or other shady activity.
Demand Offering is a somewhat novel twist on the idea of highway robbery. Wherein you get them to hand you the thing that you want before you scarper.
Haunting Reminder is useful to any spy or criminal organization that uses intimidation and fear.
Hidden Presence is as good as Invisibility or better if you only want to get by a small group of people or single person and they all fail their saves. So not as good as invisibility at all, but it can be used in a similar way and you don't have to worry about being quiet or not wearing perfume, etc. Criminals and Spies should be able to find a use for this spell.
Hoodwink is another spell that is friend to kidnappers, or even just people who want to abduct people and interrogate them.
Intensify Psyche is yet another short duration buff to skills, in this case specifically social skills. Arguably could be combined with certain kinds of hedonism as a spellcasting service since it amplifies all sensation.
Investigative Mind is a buff to most forms of making a living as a Wizard based upon one's Wizardliness or as a sage or even a merchant, aside from the social side of things, rather than one's spellcasting directly.
Passing Fancy is explicitly for creating distractions in intrigue and covert situations, and therefore of some interest to any shady spellcaster.
Seducer's Eyes give a nice untyped bonus to all charisma-based skills for a decently long time. Just gotta remember to invest in keeping up one's sex appeal. This can definitely help with negotiations in all sorts of situations.
Touch of Idiocy could have applications in security services, such as being cast on known spellcasters before an audience with a ruler to remove their ability to cast their highest level spells. Detect Thoughts, Detect Anxieties, and Detect Desires could even be used to corroborate the new mental ability score values.
Touch of Mercy can be used to make a fight have all the excitement and spectacle of real blood sports without the actual risk of death part, or at least not as much of it.
Unnatural Lust is another spell that could be used to sabotage a rival or create a distraction, or even both.
Aversion makes a creature avoid an object or location for days. Not many legitimate uses for this spell, I believe, but it should be useful in at least some shadier contexts. It can also be used to sabotage rivals.
Babble is another distraction-producing spell.
Blood Rage makes combat even more of a spectacle, though of the angry sort, rather than the performance combat sort.
Business Booms directly improves running a business per the Downtime subsystem, or could be sold as a spellcasting service to someone doing so.
Deep Slumber is Sleep, but for more HD, so it can get a stronger lone target or take out multiple weaker ones. Primarily of interest to kidnappers, but some bounty hunters might like it as well.
Deflect Blame is another get out of jail card for bungled social skill checks, with the added potential benefit of causing someone else to take the negative consequences of a failed check.
Gullibility can be used to help one talk one's way past a guard or just talk someone into something but with less of a potential trail due to what the target remembers in comparison with Charm Person.
Heroism is a decently long Morale bonus buff to skill checks that works with Moment of Greatness. Extremely open-ended. Repeated castings and/or a long enough duration can get you the buff when crafting.
Hold Fey is Hold Person, but for Fey, and therefore more niche and more likely to run into issues where it doesn't work quite as well as one would like.
Hold Person helps with kidnapping and the like. Compare with Sleep and Deep Slumber.
Matchmaker could be used to create a distraction. It could also potentially, with judicious target selection and manipulation of the unfolding situation, lead to actual matchmaking or augment such. It could also be used to create scandals and intrigues that could then be exploited for profit.
Mindlocked Messenger is a fairly secure form of message delivery system.
Pillow Talk can not only be used to gather information, but it can also be sold as a weekly spellcasting service to prevent other people from behing able to cast it on someone. A steady income of 150 gp a week is nothing to sniff at, even for a 5th level Wizard.
Prosperous Room is another spell made to interact directly with the Downtime system. It works best for owners that are hands-off with running things from day-to-day, at least as far as a group of rooms are concerned. The most effective use would be to cast it on any rooms that can produce Magic, especially if it can also produce Goods, Labor, or both as part of financing cheaper magic item creation. Cheaper magic items, of course, means a larger profit margin on making them for sale.
Puzzle Box can be used to permanently curse a rival or competitor's tools, making it harder for them to earn their livelihood. A guild could also have enforcers that would arrange for this spell to be cast on the tools of someone found to be violating their strictures or competing with them.
Rage lasts for as long as the caster concentrates in addition to a set duration after they're done. This spell could be used to enhance the spectacle of gladiatoral combat.
Reckless Infatuation is the other side of the coin of Unadulterated Loathing and can create a distraction that lasts for days or just result in a rival or someone else that one wants out of the way doing something so that they get locked up.
Unadulterated Loathing is the other side of the coin of Reckless Infatuation. The two can even be combined as long as you cast it on two different creatures.
Slave to Sin can reveal useful information about just what a creature's primary vices are, in addition to likely causing themselves to cause a scene. Provided you can arrange for a way to cast the spell successfully and avoid the possibility that Wrath is that creature's primary sin and thus it attempts violence against you for that reason even if it doesn't cotton on to the spellcasting.
Suggestion is an iconic Enchantment spell and for good reason. It is very, very open-ended and therefore the main limit is the caster's cleverness and ability to get away with casting the spell without being caught.
| Coidzor |
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Slightly more than I expected for Evocation and slightly less than I expected for Illusion. Although Silent Image and its relatives are as open-ended as ever.
Evocation
Black Powder is the alchemical reagent here and it adds 1 point of energy damage for 10 gp. There are a number of other components that increase a specific type of energy damage by 1 point. There don't appear to be any of significance, at any rate.
Breeze creates a light wind, which could conceivably do a little bit of work, though it's a very short range indeed. Still, something like a miniature windmill could be powered basically all day as long as the Evoker stays within a small area. It's a rare cantrip, though. Otherwise it makes the subject have some minor bonuses in hazardous or inhospitable environments.
Dancing Lights can be used basically like signal flares. The glowing humanoid-ish shape could potentially be of some moderate use in entertainment, such as stage productions. It's also a flame-free and heat-free source of light, which would have benefits in some settings.
Light is light. Mostly it'll save some money on candles and the like and cut down on the risk of alchemy leading to unintended explosions.
Ray of Frost could potentially freeze things. How much has often been called into question. Small quantities of ice could just be a novelty, but enough would allow for certain cooling processes to be easier or even facilitate the production of certain kinds of food that otherwise would be more difficult or more expensive to make, with the more obvious examples being ice cream and shaved ice style dishes.
Spark lets you light fuses from a safer distance to start running from or to better duck behind cover. I'm reasonably confident it was invented just to say that Prestidigitation could no longer start fires. Still, of some level of use in conjunction with mundane fireworks.
Burning Hands lets you burn things and set them on fire. If something is flammable but would otherwise be resistant to being set on fire, this might well do the job.
Dancing Darkness can fill a similar minor role in stage productions as Dancing Lights, although at that point it's the same basic resource as Silent Image, but less.
Ear-Piercing Scream combined with the right sort of setup could make for an assassination tool against regular, weak people. I don't think it'd quite be reliable enough, though, at the CL that a 5th level Evoker could bring to bear, at least on its own in one single go.
Floating Disk enables hauling heavy goods, though not huge quantities of them, for decently long periods of time.
Gentle Breeze is Breeze, the rare cantrip, but you can't spam it all day. I'm mostly mentioning it because the niche uses of Breeze are pretty much gone, especially since it doesn't scale duration with CL.
Hydraulic Push helps fight fires. It might also potentially be used to create permanent water if cast at a very large, high-capacity sponge.
Magic Missile can unerringly hit and kill most forms of small game a reasonable amount of the time. There's a decent chance of killing up to deer at 5th level. In addition to the potential hunting application, it'll also kill or stagger weak townsfolk in one go pretty consistently.
Shocking Grasp involves some engineering problems, but it could be used as a source of electricity that could then be used to do other forms of work with some sort of non-High Technology technology.
Touch of Combustion would be a friend to anyone working as an executioner in a place where burning people at the stake was a preferred means of execution. Damp wood would not nearly be the impediment to a burning that it might otherwise be.
Unwelcome Halo would have some uses in entertainment and stage productions, I'm sure. It would require non-good actors, but that shouldn't be too much of hazzle outside of maybe a temple of Shelyn trying to put on a theatre production.
Beacon of Guilt basically permanently curses someone with Faerie Fire. This would have some level of potential use when it comes to security services as well as entertainment for outfits that could afford the cost of getting rid of the curse as necessary.
Burning Gaze is another "set stuff on fire from a distance" spell. Automatically ignites unattended objects, though, and no size limitation on the size of the object that can be ignited. Probably a nice trick at bonfires to be able to ignite the entire thing in one go.
Burst of Radiance is a low level way to check to see if a group of creatures are Evil that gets around most ways of attempting to conceal alignment from divination magic.
Continual Flame lets the caster create Everburning Torches and Ioun Torches and the like. Note that there is no size limitation on what size of object this can be cast on. A single object can therefore provide much more light than an ordinary torch or everburning torch. Still, a default net profit of ~5 gp when selling for half is at least something and will add up over the course of a week's worth of spell slots, assuming the Evoker has the seed money and ruby dust isn't rare. False Focus naturally turns this into a much larger money maker that could more than support a Wizard as a decent livelihood.
Elemental Touch when used for electricity damage is basically Shocking Grasp, but across multiple rounds.
Gust of Wind only becomes potentially useful when combined with Permanency, but with specific engineering, it could produce higher efficiency wind mills or even power a turbine.
Ice Slick could be used to help keep an ice room cold and counteract ice that is lost due to thawing to some extent, which would be useful to businesses that sell ice, whether natural or magically created.
Pilfering Hand is basically a purse-snatcher spell. Used judiciously it could enrich a thief, but probably not as much as doing almost anything else with their spellcasting, even compared to other magically-augmented criminal activity.
Revealing Light would be a useful spell in the arsenal of a mage providing security services for its abilities in combatting non-magical stealth.
Shatter destroys nonmagical objects. One legitimate use would be to accelerate the process of pulverizing gemstones to make them into powder. Being able to destroy an object of up to 50 pounds would also have other applications, as that is fairly open-ended.
Campfire Wall could be of interest to an Evoker offering protection services while traveling, at least in areas where the night-time threats are the sort of creatures that would be dissuaded by a wall of fire and light, rather than drawn to such.
Channel the Gift could be sold as a spellcasting service if someone really wanted to be able to cast a 3rd level or lower spell multiple times in a row in one day to the point where it was worth 150 gp each to them.
Daylight is only tens of minutes of bright light, but that might still be enough, say in some form of continuous item, to grow plants. Which would then allow rare, valuable, or illicit (and valuable) plants to be grown in greater security or even within conditions that are entirely manipulated for the best growth.
Fireball could be used to act as a sort of improvised firework or to start a big fire (or series of explosions) from quite a distance. It might have use in demolitions when combined with gunpowder, for instance. Depending upon how long metals are melted by it, it could be used to cast a fairly wide array of metals without having to pay for fuel or have (as much of) a smelting facility.
Firestream can also melt the same array of metals as Fireball, but lasts for longer, so it could be used to greater effect for small-scale casting.
Hydraulic Torrent has potential use in fire-fighting applications.
Lightning Bolt could, like Shocking Grasp and Elemental Touch, be used to produce electricity with appropriate engineering prep work. It can also be used to melt metals similarly to Fireball.
Motes of Dusk and Dawn could have potentially more uses in the entertainment sector than Dancing Lights or Dancing Darkness alone, but it would still be relatively niche in that arsenal.
Recharge allows one to refill batteries and items of high technology. Even with the 20% chance of destruction, that could be useful as a spellcasting service or as someone working with high technology directly.
Pain Strike would be useful in interrogations to some extent.
Spotlight has obvious applications in the entertainment industry.
Tiny Hut is a generally better "safe camping for a small number of people" spell than Campfire Wall for Evokers that are taking people between settlements. It's also an ideal spell for creating a comfortable work-space.
Wall of Split Illumination would be another lighting spell that could have potential applications in entertainment.
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Illusion
Silver is the alchemical power component for the school as a whole. It only increases the DC for Will Saves to Disbelieve, though, so it's extremely variable whether that's worthwhile. Often times, if someone is trying to disbelieve an illusion, then whoever cast that illusion has already failed in many respects.
Quicksilver, on the other hand, increases the CL by 1 for duration purposes for [mind-affecting] spells for only 3 gp, which is great for those illusions that are [mind-affecting], of which there are a few.
Ghost Sound has applications in the entertainment industry.
Haunted Fey Aspect would be extremely niche, but it could very well be of some use in a small number of theatrical performances.
Oath of Anonymity creates, essentially, a separate identity with a hidden face. It could allow an Illusionist to play at least one more role as an actor more easily.
Vacuous Vessel could be of use to anyone trying to smuggle, but since putting anything into a container that it's been cast upon dismisses the spell, it would definitely be risky to try to rely upon it.
Alter Musical Instrument could be used to enhance musical performances and have potential use as special effects in a wider production.
Auditory Hallucination can be used to enhance something put on for the entertainment of a small audience. It could also be used to con people into believing that you've put them into touch with the voice of a dead relative.
Blend would be of use in hunting, as it would allow one to not necessarily need a blind for waiting in ambush for prey.
Blend with Surroundings will fulfill a similar role, but it increases the number of environments that a creature can lie in wait for prey. It can also aid someone in evading pursuers, such as if a heist went wrong.
Clarion Call is of great use to anyone attempting to address a crowd. So it would have use in the entertainment industry as well as be something that basically any political figure would want cast on them before giving a speech. In more shady activities, it would allow a proxy to become a rather large distraction.
Cloak of Secrets allows for secure message transmission along verbal channels.
Color Spray would have similar applications in kidnapping as Sleep or Hold Person.
Dazzling Blade could be used to help make gladiatoral or performance combat more of a visual spectacle. Or even just augment a prop for s short scene in some kind of stage production.
Decrepit Disguise could be used as a theft deterrent, to make it look like valuables aren't actually valuables, but I'm not seeing any direct uses for leveraging this into some form of business. It could possibly be used to con or steal or lead to good inventory being discarded so that the caster can then recover it themselves.
Disguise Self is very open-ended and can be used in service of all kinds of things. Entertainment is merely one of the avenues by which it might be employed, even when just considering legitimate uses only.
Disguise Weapon is of use to would-be assassins, as it allows one to disguise a weapon as an improvised weapon of the same rough size. And an improvised weapon is just a regular object that could potentially be used to whack someone. Like something as innocuous as a mop or feather duster or copper laundry rod.
Fool's Gold is pretty straightforward short duration counterfeiting. At this level range, one could "turn" 500 copper pieces into 500 gold, for up to basically 495 gp profit. The smartest way to use of this spell would be to disperse the fake coinage widely enough that it didn't put too noticeable of a dent in any one person's bottom line, as well as probably use silver coins instead of copper.
Lose the Trail can be quite useful to shady spellcasters who want to cut down on the risk that they and their fellows on a heist or other caper will be able to be tracked down.
Magic Aura will help with smuggling magic items or using magic items to smuggle.
Quintessence could be used to turn a profit by getting people to buy broken things, but only if one could either scrounge up the broken object themselves or get around the selling for half rule.
Silent Image has obvious uses in entertainment and slightly less obvious uses in advertisement. It's also a very open-ended spell, so it could be used to make people think they're seeing just about anything within its area of effect. Combine with a decent bluff and an audience not savvy in Spellcraft and the sky's the limit.
Vanish allows for a quick getaway when it comes to crime and intrigue just as much as it does during adventuring.
Ventriloquism has use in the entertainment sector.
Assumed Likeness is like a tailored Disguise Self that offers up a number of buffs to manipulate people.
Disguise Other would allow one to costume actors for a lot cheaper than (at least some) actual costumes, at least if the Illusionist was running a show rather than being paid as a spellcasting service. The illusory costuming would also likely look better, depending upon the exact means of the production company.
Dark Whispers is a way to more securely communicate information, though it has a possibility of being intercepted it also has less possibility of people realizing that a secret conversation is taking place compared to other alternative low-level methods.
Ghostly Disguise makes the Illusionist look ghostly. This has applications when it comes to entertainment, if the Illusionist is also an actor or other performer. It also would allow the Illusionist to cooperate with someone offering a false seance experience or the like.
Hidden Blades is another spell of interest to would-be assassins for hiding their weapon, and it works for other people, so it could also be provided to, say, another member of one's criminal organization who is better suited to assassination work.
Hypnotic Pattern may or may not be fascinating enough that some people would willingly pay for it by itself, but it can definitely find use in the entertainment sector.
Invisibility has various applications in the criminal, private investigation, law enforcement, espionage, and entertainment fields, at the very least. No particularly good ones come to mind, though, aside from setting things up to really make an entrance during a stage show.
Magic Mouth is pretty open ended, but since it discharges, most of the real fun comes with the disposable income to make a whole mess of them permanent with Permanency. Still, they're relatively cheap at 40 gp at minimum CL, and could combine with other things as part of, say, a security system.
Minor Image is the next step up from Silent Image and can make some of its own noise instead of relying upon Ghost Sound for sound effects.
Misdirection is useful to infiltrators trying to get past certain types of security, most likely for some criminal end, such as theft or assassination or for espionage purposes.
Obscured Script can be used to, at least temporarily, protect one's records from being copied but not stolen. I can see this being purchased as a spellcasting service, at least in conjunction with Permanency, since specific creatures can be excluded.
Paranoia is a great distraction creating spell, because it can basically instantly start a fight.
Peerless Integrity is another spell for defeating alignment-detection and it also works for groups as long as they can stay together.
Phantom Trap can help with layering security, since it mostly serves to delay or dissuade intruders. I can definitely see some people purchasing it as a spellcasting service.
Planetarium allows one to work as an astronomer at all hours of the day. Astronomy teachers and tutors would likely find this an invaluable tool in their arsenal, at least for the stuff that doesn't require telescopes or specialized equipment.
Raiment of Command is a great infiltration or manipulation tool, since not only does it create a disguise, but it also gives a hefty buff to the relevant skill checks.
Searching Shadows notably last for as long as one concentrates and can be moved by the caster. There's definitely an angle to incorporate them into some kinds of entertainment, if nothing else.
Secret Sign is a wonderful spell for spies and criminals for transmitting information. It could also be used to work out a code system whereby messages can be sent securely.
Shifted Steps would have some applications in entertainment, though only being able to shift things by an apparent 30-35 feet would be a bit limited. Still, it could make an audience think that a narrator with Clarion Call cast upon them is speaking in a booming voice *above* the audience or other similar things.
Silent Table is another "let's talk without people eavesdropping" spell.
Symbol of Mirroring would be something that could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service to the military defenders of a city or castle so that soldiers could receive the benefit en masse to gain an edge in defending against an assault.
Sympathetic Aura is Magic Aura but it transmits its aura out to similar objects around it. I don't readily see a particular use for this, but I'm sure one exists.
Adjustable Disguise is Disguise Self, with the added flexibility of being able to change the disguise several times within the duration of a single spell.
Audiovisual Hallucination is Auditory Hallucination and all its fun, plus a Silent Image that only the targets can see. Still only good for small audiences, but what can you do?
Dazzling Blade, Mass can make gladiatoral or performance combat between several creatures that much more, well, dazzling.
Fearsome Duplicate is explicitly for intimidating people just from the spell description.
Hallucinatory Decor would be a useful spell for entertaining and also when it comes to entertainment. Incredibly lavish set design would be possible, as just one example use.
Illusory Script protects writing from being read by people who aren't authorized. This lasts for days and you can allow any number of people to be authorized. This could definitely be sold as a spellcasting service or just be used to protect financial records from mundane efforts to copy them. Compare with Obscured Script. Then there's also the potential security use in conjunction with the Suggestion effect it has.
Invisibility Sphere is Invisibility for a small group, furthering heists and clandestine activities.
Major Image is the final member of the Silent Image family when it comes to low level spells. Like the others, it has plenty of uses in the entertainment sector.
Minor Dream is a long-range but otherwise limited secure communication spell.
Shadow Enchantment allows the Illusionist to dip into the Enchanter's toolkit without having to have prepared for it in advance. Charm Person and Charm Animal would be two of the more obvious choices to grab, especially since Charm Animal isn't even normally a Wizard spell. Calm Animals and Calm Emotions would be two other niche spells that could be quite desirable. Suggestion can be obtained due to being a 2nd level spell for Psychics, which is also nice.
Shroud of Innocuity can allow the caster and a small group to get a minor buff on Diplomacy checks and the like, while also making them look commonplace and therefore unmemorable.
Stolen Light creates a "photograph," but without Permanency, it's a single viewing. Even with Permanency, it's exorbitant. Still, there are going to be some people out there willing to pay that exorbitant cost to preserve a visual representation of some memory or the like.
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And with this, I've at least skimmed over and highlighted the more notable spells of 3rd level or lower on the Wizard list.
Necromancy
Salt is the alchemical power component here for boosting CL for effect, if this doesn't apply to duration, then at least it allows one to make a bit more undead using (Lesser) Animate Dead. Void Shards are for penalizing creatures' saves against the spells, which could be quite important for something like Command Undead used against intelligent undead, but they're also still pretty expensive.
Sotto Voice is for making low HD people scared for intimidation purposes.
Bed of Iron is niche, but it lets people sleep in armor and could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service to groups that would need to be ready at a moment's notice. Compare with Enchantment's Keep Watch.
Chill Touch could be used for killing animals without harming the bodies at all, though I'm not sure if that's really useful to any of the standard uses to which animal carcasses are put.
Decompose Corpse allows for quick flensing that doesn't damage the skeleton at all if one wants the bones for bonecarving or scrimshaw. It also works in conjunction with Restore Corpse to pull off a couple of tricks. Necromancers who create undead also can use this to makes Skeletons with less mess. It also greatly reduces the weight of a corpse and could be used to forego burial and instead directly inter a dead person's bones in an ossuary or catacomb to save on graveyard space.
Interrogation is well-named for it assists with interrogating people.
Preserve keeps food from going bad. It has a nice decent duration, but works on a what is really a very small amount of food per spell slot. It could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service, but I'm not quite sure what food would be simultaneously light enough and valuable enough to warrant that. Other than maybe caviar? It does also preserve magical herbs and the like, which can be quite valuable and have a limited shelf-life after they're harvested without the spell.
Repair Undead is an important tool for anyone who maintains their own undead labor force.
Restore Corpse has a potential exploit when combined with Purify Food and Drink, clever butchering, and Decompose Corpse to produce a source of cheap meat or possibly other valuable body parts. An ally with Purify Food and Drink would be necessary, though.
Sculpt Corpse can be used to pull off faked deaths or turn in bounties for people wanted dead or alive. If you don't try to pass it off to someone who actually knew the individual in life then there's not even a Will save.
Skin Tag is a surveillance-enabling and enhancing spell.
