Artificer Build - 1,000,000 gp by 10th lvl

[bearofsmiting]

The Merchant

Greetings fellow gameologists. What I am trying to do in this post is a couple of things; prove to my friends that the artificer I played last campaign was completely legit, show this community in general how much wealth an artificer can generate, and post my build for criticism and improvement. Though most magic-users can unbalance the game, the artificer may be the most extreme if played right.

First off, the rules: In min/maxing a character, I always try and take a strict interpretation so the character holds up under the tests of even the most stringent DMs. As such, this build is limited to the Forgotten Realms and non-campaign specific official content.

Secondly, as a practical matter, I am making the build ECL 10 because I want to show that an artificer can be played at lower levels and is indeed still broken at lower levels.

Thirdly, the references: outside of the SRD, I am referencing Dungeon Master's Guide II, Unearthed Arcana, Dragon Magazine 357, and Player's Guide to Faerun.

And now, the build:

Race:
Human
Levels:
Blessed of Boccob Wizard 10; alternate class feature that grants +1 free bonus caster level in item crafting (Dragon Magazine 357 p89)
Feats:
Racial Bonus: Mercantile Background (Player's Guide to Faerun)
Flaw 1: Apprentice (Craftsman) (Dungeon Master's Guide II)
Flaw 2: Favored in Guild (Arcane) (Dungeon Master's Guide II)
Wizard Bonus: Scribe Scroll
Level 1: Craft Wondrous Item
Level 3: Item Familiar (Unearthed Arcana)
Level 6: Words of Creation; grants +1 free sacred bonus caster level in item crafting (Book of Exalted Deeds)
Level 9: Magical Artisan (Player's Guide to Faerun)

Now, let's see how much wealth this build can produce.

First, let's calculate the free caster levels. Assuming these don't allow you to simply craft an item for free (based on an item with a caster level of 2 or 1) then they'll provide the greatest percentage discount on an item with a caster level of 3. For example, to buy a wondrous item that provides a use-activated Magic Missile effect at caster level 3 would cost 6,000 gp (1 x 3 x 2,000). To craft it would be half that or 3,000. An item crafter with these free caster levels however crafts the item as if it's base price were only 2,000 (1 x 1 x 2,000), costing him 1,000 in raw materials. Effectively, for any item that has a caster level 3, the item crafter gets the cost discounted down to 33% of the original.

There is one other reference outside of feats for a crafter to get discounts. Also from Dragon Magazine 357 (p56), fey cherry wood, when used in the construction of magic items, grants a 10% discount to raw materials and XP costs. Now lets add everything up together.

For Raw Materials Cost:
.5 (crafting instead of buying)
.33 (free caster levels)
.75 (Magical Artisan)
.9 (Apprentice)
.95 (Favored in Guild)
.9 (fey cherry wood)
multiplied together = 0.095225625 (So whereas most crafters pay 50% of an item's price to make it, you pay somewhere around 10%)
Now, that's the cost as a percentage of the price; let's calculate the profit as a percentage of the price: 0.904774375

XP Cost as Percentage of Price:
.04 (crafting)
.33 (free caster levels)
.75 (Magical Artisan)
.9 (fey cherry wood)
multiplied together = 0.00891 (So most crafters pay about 4% of an item's price in XP to make it, while you pay less than 1%)

Now, with an ECL of 10, I sacrifice the last level for item crafting so he's only a 9th level character. Add that XP with the bonus from Item Familiar and you have 9,900 XP to spend. You also at this point have a base character wealth of 49,000. Now you have all you need to calculate potential wealth.

(9900 / 0.00891 x 0.904774375) + 49000 = 1054304.861

You'll notice I didn't calculate the traditional penalty adventurer's incur when they sell loot. PCs normally have to sell at 50% of the market price. However, if you can solve the problem of mortality with your character (which actually isn't that hard to do; the least interesting way costs somewhere around 30k) then you can use the Mercantile Background feat as often as you want to simply remove this penalty; you buy and sell items at exactly the same price, incurring no benefit or penalty.