Blindness/Deafness could be sold as a spellcasting service to people who want a good duration spell to disable a rival or enemy. It could also have purposes in espionage and intrigues. It could also be used to manipulate people, as it can be dismissed by the spellcaster, such as in exchange for money or doing some service.
Bloody Tears and Jagged Smile is a useful spell for a good duration of intimidation buff for things that aren't on the up and up. It also provides 30+ minutes of Deathwatch in order to tell what condition creatures are in. One could also conceivably gather up the blood that one weeps for some other purpose.
Bone Fists is another spell that can make staged fights more of a spectacle.
Command Undead is great for controlling mindless undead for days at a time. Even without being able to create them, a low level Necromancer can control a good number of them. Even using them in the least creative way, a standard humanoid skeleton can grind enough flour using a Hand Rotary Quern to produce 13.44 gp of profit per 7 day week, while a larger or just plain stronger mindless undead could power a much larger quern or even a proper mill. Otherwise it's basically Charm Person but for intelligent undead creatures.
Corpse Lanterns is yet another variation on Dancing Lights, except spookier. It can be used for similar purposes in entertainment and theatrics.
Crafter's Nightmare is a rival or enemy sabotaging spell and could be sold as a spellcasting service to sabotage the rivals or enemies of others. Unlike Crafter's Curse, though, this has some potential of actually causing death.
Curse Terrain, Lesser is a fairly open-ended spell that could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service to interested parties that wanted to discourage people from going to a particular location. Although this is a bit of a stretch. This family of spells in conjunction with Permanency could be used as security magic, to an extent, but not particularly well due to its indiscriminate nature as well as their unpredictability, though they do have a decent variety of effects within their grasp.
Defoliate will instantly kill plants that are not plant creatures in an area without having to either touch them or use fire, which can be handy for eliminating hazardous plant life. It sounds like it can be used to fell trees as another pedestrain use, though with more waste than simply felling it by mundane means, by my understanding of the dimensions of the AoEs. (As an aside, in the hands of something like a Rune Guardian, or just with any way of being able to spam this spell, Defoliate could also wreak a lot of indirect havoc on a countryside.)
Dress Corpse would allow for an undertaker to guarantee, as much as is possible, that a body would be suitable for an open casket funeral. It also has some risky criminal and con artist uses. Combine with Sculpt Corpse as necessary for all kinds of potential fun.
Ghoul Hunger can create a distraction, but it's a pretty extreme choice for that purpose. Similarly, it could definitely sabotage a rival or enemy if one could cast the spell without getting noticed.
Languid Venom is a boon to anyone who wants to poison creatures. It can also be sold as a spellcasting service to increase the price of poisons one sells or sold to someone who is a purveyor of poisons.
Limp Lash paralyzes a person for as long as the Necromancer is within range. It would be great for prisoner transport where you don't care about the prisoner's ability to move or value preventing it from being able to move while changing out its chains and manacles and such or readying it for transport.
Pernicious Poison will aid a different kind of poisoner from one who would use Languid Venom, but it would still be of some use in helping ensure that the poison's damage does the job after the victim begins to succumb to it.
Sentry Skull requires a fresh supply of humanoid corpses, or at least heads, although Gentle Repose may have something to say about that. Still, it's a pretty decent security spell despite its grisly limitations due to its permanent duration.
Steal Voice inflicts a spellblight, which could be sold to, say, prison systems that don't have full-on antimagic stuff everywhere. It could also have more clandestine or shady uses.
Unsettling Presence is a spepll for debuffing and sabotaging a potentially large number of people for hours.
Animate Dead, Lesser allows one to create basic skeletons and zombies. The most useful ones from a business standpoint would tend to be either things with a good strength-to-HD ratio or low HD creatures with hands. While still mindless, undead controlled by Animate Dead are seemingly able to get a bit more complexity in terms of their commands than mindless undead controlled by Command Undead. How much of a difference this is highly dependent on the person making that call, though. Still, something big and strong that you want to turn a wheel or pump forever and otherwise would use a lot of the HD from your Animate Dead control pool is probably better off being shuffled over to Command Undead. False Focus is of interest for reducing the cost of making individual undead, at least the lower HD ones. Even without False Focus, though, something like a 1 HD Skeleton is going to take 19 days to turn a profit on the initial investment cost of 25 gp in onyx and 10 gp in the form of a Hand Rotary Quern just grinding out flour. More inventive methods of making money could recoup that 35 gp initial outlay faster, but that's probably the minimum, aside from something like getting 1 sp or less per day per skeleton + trained hireling rates for acting as an overseer by using them as untrained hirelings, probably acting as porters or shifting things around in warehouses. There have definitely been more than a few threads about how to use undead to make money, and I believe Geb confirms that mindless undead can, with an appropriate overseer, be directed to plow fields, tend fields, harvest crops, and otherwise allow farms to be run with minimal labor done by actual intelligent creatures, and this can be used as a benchmark for the complexity of other tasks they can be overseen in.
Catatonia can probably be sold as a spellcasting service to some people looking to fake their own death (as could Sculpt Corpse + Dress Corpse), though if you've ever read Romeo & Juliet you know that things like this can backfire spectacularly.
Deathwine is a bit expensive, but of great use to anyone casting Animate Dead, as it will allow one to create and control more HD than usual. When used in conjunction with Salt, that's +4 to the CL. Could be sold as a spellcasting service, but most classes that would find this useful would already be able to cast it, though some of the classes with restrcted spells known might forego learning it as a bit too niche.
Eldritch Fever is another way to debuff a spellcaster to make it easier to keep them prisoner and therefore could be something where a Necromancer could get paid a retainer to use it on behalf of the courts or jails.
Gentle Repose is friend to the undertaker and butcher alike. It can be used to keep slaughtered cattle fresh for days before they're butchered, and even allow carcasses to be parted out bit by bit as needed, and at 2 cp per day, it's cheaper than feed, at least for larger animals. It also can be sold as a service to people who don't immediately have the funds to bring someone back to life but intend to do so. There are other, more unsavory things that can be done in conjunction with the spell to turn a profit as well. One could also find use in keeping it prepared around arenas or other areas where people might die so that their bodies could then be brought to where Breath of Life could be cast on them to bring them back to life. It would be less expensive to keep someone with Gentle Repose on-hand than keeping someone able to cast Breath of Life occupied, too.
Horrifying Visage would be of great use to people who want to intimidate or frighten others. I can see criminal organizations making people who are going to meet with a ranking member go through an area with this spell cast on it so that they can be more easily dealt with. I can also see someone who wanted to make a truly frightening haunted house attraction incorporating this spell into the entrance to the attraction.
Impede Speech has potential applications in security services, as it will limit a spellcaster's ability to cast many spells, helping to preclude the chance of them trying something during an audience or negotiations.
Marionette Posession could facilitate some interesting spectacles, since I believe it would allow, say, two Necromancers to possess constructs and make a fight between giant robots a bit more interesting than it would otherwise be.
Necromantic Burden is helpful to Necromancers who want to steal the mindless undead of other Necromancers.
Outbreak is something that certain Antipaladins would want to purchase as a spellcasting service as part of a plan to collect as many diseases as possible in order to weaponize them later.
Sands of Time weathers and corrodes objects. Compare it with Transmutation's Break and Evocation's Shatter. It can also be used to make objects look much older than they actually are. This could, in conjunction with repairing the damage, be used to produce fake antiques, though this wouldn't stand up to magical scrutiny. It could also be used to provide a convenient disguise to creatures for a decent duration by making them look significantly older. I believe this might cause children to temporarily grow to adult size or cause non-immortal creatures with dragon-style age categories to increase their size category if nothing else, though I don't see any good way to monetize that, aside from taking advantage of a better modifier to carrying capacity for being a larger size.
Symbol of Exsanguination could be sold as a trap-creating spell service.
Toxic Gift could be useful to some poisoners, especially in conjunction with something like Languid Venom so that while the poisoner is poisoned, they don't actually take any negative effects, and so could smuggle in poison past security in their own veins. As a touch spell, I believe one can even cast it somewhere else, hold the charge, and then release it while shaking someone's hand or the like.
Unliving Rage could be used to a similar effect in a gladiatoral context as Rage in order to make things more of a spectacle.
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Transmutation
Transmutation has a wonderful alchemical power component in the form of Magnesium, which is a mere 2 gp in exchange for +1 CL for duration purposes. Ginger also increases CL for overcoming spell resistance for 5 gp, which is also decent enough.
Transmutation probably has more cantrips that could be used to make a living just by themselves than any other school of magic.
Chameleon Scales helps with disguises, though it would need to be used in conjunction with some mundane measures for the more common humanoid races, since it only changes coloration and not other features. Aside from things like a Half-Orc who otherwise looks human except for their green skin.
Jolt is a rare cantrip, but it's an at-will source of electricity damage. So, like Shocking Grasp or Lightning Bolt, with a proper receptacle, it could be used to store magical power as electrical power and do work.
Mage Hand can assist with all kinds of things, though I can't think of a specific monetization offhand. The main thing that I see it as allowing is safer handling of corrosive substances by doing so from a distance, though grabbing things off of shelves faster would also allow one to do many things faster. Mage Hand doesn't care about temperature, so one could even use it to manipulate hot coals and a metal object inside of a furnace or forge, at least with smaller scale metal objects.
Mending repairs things, including magic items. As a Transmuter of 5th level or lower, the CL 5 limit means a weight limit of 5 pounds, but that still includes a fair number of things that can be repaired by a Transmuter faster and for less cost than using Craft skills to repair them. Although since all the pieces are needed, there are still jobs that it can't do. Like the Universal spell Prestidigitation, Mending alone could support a Transmuter's livelihood by offering it as a spellcasting service. A Mending-focused Transmuter could theoretically output 30 gp of spellcasting service an hour, 240 gp per 8-hour day, 1200 gp per 5-day work-week, 4800 gp per 4-week month. Even a fraction of that would be a respectable living for a low level character. Earnings would fluctuate more if the Transmuter were charging repair costs in line with the costs for repairing items in the Craft skill or in the description of the Broken condition, though, since those are based on the cost of the base item.
Message allows for more-secure communication that can be used ad nauseum. This has uses both in the clandestine world as well as just for messenger work.
Scrivener's Chant allows one to produce copies of books and other written works quickly compared to traditional scribing. Since the material component is 1 vial of ink, which costs 8 gp, turning a profit requires to either use the False Focus feat, the Eschew Materials feat, or reproduce works that have a high gp value relative to the number of pages. It would require a bit of math and GM negotiation to figure out how many pages are in various books, though at least there are example weights given for most of the books that one would want to reproduce and sell this way.
Alter Winds can be used to help power wind mills and possibly can help ships more consistently benefit from beneficial winds.
Ant Haul could be sold as a spellcasting service. The effect of the spell becomes more notable the larger and stronger the creature is. In addition to making things more able to haul or move goods around, this will also allow for animals to either more quickly turn the mill at an animal-powered mill or allow for them to turn a heavier/more powerful mill than they otherwise could.
Blood Money will naturally increase the profit margins of many spells that produce wealth directly that use material components. Blood Money will also remove the cost of some spells that could be sold as spellcasting services in order to make them more affordably available to more potential buyers as well as remove prohibitively expensive material components from spells that could be used to buff the caster or a servitor creature in such a way that it increased their earning potential. Masterwork Transformation would be one notable lower level spell that Blood Money would work with in order to greatly increase the value of the sold object(in this case, raising the value of weapons by making them MW), even beyond just using False Focus on the less expensive forms of masterwork items. Buying a 2 gp Dagger and then casting MW Transformation will deal a small amount of hp damage and 1 point of Strength damage and give a net profit of 149 gp when that MW Dagger is sold. Threads upon threads have been made discussing how to use Blood Money to make money, though, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
Bouncy Body would allow for falls of up to 25 feet to be part of arena combat without it actually being dangerous to those involved, and it lasts for a good long duration compared to most forms of combat, too. It would also facilitate high-flying wrestling moves being used more often, potentially making for a more entertaining show.
Break applies the broken condition to Medium or smaller objects or destroys such things that already have the broken condition. In addition to things like breaking gemstones in order to powder them, if one could surreptitiously use it, one could potentially use it to get a discount by graciously buying broken items from merchants and then using other magic, such as Mending, to repair the damage. Compare with Necromancy's Sands of Time and Evocation's Shatter.
Brightest Night has a decent hours long duration and enough of an effect in making it so that creatures can see better at night and not have people sneak by them that it could conceivably be sold as a spellcasting service or be something that organizations might pay a Transmuter a retainer to keep as an available option to them.
Burning Disarm can flash-boil water, though whether that's long enough to usefully do anything is a bit of a corner case that would require a bit more research.
Chastise is a social manipulation and interrogation spell, and it's untyped so it would stack with many other such spells.
Crafter's Curse is a rival sabotage spell, and unlike Crafter's Fortune, there might actually be enough other value in using the spell that it could be worthwhile to someone to buy it as a spellcasting service. Of course, this runs into the difficulties of casting spells on creatures without them realizing it.
Crafter's Fortune will allow even an otherwise untrained Transmuter to be fairly competent at crafting mundane items. Between a decent intelligence and MW Tools, Crafter's Fortune should easily allow for DC 20 Craft checks to be made even without ranks in that particular Craft skill. A level 5 Transmuter should be able to get a result of 30 by Taking 10 if they invested in a form of Craft, which would allow them to, say, make 107.1 silver pieces of progress per day (150 sp if you divide by 5 for the 5-day workweek that's usually assumed) which would translate into ~1.78 gp of daily profit selling it for half (2.5 gp with the divide by 5 assumption). Thematically, this should be able to be sold as a spellcasting service, but a CL 5 version would cost 50 gp, which would generally cost more than the actual increase in profits someone would receive from it. Alternate Crafting Rules and using Downtime to produce Goods in order to further drive down the cost of raw materials will, of course, increase the profit margin. More than being used to produce goods for sale as-is or used to Earn Capital or simulate making a Profession Check by the Practice a Trade function of the skill, though, this spell and mundane crafting in general can help increase the profit margin of casting Blood Money in conjunction with Masterwork Transformation by making the dagger or other weapon rather than buying one someone else made. Yet another use of the spell is to allow untrained hirelings to have a much greater chance of successfully using Aid Another to boost your craft check result in cases where you really need it.
Dancing Lantern will either provide a burning lantern that doesn't need fuel for its flame or will produce light without heat or flame and do so for hours without having to be constantly re-cast every so often like Light or Dancing Lights would.
Emblazon Crest could be sold as a spellcasting service in cases where someone's proper arms and armor and other gear were somehow unavailable. Depending upon how "proper crest and coat of arms" is defined, this could also be used in entertainment for costuming combatants.
Enlarge Person is short duration, but, especially combined with other spells such as Ant Haul and mundane measures such as block-and-tackle, could be used to do a fair amount of work even in that short amount of time.
Erase can be sold as a spellcasting service, since it can destroy certain forms of magical writing that people might need eliminated, though this can be risky. It also irrevocably removes mundane writing from surfaces, which can be helpful in eliminating harder to deal with graffiti or as an extra layer of security when destroying something containing sensitive information in written form.
Expeditious Excavation can save a Transmuter some money by digging out their own basement or cellar or allow them to dig holes where a group of 1 sp per day Untrained Hirelings couldn't dig with plain old shovels(2 cu.ft./minute, 120 cu.ft./hour). In general, though, it'd usually be better to use other spells with this spell slot and just pay the commoners to do the digging.
Expeditious Retreat could be used in some cases to cheat at foot races as well as to make a hasty escape.
Fabricate Bullets assures a Transmuter a net profit of 13 gp per spell slot as long as there's a market for firearm bullets; sling bullets and pellets would be produced and sold at a loss, so those are best avoided. It's not quite the daily profit of producing a keg of gunpowder or boatload of bullets for 100 gp and selling it for 500 gp that someone with the Gunsmithing feat can do on that front, but it's a better profit margin than using regular old mundane crafting without the Gunsmithing feat, which would be a profit of 5 gp per unit of 30 bullets made and sold or 17 cp per individual 1 gp bullet made and sold. And it takes so little time that it can be combined with mundane or magical crafting or Downtime or Profession checks.
Fabricate Disguise is of use for quick-change artists and also for Wizard-actors who need to change costumes quickly between scenes.
Face of the Devourer can buff intimidation, but it also comes with an ill-defined chance of removing the target's ability to speak, which would be counterproductive in at least some circumstances where they would be intimidating people as part of the criminal or law enforcement uses of the skill as well as the intrigue-related ones.
False Face allows for one to maintain specific false identities and creates a physical change in appearance that will hold up under physical examination. This has definite use for actors, criminals, spies, and anyone who wants to go under cover.
Feather Fall could be used to basically offer skydiving experiences.
Ferment appears to allow one to effectively turn a barrel of water into whatever kind of alcohol one desires, with the limitation that the drunkenness is more severe from the get-go, people sober up more quickly, and there's no hangover. It also allows one to slip people potions or poisons without them realizing it, so it's useful to poisoners as well.
Forced Quiet is good for infiltrating types and sneaky spellcasters. It can both be used to make it less likely that eliminating a specific guard would cause an alarm to be raised and be used to make the spellcaster or an ally sneakier for a short period of time by buffing their Stealth.
Grappling Scarf allows one to make a scarf into a grappling hook. That's going to be useful for infiltration and sneaking purposses in service to a variety of goals. Compare to Handy Grapnel.
Handy Grapnel turns a rope into ammunition to embed it into a surface and allow it to be climbed. Useful for infiltration and sneaking. Compare to Grappling Scarf.
Hide Weapon is useful to would-be assassins and also to those who would assist such by smuggling weapons into places and then stashing them for them. It would also be generally useful to infiltration in service to other goals.
Jump has some amount of utility to people looking to cheat at track and field events as well as to people interested in infiltration.
Keyhole offers some great utility to infiltrators by allowing them to over otherwise sealed doors.
Lighten Object always makes me wish it was compatible with Permanency by default, but even without that, it can combine nicely with Ant Haul and Enlarge Person and other things to increase the amount of work that can be done in a short period of time, although Lighten Object does only apply to thinks of a relatively small number of cubic feet of volume. So I suppose Shrink Item might be necessary in some cases, although that also reduces the weight so it might be redundant.
Lucky Number can be used to give a reroll or give a +2 Luck bonus on one roll, but only if a specific number is rolled. It's very fiddly, but this could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service, given its long duration. With a way to guarantee a result of 10 on the initial roll as part of casting this spell, I believe one could turn this spell into a +2 Luck bonus on one Take 10 result. Since this applies to any kind of dice roll, though, it's even more open-ended than just a potential buff to ability checks, skll checks, attack rolls, or saving throws.
Mirror Polish allows the caster to instantly make mirrors, provided they have the raw material surface on hand. This can be useful for surreptitiously making a mirror for use with Divination's Mirror Sight and it also could be used to produce a Mirror or even Mirror Ball, which could be sold for 1.67 gp or 16.67 gp net profit respectively going by the standard Craft skill rules for how much raw materials cost. This spell could also expedite the construction of a mirror telescope, with the appropriate knowledge base.
Monkey Fish makes the caster better at two different movement modes that aid in infiltration at once, which would be useful for, say, swimming across a body of water and then climbing up a cliff and/or wall in order to infiltrate a compound.
Pattern Recognition is unupdated 3.5 content, but it makes the caster better at searching and tracking, and requires only minimal work to convert. Detectives and spies would likely be the ones to find it of most use.
Peasant Armaments allows the caster to temporarily turn a butter knife into a viable tool for assassination. Well, multiple butter knives. Compare with Refine Improvised Weapon.
Polypurpose Panacea has a few uses, the most notable being Analgesic, Clarity, and Wakefulness. The Analgesic use is mostly fluff, but being able to ignore such things would increase productivity to some extent. Clarity has a real but minor buff to skill checks. Wakefulness should be compared with Enchantment's Keep Watch.
Recharge Innate Magic heavily depends upon what racial SLAs a creature has, but if it has good ones, then it could be worthwhile to trade a single first level spell slot for more uses of them. I can't recall any examples of races with SLAs that would be useful in this context offhand, though.
Refine Improvised Weapon can also be used to make a single butter knife into a MW Dagger for hours. Compare with Peasant Armaments. This one is probably superior for most assassination purposes.
Snapdragon Fireworks would allow the Transmuter to put on at least a minor fireworks display. Combined with investment in Craft: Alchemy and use of Crafter's Fortune, a Transmuter may be the variety of Wizard best situated to do pyrotechnical work.
Transfer Tattoo can be sold as a spellcasting service to facilitate people selling magical tattoos that they no longer want. It could also be used by certain criminal organizations to steal magical tattoos from their victims.
Urban Grace greatly facilitates moving around in cities and using crowds to escape from pursuers. Spies and criminals would both enjoy this spell.
Vocal Alteration can be used in conjunction with other spells and mundane disguises to impersonate people, which generally has some sort of manipulative end in mind. It also has some applications in the entertainment sector, whether that's making gladiator-wrestlers be able to disguise themselves during some pageantry or another or allowing stage productions to have authentic demonic voices for those roles
Wizened Appearance is a disguise spell. It also allows some creatures that are not fully grown to reach their full adult size. It also allows a lot of flexibility in how much older the creature appears.
Youthful Appearance does much the same as Wizened Appearance, but in the opposite direction. It can't reduce a creature's size category, though.
Accelerate Poison has use for poisoners. It could even be combined with Languid Venom to be able to select the exact right moment for a poison to take effect, I believe.
Air Step is a benefit to infiltrators and also can be helpful for anyone in a clandestine line of work that wants to make it more difficult for them to be tracked.
Alter Self can be used for infiltration or manipulation, as long as those can work with the fairly short duration.
Animal Aspect can provide minor to moderate buffs to a variety of skill checks and movement modes for a short period of time, making it most of interest to people getting access to a place they shouldn't be or fleeing the scene.
Ant Haul, Communal is a force multiplier for moving quantities of goods, it'd probably be most useful for loading or unloading cargo from wagons or ships more quickly.
Ashen Path will make 1-5 creatures not succumb to smoke inhalation, or at least not do so as easily. I mostly see fire-fighting and rescue capabilities here. It also appears to allow one to work with fungus or plants with spores that would otherwise be harmful, as long as they would only be a problem for breathing
Boiling Blood can be used to make creatures with the orc subtype stronger for as long as the caster concentrates. This could be useful in gladiatoral or athletic contexts or in terms of making strength-based labor more effective. Alternatively, it can be used to boil a creature's blood, which could potentially be used to accomplish something, especially on a creature that's able to resist even small amounts of fire damage. Perhaps it would cause such a creature to suddenly double as a space heater, or even allow them to be used as a heat source for cooking.
Brittle Portal makes surfaces easier to damage or break, at least temporarily, but it requires that one cast other spells that interact with Hardness rather than bypass it or have the surface damaged by mundane means. So it works well with minions. Compare with Break or Shatter or Sands of Time.
Bull's Strength makes someone stronger for a shortish duration. Compare with Enlarge Person.
Buoyancy can be likened to an aquatic Feather Fall, and used to save people from drowning in emergencies.
Carry Companion allows one to store an animal or magical beast in miniature form while it is not needed. This can extend the effective lifespan of useful animals and can, in some cases, significantly cut down on the expense of feeding such animals while they're not actively working. It can also be combined with other effects to create traps where some effect(s) tempt intruders into throwing down an AoE Dispel Magic, thereby rendering one or more creatures active that had been in stone miniature form. Anthropomorphic Animal is one way to improve animals' attitudes in order to be able to cast this spell on them, and Euphoric Tranquility is another.
Certain Grip has utility for those who would be doing infiltrating by climbing or balancing on ledges. Has a pretty good duration, too. It can also be used to make gladiatoral or performance combats more one-sided or even drag them out by decreasing the chance that maneuvers work on either side
Codespeak is a secure communications spell. It can also act as a check against disguises by making written documents that can only become legible again if the same group of creatures is subject to the spell at the same time.
Darkvision offers possibilities to sneaking spellcasters that don't already have Darkvision. It also lasts for hours and has good potential as a spellcasting service. It can also allow for working with extremely light-sensitive materials that even magical lighting would ruin.
Disfiguring Touch applies a variety of debuff effects, even allowing for Transmuters to come up with some of their own that are in line with the examples listed in the spell description. It has a great duration, so it can be useful for making someone less able to escape from a jail setting or other form of imprisonment and it could also be used for rival sabotage or intimidation/manipulation, though the touch requirement complicates effective use.
Dragonvoice is niche, but if there are any dragons to make deals with, this will allow them to be dealt with better/easier. Its other use can be compared with Illusion's Clarion Call, or even combined with it, to address large audiences.
Eagle's Splendor is short duration, but still a potentially quite useful buff to social skills which can be brought to bear in a variety of situations.
Eroding Ray is for damaging objects and constructs, specifically by hp damage that causes crumbling. Compare it with Break, Shatter, Sands of Time, etc.
Extreme Flexibility will help a sneakier spellcaster evade grapple-happy pursuers.
False Age has increased flexibility over Wizened Appearance and Youthful Appearance in that you can use 1 spell to mimic either effect, but it is to a lesser extent and for a shorter amount of time. A Transmuter who knows what they want to do in advance would generally want to prepare the lower level spells. Still, it can give bonuses to one's mental ability scores, and it isn't too short of duration, so some use come be made of it, especially using means such as Extend Spell or repeated castings similar to how Herosim or Tears to Wine could be extended or recast to cover an entire extended activity, such as crafting. Compare the actual bonus to skill checks provided by False Age to Tears to Wine and Heroism, however.
Fleeting Defect temporarily applies the broken condition to an object, thereby allowing one to use other spells or mundane means or minions to destroy it more easily.
Fleshy Facade could be useful to Transmuters with undead minions or allies, and, especially coupled with Extend Spell, could be sold as a spellcasting service to some intelligent undead that want to interact with society for relatively short periods of time at a time.
Fool's Gold is highly useful in intrigue situations as it will facilitate casting all kinds of spells on a target, whether those spells assassinate them, sabotage them, manipulate them, make them easier to kidnap, or spy on them. As an additional bonus, it also doubles duration, so something like an Extended Charm Person would last for, either 15 or 20 hours at CL 5 depending upon how you decided to treat the multiplication.
Fox's Cunning is short duration like the other Animal's X ability score buffing spells, but of particular interest to Wizards as it makes their spells more effective by increasing thei save DCs. It also buffs their ability to roll Knowledge and Spellcraft checks if they're doing work as a sage.
Full Pouch is an item duplication spell for alchemical items. Amusingly, despite claiming that the copies are inferior to the originals, they can actually be more effective because they use whichever save DC is higher between the original item and that of this spell. Even if the items have to be sold at a discount on top of being sold for half, this would still turn a profit. Alchemical items have quite the range of potential costs, but let's say that you sold stuff for 1/3 instead of 1/2. Just by way of examples, by selling for 1/3, Flasks of Acid or Alchemist's Fire would net 2.33 or 5.66 gp of profit, Alchemical Coal would net 32.33 gp for Blinding Cinders or 15.66 gp for Choking Smoke, a Raining Arrow would net 9 gp, a Cold Iron Blanch Bomb would net 49 gp, Consecrated Salts would net 99 gp, and Elemental Brine would net 165.66 gp of profit; and that's just looking at Alchemical Weapons. Alchemical Remedies would likely have a greater market for them, and could even be used to make a profit even under the interpretation that you aboslutely have to use the copy in the same round you cast Full Pouch, of Alchemical Remedies, Loyalty Transfusion would allow for the most profit, even if it is fairly niche for transferring ownership of homunculi. Alchemical Tools allow for even further things, including Blightburn Paste which is the most expensive alchemical item, period, IIRC, although one would need quite a large pouch to withdraw Blightburn Paste from it.
Glide is almost as useful as flight for getting away from a tall tower safely. It would principally be more useful to people engaged in clandestine or criminal activities where they would need to make a hasty retreat from a large, tall structure they've infiltrated. One could also technically be mounted by smaller creatures or even carrying more similarly sized creatures while doing so, which could have uses in recreational settings for stronger Transmuters.
Grasping Vine allows sneaky spellcasters to pick locks or disable traps from a safer distance, or just move objects around.
Greensight lasts for a decent duration and allows a creature to see through any plant matter aside from solid wood. This would be useful to a Transmuter tending a greenhouse or other space where an animal might try to hide that the Transmuter would be looking for. It could also likely be sold infrequently as a spellcasting service for when something like a menagerie or magical greenhouse need to be searched.
Harmless Form is an 8 hour Beast Shape II for a familiar or the like. With the right base familiar choice, a Transmuter could use this spell to make their familiar into a better spy or be capable of doing useful work by turning it into a Large creature and taking advantage of its increased carrying capacity.
Hidden Knowledge is helpful for secure communication and carrying of messages. It can also be used to erase certain knowledge from one's mind in conjunction with Dispel Magic and possibly Erase if there would be a benefit to doing so. Offhand, there are two things that I can think of that would be potentially useful there, and the first is excising information about the horrors of the Mythos or Dominion of the Black that was actively harmful, which I don't believe exists in PF but I haven't paid too much attention to that side of things. The other would be to make it so that one could not have Zone of Truth or the like used against one's self in order to force a confession to a crime or knowledge of a crime having occurred.
Human Potential is a more flexible but weaker version of the Animal's X ability score boosting family of spells. Anything they can do this can do but to a lesser extent but with the flexibility of not needing to know exactly what ability score to boost in advance.
Knock picks locks and defeats Hold Portal and Arcane Lock. Useful to thieves and other criminals, law enforcement conducting raids on criminal compounds or strongholds, and spies at the very least.
Levitate allows one to operate as an elevator, lifting up to 500 pounds of cargo or building material up off the ground. Combined with a ladder or other means of quickly increasing the Transmuter's elevation, this could allow them to save quite a bit of time by transporting goods from ground level to the top of a building being constructed.
Make Whole is Mending, but operates on objects based upon their volume instead of their weight and therefore usually allows for more repair to be done. It also allows for the restoration of destroyed magical items, such as, IIRC, magical ammunition that has been used. It is therefore of interest to anyone making use of Arrow Eruption to duplicate magical arrows and in at least some cases, purchasing Make Whole as a spellcasting service would still allow such a scheme to turn a profit. It could also be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers who don't have access to Make Whole themselves but who saved their destroyed magical arrows, etc. Depending upon whether one considers ammunition to be the same as single-use items, at any rate.
Mark of Blood allows for one to permanently know the direction and distance to another creature. This is useful for keeping track of prisoners for some kind of Wizard Warden as well as for keeping track of employees, allies, friends, family, etc. If used properly to get it on them, it can even be used to keep tabs on rivals or enemies.
Masterwork Transformation can be sold as a spellcasting service, and without the False Focus feat or Blood Money spell, that's about the only way to make money off of it. With False Focus on the table, MW Thieves' Tools and MW Artisan's Tools can be produced and sold for net profits of 20 to 22.5 gp, with a greater profit margin if one made the baseline tools rather than buying them in order to cast the spell on them. False Focus could also potentially allow up to 16 pieces of ammunition to be made Masterwork in one go (6 gp per piece of ammunition), allowing groups of 10 units of common ammunition to be sold for net profits of 29.5 gp(bolts), 29.95 gp(sling), 29.75 gp(arrows), 29 gp(shuriken), and 25 gp(firearms). (For groups of 16 common ammo that's 47.2 gp for xbow bolts, 47.92 gp for sling bullets, 47.6 gp for arrows, 46.4 gp for shuriken, and 40 for firearms) Assuming the Transmuter purchased the ammunition instead of using, say, Fabricate Bullets to make firearms bullets and then made them masterwork, or used the higher level Conjuration spell Create Armaments, or engaged in mundane crafting. Mundane crafting could create a lot of Arrows, or even more Stone Arrows, and the profit is mostly made on the 6 gp per piece of MW ammunition side of things anyway.
Mirror Hideaway can provide an alternate means of safe rest for travelers, especially when combined with Extend Spell, since a single mirror is a lot less obvious than an entire camp site, though it won't be the most comfortable lodgings. It could also be used by assassins or the like to lie in wait prior to an ambush.
Pyrotechnics has some applications in entertainment, just make sure that you're over 120 feet away from the audience.
Quick Change is useful to sneaky spellcasters engaged in clandestine or criminal activity, provided they have the Change Shape ability and a true form that is notably unrecognizable compared to their alternate form(s).
Raven's Flight is helpful to infiltrators or others who need to be able to move up to 200 feet away and would be able to do so relatively securely if people thought that they were just a bird instead.
Reinforce Armaments, Communal will allow multiple people to wield butter knives like they're MW Daggers. Mostly useful for assassinating and ambushing. Could also be useful for non-lethal takedowns if one can work out what kind of object would translate into a Sap. Compare with Peasant Armaments and the base Reinforce Armaments. Could also have potential in some sort of slapstick-esque gladiatoral combat with non-standard weapons.
Remarkable Legerdemain is great for short duration smuggling of objects.
Rope Trick is another reasonably secure resting spell, though given the difficulties with hiding the rope, less useful if intelligent creatures are the reason you want to stay safe. Compare with Mirror Hideaway, Campfire Wall, and other similar spells.
Rovagug's Fury is only a minor, localized earthquake, but there are some situational uses of it, such as small scale demolition of already weakened structures.
Rune of Rule could be sold as a spellcasting service given the 24 hour duration (48 with Extend Spell) and ability for the recipient to choose when they activate it. Kindness would be of particular use when combined with assistants using Aid Another for some purpose. Love would be of use to any clandestine uses of Enchantment magic. Temperance can be sold as protection against poisoning.
Sculpt Simulacrum would be of use to higher level Wizards and other spellcasters who want to make their Simulacra more able to infiltrate and carry on clandestine activities. It's pretty unlikely that they would pay a lower level spellcaster to provide this for them as a spellcasting service, but I feel it's worth noting nonetheless.
Snow Shape allows for more rapid construction of structures out of snow in areas with long-lasting winters or that are permanently frozen. Compare with something like Ice Spikes, possibly in conjunction with Expeditious Construction, though. It could also be used to plug up the gaps between Ice Spikes to make wind breaks and the like. It can also create temporary weapons that last for 24 hours before they melt away, which could have uses for assassins.
Spider Climb is of interest to clandestine types like spies and cat burglars. It also could have applications in entertainment. It could even be sold as a spellcasting service to some, due to the decently long duration, especially with Extend Spell in the mix.
Squeeze can be quite useful for infiltrating types, or even more useful on their familiars which could then fit through quite tiny openings.
Stabilize Powder can be used in conjunction with a prepared, loaded firearm, to make a trap that's more stable and it could be sold as a spellcasting service to anyone who wanted such traps to be incorporated into their security.
Stone Throwing used in conjunction with strong creatures and other spells such as, say, Ant Haul or Enlarge Person, could be used to make a pair of creatures that can quickly and relatively safely transport heavy but durable goods more quickly. It is, admittedly, a fairly alarming method of conveyance.
Sun's Disdain permanently curses someone to have light blindness and not do well with sunlight. This would mostly be a rival or enemy sabotaging spell, though it could also be used to make prisoners less able to function outside in daylight, potentially limiting their ability to escape.
Tattoo Potion could be sold as a spellcasting service, possibly on top of otherwise acting as a potion seller. The resulting tattoo may also be able to be moved to a slot other than the chest on another creature by using the Transfer Tattoo spell.
Tears to Wine can easily be used to produce vast quantities of mead or wine for parties, and with Extend Spell, it can even last the better part of 2 hours at CL 5. It is also a quite good, highly shareable buff. Multiple castings combined with Extend Spell and any CL boosters the caster can get their hands on can not only benefit their own Craft or Spellcraft checks when crafting, but also make it more likely that their assistants successfully Aid Another to boost their check result even further. Due to the spell description, some GMs rule that the spell permanently creates mead/wine, it's just the buff component that ends after 10 minutes/CL. In those cases, 1 cubic foot is 8 gallons in PF per Create Water (and just generally), so that would be 8 gallons of mead or 64 gp of mead per 2 CL, which could then be sold for half for 32 gp per 2 CL (roughly 16 gp of profit per CL). Common/Average Wine is 2 sp per 6 lb or 6 pints, which works out to a price of ~3 cp per pint that then becomes 1.92 gp per 2 CL that nets 0.96 gp of profit per 2 CL. A full barrel of 75 gallons of mead would be sold for 301 gp and net 300 gp of profit, assuming the barrel was purchased for full price. A 75 gallon barrel of wine would net 10 gp of profit.
Telekinetic Assembly allows rapid setup of a siege engine, being able to assemble siege engines requiring up to 4 workers normally with proper skill investment. So that's a minimum of up to a Medium sized siege engine without skill investment and up to a Large sized one with investment in Knowledge (engineering). This could be useful for some clandestine activities where setting up a siege engine where it shouldn't be could create a great distraction, but more likely this would be something that certain cities or castles would have available to them on retainer or have purchased in the form of scrolls in order to rapidly set up non-permanent siege engines.
Thunder Fire can create a distraction that deafens a group of people to make them easier to sneak by and also attracts attention from elsewhere to go towards the sound of a gun going off very, very loudly. This would naturally be principally useful in clandestine activities in places where there are guns.
Transmute Wine can be used to produce animal blood. Note that while the spell description specifies a bottle of fine wine, the target specifies a bottle of wine worth 10 gp. Admittedly, from looking into the matter from Tears to Wine, it seems like it takes a bit over 5 gallons to have 10 gp of common wine, which would be a fairly large bottle indeed. This could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service or be used to produce a custom magic item that casts it 1/day that would be of interest to vampires that don't want to deal with the hassle of feeding from other creatures directly. If the type of animal blood can be specified, then it could also potentially be used to produce blood to put into humanoids, should that somehow be necessary and not better handled by direct healing magic.
Visualization of the Body provides a nice, 24 hour buff to skills using physical ability scores. It's fairly expensive, though, so it works best with Blood Money. There are circumstantial buffs that it can be discharged to use, most notably Strength making it easier to break things and grapple or escape grapples for 1 minute, which can be compared to the host of other spells for breaking things directly or making them easier to break using mundane means. Should also be able to combine with Extend Spell to double the benefit.
Visualization of the Mind is like its sibling spell, Visualization of the Body, but for mental ability scores. At the most basic level, it can buff Craft and Spellcraft checks for making mundane or magical items. It can also boost earning Capital in the Downtime system or just making money using Craft or Profession to practice a trade. A prime candidate for use with Blood Money. A custom item that casts it once per day would have an estimated market price of ~12,160 gp, with 10K of that being from the material component. Used just to boost income from Earning Capital to produce gp or boost Profession Checks or the like, it'd take ~66.5 years to pay off, though using it to boost magic item crafting would lead to it paying for itself more quickly.
Whispering Wind is a medium distance communication spell. It's a bit unreliable, though, since it goes to a location and can deliver its message while no one is present. Still, it doesn't require the Transmuter to be physicall present and can't be intercepted except by literally being in the target area.
Air Breathing can be sold as a spellcasting service to aquatic creatures that have business on land but aren't naturally amphibious. Places that deal with air-breather/water-breather relations would likely have people on retainer that can cast this spell in addition to people who can cast Water Breathing. Compare with Water Breathing.
Ancestral Regression could be sold as a spellcasting service to Drow or used by a Drow to more comfortably live and do business on the surface. It also doubles as a non-Abjuration Undetectable Alignment.
Anthropomorphic Animal allows Transmuters to make friends with animals. It can also be used to produce DIY Minotaurs and the like for gladiatoral combat. It also allows one to take a generally tractable animal that's also very strong and give it hands so that you can direct it to do specialized tasks. Or you can make an Elephant gain the ability to have hands and then cast Ant Haul on it so that it can load huge quantities of cargo aboard ships in a short period of time or shift building material from ground level up a few stories quickly to accelerate building taller buildings.
Ape Walk gives a creature a good climb speed for a decent amount of time and makes them better at long jumping. Could be sold as a spellcasting service in some cases and would be useful to infiltrators who need to, say, scale a wall by climbing. Though compare with spells like Monkeyfish, which give climb speeds at lower levels.
Arcane Reinforcement makes Transmuters even better at crafting than Crafter's Fortune alone already does. Combined with Crafter's Fortune, this is a +10 to Craft checks at level 5 with appropriate investment in Spellcraft. Compare with Visualization of the Mind and Crafter's Fortune.
Assume Appearance allows for the Transmuter to assume the identity of a dead person for days. Works best when combined with Gentle Repose to preserve the body. I believe this can be combined with Sculpt Corpse to look differently while using the creature's voice. I can't see any real non-clandestine uses for this spell for the most part, although I suppose a Transmuter who was also an actor could pull a "the show must go on!" if the lead in a play or the like suddenly died.
Beast Shape I allows one to turn into a flying, swimming, or climbing animal for a short period of time to aid in infiltration and escape. So another spell for the "clandestine activities" pile.
Blood Sentinel can create a short-term scout for Transmuters who don't have familiars.
Blot is another spell that will destroy glyphs of warding or symbols or explosive runes. Compare with Dispel Magic. It could also be used to potentially fool people into thinking that their books were ruined, by actually temporarily ruining them, thereby allowing one to possibly recover them from the trash or acquire them more cheaply than should otherwise be possible.
Burrow will allow for short duration jaunts through soil or even stone. Another spell for entering or exiting areas that one shouldn't normally have access to. It can also be shared with others as a potential spellcasting service, though the short duration would make it fairly niche on top of the fact that it would leave a trail of evidence for those clandestine activities unless the Transmuter were already a co-conspirator.
Control Vermin allows for giant vermin to be used almost as well as animals for decently long periods of time. It could even be used to train them over time, I believe. That could facilitate a business niche as long as the Transmuter and would-be vermin trainer had some way to acquire them.
Countless Eyes makes a guard a better guard for hours. This could be sold as a spellcasting service as part of a heightened security level or used to make a small number of night watchmen all the more effective.
Daggermark's Exchange can be used to acquire rare or difficult to obtain poisons, expanding a would-be poisoner's arsenal. Arguably could be used with Blood Money to produce valuable poisons for free that could then be sold or used directly, with Widow's Kiss being the most expensive at 7K which would be 3500 gp of profit, minus any costs for restoring the ~15 points of strength damage that would inflict via Blood Money. For similar reasons, False Focus could potentially be used to make poisons with values of 100 gp or less, such as Woundweal, Small Centipede Poison, Oil of Restfulness, Pupil's Friend, Greenblood Oil, Drow Poison, Belladonna, and a few others. Eschew Materials arguably could allow for the creation of poisons that don't have a listed price, such as some animal poisons (Eurypterids, for instance) and poisons such as Poison Oak/Ivy/Sumac or Stinging Nettles, or even Green Prismatic Poison.
Darkvision, Communal can also be sold as a spellcasting service like its basic version, but is usually more niche due to needing to have a fairly specific reason to have 5 creatures have darkvision for 1 hour as opposed to making a single creature be able to see in the dark for 5 hours or 10 hours with Extend Spell in the mix.
Deft Digits is basically a higher level Mage Hand that can do more things. It's of use to handle hazardous materials as well as to pick pockets or mess with traps and locks from a distance.
Dongun Shaper's Touch can be used to reshape objects for 24 hours, provided it's the right size. This is fairly open-ended. One use that immediately occurs to me with this is for effectively creating secret compartments that are sealed for 24 hours and thus more difficult to detect, which would aid in smuggling. One could also effectively use gold in order to plate it around lead in such a way as to counterfeit art objects or even just selling lead for the price of gold by weight. I'm sure more creative minds can come up with other ways this could be exploited, including ones that would be of a benefit to legitimate business enterprises.
Earth Tremor produces difficult terrain in the form of dense rubble by tearing up the ground. This could accelerate the production of gravel or even cobblestones, or aid in breaking through hardened ground in order to start digging. Although Conjuration's Expeditious Construction is probably a more efficient way of producing cobbles.
Enter Image is actually incredibly useful for providing security in specifically prepared spaces. A special central "security room" where the Transmuter is guarded by a trusted servitor that's within 250 feet of a large range of images of the Transmuter can allow them to provide surveillance for a fairly large area. This could potentially be sold as a combination of spellcasting service and/or trained hireling service.
Fins to Feet can be sold as a spellcasting service to aquatic creatures or creatures with aquatic animal companions or the like. It also allows a Transmuter who is such a creature to conduct their affairs on land more easily.
Fire Trail can be used to start a quite a large fire fairly quickly. Given the nature of it, this is probably more useful for starting fires for criminal purposes or to create a distraction than for entertainment purposes. The main legitimate use I can think of would be for starting a wild fire for hunting purposes or to do a controlled burn as part of forestry, but even then, one of the more controlled and limited ways of starting fires with magic or even just mundane firestarting methods would probably be safer and better able to realize one's goals.
First World Revisions could be sold to Wayangs who want to pass as less remarkable Gnomes or would allow a Wayang Transmuter to live their life as a Gnome if that would provide them any kind of benefit.
Flame Arrow can be used to turn a collection of ammunition or shurikens into flaming versions to create a more spectacular effect. Or, if used in conjunction with a good shot with a long range weapon, allow fireworks displays or bonfires to be lit from a greater distance than most magical spells could do on their own.
Flash Fire can create a blinding distraction that also creates noise. Compare with Thunder Fire.
Fly is a great infiltration tool and could even conceivably be sold to some extent as a recreational spellcasting service, though the duration is fairly short.