More specific and less applicable ways to reduce costs:
To take this character in a more specified direction, I would change his race to dwarf and take the Gold Dwarf Dweomersmith Feat or change his race to gnome and take the Maester prestige class. You'll notice I left the 5th level wizard bonus feat blank for either losing the human racial bonus feat or for a different item creation feat. Some other discounts of note which I considered too specific for this general build come from several different items; Gremma's Cauldron (Potions), Hammer of the Magesmith (Arms and Armor), Lyre of Building (Stronghold), and Mattock of the Titans (Stronghold). You can also lower the price of an item by as much as 10% with haggling using the diplomacy skill, but as this is based on in-game role-playing and the diplomacy check of the merchant, it's not really relevant here.

Other ways to reduce costs:
You can always lower the price of an item by 10% or 30% or both if you limit it's usability with skill or alignment requirements, but as that changes the price and not the cost, it doesn't make a crafter more or less efficient (a non-crafter character who has an NPC merchant make custom items can benefit from that mechanic just as much as a crafter can).
If you are in a game where your DM allows or encourages broken game-play (and is still unaware of the potentials of item crafting), then buy a Thought Bottle. One or two of these babies can nearly completely offset XP cost and make your wealth nigh-on infinite.

[telehax]

First, let's calculate the free caster levels. Assuming these don't allow you to simply craft an item for free (based on an item with a caster level of 2 or 1) then they'll provide the greatest percentage discount on an item with a caster level of 3. For example, to buy a wondrous item that provides a use-activated Magic Missile effect at caster level 3 would cost 6,000 gp (1 x 3 x 2,000). To craft it would be half that or 3,000. An item crafter with these free caster levels however crafts the item as if it's base price were only 2,000 (1 x 1 x 2,000), costing him 1,000 in raw materials. Effectively, for any item that has a caster level 3, the item crafter gets the cost discounted down to 33% of the original.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't work that way; The CL increase would only let you qualify to make these items earlier or craft with a higher CL than you normally could. The CL of your items aren't automatically boosted for free.

You'll notice I didn't calculate the traditional penalty adventurer's incur when they sell loot. PCs normally have to sell at 50% of the market price. However, if you can solve the problem of mortality with your character (which actually isn't that hard to do; the least interesting way costs somewhere around 30k) then you can use the Mercantile Background feat as often as you want to simply remove this penalty; you buy and sell items at exactly the same price, incurring no benefit or penalty.

Given nigh-infinite time, it is a trifling matter to get nigh-infinite gold. If your DM allows that, it isn't that much of a stretch to say that any character can simply make perform, craft or profession checks. My artificer achieved 100,000gp worth of items at level 6 in four months using the Business rules  in PHB2 and Power of Faerun.

[bearsarebrown]

You'll notice I didn't calculate the traditional penalty adventurer's incur when they sell loot. PCs normally have to sell at 50% of the market price. However, if you can solve the problem of mortality with your character (which actually isn't that hard to do; the least interesting way costs somewhere around 30k) then you can use the Mercantile Background feat as often as you want to simply remove this penalty; you buy and sell items at exactly the same price, incurring no benefit or penalty.

I'm an young Elf Wizard. The second the games starts I'm going to farm by making Profession checks for the next 500 years. Look, I just made a level one character with a 6 digit bank account.

That's not even bringing up the amount of infinite gold loops.

[Unbeliever]

1.  Telehax is right, I am pretty sure this is spelled out in the Eberron Campaign Setting. 

2.  Not to burst the OP's bubble, but, yeah, the economics of D&D are dumb.  We know that.  The reason being that for an action-adventure game it's generally speaking irrelevant and boring.  Just compare it to the economics in Diablo II.  Just the straight 50% profit margin can give you a ridiculous amount of gold given the craft reserve and other ways to cheat the (stupid) XP cost.

If people think artificers are broken, it's not b/c of this. 

[Ikeren]

First off, the rules: In min/maxing a character, I always try and take a strict interpretation so the character holds up under the tests of even the most stringent DMs. As such, this build is limited to the Forgotten Realms and non-campaign specific official content.