Gaseous Form is another great infiltration tool that can bypass just about any level of mundane defenses that are not air tight. Compare with Fly.
Golden Guise could be used to con people, though given the short duration, it would need to be done quickly. It could also be used to make a very hard object, such as one made of Adamantine, be compatible with Dongun Shaper's Touch due to reducing the hardness.
Imbue With Addiction has obvious uses to those looking to expand their client base. It can also be used to sabotage rivals or enemies. False Focus could be used to make this more surreptitious and get around having to actually have a dose of a drug, though it also would limit the price cap to 100 gp.
Improve Trap could be sold as a spellcasting service or be used to increase the security of one's own traps. Improving the DC of the Perception check required to locate the trap is generally the way to go, since it's better for the trap to not be detected in the first place. Pairs nicely with Unseen Engineers to rapidly produce mechanical traps and improve their effective CR without having to pay increased costs in raw materials.
Infuse Self can be used to assume the form of plane-touched creatures for a good length of time. The things of greatest interest are probably the energy resistances and the racial bonuses on skills, since a +x racial bonus to skill checks is one of the hardest things to get access to or replicate.
Kalistocrat's Nightmare could be used to sabotage a rival or enemy and even potentially make a profit by buying the coins for more than their value as copper pieces but less than their original value, provided one has a way to revert them. It could also be used to pull of a plan where a bank or the like is now beholden to a group that can provide the necessary number of castings of Remove Curse in order to return the coins back to their proper value.
Keen Edge could be used to make Gladiatoral combat more exciting by making critical hits more common.
Magic Weapon, Greater could be sold as a spellcasting service to law enforcement or defense forces, or be something that such groups would pay a retainer in order to have consistent access to that spell. Especially when cast on 50 pieces of ammunition, that would increase the potential that damage was successfully dealt to certain threats.
Mark of Buoyancy effectively lets you make a novelty balloon out of objects of up to 50 lb at CL 5. They last for a minimum of 5 hours, which is a better lifespan than many balloons. It can also be used to make it easier to move around goods, although compare it with spells such as Lighten Object, Shrink Item, Ant Haul, and Enlarge Person. A Small-sized or smaller creature could effectively use this to make a kite or the like which floats them 10 feet off the ground or more and could be used for some recreational gliding purpose, especially if they started on, say, a cliff or bluff or tall building or the like.
Monstrous Extremities could be used to spice up arena combat by giving the combatants natural weapons that last for hours.
Monstrous Physique can be used similarly to Beast Shape I, but you can more consistently have hands and unlike an animal are not going to be likely to be brushed off.
Paragon Surge is useful for allowing Half-Elves to gain access to different feats for short periods of time on the fly, and is a fairly open-ended ability. There are plenty of threads that deal with what Paragon Surge can do, although, admittedly, most of them will focus on an adventuring context. I believe there are certainly some feats that could be useful, though, even with only 5 minutes of use. If nothing else, Additional Traits can accomplish some things to make certain skill checks improved.
Raging Rubble has its most use from the fact that it lasts for as long as the caster concentrates. This could be used to create a "terrain hazard" in an arena to spice things up. I believe it could also be used to quickly grind up and destroy some objects and could arguably be used to break up rocks into gravel or similar sorts of things. Add sand and use stones with pleasing colors and you might even be able to make an improvised rock tumbler to make them polished. Consider pairing with Obisidan Flow, or a natural source of obsidian, and Earth Tremor to produce polished pieces of obsidian.
Resize Item can be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers who have recovered gear from other creatures that is too big or too small for them to use.
Rune of Durability can be sold as a spellcasting service as it permanently makes weapons more resistant to sunder attempts and harder to break.
Secret Page can be used to secure a spellbook's contents or disguise a scroll. It can also make a surface a valid target for Explosive Runes or Sepia Snake Sigil and related spells. I believe this is mostly useful for personal security, as it seems the special word to reveal the contents is something unique to the caster. Otherwise it could be used to facilitate more secure/secret communication or otherwise sold as a spellcasting service.
Shifting Sand can be used to destroy the tracks one has left behind, making it of use to clandestine endeavours and sneaky spellcasters. It can also cause some objects to be shallowly buried, but I don't see there being many cases where that will be actually useful.
Shrink Item can be used for a variety of purposes, ranging from transporting heavy but not super-bulky goods easily to making it so that lava is something that can be transported safely.
Spider Climb, Communal can aid a group of creatures in infiltrating places by climbing. Made all the faster if using creatures that can act as mounts as the targets for the spell.
Touch Injection is of great use in a poisoner's arsenal.
Unhallowed Blows, Greater can be used to make arena combats involving undead more dangerous and thus more of a spectacle.
Water Breathing allows non-aquatic creatures to work underwater for good lengths of time. It also facilitates leisure and recreational activities in and on and under the water. Places that deal with aquatic creatures would likely pay a retainer to have access to this spell for their representatives when they need to go below the waves. Compare with Air Breathing.
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Universal
Arcane Mark allows for permanently creating writing. It doesn't define the personal rune as unchangeable, either, so it could potentially be changed in order to allow one to create signs with more writing on them. Spamming invisible Arcane Marks everywhere could also make it much more difficult for Detect Magic to immediately pick up on magical traps and illusions, just by making everything glow. It can also be used to mark employees or other minions for ease of identification or to make certain traps ignore them.
Prestidigitation is a spell that can be used to make a living all on its own. The laundry service use is even explicitly listed with a price and everything. Another notable use is to make food items taste better than they otherwise might, allowing one to potentially make more of a profit off of otherwise less expensive food.
Collaborative Thaumaturgy is a spell that could be sold as a spellcasting service, given that it basically is a 3rd level spell that gives another spell metamagic. Extend Spell would probably be the most commonly sought after metamagic in a business context.
| Coidzor |
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Now for level 4 to 6 spells.
Abjuration
Mugwort Extract (4 gp) - +1 CL for range
Myrrh (2 gp) - +1 CL for CL checks and Dispel checks.
Cold Iron (5 gp) - +1 CL for CL checks and Dispel checks.
My understanding is that Myrrh and Cold Iron will not stack with one another to give a total of +2 to those checks, so Myrrh would be generally preferable.
Absorb Rune I has two uses. The first is to allow one to move around magical traps and other runes in order to reposition them, either to allow safe, open access to a previously lethally guarded area or to transfer a rune from a non-transportable surface to one that is transportable. The second is to offer a safer alternative to Dispel Magic. In either case, it only works on spells of 3rd level or lower and their equivalent in magical runes that are not traps created by spells.
Absorbing Barrier protects people in an area from ranged weapons' damage for hours. One way this could be used would be in conjunction with a spell like Arrow Eruption to protect the secondary targets from the arrow damage involved. It could also have uses in live combat exercises where trainees use ranged weapons on one another without any real risk of serious injury or death.
Aram Zey's Trap Ward basically makes it safer for the Abjurer to provide Dispel Magic or Absorb Rune as a spellcasting service in dealing with magical traps. It also means they can bill for additional spells, which is always nice. Although with that in mind, it'd be best in the hands of someone with False Focus or Blood Money to reduce the 100 gp materrial component cost and need to consume a set of MW Thieves' Tools each time the spell is cast.
Caustic Safeguard burns people with acid a few times over the course of acid if unauthorized people touch it. This could be used to guard a door that no one but a small number of employees should go into. It could also be used to catch and potentially kill pickpockets. Note that there is no size or weight or any other restriction or limitation on what object this spell can be cast upon. It could also be of use to some assassins as a supplemental form of damage or a trigger for readied actions.
Curse of Magic Negation makes it harder for a creature to cast spells for a good long duration. The expensive material component would limit its use, but I can see this being used for transport of dangerous magic-using prisoners as well as for allowing audiences with notable spellcasters.
Dream Shield protects sleeping targets from a variety of effects or protects awake creatures from sleep effects. Could be sold as a spellcasting service to the rich and paranoid.
Enchantment Foil increases the Abjurer's resistance to Enchantment effects for hours. This would be highly helpful to an Abjurer providing security services in preventing themselves from becoming the easiest target to circumvent the security.
Fire Trap is another trap-creating spell. It also doesn't damage the object it's attached to unlike some other forms of trap-creating spells. It can be sold as a spellcasting service since authorized creatures can be attuned to it or be given a password to make it safe for them to use.
Globe of Invulnerability, Lesser negates spells of 3rd level or lower within its area. It could be used to protect against failure while dispelling 3rd level or lower magical traps.
Homeward Bound sends extraplanar creatures back to their home plane with a 20% failure chance. It could be sold as a spellcasting service to extraplanar creatures that wish to return home but can't do so under their own power and can't afford a higher level spell or there's no higher level spellcaster available that can provide that service.
Remove Curse gets rid of curses or allows cursed items to be removed and disposed of. A prime candidate for being sold as a spellcasting service, though it's also widely available to many spellcasting classes.
Shield Speech, Greater lets a whole group of people have private communication for a good long length of time. Not enough for extended negotiations without high CL and/or Extend Spell, but 70 minutes at the minimum CL it's available for is pretty good. Can facilitate normal-duration negotiations in addition to secure message delivery.
Soul Vault protects souls from being captured after death as well as against being possessed and is compatible with Permanency. I can definitely see a market for that particular combination being sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers and at least some nobles and other rich people.
Spellcrash, Lesser makes spellcasters lose spells of 3rd level and lower, 1 per round. This could be employed as a pre-audience screening process to eliminate the spells available to magic-users before meeting with VIPs.
Tough Crowd aids in resisting enchantment and illusion spells and also makes it harder to use social skills to deceive or manipulate a group of creatures. This can be quite beneficial during negotiatons, and the duration is decently long, especially with Extend Spell and/or higher CLs, even if it isn't an hour/CL spell. Could be sold as a spellcasting service or could just be used to make the Abjurer's side of negotiations a tougher nut to crack.
True Form reverts creatures to their true form, defeating polymorph effects. This has clear applications in providing security services and in screening for shapechanging creatures and magically disguised imposters.
Banishing Blade can be sold as a spellcasting service to send (relatively low HD) extraplanar creatures back to their home plane without the 20% chance that they end up on the wrong plane that Homeward Bound has. Just put it on a Sap or other weapon that either doesn't deal lethal damage or just doesn't deal damage.
Break Enchantment is a solution to a variety of maladies, curses, and other negative effects. It can be sold as a spellcasting service, especially to lower level adventurers.
Darkvault makes it so that an area can't be lit with nonmagical light and magical light has a chance to fail. Has a good long duration and is compatible with Permanency. It's niche, but could be used for areas where you really don't want any light.
Dismissal is essentially a faster version of Homeward Bound, and has the same 20% chance of sending creatures back to the wrong plane. Compare with Banishing Blade, though Dismissal doesn't have a cap on the number of HD that the extraplanar creature can have.
Guardian Monument, Greater creates a radius of damage resistance for humans for hours, much like the lesser version of the spell. The DR is doubled, though, from 2 to 4. In addition to potentially bolstering guards in an area, it could also be used as an added safety measure in some situations in gladiatoral and performance combat.
Life Bubble lets creatures breathe under water and in space along with being immune to magical and nonmagical diseases and poisons and other gases/vapors that rely on breathing. It also has a nice long duration. Definitely a candidate for being sold as a spellcasting service. Compare it with Transmutation's Air Breathing and Water Breathing spells.
Mage's Private Sanctum ensures privacy for a good long duration. It could be used to convey messages securely, but it's more likely to be applicable to allowing negotiations or the like to occur in private or even in secret. It could be sold as a spellcasting service, or an Abjurer who specialized in facilitating such negotiations could make it permanent with Permanency and then rent it out as a venue for such activities, with further spells being add-ons.
Nex's Secret Workshop protects a potentially very large number of creatures or objects from many forms of Divination magic. For hours. And the expensive material component is relatively more affordable just from the sheer number of people and/or things that can be protected. Could be sold as a spellcasting service. Definitely has a role in providing security services.
Siphon Magic allows the caster to take a spell (especially a spell that can only affect the caster) and have it apply to them. This could be used by an Abjurer to grab spells from other spellcasters, or it could be put into a magic item that the Abjurer then allows customers to use in order to grab self-only spells for themselves that the Abjurer casts.
Soothe Construct is helpful to Abjurers working with golems and other constructs that can go berserk. It may or may not be able to work on certain constructs, though.
Absorb Rune II has two uses. The first is to allow one to move around magical traps and other runes in order to reposition them, either to allow safe, open access to a previously lethally guarded area or to transfer a rune from a non-transportable surface to one that is transportable. The second is to offer a safer alternative to Dispel Magic. In either case, it only works on spells of 5th level or lower and their equivalent in magical runes that are not traps created by spells. It's identical to the lower level base version save for the spell cap.
Antimagic Field(AMF) has a decent duration and temporarily suppresses magic. This applies to a whole lot of things. I can't think of any direct uses for it from a business context offhand, although it can facilitate dealing with dangerous magical items, magical traps, and spell traps. I would be quite interested to hear any comments on Antimagic Field in particular. As sure as I am of my inability to think of anything within the time I'm allotting myself for going over all of these spells (well, really just skimming), I'm equally sure that I've seen threads that have gone through a lot of different practical and theorycraft applications for AMF.
Discharge, Greater acts as the lesser version, but can target more objects. Can quickly render many technological items safer to interact with, or set the charge value for an item to 0 so that one can know exactly how many charges as in it as one puts them in. Could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service, and with enough tech objects, could even be more cost efficien than the basic version of the spell.
Dispel Magic, Greater is Dispel Magic but can affect an AoE and remove multiple spells. Can also be sold as a spellcasting service, just like the more basic version. Also great for combining with Explosive Runes/Incendiary Runes cheese in case you want to do any demolitions work.
Dust Ward destroys magic items. The biggest customers for this would be bad guy organizations and people like the Red Mantis Assassins that want to destroy all of their magic items if they fall into the hands of the enemy. Still, that's some amount of market for this as a spellcasting service.
[/url] is less efficient than the lesser version, as it's two spell levels higher but its effect only increases by a single spell level. Still, serves broadly the same function and isn't outright bad.
[url=https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Guards%20and%20Wards]Guards and Wards puts down a number of protective effects over a fairly large area for almost an entire day at minimum CL. This would be most useful to an Abjurer who is providing security services and an alert goes up or to one who is actually defending a castle or fortress somewhere. It is compatible with Permanency, though, since one can't designate creatures to be immune to the effects of Guards and Wards or able to pass freely through the Arcane Lock'd doors, it'll be a lot more limited whether that's a viable combination option for spellcasting services.
Spellcrash acts as the lesser version, except it eliminates spells of 5th level and lower. Still serves the same basic role, though, in improving security. Combines nicely with being used alongside the lesser version, in fact.
Symbol of Sealing permanently seals doors with a Wall of Force effect. You can set a password to get through it, though, as well as specifically attune any number of creatures to the symbol, which opens it up to being sold as a spellcasting service.
Undeath Ward lasts for a short duration and either repels or damages undead. The main use for this would be for an Abjurer who wanted to devise a test to make sure that a creature isn't undead, most likely as part of screening people as part of security services they offer to a patron.
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Conjuration
Darkwood (10 gp) - +1 CL for the effects of [Creation] spells.
Phosphorus (2 gp) - +1 CL for the range of [Teleportation] spells.
Spirit of Wine (3 gp) - +1 CL for the duration of [Calling] and [Summoning] spells.
Acid Pit can break or destroy any amount of objects that will fit inside of a 10x10 area, 5-ft-deep pool of acid and that are not immune to acid damage. Given the acid component, this may be a way to provide a service destroying garbage and other refuse. Compare with Shatter and other spells for breaking and destroying things.
Beanstalk creates compost, if nothing else. The temporary watch tower may also be of use, though it will be conspicuous. There is no listed monetary price given for compost anywhere, IIRC. Peat, as a trade good, would probably be the closest, and Peat is worth 3 copper pieces per 20 pounds. If you took compost as the "raw materials" necessary to make peat, that would probably give you something around 1 copper piece per 20 pounds. Between Expeditious Construction, Mudball, Ice Spears, the older version of Snowball, and Beanstalk, a Conjurer is able to create and fertilize soil and then also provide moisture, allowing a 7th level Conjurer to potentially do small-scale terraforming or land reclamation... or at least be able to create their own raised garden beds basically anywhere with solid ground. So this spell has some clear use for farmers and gardeners, although Oasis might be the best spell available to Wizards to add water into mix if there's not a natural source available. I believe someone trying to be a Shambling Mound rancher might also find this spell of use.
Bind Sage is useful for if one wants to gather lore or research a subject. Caulborns have a respectable +14 modifier for all Knowledge checks and I believe the Caulborn could receive buff spells before it makes any Knowledge checks for the Conjurer. Should definitely be eligible for sale as a spellcasting service. Would also be useful to Conjurers who are making a living as Sages, especially if the Caulborn can Aid Another to boost the Conjurer's Knowledge check.
[/url] creates a big, spiked block. While it can be conjured in mid-air and then immediately go away, if it is cast so that it appears on the ground, it can then be hoisted up into the air in order to work as a semi-magical, semi-mechanical trap. While it isn't a tremendous amount of damage, this is a way to make a trap with automtic damage that also doesn't clutter up the room afterward. So this could be sold as a spellcasting service or simply used by the Conjurer to help "stock" traps in their own building, compound, or dungeon.
[url=https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Create%20Armaments]Create Armaments can literally create more value in gold than it takes value in diamonds if used to exploit the properties of Gold as a special material and making armor out of solid gold. Even without Blood Money or False Focus in the mix. Outside of cheese, this would be viable, if relatively rarely used, to be sold as a Spellcasting Service to provide on-demand access to a specialty weapon made out of a special material other than Cold Iron. Chain Coats have a particularly good base cost to weight ratio, followed by Chainmail. Piecemeal armor can also be used to assemble a composite suit of armor with even better gp cost to weight ratio
Curse of Dragonflies permanently impedes a creature's ability to fly. This is good for helping prevent prisoners with flying abiliites from escaping. This could conceivably be sold as a spellcasting service to court systems.
Dimension Door is a tactical teleport option with a fairly long range. It can be used to infiltrate buildings from several hundred feet away(over 500 feet away at minimum CL), and generally has its most use in clandestine activities, though it could potentially be used in entertainment.
Freedom's Toast would be a useful spell for springing someone from jail or rescuing a prisoner mid-transport.
Ghost Wolf acts as Phantom Steed, except it's also spooky and causes a fear effect. Would probably make a great addition to a haunted house.
Infernal Healing, Greater is a healing option, but would generally be overkill compared to the base version of the spell.
Minor Creation can be used to create nonliving plant matter and materials made from such for hours. One use is to create (large quantities of) highly lethal plant-based poisons that cease to exist after several hours. Another use would be to create plant-based food out of it, if one has a sufficient duration for such things. I believe there are guides out there about all the things one can do with this spell due to its open-ended nature.
Phantom Steed, Communal is Phantom Steed, but with up to 6 of them. This could be sold as a spellcasting service to a small group of people who want to make a one-way trip to some relatively nearby location more quickly than they otherwise might be able to.
Secure Shelter will provide a secure-ish, temporary shelter. Of most interest to Conjurers who are offering a service of taking people between settlements, such as with something like Conjure Carriage or Communal Mount.
Shadow Invasion is more notable for Illusionists, since it makes spells such as Shadow Conjuration 20% more real than they otherwise would be, though only while within this fairly short duration AoE.
Summon Accuser is a great spell for surveilance purposes. Just remember to get the zebub/accuser devil to also show you all of its memories involving you so that it can't show them to its superiors or anyone else.
Summon Cacodaemon, Greater gets you more Cacodemons than the base version, which in turn means more soul gems.
Summon Ship gets you a ship for days. At this level range it'd be a Keelboat for a week at CL 7 or up to a Longship or Sailing Ship for almost 2 weeks as CL 11-12. Interestingly, it seems that when the spell ends, the material it creates does not cease to exist, but instead merely falls apart, potentially allowing for some amount of salvage, especially if it was brought in to drydock and disassembled before the duration ended. This could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service to groups that want to make trips of less than a week, such as going sailing on a large lake to go to an island dungeon, or be sold as an ongoing, longer term, and repeated spellcasting service where the Conjurer is also being paid to go along with the clients and maintain the ship for an extended journey. Mundane methods of chartering an existing ship would probably be cheaper than the latter option, though, depending upon the number of creatures and amount of cargo to be transported. It's 310 gp to get Summon Ship cast as a spellcasting service to provide a Keelboat for 7 days; at 1 sp per mile for passage on a Keelboat, that works out to be the equivalent of a single person traveling 3100 miles by Keelboat or 620 miles for a party of 5 Medium or Small creatures. At 1 mile per hour usual speed for a Keelboat, 620 miles works out to be about 25 days of ship's passage.
Touch of Slime could be of potential use as an assassination spell, given how nasty Green Slime is.
Trade Items is a potentially interesting theft spell, allowing one to replace an item with a duplicate, or at least something of similar weight so that a pressure-sensitive trap is never triggered. It could also be used to effectively pickpocket or purse snatch.
Acidic Spray is notable as a Conjuration [Creation] spell that explicitly creates acid with the Instantaneous duration. How much acid and if it becomes inert after 1 round is a huge question mark, as is what it would become if it did become inert. (Water with some salts in it? But which salts? Sodium Chloride for salty water action?) Either way, this creates some form of permanent matter and the acid it creates may be a form of acid that doesn't have any effect on objects, only creatures. If it creates water with salts in it, it would still have a chance to be of interest alchemically, though Ice Spears would probably be of more interest for creating permanent water.
Arid Refuge can only be cast underwater, but it has the advantage of climate control, unlike the lower level Secure Shelter. Still only houses 8 creatures, though. Doesn't have to be deep underwater, though, and, technically, it doesn't say that the building can't protrude up out of the water. I'd have to doublecheck the general magic and spellcasting rules, but I believe it might even be possible for the spell to be cast while the caster is underwater but the target area is not.
Cloudkill automatically kills creatures with 3 HD or fewer. Ergo, it could be used to fumigate or even as pesticide, provided the area was examined beforehand. Unlike mundane pesticides and the like, there's no lingering poison that could harm scavengers that eat any vermin or animal corpses it creates and there won't be any effect on crops.
Duplicate Familiar allows a Conjurer to use their familiar to scout, etc., with no risk of their actual familiar actually being killed. They can also use it to duplicate someone else's familiar. Has a decently long duration, so this could be used to further quite a number of clandestine activities.
Geyser creates a source of boiling water that remains as long as the Conjurer maintains concentratiion and has a highly variable size. At the very least this could be used to provide a heat source, provided one didn't need anything hotter than the boiling point of water. Although it might be superheated water that the Geyser spell creates.
Mage's Faithful Hound provides security, combining an alarm that can detect invisible and ethereal creatures and isn't fooled by [Figment] Illusions. Given the limitations on what it takes for other creatures to not trigger the hound, this probably is more of one for guarding one's own restricted areas rather than something that can be directly sold as a spellcasting service.
Major Creation is much like its sibling spell, Minor Creation, but allows for a greater variety of potential products. For plant-based products, it's effectively an Extend Spell that stacks with actually using Extend Spell, allowing for up to 4 hours per CL at CL 11-12(44-48 hours), which is quite a bit of time for food or poisons and even for substances used in the service of con jobs. Of note is the fact that this has a permanent duration if you can get a Djinni to cast this for you using their SLA.
Planar Binding, Lesser gets you an outsider or elemental with full use of its abilities. It's also really there for purposes of being able to slay it and have it leave behind a body. Entire guides have been written about the Planar Binding line of spells. At its most basic, it can get you a Lantern Archon that can cast Continual Flame many, many times for you, to the point where an entire city could be lit by Continual Flame, or you could have a huge stack of Everburning Torches, which sell for 55 gp each. Even giving the Lantern Archon a fair payment (by planar binding's scale), one could ultimately turn quite the tidy profit.
Sealed Sending is a decently secure way of sending messages, although it is limited to 50 words, only twice the length of Sending, and it's based on a location rather than a specific recipient. Still, it defintely has potential as a spellcasting service. Especially combined with any languages that have ubernouns like German does. So maybe Dwarven? Working out a system of code words and cyphers could also allow one to condense quite a bit of information if one had, say, formed a network of Conjurers that agreed to cooperate or made a number of Trompe L'oeil servitors to allow rapid communication between cities, countries, even continents.
Secret Chest allows for secure storage as well as smuggling. Compare with its lower level version, Secret Coffer, however.
Surface Excursion is a way to escape subterranean locales temporarily, though one could use this spell in conjunction with Teleport, taking the opportunity granted by Surface Excursion to acquire an increased level of familiarity with that area in order to use to make Teleporting back up more reliable and safe than trying to do so blindly. Multiple castings of Surface Excursion may be necessary, however, depending upon whether one can use 9+ hours to study a small area carefully to familiarize one's self with it intentionally.
Teleport allows for one to offer transport to anywhere between 900 and 1200 miles away at the range of caster levels we're looking at. It also allows between 3 and 4 Medium beasts of burden or porters to be used to transport goods, potentially facilitating commerce. So this would have use sold as a spellcasting service to travelers or merchants or used by a Conjurer to be a merchant themselves. Especially if there are, for example, a variety of settlements within range where they have the Settlement Quality "Resource Surplus," giving a discount to goods or raw materials of up to half off. Silver and Iron are listed as examples, as are alchemical compounds, so it could work on trade goods as well to some extent, in addition to allowing a Conjurer to set up two homes, one in a place with cheap X and the other in a place where the price of X is normal or even higher than normal, and then Teleport between them, potentially using Downtime to acquire Goods capital to increase their profit margin on crafted goods from 1/6 (normal) to 1/3 (Resource Surplus) to ~41.67% (Goods) using standard Craft rules; in other words, a 600 gp item normally sells for 300 gp making either a 100 gp, 200 gp, or 250 gp net profit depending upon how deep you go. Or from 25% (normal) to ~37.5% (Resource Surplus) to ~43.75% (Goods) net profit for Alternate Crafting Rules; in other words, a 160 gp item normally sells for 80 gp making either a 40 gp, 60 gp, or 70 gp net profit. Between things like Ant Haul and similar buff spells, Carry Companion, and Shrink Item, as well as extradimensional storage solutions, a Wizard could potentially carry quite a lot of trade goods or finished goods between settlements this way. I'd have to open up statblocks and look into math, but it's definitely possible for a prepared Wizard to rival or exceed the quantities that a ship could transport, especially if they're compared over the same amount of time.
Unseen Crew provides basic seamen, and with better Profession (sailor) modifiers than many low-level creatures (+8 at CL 9 and Int 18, for instance). Depending upon exactly how limited they are, they can also do a bit more than simply having the same number of Unseen Servants, since they last for days and have higher strength scores. At the very least, they should allow one Conjurer to accomplish the work of 9 people when it comes to warehousing. Alternatively, going back to the Hand Rotary Quern that I brought up while initially touching upon Unseen Servant as a measure of economic output, that's 9 * 24 = 216 hours * 9 unseen crew = 1944 "man-hours" of flour, or 155.52 gp net profit over the course of a bit over a week(17.28 gp per day), or 65.52 gp profit after the initial purchase of 9 querns. This would naturally pair quite well with Summon Ship as a spellcasting service, or even to allow a Conjurer to go sailing for a multitude of potential purposes with a temporary, disposable ship and extremely expendable crew.
Wall of Stone creates permanent stone walls or bridges. This naturally facilitates construction in some ways. It can be sold as a spellcasting service, or one could compare it with the price of an equivalent weight of masonry stone multiplied by either 3(standard Craft) or 4(Alternate Crafting Rules). At CL 8, it would be 2 inches thick and occupy 8 5x5 squares for ~33-1/3 cubic feet; made from stone with a density of 160 lb/cu.ft. that would be 5333.33 lb or the equivalent of 266.66 gp of masonry stone, which multiplied by 3 basically becomes 800 gp. Compare with Expeditious Construction, which will create more stone, but in a loose form rather than solid, requiring Stone Shape or Fabricate to join the stone together. Compare with Wall of Iron, a higher level spell which was explicitly made unable to be sold or used to craft with. Combines nicely with the Transmutation spell Transfiguring Touch.
Acid Fog joins the ranks of Acidic Pit and Shatter for destroying large quantities of objects in a relatively short amount of time. It's acid, so it has greater potential to eliminate matter. Could be helpful in the production of salts or the refining of alchemical substances in addition to garbage disposal.
Conjure Black Pudding allows for the permanent destruction of matter by incorporating it into a Black Pudding that then ceases to exist when the spell ends. Good for garbage disposal.
Flash Flood is a highly GM-dependent spell due to its duration and being a Conjuration [Creation] spell. It may or may not permanently create water. If it does, then it's potentially useful for that. Even if it doesn't, the water conjured has the potenial to be applied to fire-fighting if nothing else.
Genius Avaricious provides a great buff to a variety of skill checks(untyped +4 for 1 month at CL 12), but is also fairly expensive. On the other hand, if you ever wanted to find a way to guarantee the creation of tiefling children, look no further. Combines well with Blood Money, Greater Shadow Conjuration, or Shades.
Getaway teleports a group of people back to a designated location, as long as the Conjurer triggers the teleportation effect within hours of actually casting the spell in the first place. Great for providing getaways as its name implies, and has 0 chance of error, at least in and of itself.
Ice Crystal Teleport can be used to either teleport one's self or another without error, but it requires being very familiar with the destination. It's up to GM adjudication to decide just how many locations a Conjurer could maintain as "very familiar" for the purposes of establishing a (probably small-scale) teleportation network.
Janni's Jaunt allows the Conjurer to travel to the Plane of Air and potentially work out an agreement with some Djinni in advance in order to make Planar Binding safer. Also allows the Conjurer to travel to the Plane of Fire and thus the City of Brass as well as any other Planar Metropolises among the Inner Planes. Can also be sold as a spellcasting service, similar to Plane Shift.
Minor Reversion, Mass essentially gives a number of creatures a pool of healing they can draw upon for 24 hours. This can be useful for bolstering your gladiators or your guards or even possibly be sold as a spellcasting service for the city guard for, say, an elite unit that's going into a highly dangerous situation and needs as much support as possible.
Planar Binding binds outsiders and elementals. It gets access, notably, to Djinni (infinite duration plant matter through Major Creation) and Succubi (Profane Gift). As with Lesser Planar Binding, entire guides could be written about this spell, and have.
Summon Flight of Eagles nets a number of Giant Eagles. It's got a decent duration, but the biggest use is probably for if you want to have several targets for Alter Summoned Monster, especially if you don't have Heighten Spell, since Summon Monster spells up to Summon Monster 6 have some pretty decent options with SLAs. Just remember that when the summon spell ends, so do all of the non-instantaneous duration spells that the summoned monsters cast, so this is better for things like Remove Curse or Break Enchantment rather than Continual Flame. (I'm 95% certain that Permanent duration ones expire but Instantaneous ones do not, at any rate)
Teleport Structure allows you to teleport an empty building to another, empty part of the same settlement. This has definite potential for sale as a spellcasting service, especially since the material component is so cheap at only 50 gp. Archives of Nethys labels this as a Downtime spell, but it seems more like a Kingdom Building spell since it discusses lots.
Teacherous Teleport is Teleport, but you can choose to screw people over with it, which is most of interest in clandestine situations where one can gain the trust of one's would-be victims.
Wall of Iron creates permanent iron in wall form that you can't sell or use to build items. Nothing's stopping you from using it to make composite walls, though. Compare with Transfiguring Touch, which is able to create iron that can be sold or used to craft items. One potential exploit involves converting the iron into rust, which is what iron ore essentially is, and then smelting that rust into normal iron. Another use is in feeding Rust Monsters, which is good for would-be Rust Monster Ranchers.
| Coidzor |
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Divination
Dew of Lunary (20 gp) - +1 CL for effect
Akashic Communion is good for buffing Knowledge checks. Best for someone with False Focus. Can aid someone in generally being a Sage or be sold as a Spellcasting Service. Just remember to prepare the list of questions in advance and don't deviate from them.
Arcane Eye is a great scouting spell, even with its short duration. Especially if you get up high before you cast it, since you can place the sensor anywhere within your line of sight. So you could, say, climb a temple's belltower, look down at the center of some guild compound or noble villa, etc., and then cast Arcane Eye so that it appears right in the heart of the enemy operation.
Detect Scrying does exactly what it says on the tin. It detects scrying in the area around the Diviner. For 24 hours. Combines well with Extend Spell and has uses in security services.
Havest Knowledge allows the Diviner to use another creature's skill modifier to make Knowledge checks. Alternatively, one can sift through their mind to answer specific questions. Compare with spells such as Bind Sage or Contact Nalfeshnee or simply using the Diviner's own skill modifier, which could be quite high in Knowledge skills that they invested in.
Hypercognition buffs certain knowledge and Linguistics checks and accelerates them. It's useful to sages, but compare it with Bestow Insight and other buff spells.
Insect Spies is a reconaissance spell. It gives more information compared with Insect Scouts and other related spells of the same level and lower.
Locate Creature will help the Diviner find creatures, provided the Diviner is able to determine a general area to look in. Definitely some circumstances where this would be purchased as a spellcasting service, but on the whole, more likely to be used for the Diviner themselves. Can be used to help find certain kinds of creatures, like, say, certain rare magical creatures or some kind of other creature that the Diviner is hunting for one reason or another.
Meticulous Match will instantly compare whether two items are identical. Also, whether a sample of blood came from the same creature as another sample of blood. It can also determine if there's a relationship between two objects that are obviously not identical. Not foolproof, but definitely of use to anyone who is investigating just about anything, whether detectives or more surreptitious sorts.
Mnemonic Siphon can be used to steal a spell from another caster and either prepare that spell or scribe it into one's spell book. So, with deliberate action to only prepare one spell before this spell is cast and targets them, one Wizard could intentionally impart spell knowledge to another Wizard for them to trascribe it into their spellbook without needing direct access to the first Wizard's spellbook. Can also work for selling spells to Witches or purchasing spells from them, if it's a spell shared between the two lists.
Named Bullet has applications in assassination work.
Probe History gives a bonus to Knowledge checks about stuff relating to a creature by viewing alternate realities. Most notably, it gets around the limitations on retrying Knowledge checks. Only can be cast once per creature per spellcaster, though, so it's a bit of a last resort as well as something where you'd want to get as much info as possible to finetune the question first, as well as have that information in order to help account for the differences caused by the alternate reality.
Questing Stone uses an ioun stone, which is risky and potentially expensive. Compare with Arcane Eye.
Sand Table maps out an area with a view towards information that is useful from the standpoint of one making war. Definitely some room for this to be sold as a spellcasting service, or, more likely, for militaries to have spellcasters on retainer who can cast this for them as needed.
Scrying can be used to gather all sorts of information, though it's primarily for spying on a specific creature.
Share Senses turns the Diviner's connection with their familiar into a scrying sensor that lets them use the familiar's senses, or at least, one specific sense out of sight, hearing, and smell. Only works within several hundred feet, though, but it can be useful in a number of small-scale spying contexts. Has a relatively short duration. Compare with Watchful Animal.
Speak with Plane allows one to query intelligent planes. Seems super niche, since how many planes are sentient, but useful in that niche. Just beware of there being a long queue to cast this spell, since the limitation is based on the spell being cast on the plane by anyone within the past week.
Symbol of Revelation has definite uses in providing security services. It activates when a number of hidden or disguised creatures come within range and then surrounds them with a Faerie Fire-style effect. It is compatible with Permanency, so expect any reasonably wealthy ruler to have one set up for screening those seeking an audience, or even entry into the seat of power proper.
Tongues, Communal is Tongues, but for multilpe targets. Should be long enough to facilitate standard negotiations but not super-extended ones, at least not with only one casting.
Vicarious View puts a short duration scrying sensor on a creature, object, or even point in space. Given the short duration, it's most useful for clandestine activities and spying.
Watchful Animal actually puts a scrying sensor on the Diviner's familiar or animal companion. Compare with Share Senses and Greater Inspect Spy, the latter of which Watchful Animal somewhat replicates. Sorter range but longer duration than Share Senses.
Awaken the Devoured allegedly is useful to Conjurers to torment conjured Daemons in order to get them to comply. Mechanically it doesn't do all that much beyond an ordinary damage spell.
Commune with Texts allows you to quickly find information within a collection of textx, whether they be scrolls or books or what have you. Also modifies Research checks. Of interest to sages, primarily, I believe.
Contact Other Plane can, with proper procedure, reveal the answers to a lot of questions and is pretty open-ended and powerful. While not as many guides have been written about this as Planar Binding, there have been a few treatises that were either written specifically with PF 1E in mind, or that are still applicable from earlier versions of the spell.
Dungeonsight essentially maps out a 60-ft radius from the Diviner every time they cast it. Can reveal the existence of secret passages and hidden doors, but access to them is still left as an exercise to the Diviner and those around them. I could see this being sold as part of a spellcasting service for surveying a newly inherited property, especially one believed to have architectural secrets. Not sure how it would react with impossible architecture where way more is fit within a 60' radius than should be, but I think it might just reveal that kind of thing at least some of the time in some ways.
Fortell Failure Can be used to gauge whether one can succeed by Taking 10. Mostly useful for letting you know if you need to stop and try again later with more buffs for Knowledge checks, as those are one of the main contenders for skill checks where the DC won't be known by the player or character in advance.
Glimpse of Truth is very short duration True Seeing. Still, it can have its uses for quickly scanning a group to see if they're all openly showing themselves for screening people seeking an audience with the local ruler or whatever patron one is providing security services to.
Locate Gate helps the caster locate Teleportation Circles, Gates, and other magical portals and portal-type effects. The Diviner needs to already know the general area to search in, however, due to the range only being several hundred feet and the duration only being measured in minutes. I could see some rulers arranging to pay spellcasters to sweep entire areas for such effects periodically to make sure no one is making a back door into secure areas.
Mask from Divination puts a mask on someone's face that can't be removed for 24 hours and also hides them from divination. Make sure to include breathing holes and at least a hole they can drink through, though, especially if you combine it with Extend Spell. Compare with Nondetection, which this spell functions as and then some. Could be sold as a spellcasting service or just used to help hide and protect someone who has become the target for assassins or kidnappers... or hide the victim of a kidnapping from would-be rescuers.
Mind Probe will allow one to learn the answer to a number of questions by probing a specific creature's mind. Has two points of failure between Will Saves and Bluff Checks, though. Can get around language barriers, however, and be used on less intelligent creatures. Probably of most interest to clandestine activities, which is also where the weaknesses of the spell are the most glaring.
Prying Eyes creates a number of visible but stealthy eyes to serve as spies. Compare with Arcane Eye.
Symbol of Scrying is basically a permanent version of the Alarm spell, coupled with a scrying sensor. As a result, they're most useful for providing security services but only for fairly specific areas. It can also be made permanent with the Permanency spell. Interestingly, it's not considered a magical trap despite being a Symbol spell and related to Symbol of Death.
Telepathic Bond allows for short range telepathic communication between multilpe creatures for tens of minutes. So it could be sold as a way to offer secure communication or translation or a combination thereof. Or used as such without spellcasting services being involved.
Thoughtsense locates all conscious creatures within range for a short duration. Can be used for short sweeps for non-mindless creatures in an area, but is more of a supplemental spell, rather than one that would be given top billing in the security services that a Diviner might offer.
Trace Teleport allows one to figure out where someone teleported to or teleported from. This can be useful for detectives or for spies.
Truespeak gets around language barriers for a short duration. Compare with Telepathic Bond and Tongues, etc.
Analyze Dweomer allows for rapid identification of multiple magical items, magical effects, spells, spell effects, etc. It also catches curses. Can be sold as a spellcasting service.
Contact Nalfeshnee That's at a +23 or +20. Compare with the Diviner's own modifier with the 24-27 Int and 11-12 skill ranks they would probably have in any given Knowledge skill in the 11-12 level range.
Dream Scan allows the Diviner to read a sleeping creature's thoughts and even plumb the depths of their minds for cryptic answers to more complex questions.
Harrowing, Greater can be used to confer a variety of buffs for a decent duration.
Legend Lore is yet another information gathering spell, most useful on the lore end of things than on the whodunnit side of things. Casting the spell can really monopolize the caster's time, though, so even cast as a spellcasting service, this would probably involve additional costs for the versions that take days or weeks.
Named Bullet, Greater is also useful for assassination purposes.
Prophetic Lore is a bit of a more finely tuned Legend Lore that doesn't take as long and can't work off of rumors alone. The tradeoff is that prophecies are often vague or require deciphering and may not be applicable to the current situation.
Sarzari Shadow Memory imparts information that will help assassinate someone. So, naturally, this is of most interest to assassins and other clandestine activities.
Telepathy allows one to communicate telepathically with any number of creatures within range for a short duration. Compare with Telepathic Bond, Tongues, etc. Can be used for secure communications.
True Seeing pierces magical disguises and vision impediments. Has several applications in security services as well as being useful to more clandestine types. Can even be cast by the Diviner on another creature.
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Enchantment
Cytillesh Spores (5 gp) - +1 CL for duration for [Charm] or [Compulsion] spells.
Pesh (15 gp) - +1 CL for duration
Quicksilver (3 gp) - +1 CL for duration of [Mind-Affecting] spells.
Amnesia isn't the most obvious direct money-maker, but it's an instantaneous, [mind-affecting], (compulsion) Enchantment spell with an effect that's permanent unless high level magic is used to fix it. The most obvious uses I see are someone using it to remove someone from the board in some clandestine game of cat and mouse without actually having to kill them and more devious (and socially-skilled) types using it as part of the first steps in a process that turns defeated enemies or would-be thieves, etc., into loyal-enough minions. It would also be useful on a kidnapping victim to get them to forget that they had, in fact, been kidnapped. So there definitely are outside-of-the-box applications, and I suspect out-of-the-box thinking will make up most of the ones of potential interest for our purposes here.
Antithetical Constraint is another spell that can be used as a non-divination method of determining creatures' alignment. But it requires having a group of creatures with known alignments to serve as your "weights and measures." Uniquely, or close to it, among such spells, instead of doing damage with a save to avoid or lower the damage, this spell prevents attacks from hitting, including attacks that don't deal any damage. Like grapples. So this would have niche uses in security systems, but I believe there are still ways to fool the spell.
Aura of the Unremarkable is, essentially, the "not my problem" effect in spell form. It only lasts for a relatively short period of time, but it can facilitate all manner of clandestine and illicit activities.
Charm Monster is Charm Person but for all creature types and lasts for days. Still requires opposed Charisma checks to get the creature to do what the Enchanter wants if it's against their nature. A lot of fun could be had with this spell.
Demanding Message has all the utility of regular old Message for delivering secure communications while also allowing one to surreptitiously pass a Suggestion spell onto someone. Can help with clandestine activities and even combine them with using secure messaging services as a cover.
Fiendish Wrath can be used to make gladiatoral and performance combat of the unarmed or natural weapon variety more exciting.
Fleeting Memory deletes a very short period from a person's memory, but only after that period of memory has actually happened, fully, after casting the spell. Should have some use for spies and criminals, though, especially since it deletes the memory of the spell being cast, though that's the only thing from before the spell taking effect that is deleted from their memory without additional memory modification.
Forgetful Slumber is a kidnapper's friend because it also deletes 5 minutes of memory prior to the spell going off. The sleep effect lasts for minutes, so there are definitely a fair few things that could be done with it for the sneakily inclined and morally bankrupt.
Geas, Lesser locks creatures into a course of action for days, unless it has a definite end-point. I like assigning some rather large amount of crafted items to a character who can slowly plug away at them, day by day, since it's relatively straightforward to calculate how long it will take them and also gets captives to actually be useful. One could also just use it to geas people into abiding by the terms of their employee contract or the rules in their employee handbook. The 7 HD limit has several ways to circumvent it, too.
Hollow Heroism acts like Heroism until the Enchanter decides to reverse it. This can be useful for rigging fights. It can also be useful for spicing up fights by changing which side has the advantage in order to put on more of a show.
Hypnotism, Greater acts as regular Hypnotism in that you can make requests, but better, with more different requests that can be made and they can be incredibly complex requests. Also, a better HD cap. Compare with Suggestion and the spells related to Suggestion or that can contain Suggestion within them for getting people to do things for you well after any spell duration would have experied or even traces of any spell would have faded. All kinds of plots can be facilitated by this spell.
Inveigle Person is basically Charm Person, but instead of just making them Friendly towards the caster, they're friendly towards everyone, though any hostile or harmful action from anyone will instantly end the spell well short of its hours long duration. Definitely at a risk of potential sabotage by others purposefully or inadvertently manipulating the target of the spell so that they get distracted by the additional requests instead of doing what the Enchanter asked them to do, though skillful use and preparation can mitigate that to at least some extent.
Lost Passage is good for hiding places, like the hidden entrance to a cave that smugglers use, or a dungeon that the Enchanter built or had mind-slaves build in secret or, more likely, a dungeon that the Enchanter took over by making the inhabitants either murderbucketed or mindslaves. Compatible with Permanency, too, so some organizations could conceivably hire someone to make it so that their hidden lairs, etc., are much harder to find, especially accidentally. With a high caster level and difficult Will save DC, there's a non-zero chance that someone who wanders into there will end up getting lost inside of a small area and end up dying of starvation. Even the -14 at minimum CL is nothing to sniff at when it comes to the Survival checks of NPCs with 5 or fewer HD.
Malicious Spite will make a creature hate another, different creature for days. To the point of plotting murder, if that's within their ethical wheelhouse or means. On the other hand, if the target succumbs to the spell but resists the urge to do terrible things to the third party, then they will take Wisdom damage over time, eventually falling into a short term coma. Both of these things can be quite useful to a manipulative Enchanter with fingers in many pies, though even then they'd generally want to have a reasonable idea of which outcome they'd get for a creature before actually trying it. Combined with Fleeting Memory and appropriate disguises, an assassin or the like could convert all kinds of people into temporary co-conspirators.
Mindwipe inflicts temporary negative levels on a creature with no risk of them dying, at least because of those negative levels directly. Instead, they'll fall into a coma. This can be used to create a safety buffer to avoid accidental death for if one were to experiment with Unholy Arrows for negative levels or just cast Enervation and related spells, such as to prepare a target with more than 7 HD for being targeted by Lesser Geas. In addition to furthering plots and clandestine activities, the spell also can delete spells from spellcasters for the day, so it can have a role in screening people prior to meeting VIPs.
Moonstruck could definitely spice up gladiatoral and performance combats by making things into a spectacle.
Nixie's Lure allows an Enchanter to lure creatures towards themselves. As a bonus, the spell can last for as long as the Enchanter can keep up concentration, potentially allowing for quite some distance to be traversed before the trap swings shut. This can be quite useful for kidnappers as well as those who hunt rare animals, especially for live capture.
Sacrifice aids the Enchanter with the Conjurer's trick of conjuring creatures, such as with Planar Ally or Planar Binding.
Seeds of Influence allows for Enchanters to more easily scry or otherwise use Divination spells on creatures as well as use lower level Enchantment spells with a bit of free metamagic. Basically just makes the Enchanter better at being an Enchanter for that one creature, and also spying.
Symbol of Laughter is another member of the Symbol family of trap-creating spells. Like most Symbol spells, it is compatible with permanency. It has potential as a pair of spells sold as part of spellcasting services as well as for designing a security system.
Terrible Remorse can be used to make a low HP creature (attempt to) commit suicide, which naturally will have some use in the world of assassins, as well as being something that can create quite the distraction.
Triggered Suggestion is Suggestion, but it lasts for days and the Suggestion effect doesn't actually begin in earnest until some other condition arises that triggers it. Like the Suggestion staying dormant inside the creature until they're staying inside the palace and then they just have to open up a specific window to let in some air, allowing an assassin to sneak in through said window that would ordinarily be kept locked and closed. In terms of raw greed, though, this could also be used to get a character to expend their wealth buying something they would not normally buy, or buying more of it than they usually would.
Apathy makes a creature experience a hefty debuff and lack of interest in actually doing anything with regards to one particular subject, to the point where, used properly, it can usually prevent them from even attempting to make a skill check or the like. This can definitely be used to sabotage rivals, though to get the full, hours-long effect, the Enchanter has to actively avoid interacting with or targeting the creature.
Befuddled Combatant can be used to make combats significantly less lethal if cast on all parties or to rig fights if cast on only certain parties. Of potential, though limited use in entertainment and training.
Charm Person, Mass is exactly what it says on the tin. The HD restriction could get a bit annoying if one is dealing with creatures with real levels under their belts, though.
Compel Tongue, Mass is just the lower level version except targeting more people. Forces them to all speak one language and one language only, which can help facilitate communication or make a whole bunch of people have difficulty communicating with anyone but one another and the Enchanter. Used for more legitimate endeavours, it's useful to remember that the spell can be dismissed early.
Compelling Rant mostly serves as a way to distract a large number of people for up to hours at a time if necessary. It can also temporarily change people's views as long as one continues to rant, so there's some ways that situations could be set up to turn people against one another... as long as it happens within some distance of the Enchanter while they're ranting and raving. In games that use the Sanity System, it can also be used to inflict people with madness.
Contagious Suggestion makes Suggestion into, essentially, a memetic virus that spreads, albeit, only to a relatively small number of people due to the HD limitation. Useful for most of the reasons that Suggestion is, plus it allows the Enchanter to cast it on someone more easily accessible who will then go and try to spread it to the actual desired target or targets.
Curse of Disgust makes a creature permanently try to avoid a specific thing. Can be used to facilitate intrigue as welll as just sabotage rivals, especially if the Enchanter makes the target sickened by, say, the target's patron.
Dominate Person makes another creature a mind-slave for days.
Feeblemind sets both its victim's Int and Cha to 1. One application would be to make spellcasting prisoners simply unable to cast spell if they don't use Wisdom as their spellcasting ability score.
Grand Destiny is a buff spell that will boost a variety of checks fairly well for tens of minutes. Any kind of short term skill check should be able to be boosted by this to good effect.
Passing Fancy, Mass acts as the single-target version, but allows for an even bigger distraction to be caused due to there being more targets.
Seek Shelter is a great spell for clearing people off of the streets for a long period of time, although it only affects low HD creatures and has a relatively small AoE. Can also be used to clear out potential witnesses from an area around a specific target or even be used to manipulate a target for kidnapping to go somewhere that an ambush is lying in wait.
Sequester Thoughts can be used defensively to store all of one's knowledge about a plot or scheme securely away if one knows that one's mind is going to be read. It can also be used offensively to eliminate someone else's memory, especially since if the Enchanter takes the gem more than 30 feet away from the target, they can dispel the spell on the gem and just destroy those memories. Of note, the material component for this spell should actually be a focus, due to not being consumed by the spell, another note is that since the gem is shattered if you want to destroy or return the memories, it can be used with diamonds as part of the process for making diamond dust.
Sleepwalking Suggestion is great for all kinds of clandestine activities, though using it to make a patsy that actually physically commits some crime or poisoning is probably the best. Can be combined with spells like Sleep or Deep Slumber.
Smug Narcissism has two main components, one modifies the target's behavior so they act like a complete git and the other gives them a penalty to skill checks, such as Diplomacy to try to mitigate the damage they're doing to the attitudes of those around them due to acting like a git. This could potentially lead to creating a distraction, but more likely I'd say it'd be more of a rival sabotaging spell, especially intrigue-related rivalries.
Symbol of Sleep is another symbol-based trap spell. Works against all creatures of 10 HD or fewer, which is fairly useful against most common people. Like basically all of the symbols, this could be potentially sold as a spellcasting service.
Touch of Slumber could be sold as a spellcasting service as a very expensive insomnia cure. It could also be employed in a similar manner as Deep Slumber, but against a single target, though it would require a bit of guile to pull off successfully.
Untold Wonder doesn't have much direct use, but it offers up some potential combos by making spells like Heroism more effective and protecting or even reversing the effects of some debuffs.
Cloak of Dreams creates a small AoE of a Sleep effect that has no HD limitations. An Enchanter working in conjunction with their familiar could put quite a few people to sleep quickly. This is, like most sleep effects, of most use for kidnapping purposes or to facilitate casting spells that require willing targets.
Geas/Quest is Lesser Geas but with no saving throw, no HD cap, and with heftier penalties if the creature is prevented from following the geas. Since the duration for open-ended/indefinite tasks is the same, the general utility of avoiding doing that by giving a set of strictures to obey while accomplishing some more concrete goal remains largely the same. Since this can work on more powerful creatures, including a larger number of immortal ones, that opens up further possibilities, since an arbitrarily long period of time is something that could be realized by a creature that has an infinite lifespan.
Mind Swap is a bi-directional possession effect. Generally not going to be as useful as other possession effects, due to the target being able to walk around or otherwise use one's body. It will, however, allow the Enchanter to effectively be in two places at once, one publicly and the other more sneakily, provided they have a confederate who can effectively impersonate them, at least for some purposes.
Phobia gives a creature a phobia from a relatively small list, though the animals and vermin allow for things to be significantly more open-ended. One way that it can be used is, in conjunction with appropriate prison design, to make it much more difficult for prisoners to escape or go outside of their designated areas.
Suggestion, Mass acts as Suggestion, except to a bunch of creatures in an area and they all receive the same suggestion. Every bit as open-ended and useful as the baseline spell, and having more bodies to throw at a problem is generally helpful.
Symbol of Distraction is yet another symbol trap spell. One notable use for it is to lure intruders towards the symbol and into a cage, which is then closed by something like a construct servitor, possibly by pulling a lever and dropping a portcullis or the like.
Symbol of Persuasion is also a symbol trap spell, except the targets become charmed by the Enchanter for hours, similar to Charm Person, but without the humanoid limitation. This makes it trickier when it comes to selling it as a spellcasting service, but it can be used to set up other things in a pretty open-ended manner.
Unconscious Agenda makes a creature into a plant for weeks until the directive given to them is finally triggered. This can be used to get people to commit crimes, either for the sake of the crime being committed itself or for the sake of getting the target to commit the crime and then face the punishment for it.
| Coidzor |
Evocation
Black Powder (10 gp) - +1 energy damage.
Brimstone (1 gp) - +1 acid damage for [Acid] spells.
Saltpeter (1 gp) - +1 fire damage for [Fire] spells.
Agonize assists with coercing a creature conjured with Planar Ally or Planar Binding or similar spells into cooperating. This can save the Evoker money on purchasing the services of outsiders and/or elementals, but it does make them more likely to try to circumvent their orders or come for revenge. Still, it could be an important cost-saving measure if one wanted to do something with [Calling] spells that weren't already insanely profitable, or at least that didn't already produce a lot of raw wealth, like creating a treasure trove of Everburning Torches or selling magical city lighting to a city or estate or castle.
Bit of Luck creates a reservoir of +1d8 or even +2d8 Luck bonuses for skills. It has a decently long-lasting duration and doesn't have an expensive material component. It's also flexible enough that the caster can decide to apply the Luck bonus before or after seeing the numerical result of the roll. A Maximized CL 16 version of this would give a +24 Luck bonus several times over the course of the spell's duration. Empowered Bit of Luck would be a 6th level spell and be within the grasp of this level range, and I believe it would make the bonus +2d8+2d4(?), which is still pretty good. A Maximized, Empowered version might even be worthwhile cast from a 9th level spell slot in certain circumstances.
Brightest Light is Daylight but with a longer duration and it can be used to get an extra attempt at dispelling magical darkness. Could just be useful as a source of light with a little bit of added security against darkness spells. Could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service, especially if Extended. Compare with using Heighten Spell and False Focus in conjunction with Continual Flame.
Contingent Scroll consumes a scroll to make it come into effect later in response to a triggering condition. I can see this having some niche use, such as if an Evoker really wanted to accomplish something with very tight timing and needed all of the help with the action economy that they could muster.
Controlled Fireball could be useful in clandestine activities to cast a spell that damages one's self and/or one's allies while assassinating or just significantly hurting someone else in order to draw off suspicion from one's self. Combines nicely with short-lived illusions that are too far away to be detected as such by passive, long-duration defensive spells.
Creeping Ice doesn't explicitly create lasting ice, but it has a decently long duration, so the ice it does create will last long enough for at least some purposes. Most snowcones you'd sell using this spell wouldn't last the full 70+ minute duration anyway, let alone the 180+ minute duration if it were Extended. Depending upon how the GM is feeling, it could conceivably be ruled that the Evocation isn't creating ice so much as creating enough cold that the water in the area is being formed into ice in that particular locale, potentially allowing for a bit longer on the ice before it all melts away naturally.
Detonate can be used to create Acid or Electricity damage to objects within 30 feet. Acid would allow this to work like Acid Fog or Acidic Pit to destroy garbage and other refuse. Electricity would allow this to work like Lightning Bolt and any other electricity spell that can affect objects, potentially allowing for the electrcity to be stored as power.
Shout damages brittle and crystalline objects. Compare with Shatter and other spells. Quite a lot of minerals are technically crystalline in structure, too.
Wall of Fire can provide a fair amount of heat for as long as the Evoker is willing to spend their time concentrating on it and staying within 170+ feet. This is also compatible with Permanency. It is conceivably possible to design heating systems, furnaces, boilers, etc. involving permanent walls of fire.
Wall of Ice allows for there to be, interesting enough, steam that lingers after the spell duration ends, potentially implying that if fire damage is used to melt a wall of ice, it does create permanent water vapor that then dissipates.
Burn Corruption scours areas clean of life, including foliage, with fire that doesn't actually start fires. This would be handy in completely destroying plant life in an area, especially if it was somehow demonic or abyssal plant life.
Cone of Cold drains heat and creates an area of extreme cold. This should freeze water, should one have water on hand and desire to freeze it.
Lightning Arc is yet another source of electricity damage that can affect objects and therefore potentially be harnessed for power. It also melts metals with low melting points (somewhere around 2000 degrees F / 1100 degrees C or lower it seems) and can start fires, much like Lightning Bolt or Fireball.
Sending is a great long-distance communication spell. Compare with Sealed Sending. The same principle with working out codes and cyphers to communicate more with fewer words also holds true.
Wall of Force allows one, with Permanency, to build impossible structures. It also allows one to, in conjunction with Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, Expeditious Construction, and/or Transfiguring Touch to make a composite layer of walls and foundations, etc., such that both ethereal creatures and creatures with earth glide are unable to enter, at least by going through the walls or floor.
Alaznist's Jinx inflicts a permanent curse in the form of the spell burn spellblight. It also makes it obvious that the spellcaster tried to cast a spell. Useful for prisoners and, to a certain extent, useful in niche circumstances where one wants to debuff someone to make them safe to negotiate with, or for screening visitors.
Chain Lightning continues on in the tradition of Lightning Bolt and other electricity damage causing spells as a potential way to convert spells into mundane electrical power.
Contingency can aid with action economy or just be a good layer of defenses. A fairly open-ended spell, altogether.
Hellfire Ray is a way to send souls to Hell. Certain evil Evokers might even be able to get a commission per soul.
Mage's Decree is a great way to make a mass announcement.
Path of the Winds creates a powerful downdraft that can create a 40' deep, 5'(?) wide channel in liquids and that lasts as long as the Evoker is willing and able to concentrate on it. It's also mobile. I'm not seeing an immediate use for the spell, but I'm quite certain there must be one.
Symbol of Storms is yet another Symbol spell that makes a trap that can serve a purpose in security. With an appropriate setup, it could be used to harness quite a bit of lightning.
Transfer Familiar allows the Evoker to temporarily cede their familiar to another creature that does not already have a familiar. I could see an Evoker with the Valet familiar potentially renting it out to a would-be magic item crafter who didn't have a familiar.
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Illusion
Silver (10 gp) - +1 to DC of Will Saves to disbelieve.
Quicksilver (3 gp) - +1 CL for duration of [Mind-Affecting] spells.
Complex Hallucination is the Major Image equivalent of the Hallucination line of spells, with the addition of being able to fool the targets' sense of touch. Definitely can have some applications when it comes to Entertainment, and can have more clandestine uses to get people to believe all kinds of things have just happened in front of them, whether to get them to go off on a wild goose chase or to frame someone for a murder.
Dream Dalliance is a curse that causes creatures to waste away because they want to sleep forever. This would have some applications for assassins. Since it creates a duplicate of the target creature inside of the Mindscape, I believe it could also be used to manufacture encounters as part of farming XP, though I'm not fully versed in the mindscape rules, combined with other spellcasting services that allow entry into mindscapes, this could potentially be sold to adventurers and the like as a training service.
Fool's Teleport turns the Illusionist invisible and fakes a teleportation effect. This is most useful for when one is beating a hasty getaway, but doesn't want to teleport or can't for whatever reason (e.g. the spell Teleport Trap). Part of a suite of tools for misdirection as part of various potential clandestine activities.
Geomessage allows for secure communication between those who can cast Geomessage or at least arrange for it to be cast for them. Not only does it require the spell, but it can also require a specific password to access the message. Definite potential for a spellcasting service here.
Hallucinatory Terrain makes natural terrain seem like another sort of natural terrain. Has a number of potential applications in outdoor entertainment, and could even work quite well for outdoor plays with appropriately designed or disguised sets.
Illusion of Treachery can be used to frame someone of all kinds of terrible crimes. Most effective for framing someone for murder or an assassination, because it doesn't matter if the other creature gets to make a save to disbelieve the illusion if they die. Combines well with Greater Invisibility and good use of things that break or control line of sight.
Illusory Wall creates an illusion of a vertical or horizontal surface that sticks around permanently. It can effectively act as wallpaper, though the 1 foot of thickness could be potentially limiting. Has numerous applications in defense, but can also be a way to decorate.
Inhibiting Patterns can be used to grab a lot of people's attention, at least for a while, and lasts for as long as the Illusionist concentrates and for a bit longer afterward though it's also dismissable, which is always good. Compare with Silent Image, though this does have some additional uses just from the negative consequences from entering the pillars. Has some potential applications in sprucing up or spicing up the arena for gladiatoral and performance combats.
Instant Fake duplicates an object for a short period of time and is compatible with swapping it out.
Magic Aura, Greater is the lesser version, except that you can imitate things so that it looks like someone else cast the spell or created the object or hide things so that it looks like no one in particular did. It can also be used to make it seem like spells are on a creature that aren't there or like there are no spells on that creature, which has a number of uses when it comes to clandestine activities.
Mindscape Door allows entry into Mindscapes, allowing all kinds of things, though not quite as much as straight up creating mindscapes.
Minor Phantom Object is Minor Creation, but with a Will save to disbelieve the object, making it cease to exist.
Phantasmal Asphixiation can be used to make someone fall unconscious, creating a distraction or allowing one to get better access to them by being able to rush them off for help or treatment.
Phantasmal Killer is a notoriously bad spell from a combat against creatures that can offer any kind of relevant challenge, but used against ordinary people, its effectiveness, while still not optimal on its own, greatly increases, becoming a potentially useful tool in the assassination toolkit, especially if paired with debuffs.
Quieting Weapons are an assassin's friend, since they make no sound when used. They also make it so that targets have to make a save or they're unable to make loud noise, such as to call for help or otherwise make a scene. Could also be useful to add an extra layer of insurance for knocking out a victim targeted for kidnapping.
Rainbow Pattern can be used to fascinate creatures and then lead them around for as long as the Illusionist feels like concentrating and then for a short while after that, with the added bonus of being dismissable. A bit flashy for a kidnapping spell, but if the Illusionist gets all of the creatures in an area that could notice it, then that matters significantly less. Could also be used as part of a particularly aggressive advertising scheme
Shadow Conjuration is incredibly versatile. One notable use is to cast Draconic Ally and get a pseudodragon ally for days for free, as well as other lower-level Conjuration spells with expensive components. It can also be used to troll people by making partially-real matter that they can then fall through, such as by using it to cast Expeditious Construction to make quasi-real stone that could then be targeted by Stone Shape(I believe) to be shaped to a variety of purposes or earth, which could then be used to fill in pits. Arrow Eruption and its item duplication abilities are another point of potential interest, along with Conjure Carriage, Evaluator's Lens, Expeditious Construction, Iron Stake, Sepia Snake Sigil, Silver Darts, Stone Discus, Unseen Engineers, and Waves of Blood(maybe). As for Summoning subschool spells, Alter Summoned Monster, Calistria's Guardian Wasps, (Communal) Mount, Secluded Grimoire, and Secret Coffer are probably the most notable.
Shadow Jaunt is a short-range, stealthy teleport that doesn't require line of sight. Requires shadows to work, though.
Shadow Step is a less stealthy, longer-ranged, and potentially more random version of Shadow Jaunt.
Shadowform can be used to help rig fights or just be an interesting, albeit relatively short-lived gimmick in some kind of performance or gladiatoral combat.
Simulacrum, Lesser is an open-ended spell that could be tricky to use. I believe the key to using it is in using social skills to manipulate the resulting creature and also hoping that it doesn't realize it only exists for a few hours or using its fleeting existence to further manipulate it. Depends heavily on GM adjudication for what a simulacrum will know, and, for some creatures, what a simulacrum is capable of doing.
Appearance of Life, Greater disguises an undead as a living creature for hours, and do a much better job of it than the base version. There would conceivably be some market for this as a spellcasting service in some settings.
Create Mindscape is extremely open-ended. At the very least it should have entertainment and clandestine uses.
Deceitful Veneer is mostly a rival sabotaging spell by making another creature seem like a liar, but it can also be used to destroy someone's credibility prior to doing something clandestine that depends upon them knowing about it but not being believed when they tell others, which is, admittedly, pretty convoluted.
Dream can send very lengthy messages long distances and in a way that's secure against mundane tampering and even many magical forms of tampering or eavesdropping. Compare with Sending.
False Future misleads divinations about a creature or object's future by supplying a false vision instead. Is fairly limited due to the hours long duration, but it could be useful for clandestine activities, avoiding divinations done as part of a security screening process.
False Vision will mislead divinations trying to scry on a particular area, which can be useful for making it more difficult to spy on sensitive negotiations.
Illusory Hoard can be used to cover up theft.
Major Phantom Object is Major Creation, but with a chance to disbelieve it and with a set duration regardless of the type of matter imitated.
Mirage Arcana is upgraded Hallucinatory Terrain.
Persistent Image is a pre-scripted version of Major Image, useful for all manner of things, especially in Entertainment, where it will free up the Illusionist to concentrate on another spell.
Scripted Hallucination is the Hallucination-line equivalent of Persistent Image with the usual tradeoffs. It does have one notable advantage, in that the phantasm created will react to what the targets of the spell perceive around them. Which can combine with other illusions to really sell them or make targets be less inclined to attempt to investigate illusions or interact with them, thus preventing disbelief.
Seeming is Disguise Self for multiple creatures and a good, long, 12 hour duration. One (in)famous use is to disguise a Necromancer's Skeletons as living creatures, or at least to make them appear that way from a distance, potentially allowing such a spellcaster to operate somewhat more openly on the fringes of an anti-undead society.
Shadow Evocation imitates 4th level and lower Sorcerer/Wizard Evocation spells. Notable spells include Admonishing Ray, Agonize, Beacon of Guilt, Bit of Luck, Continual Flame, and Recharge. Using Shadow Evocation to cast Continual Flame will get around the expensive material component, for instance.
Symbol of Striking is another trap-creating spell. This one makes a shadow illusion of a particular weapon that makes attacks of opportunity. Should combine nicely with weapons that have more of an effect than just damage on a successful hit.
Village Veil makes an area seem like it has suffered some great calamity, dissuading further investigation, with some abilty to selectively decide who gets to see through the illusion. Has some definite uses in security as well as for covering up clandestine activities.
Baleful Shadow Transmutation makes a person permanently think they've been turned into a newt, possibly also turning them into a newt. Alternatively, it could turn them into an elephant or even just another, different kind of humanoid. The daily saving throw definitely limits the utility, though, but combined with some other debuff, possibly Bestow Curse, it could
Dream Reality makes the target not retain any memories during the, admittedly short, duration of the spell. This can open up possibilities for casting further spells upon a target or in the area around them without having to be sneaky.
Illusion of Treachery, Greater acts as the lesser version, except the spell bakes in a few of the other spells and measures that the Illusionist would take in order to avoid drawing suspicion upon themselves.
Mislead can be used to facilitate a getaway, or, alternatively, if one wishes to concentrate on it for longer, it sticks around as if the Illusionist cast Major Image for a copy of themself. Unfortunately one has to wait until the next spell level for Project Image to be able to actually see through it, though, requiring the Illusionist to stay within line of sight, and probably hearing as well, to really sell things properly.
Night Terrors can be used to inflict Fatigue and Exhaustion on a prisoner which can't be counteracted by other spells as long as Night Terrors is active. It can also be used to inflict Wisdom damage to the point where such prisoners fall into a coma or just straight up do sanity damage if that system is in use.
Permanent Image is Major Image, but it sticks around. Exactly what is meant by being able to move the image is extremely GM dependent, but at the very least it allows for some nice interior decorating, being able to create both illusory sculpture as well as being capable of making much, much thinner forms of "wallpaper," with the added bonus that the Illusionist can move them into and out of place as desired. At the very least, a theater or opera house with access to an Illusionist of this caliber could have incredibly sumptuous set design.
Programmed Image is Persistent Image, except you give it a trigger for when it goes off, allowing for even more complicated nested illusions. This is extremely open-ended, but naturally has applications when it comes to Entertainment. Heck, an Illusionist with access to this level of spells could make a play that was nothing but nested illusions.
Psychic Asylum is effectively a longer duration Time Stop but only inside of the Illusionist's mind. Mostly this allows one to have perfect recall of things within recent history and to prepare a single needed spell. GM adjudication would naturally vary on how useful this spell would be for Knowledge checks, though one would have perfect access to any relevant tomes that one had looked at within the past 11+ weeks.
Shadow Enchantment, Greater gets access to 5th level and lower Enchantment spells. This gets around expensive material components as well as long casting times. Amnesia, Aversion, Business Booms, Charm Monster, Mass Charm Person, Dominate Person, False Belief, Feeblemind, Lesser Geas, Memorize Page, Pillow Talk, Prosperous Room, Symbol of Laughter, Symbol of Sleep, and Zone of Truth are some notable grabs.
Shadow Transmutation is more limited than the other Shadow spells that mimic another school of magic, having a set list of spells it can mimic. On the other hand, one of those spells is Polymorph. It can certainly be useful and is still pretty open-ended, though.
Shadow Walk is Illusionist's Teleport, allowing for long distance travel as a group, and in addition allows some limited interplanar travel. Shadow Walk has half the range of Teleport but should generally be safer, though it is less desirable than Greater Teleport if that is available. Still, a potentially viable spellcasting service, and could be used in order to go to locations in order to become familiar enough with them in order to use Teleport.
Triggered Hallucination is the Programmed Image equivalent of this family of spells. Being a phantasm spell from the Hallucination-line, though, the implantation is in a particular creature, rather than tied to a location. One rather tame example of how this power could be used would be to fool someone into assassinating their ruler.
Veil is Seeming on steroids. This could be used to provide perfect costuming for plays, spice up gladiatoral events by making the combatants look otherworldly, disguise assassins or criminals, cover up courtly intrigues, or even just let you use an incredibly strong zombie as a teamster in an area that frowns on undead.
| Coidzor |
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Necromancy
Salt (10 gp) - +1 CL for the effect.
Void Shard (250 gp) - -2 penalty to saving throws for targets.
Aggravate Affliction is useful to poisoners, as it speeds up the process of poisoning someone.
Animate Dead allows for everything the lesser version did, untiring, undying, inexhaustible brute laborers, and then on top of it, it allows further options. Bloody Skeletons allow one to have basically indestructible, if potentially messy minions, that don't have to worry about ordinary industrial or construction accidents. Though if they do actually create a mess, that mess could itself be an opportunity, though what use necromantically charged blood and gore can be put to is an exercise for the reader; although arguably an infinite supply of bone could be useful depending upon how GM adjudication works. Beheaded allow one to have an infinite source of certain types of energy damage. Necrocraft allow for open-ended undead construction and also allow for useful, strong undead to be made, even if all that is available are the corpses of chickens, squirrels, or other small animals. Isitoq are phenomenal as spies, and can even be used as, effectively, magical security cameras. Frostfallen creatures generate supernatural cold, and so could be used as a source of coldness for heating and cooling systems or even "power" an icemaker.
Bestow Curse bestows a permanent curse, and includes an open-ended option for creating custom curses which can become quite ridiculously specific depending upon GM adjudication. Good for debilitating prisoners so they can't escape, especially when multiple uses of Bestow Curse are layered upon one another.
Bloatbomb is a straight up save or die for low HD creatures.
Boneshatter destroys bone, chitin, and similar materials. Combine with Decompose Corpse in order to efficiently destroy a corpse to prevent Raise Dead from working on it. Compare with Shatter, Break, Acidic Pit, and other object damaging and destroying spells.
Contagion inflicts disease on a creature. This is especially helpful if one has a friendly Antipaladin on hand that can serve as a storehouse for germs. It can be used to have a source of various diseases on hand for study or it could be used to add disease into the mix as an additional element beyond just poisoning people. Say, contaminate a dose of poison with disease, or otherwise arrange for an assassination target to be exposed to several diseases in addition to poisons, then hit them with Aggravate Affliction and all of those diseases and poisons will proc at the same time.
Contingent Venom allows one to greatly delay the damage a poison inflicts long after its consumption or exposure, and in that regard it compares favorably with the related spell Languid Venom. It also allows one to use a dose (or dozen) of poison as a blackmail tool.
Curse of Befould Fortune's most notable effect is probably preventing creatures from Taking 10 or Taking 20 on skill checks, followed by forcing creatures to roll twice and take the worse result with skill checks and such. Good for sabotaging rivals, though it also would have use in the realm of blackmail.
Curse Terrain adds more negative terrain types to the list offered by the lesser version.
Cursed Treasure is Bestow Curse, but it allows the Necromancer to not be anywhere near the would-be victim. It's quite open-ended as a result. It also has fairly straightforward uses when it comes to being part of a security system.
Earsend creates a creepy spy made from a creature's ear or the Necromancer's own ear. Decent duration for a short term spying endeavour.
Familiar Melding allows the Necromancer to possess their familiar. This may or may not allow the Necromancer to become a more effective scout in their familiar's body, and it may or may not allow the Necromancer to more ably pull off clandestine or sneaky spellcasting.
Flesh Puppet creates a Zombie disguised as a living creature. The main limitation is that it's tethered to the caster. Still, it's an effective way to Weekend At Bernie's someone. The main uses I see for this involve theft, fraud, or simply framing someone else for killing the person whose corpse was used.
Hunger for Flesh compels a creature to cannibalism, which can create quite the distraction indeed if it involves locking them in a fight to the death against another nearby creature.
Infuse Effigy can be used as a delivery vehicle for a variety of curses without the Necromancer having to be there, or it can be used as a permanent aura that causes the Shaken condition for as long as the Necromancer is willing to sacrifice the spell slot. This shaken effect could be used in a particularly macabre haunted house or used as part of a debuffing process to make certain spells stick better, such as part of processing prisoners.
Mischievious Shadow makes an area where creatures that go into it have their shadows distort and sabotage them. This is useful both for regularly cursing prisoners so they're less able to function and escape and can also be useful in sabotaging rivals. The duration and the fact that it is dismissable could allow it to be incorporated into a security system as well. As a spellcasting service it'd basically work out to 25 gp per day if Extended, or 40 gp per day normally.
Object Possession, Lesser allows the Necromancer to possess an object for a short time, making it into an Animated Object. Has only a short range, but I believe it to be just open-ended enough to potentially have some use.
Riding Possession can be useful for spying purposes, or used to provide [mind-affecting] buffs to a creature that ordinarily wouldn't be allowed to receive magical assistance.
Shadow Projection allows the Necromancer to use their shadow as a spy. There's also some potential uses for the Strength-damage attack, but it has its drawbacks, since it may still kill the target when that may not be ultimately desired in some cases. In other cases, where killing is desired, this could be a useful assassination tool.
Skeleton Crew creates skeletons that are competent sailors and last for days. Useful in conjunction with Summon Ship. Compare with Conjuration's Unseen Crew. Like Unseen Crew, this spell is arguably more interesting for the precedent it sets of creating a number of servitors for days that effectively have ranks in a downtime skill.
Umbral Infusion will make an undead creature start going on a rampage. This could be potentially useful to create a distraction in a society that uses mindless undead like livestock. Alternatively, this could be used to make a fight in an arena between a mindless undead and living gladiators more of a spectacle.
Wall of Blindness/Deafness creates a temporary wall that either permanently blinds or deafens. Has a number of limitations on how it can be placed and used as an AoE
Absorb Toxicity can be of use to some would-be poisoners for an alternate delivery method that can also boost the save DC, at least for the initial save.
Astral Projection, Lesser is Astral Projection, but it only allows access to the Astral Plane itself. Still, this could potentially be sold as a spellcasting service and there are some things that can be done on the Astral Plane that are useful.
Black Spot curses a creature permanently. This could be used to blackmail someone or to help intentionally create circumstances that turn a pirate into a ghost. Said ghosts could then be harvested to make magic items with by someone with the Haunt Scavenger feat. I can see some morally dubious societies intentionally doing this to either discourage piracy or to farm pirates as a natural resource.
Blight kills a plant and withers it significantly regardless of the size of the plant. If there are some giant plants to clear out for land reclamation, for instance, this spell will greatly help that job. I believe that kudzu infestations are often all just one plant that has spread across a large area, too, so a single casting of Blight could do the lion's share of the work in clearing out such an infestation.
Conditional Curse is Bestow Curse, but it gives the creature a way to get out of the curse if they accomplish something within a year and a day. Crafting stuff for the Necromancer, an untrained creature Int Mod 0 creature can make DC 10 items by Taking 10, or DC 12 items if given a set of MW Tools. With DC 10 stuff that's 366 days * 100/7 = ~522.85 gp of progress or ~261.42 gp of gross profit if sold, ~87.14 gp of net profit. DC 12 stuff that's ~752.91 gp of progress over those 366 days, or about 376 daggers which is also 376 gp of gross profit or ~127.84 gp of net profit if sold. If provided with a Hand Rotary Quern to grind wheat into flour for 8 hours shifts each day, that'd be 234.24 gp of profit created. Of course, much more creative uses, such as getting people to provide information to blackmail others or facilitating other intrigues or criminal activities can lead to a lot more, so the monetary examples here are more of an example of the absolute minimum.
Daywalker gives a disguise to undead that's an actual physical change to fake them being alive.
Decollate can be used, if for no other purpose, to set up a faux-Dullahan fight in an arena without actually having to have any undead involved.
Flesh Puppet Horde is Flesh Puppet, but with more creatures at once. A Necromancer who wanted to use undead to work at simple tasks would potentially be better served by using this spell than trying to disguise undead created by Animate Dead with spells like Seeming.
Magic Jar is a spell for possessing other creatures for hours. Many guides have been written about this spell, both for PF 1st Edition and D&D 3.5. This spell is extremely open-ended and can facilitate just about any endeavour, although due to the general morality of possessing other people, those sorts of things are generally best confined to crime and politics. One fairly basic example of how this spell could be used would be to have the Necromancer possess a monster in order to have more of a control over the outcome of some bloodsport.
Object Possession lasts longer than the lesser version of the spell and gets a much larger object. The short range is somewhat mitigated by being able to animate an object that is large and strong enough to move one's body along with it. One use would be to make a "self-propelled" vehicle, although compare that with Conjure Carriage. Compare with Possess Object.
Possess Object is Magic Jar, except only for possessing a single object, turning it into an Animate Objects style Animated Object. At the caster levels we're looking at here, that means a Huge-sized object is the upper limit. This could be used to power a fairly sizeable mill without any external power source. Compare with the Object Possession line of spells.
Possession is mostly an altered version of Magic Jar, but it does allow for the spell to be recast while in the act of possessing a body, allowing possession to be kept going more or less indefinitely. It also lacks the range limitations of Magic Jar, allowing it to be used in different ways.
Red Hand of the Killer makes it easier to find the killer of a particular creature. This has use for detectives and the like.
Repair Undead, Mass repairs undead en masse. Useful for the maintenance and upkeep of undead that aren't Bloody Skeletons.
Soulswitch switches the souls of the Necromancer and their familiar for a decent duration. It allows for spying while one's familiar continues to pilot the Necromancer's body to keep up appearances and avoid tell-tale signs that the Necromancer is not present within their own body.
Symbol of Pain creates a permanent until discharged trap. It debuffs creatures affected by it for quite a while after they move away from the symbol, too. Like all such spells, this could be sold as a spellcasting service or used as part of the Necromancer's own security systems.
Torpid Reanimation is basically Animate Dead, but it allows the Necromancer to set a trigger condition. One thing this allows is to have corpses that then animate as part of a security system or even a specific trap.
Contagion, Greater creates a disease that requires magic to curse it, although I believe that only applies to the patient 0, not anyone that they might infect. Otherwise it's like the basic version of the spell, including the variety of diseases available.
Circle of Death is of interest to assassins targeting low HD creatures. Although beware of all of the HD accidentally getting expended on small animals and/or vermin.
Create Undead could be sold as a way to "cheat death" in certain societies, since Juju Zombies retain their memories and even some of the personality of the original creature. I can't recall if Skeletal Champions retain personality or just their intelligence, but a Bloody Skeletal Champion would be one of the more durable forms of undead that a person could be made into, short of ones that regenerate after destruction, such as Liches. Blast Shadows, Crawling Hands, Crypt Things, and Tikoloshe are forms of undead that the Necromancer can command or get some use out of, rather than being created with complete free will or lack of control, and unlike Animate Dead, there's no hard cap on the number that can be controlled simultaneously. Tuyewera also will obey the Necromancer, but they require the Necromancer to be level 13+. Another point of potential interest is that Blast Shadows don't seem to require a humanoid's death in order to create them. They're also immune to fire, intelligent, and can speak, making them ideal assistants in various metallurgical enterprises; with Retraining, their 10 HD would easily allow them to get various crafting feats, such as Skill Focus, Signature Skill, or even Master Craftsman and seguing into Craft Magic Arms and Armor and Cooperative Crafting.
Curse Terrain, Greater continues on in the tradition of its lesser siblings, but with more hazards and types of hazard available.
Curse, Major is Bestow Curse, but harder to resist and remove.
Flesh Wall will, arguably, in conjunction with something like Blood Money or False Focus or Eschew Materials actually create human corpses. If so, it would allow for "vegan" Necromancy, as in, the creation of undead that don't involve any creatures that ever had souls.
Hasten Judgement is quite useful to assassins, as it makes it significantly harder to raise a target from the dead, though it has to be cast on them while they are still alive.
Lash of the Astradaemon can be used to inflict negative levels in a controlled manner if Unholy Arrows and similar items are not available. Combine with Mindwipe for a buffer of safety for when one does not desire to kill through negative levels. Most of the combos this allows for are criminal or relate to some kind of spy or intrigue scheme.
Spectral Salqui gets the Necromancer a temporary, loyal Yeth Hound-style creature. The principal use that comes to mind is gaining it as a scout, especially since it can keep in telepathic communication with the Necromancer.
Symbol of Fear creates a permanent until triggered trap that causes targets to become Panicked. A trap that needs an additional layer of security to be effective, but one that could still be sold as a spellcasting service or used by a Necromancer to protect their own holdings.
Undeath to Death is Circle of Death, except it targets and destroys Undead creatures. Marginally less useful due to many undead having inflated HD and being more resistant to many sources of negative levels. Also, undead are generally less likely to be assassination targets, although I'm sure that contracts to exterminate undead would be obtainable in many places. Potentially ones lucrative enough to turn a profit even after having made the undead one's self, for people with minds twisty enough for that.
Wither Limb denies a creature the use of one of its limbs, permanently, or at least until it is healed by appropriate magic. This can, for instance, make it supremely difficult for most types of characters to escape from a prison.
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Transmutation
Ginger Extract (5 gp) - +1 CL for overcoming Spell Resistance.
Magnesium (2 gp) - +1 CL for duration.
Adjustable Polymorph is Alter Self, but with several uses for the same duration. Primarily useful for infiltration purposes.
Animal Aspect, Greater is short duration, but offers a fairly versatile number of buffs, ranging from boosting skill checks to increased movement options.
Assume Appearance, Greater combines the fun of the lesser Assume Appearance with a bit of Vocal Alteration while extending the duration of that effect to be the same, days long duration, as Assume Appearance in either form. Great for infiltration.
Baphomet's Blessing is a shorter duration alternative to Anthropomorphic Animal for adding in a DIY Minotaur into your arena as part of shaking things up without actually needing to go and get an actual minotaur.
Beast Shape II is most useful for infiltration due to its short duration, and this remains the case pretty much for all members of this line of spells.
Calcific Touch is Dexterity damage that eventually turns creatures into statues, ala Flesh to Stone. Can be used to keep prisoners in a form of stasis for easier storage, to penalize the dexterity of prisoners without turning them into statues, or just to make life-like statues for sale, whether the creatures used are people or otherwise.
Claim Identity steals a humanoid's form while making them completely unremarkable for hours. This can be useful to provide an alibi to a more skillful ally while they go and do some surreptitious deeds while being essentially impossible for others to remember properly (especially if combined with some basic mundane disguise, like a really obvious monocle or mustache or exaggerated limp). This can also be useful to temporarily steal another creature's identity to accomplish some purpose while they're sleeping or captive or otherwise indisposed.
Cloud Shape is Gaseous Form but with the disguise of a cloud. One could impersonate a fog cloud or any other form of cloud, allowing for some amount of spying during foggy conditions or allowing for seeming relatively innocuous while traveling in other conditions.
Concealed Breath allows a group of creatures to not have to breathe for hours. Compare with Water Breathing and Air Breathing.
Conversing Wind is an upgraded version of Whispering Wind, allowing for two-way communication, or at least potentially extended exchanges. Good for providing secure communications as well as sneaky communications.
Create Holds creates temporary handholds, allowing for one to create an easy path into an area that would otherwise be difficult or even impossible to climb. So this is useful for infiltration for the most part.
Crimson Breath creates a free dose of poison and inflicts it upon another creature. This could be used to poison a victim directly or it could be used in conjunction with a spell that allows the target creature to store the poison it's inflicted with for later use.
Darkvision, Greater acts as Darkvision, but with a greater range.
Earth Glide gives the earth glide ability at a slow speed for a short period of time. This is most useful for getting into and out of places.
Elemental Body I turns the Transmuter into an elemental for a short period of time. Most notably it gives access to better earth gliding abilities than the spell Earth Glide.
Enlarge Person, Mass is Enlarge Person but with multiple targets. Can greatly facilitate moving a large amount of heavy stuff a short distance quickly, especially paired with Communal Ant Haul for more multipliers.
Fair is Foul permanently disfigures someone but in a way that the Transmuter can dismiss at-will without needing additional spellcasting. The debuffs are mostly minor or cosmetic, but could still be useful when it comes to blackmail.
Fey Form I is Beast Shape, but for Fey disguises, and it can allow one to get around some restrictions for certain spells with the right choice of creature to disguise as.
Firefall would have some applications as a form of entertaining pyrotechnical display in the right setting. Possibly with a readied action to cast it on a firework right as the explosion was dying down.
Ignoble Form turns a drow into a surface half-elf for a day. Could be sold as a spellcasting service. Could also be used by a drow to buff their daily earnings, especially capital using the Downtime system.
Imbue with Flight essentially lets a Transmuter create a temporary broom of flying or carpet of flying that lasts for hours. Requires the Transmuter's continued presence, so a bit more involved than many fire and forget spellcasting services, but I can see this being offered as part of an extended service, like a transportation service to a location that's close enough nearby that local spellcasters would be unlikely to maintain the ability to teleport to it all that well. Or where seeing the intervening countryside is important for whatever reason. Would combine well with various spells, such as Secure Shelter, as part of escorting a small aprty along the road.
Innocuous Shape is a short duration disguise and infiltration spell. Slightly more versatile due to allowing one to choose between both humanoids and animals. Also has a mild Enchantment-style effect rolled in there without actually being Enchantment or [mind-affecting], which has its pros and cons.
Irregular Size limits a creature's ability to move or take aggressive actions by withering a pair of limbs. Good for debilitating prisoners so they're less able to escape.
Liquefy turns a relatively light object into a liquid temporarily. It can be used to repair some broken or damaged objects. Alternatively, it can be used to mix the liquefied object with other liquids to give it the broken condition or destroy it. Compare with Mending or Make Whole on the repair end and with Break or Shatter on the destruction end.
Magic Siege Engine, Greater allows the Transmuter to make a siege engine better for hours. This could be sold as a spellcasting service for use against cetain monsters that warrant such actions, and cities would likely want to have spellcasters able to cast this and similar effects on retainer for defense.
Majestic Image acts as a modified version of Enter Image. Basically the Transmuter inhabits an object bearing their likeness in order to get some untyped bonuses to using their social skills.
Make Whole, Greater is Make Whole, but based on weight and better at fixing destroyed magical and technological items.
Miasmatic Form has all the infiltration benefits of Gaseous Form combined with all of the assassination uses of poisoning someone.
Mirror Transport is Mirror Hideaway except it also includes the ability to teleport out through another mirror. Good for infiltration.
Naga Shape I is Beast Shape, but for Nagas specifically. Not very good for a disguise, though, due to keeping the Transmuter keeping their own head, but there are other ways of dealing with that. It also allows spellcasting to continue functioning normally even when transforming into forms that lack hands. This is, admittedly, probably one of the more niche spells in the polymorph subschool.
Obsidian Flow permanently creates obsidian. Combines nicely with Stone Shape or Fabricate. Arguably could be made into low quality semiprecious decorative gemstones. Could probably be used as raw material for making weapons out of Obsidian as a special material. Also combines nicely with mundane pit traps as a way to add extra damage to the bottom of them and/or create permanent difficult terrain. With a 20' radius, that's 1256.64 square feet. If the obsidian is 1 inch thick, that's 104.3 cubic feet or about 16,114.35 pounds of obsidian if it has a density of ~154.5 lb/cu.ft. If the obsidian is 1 foot thick, that's 1256.64 cubic feet or about 194,150.88 pounds of obsidian.
Rags to Riches is a decent duration buff that stacks an Insight bonus on top of making tools and such masterwork. Compare with Bestow Insight and True Skill, which are single target and shorter duration.
Renovation explicitly works with the Downtime subsystem. Ideally one won't want to renovate since one will have built the building the way they wanted from the get-go, but there is some potential use here. Can be sold as a spellcasting service, with two possible interpretations, the first being that the caster just needs the consent of the others and the second being that the caster has to take a day to start construction on a Room for that building (say, add a Shack to it for 100 gp) and then get the permission of the owner to cast the spell to reconfigure the place in the exact manner that the owner wanted them to do in the first place. The main cost here, even accounting for the customer paying the Transmuter the cost of adding a new Room to the building and paying for the day that the Transmuter spends arranging for the building, is from the expensive material component(1000 gp), while notable, is probably a huge bargain for what the spell actually does, even if it doesn't really impart mechanical benefits.
Resilient Reservoir can be used to get a pretty decent Insight bonus to buff a skill check or other roll in exchange for taking several attacks worth of damage. This could be used to, say, boost some kind of ranged touch attack spell's attack bonus through the roof for an assassination, or it could be used to make it much more difficult if not impossible to fail an important Knowledge check.
Revenant Armor lasts for days and helps provide a bit of extra insurance for armor-wearers that they'll survive. So this could be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers before they leave town or head into a dungeoncrawl.
Ride the Waves gives a creature a swim speed and the ability to breathe water and lasts for hours. Can definitely be sold as a spellcasting service. Compare with Water Breathing and the many other spells that can grant Swim Speeds.
Rigor Mortis is a spell that inflicts nonlethal damage with no CL cap. It can therefore be useful for creating a buffer of nonlethal damage if one wishes to subdue a kidnapping victim using that form of unconsciousness.
Scorching Ash Form is Gaseous Form plus smoke inhalation, and could be used to get people to falsely believe there's a fire, although that same possibility automatically makes it more niche and less good for being stealthy. Of course, if the Transmuter, say, uses their phenomenal cosmic powers to start a fire, then that would probably be a sufficient distraction to not make the cloud be questioned too closely. Compare with Miasmatic Form.
Shadowy Haven is a higher level cousin to Rope Trick. Compare with Rope Trick and Mirror Hideaway. It also allows Shadow Walk and similar spells to be more accurate if this spell is cast first. It can also be used as a means by which to gain access to the Shadow Plane.
Share Shape is a much longer duration Beast Shape II, but only for whatever creature the Transmuter's familiar is, if the Transmuter both has a familiar and that familiar is an animal. With proper familiar choice, this can be an incredible infiltration and spying tool.
Stone Shape allows you to reshape Stone. Notable uses include fusing the loose stone created by Expeditious Construction into useful forms or even just fusing it into solid walls. Also, transforming the obsidian created by Obsidian Flow into a more usable format for purposes other than difficult terrain and floor spikes.
Symbol of Slowing creates a symbol trap that acts as the Slow spell for 1 round/CL. One of the ones that can explicitly be made permanent with Permanency. One of the ones that requires another layer of security. Should have no especial barriers to being sold as a spellcasting service.
Tail Current makes a number of creatures faster at swimming for hours. Should have recreational purposes and should also be useful for making couriers faster in aquatic environments.
Tailwind makes a number of creatures able to hustle with no risk of fatigue, effectively doubling their movement speed. This could be combined with mounts to greatly increase the distance that can be safely traveled in a day, especially if flying mounts are involved.
Vermin Shape I is Beast Shape but for Vermin. Giant monstrous insects and other arthropods tend to be more noticed than animals, so this is only appropriate for infiltration in fairly specific areas, making the spell more niche.
Warp Metal can effectively destroy or restore a number of metal objects, and in a way that requires this spell to counter it. Useful in breaking and entering and sabotage.
Wave Form may have some applications in fire-fighting. Compare with Hydraulic Torrent and similar spells.
Alter River has the potential to reshape geography on a grand scale given a wealthy and patient Transmuter. Could also be used to design a mass transit system or speed up river-based trade. The spell is explicitly compatible with Permanency and even calls out Move Earth as working well with it. Beyond that, with sufficient investment, a river could be manipulated such that it has greatly enhanced speed for part of it, allowing a "fast lane" for rapid transport of goods to facilitate trade.
Animal Growth is, essentially, souped up, animal-only Enlarge Person.
Baleful Polymorph permanently turns a creature into a relatively harmless animal form. With appropriate precautions, this can be used to make a prisoner immune to any other polymorph effects while they're being stored.
Carve Passage can do tunneling, although not through solid stone. It can also dig a basement or cellar a lot faster than Expeditious Excavation, which it is partially based upon.
Dissolution causes an item to temporarily vanish from existence. This can be used to fake a theft in order to distract guardians allowing for an easier time actually getting away with the object. It could also be intentionally gamed in order to try to shunt an object to another plane in order to get rid of it.
Fabricate is a spell that could be examined at length all on its own. It has a high degree of potential for theorycrafting. At its most basic, though, it condenses days or months or possibly even years of mundane crafting into a matter of seconds. Essentially each casting will yield a net profit of 50% of the seed money used given standard crafting rules. Alternate crafting rules would yield a net profit of 100% of the seed money used.
Geniekind, specifically its Mythic version, allows a Transmuter to get access to Major Creation to create permanent vegetable matter without having to involve an actual Djinni. Becoming Mythic is its own can of worms.
Half-Blood Extraction is arguably more interesting for the precedent it sets for a spell being in line with this level of spell effect. It could be sold as a spellcasting service in some limited contexts, though.
Hammer of Mending repairs objects as an AoE with no limitation on size or weight. Compare with Greater Make Whole, which is better at repairing destroyed magic items.
Lighten Object, Mass affects more objects and for a longer duration than the baseline Lighten Object, allowing for even more goods to be moved quickly and more easily across moderate distances.
Overland Flight gives long duration flight to the Transmuter. Combines nicely with Tailwind for faster travel and will work in conjunction with Imbue with Flight to allow one to effectively tow cargo or passengers decently long distances by air without having the Transmuter's weight count against the capacity of that spell.
Passwall creates a 10-15 feet deep hole in walls for hours. Mostly of use in infiltration.
Parchment Swarm can be used as a blast spell, but more interestingly, it can make any spell on a scroll of 2nd level or higher affect a 20' radius spread instead of whatever it normally targets. This can allow what would ordinarily be a single target buff to instead affect a lot more creatures. I can also see it being used to inflict a large number of creatures with the same curse at once in at least some circumstances, just to save on how many times the spell has to be cast.
Planar Adaptation protects the Transmuter against the harmful environments of various planes. This is useful for any Transmuter who seeks to go to the Plane of Fire to do business in the City of Brass, for instance.
Planetary Adaptation allows the Transmuter to survive on hostile planetary environments on the material plane. It also allows them to go on space walks. This spell could facilitate a certain amount of asteroid mining or salvage, depending upon the setting.
Polymorph transforms a creature into an animal, humanoid, or elemental for a short period of time. Basically Alter Self, Beast Shape II, and Elemental Body I rolled into one.
Rapid Repair gives constructs fast healing, greatly increasing their longevity. This could be sold as a spellcasting service to those who own constructs and aren't able to cast this spell or similar spells themselves.
Shapechanger's Gift is the caster's choice of several of the more basic members of the [polymorph] subschool, but with a much better duration, allowing for easier and better infiltration and subterfuge.
Slough causes a creature to shed its skin. It may require some use of Mending or Make Whole, but that shed skin should be able to be repaired into an intact skin to some degree. This isn't much for humanoids, unless one has a market for macabre humanoid leather or parchment, and it's also not likely to be worth the investment for the hides of ordinary animals, given leather is 5 sp or 3 gp per square yard as a trade good and 5 gp seal pelts are the most expensive pelt with a listed price. However, should one have a dragon or other creature whose very skin is a extremely valuable or even a Special Material, then things can get interesting. Angelskin, Bulette Armor, and Dragonhide are the main options, and Bulette Armor is technically unupdated 3.5 content. Best of all, with an ally with the ability to heal ability damage, several valuable skins can be produced in a very short period of time indeed, and all without ever having to take a life.
Steal Years, Greater physically changes the age of the Transmuter and another creature for several days. This can be useful for long duration disguises that stand up to physical examination.
Sun's Disdain, Mass is as the base version, but affecting more creatures. It's still good for debilitating prisoners.
Transmute Mud to Rock can either turn mud into soft rock or revert any kind of stone that had been transformed into mud by its sister spell. Useful for construction. Compare with Wall of Stone, which creates a significantly smaller volume of stone, and the combination of Expeditious Construction and Stone Shape.
Transmute Rock to Mud does what it says, converting rock into mud. Along with its sibling spell, it is great for construction.
Transplant Visage allows the Transmuter to permanently steal the face of a dead person. Can be combined with Breath of Life to create a body double, and doesn't have any lingering magic aura, either. I don't see this being sold as a spellcasting service all that often, and when it would be, I'd imagine it'd involve a bit of a longer or at least middling-term contract beyond the spellcasting itself, but I do see there being at least some level of trade in magic items that would allow a creature to make use of this spell without having to be a mid-level spell caster.
Treasure Stitching is pretty darn good for transporting quantities of extremely heavy goods.
Waft allows multiple creatures to be towed along behind a flying creature for hours, in a manner not disimilar to kites, while counting significantly less against the flying creature's carrying capacity. Potentially useful for Transmuters that wish to offer travel services with some kind of flying mount that isn't the strongest.
Break, Greater is the lesser version, but as an AoE, giving the broken condition or destroying things with the broken condition. Notably will give the broken condition to magic items but won't destroy them. Compare with Shatter and other AoE spells that damage or destroy objects, along with, in some cases, any debris created by the destruction of the object.
Claim Identity, Greater acts as the lesser version, but eliminates the need to keep the target prisoner or indisposed. It also allows the Transmuter to allow another creature to adopt the target's form instead of requiring the Transmuter to do it themselves. Useful for all kinds of clandestine things, although the target being aware can be a notable downside. Especially if having the target be asleep or comatose from mental ability damage when the spell is cast doesn't carry over while they're in mask form.
Delectable Flesh can create quite a distraction, or even be used to have an assassination target get killed and eaten by their own bodyguards/family.
Disintegrate destroys matter. Compare with Shatter and other object-damaging spells.
Flesh to Ooze permanently turns a creature (or mass of dead/inert flesh) into an ooze. Good for creating a garbage disposal system. Also good for getting a starting ooze with the Split ability in order to farm oozes.
Flesh to Stone can turn creatures into statues. This can be useful for putting prisoners into stasis prior to a trial so that they're unable to effect their own escape.
Fluid Form gives the ability to fit through cracks, small holes, narrow openings, etc., without having to be a gas, allowing the Transmuter to fit through things while retaining their full range of abilities.
Hardening is unupdated 3.5 content. Could be sold as a spellcasting service. Also extremely of use in protecting one's property.
Jatembe's Ire can be used to destroy buildings.
Knock, Mass undoes several forms of closure at once, but is otherwise as the base version save for shorter range.
Move Earth rearranges earth, but not stone. Can accomplish some significant terrain modification given time, especially when paired with spells like Alter River or Oasis. Could also be used to start a strip mine or open up the earth in order to start a quarry.
Oasis literally creates an oasis. Some level of care would be good to exercise in areas where there are already natural springs. May or may not interfere with other springs created by the Oasis spell, if it doesn't, then the spell can be cast on the same point or in multiple points in a small area to create a significant water source over time. This could be used to feed a millpond or the like, but it is most likely of most use and value in areas where water is scarce.
Stone to Flesh is mostly for undoing Calcific Touch or Flesh to Stone, but it can also be sold as a spellcasting service to adventurers who ran afoul of other forms of petrification.
Transfiguring Touch has two interpretations possible. The first is that you only spend 1 gp in material components unless you're creating precious metals. The second is that you always spend X gp in material components where X is equal to the value of what you're creating, usually by weight, unless it doesn't have a value by weight. The first one allows one to create quite a significant profit in terms of paper or iron. The second one allows one to make an equivalent profit with Blood Money or a more modest profit with the False Focus feat. Paper is 4 sp per sheet and they're 9 by 6 inch sheets. Assuming they're 1 mm thick, then one can make about 8940 sheets using 11 cubic feet. 8940 * 0.4 = 3576 gp of value, sell for half yields 1788 gp of profit. If you had some kind of all-paper construction you could make, Fabricate would boost that from 3576 to 10,728 gp which would then sell for half to yield 5364 net profit, or an increase of 3576 gp from just casting the spell for paper alone. Granted, the inital profit projection for paper doesn't take into account actually separating the resultant mega-sheet into individual sheets of paper. Iron is 1 sp per lb as a trade good. The density of iron is 491.5 lb per cubic foot. 11 cubic feet would thus be 5406.5 pounds or 540.65 gp. Which could then naturally be fabricated into something worth 1621.95 gp and sold for half, or 810.97 gp, for an additional 270.32 gp of profit. Wood and Lead are trickier, though Fabricate Bullets provides one potential reference point for lead as 2 gp per lb. The density of Lead is about 708 lb per cubic foot, so that'd be 7788 pounds of it at minimum CL. Lead isn't listed as a trade good, so even if it is worth 2 gp per lb, it'd still sell for half so that'd be 7788 gp. If it was used as the raw materials/material component for 7788 castings of Fabricate Bullets, however, that would become 233,640 gp of value that could be sold for half for a net profit of 116,820 gp; also it would take a fair amount of time. Subtract 1 gp from those figures for net profit if you're going by the first interpretation and are not using Eschew Materials or False Focus.
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Universal
Permanency is the only Universal spell in this level range. Assuming people could afford to pay for it, it would be an incredibly viable model for a supplementary or possibly even primary income source for a Wizard. A single CL 7 Permanency spell nets 350 gp, which is just shy of 3 years of Average cost of living, is 3.5 months of Wealthy cost of living, and would only need to be done 3 times a month to maintain an Extravagant cost of living.
| Coidzor |
So, thanks to an observation by ErichAD in the Rule you never see used though it is RAW thread, I just realized that due to Serren's Swift Girding being written (probably) incorrectly there's an exploit.
Of course, given it's listed as a material component the spells shouldn't work at all because the armor would be consumed by casting the spell, leading to no armor to put on them. Although it could be argued that the spell description overrules this.
Combining Swift Girding with False Focus could allow one to use the Salvaging rules to be able to create the raw materials needed to craft a more expensive item for free. Although it would probably be faster and more economical to make Chain Shirts, sell them for 50 gp, and then use Downtime to Earn Capital to acquire Goods to use as crafting material instead.
Swift Girding + Blood Money could even make use of the Salvaging rules to get the ability to create items that are expensive enough that the caster's strength score creates a practical cap that is lower than the price of the item. Also it could combine with Fabricate to make the maximum amount of gp of solid gold equipment that they could make and then turn it into an art object or jewelry 3x the cost of the gold.
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Also, in other, less cheesy news, I was reminded of how customized uses of Bestow Curse can be used as an alternative form of contraception to the conventional use of Night Tea for women or Bachelor Snuff for men.
Essentially, any woman who wants to avoid the chance of pregnancy for longer than ~7.67 years would be better off with the Wizard version of Bestow Curse than Night Tea.
Whereas for men, they can gamble on getting an average result of 2 days per dose of Bachelor Snuff or they can take it every day, so that's either ~76% of a year or about 1.5 years before wizardly Bestow Curse is the way to go.
So even for humans, where women are generally only fertile for about or a bit less than 30 years, it can be more economical to go with Bestow Curse if they have the means to pay.
Granted, the numbers will skew a bit given that they don't have to be used daily except during periods of being sexually active.
| UnArcaneElection |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just stumbled upon this thread -- it needs to be made into a guide. Request for addition to the Guide to the Guides submitted.
A couple of additional thoughts:
{. . .} Magma subschool of Earth/Fire:
Class Features: Magma Furrow leaves an area of molten ground that lingers for a bit, so that might potentially have a use in some form or fashion {. . .}
Stone welding, maybe?
Also Evocation: Burning Hands: Somebody call for an exterminator? For best results, be an Evocation (Admixturer) Wizard, so that you can change the elemental type on the fly, which is very useful when you need to exterminate a Swarm in a house without burning it down.
| Slim Jim |
SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion.
(The boss will have a white cat familiar, and no one else...or else.)
| Coidzor |
scribes (i mean they can scribe even magical scrolls at level 1 so common shouldn't be that hard).
I'm reminded of one NPC Wizard I ran into in Way of the Wicked, where one of his main ways of keeping busy when not selling magic items, was doing everyone's taxes and accounting.
Lumberjacks (animate object on axes and ant's haul etc).
Come to think of it, couldn't Animate Objects reduce waste by having the tree uproot itself, walk out of the woods, and then lay down in a convenient location, felling itself? Granted, anything larger than Huge requires a very high CL.
Although the spell isn't a Wizard spell, so it'd have to be a 7th level Wizard or a 5th level one with Retraining (250 gp). Or could be lower with sufficient funds and the Protector of the People story feat.
I believe making a Tiny Animated Object that is made of Adamantine and a buzzsaw would cost the same to build as a Small Animated Object(1000 gp) due to the CR being increased by +2 (from CR 1/2 to CR 2) for having 5 CP over its limit. Or if it has to have slashing attack for being a saw, it would be 6 CP over the limit and so +3 CR for CR 3 total, which would make it cost as much as a Medium Animated Object(2250 gp).
(That's assuming an animated object that's a saw is able to spin properly to do that.)
On that note, I'm about to delve into the subject of mills.
| Coidzor |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So my research stalled out a bit, but I have managed to get the mill at Mount Vernon as a reference point, and it seems like mill technology, at least in terms of how much it could actually grind in a day, didn't really progress that much between the late Medieval period and the Early Modern period.
Pathfinder's default technological assumptions seem to vary between Medieval-ish to Early Modern, with a few anachronisms, like (possibly magically assisted) steam engines, though they all seem to be involved with constructs aside from the occasional smattering of obviously alien/foreign high technology.
So I feel fairly safe in accepting it as a relevant enough bit of information. That said, it is still only one data point, so it should be taken with a grain of salt.
That gives us a rough starting point of 50 to 80 gp of value being created each day by doubling the value of the grain from 1 cp per pound to 2 cp per pound through the conversion from grain to flour.
So far it seems like most millstones would range from Small to Medium with some particularly large ones flirting with Large size. While the main gearage for driving the mechanisms of the mill as a whole seem to be in the Medium to Large range.
Downtime gives us a basis for the cost of a Mill as well as for a Mill Room. The value of a Mill seems to be 660 gp from the Mill Room, an office, and 2 rooms for storage (presumably grain in and then flour out). The Mill Room itself is 300 gp and consists of all of the mechanisms, etc. for the grinding of the grain, including the mill stones.
(It seems like a waterwheel is automatically part of the cost if it's just placed adjacent to appropriate water and windmills are hinted at, but no means by which to model adding the necessary tower are provided, so it's up to any individual GM to decide whether that means they have to decide what additional Room to build to count as a tower for the building or if a tower can be automatically added.)
Tying the cost of such a Mill back to the daily output, that's between 8.25 and 13.2 days for a 660 gp Mill to pay for itself producing 50 to 80 gp per day (averaged to 65 gp per diem, that's ~10.15 days). 3.75 to 6 days (avg 4.62) for the Mill Room to pay for itself. Mind, that is before labor and other costs.
Bringing it back to Animated Objects, the creation/construction costs for those are 1000 gp (Small), 2250 gp (Medium), or 6250 gp (Large). At an average of 65 gp per day those take ~15.38 days, ~34.62 days, or ~96.15 days for the operation of a Mill to pay for an Animated Object power source.
Putting those together, that means that, on the high end, it should take ~106.3 days, or a bit over 3 months, of operation to recoup the initial investment to buy or make a mill and then make it powered by an appropriate Animated Object. That's faster than a restaurant (3 to 5 years), certainly. On the low end, that's ~23.63 days, or less than a single month of high volume output.
I was going to go into a bit more depth with using Poppets and having only a single employee being paid a Manager's wage of ~3-5 gp from the Downtime system, but I haven't dug up enough to get a good idea of how many workers could be replaced by Poppets and how many it would take to do so. I hope to revisit the matter at some point in the not-so-distant future, but, well, life finds a way.
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Since I'm mentioning Mills, though, there is a mildly interesting point of comparison in the form of a humble 10 gp mundane item, the Hand Rotary Quern.
An unskilled laborer can convert 8 pounds of Wheat into 8 pounds of Flour in an hour. So simply hiring an unskilled laborer for 8 hours of work would produce 64 pounds of Flour for a net profit of 54 copper pieces per day. (64 cp - 10 cp in wages; 128 cp gross income)
Unlike a person, a Poppet can work tirelessly, 24/7, producing 192 pounds of flour per day and creating a net daily profit of 1.92 gp per day. As a result it should take such a Poppet + Quern setup about 88.54 days to pay for itself.
With Magic Capital and making the Quern one's self, the initial price can drop from 170 gp to 107.83 gp, which would pay for itself in ~56.16 days, shaving off about a month (~32.38 days) from the time it takes to pay for itself.
Compared with the investment in the most expensive Mill setup with a Large Animated Object (6910 gp), then using the 170 gp price, one could have 40 Tiny Poppets + Querns working and grinding out 7680 pounds of flour each 24 hour period. It would start producing revenue sooner than the Mill route, though it would initially be quite a bit smaller, and since Poppets can only be made at a rate of 1 per day, it means that it'll be 128.54 days after the start of the process that the 40th Poppet + Quern will have paid for itself.
Although the other poppets having been working for 40 days before it came online would certainly help. Once all are operational, that's 76.8 gp of net profit per day, or enough to pay for a new Poppet and its Quern every 2.2 days.
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I was also reviewing the Magic Trick feat and I saw a few interesting things.
Lasting Changes could also make some other Prestidigitation-based services more effective/tempting to consumers.
Thaumaturgic Aesthetics seems to be very open-ended for how it can combine with other spells, so I'm certain that there are some things that can be done with this. Beyond facilitating really elaborate and complicated shows of pageantry for nobles going to balls and courtly functions and that sort of thing, that is.
Unfettered Servant for Unseen Servant would make the spell even more useful by increasing its range and even allowing a Servant to be sent out to do a task, potentially.
Unseen Assistant provides a mechanical way for Unseen Servants to provide a mechanical benefit to aid in Craft, Perform, and/or Profession, or even just straight up do those. It won't compete with Fabricate, of course, but it would allow one to spam one's excess spell slots during downtime for greater effect.
Unfettered Servant and Unseen Assistant also have some potentially nifty synergy.
The Chromatic Savant use of Magic Trick also reminds me that, depending upon how/whether what you can create using Arcane Mark is restricted, one could use that to make what are effectively temporary tattoos.