Thirdly, the references: outside of the SRD, I am referencing Dungeon Master's Guide II, Unearthed Arcana, Dragon Magazine 357, and Player's Guide to Faerun. Plus BoED that you forgot to mention

Even the most leniant of DM's are sometimes leery of Dragon Magazine, famous for substantial amounts of poorly thought out material. Unearthed Arcana gets included more commonly but really amounts to a bunch of someone elses house rules, and BoED sometimes gets left out by virtue of the fact that it includes characters that likely don't exist in a violent D&D world.

Not to say you can't optimize using these; totally reasonable. But including all 3 together and then saying it'll hold up to even the most stringent DMs is pretty silly.

[Maat_Mons]

Since we're talking about breaking wealth-by-level, I'll provide the obligatory description of wall of salt. 

Wall of salt (Sandstorm 127) is much like wall of stone, except that it's 4th level, thicker, and made of salt instead of stone. 

The wall's surface area is one 5 foot by 5 foot square per level and it's thickness is 1 inch per level.  Salt weighs a little over 135.156 pounds per cubic foot, is worth 5 gp per pound, and is a trade good, meaning you don't have to sell it at half value. 

So, every time you cast this spell, the value of the salt created is equal to your caster level squared times 1,407.875 gp.  At 10th level, that's 140,787.5 gp per casting.  A 10th level sorcerer can cast the spell 8 times per day, for 1,126,300 gp per day. 

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Missing landlord.

[Maat_Mons]

Blessed of Boccob Wizard 10; alternate class feature that grants +1 free bonus caster level in item crafting (Dragon Magazine 357 p89)

Now, with an ECL of 10, I sacrifice the last level for item crafting so he's only a 9th level character.

You're factoring in a 10th level alternate class feature even though you're only 9th level? 

[Amechra]

I can do this without magic.

Aristocrat 1 (For the increased starting money)

Feats: Mercantile Background.

Buy Trade goods for 75% the value with your 300+ starting GP, then sell for full price. Repeat next week. Much more profitable than profit checks, especially if you are using an immortal race...

It balloons rather quickly. Not as fast as if you were to take Alliance Merchant levels, but close enough (linky to my thread in which I stat out Seto Kaiba.)

[skydragonknight]

FIRST POST OF NEW YEAR

...back to topic now

[bearofsmiting]

The CL increase would only let you qualify to make these items earlier or craft with a higher CL than you normally could.

The text quite clearly says the caster levels apply to cost.

If your DM allows that, it isn't that much of a stretch to say that any character can simply make perform, craft or profession checks.

This is true, however, there's a reason an artificer can enter a high-level game with more money than other characters, not being capped by the wealth by character level figures, and that's because they're assumed to have sacrificed xp for it. So, theoretically, they're not more wealthy because they have a drawback countering their advantage. Skill checks which can provide money would simply make a more wealthy character for entering the game without a corresponding sacrifice, so they would be capped by the character wealth by level figures.

In other words, the money they accumulated from skill checks would be considered part of their adventuring loot.

Even the most leniant of DM's are sometimes leery of Dragon Magazine, famous for substantial amounts of poorly thought out material. Unearthed Arcana gets included more commonly but really amounts to a bunch of someone elses house rules, and BoED sometimes gets left out by virtue of the fact that it includes characters that likely don't exist in a violent D&D world.

I have heard of DMs not liking Dragon Magazine content and somewhat less than that not liking Unearthed Arcana, though I haven't played with any, but all the material I used was official content. If a DM doesn't allow it, that's a house rule. All I'm concerned with is what is possible by a strict interpretation of the rules.

A 10th level sorcerer can cast the spell 8 times per day, for 1,126,300 gp per day.

Again true, however, at this point you begin to upset basic economic principles and possibly attract the attention of higher beings. The reason why item crafting doesn't fall in to this trap is because it's consuming from the same pool that it's producing.

Wealth for adventures is accumulated for one purpose, the acquisition of magic items. In your case, you are supplying salt and demanding magic items. In my case, I am supplying magic items and demanding magic items. If anything, my character would be making the economy healthier, because where he wants a couple items of high cost, he is supplying many items of low cost, making the market more liquid and healthier. For your character, even if he didn't attract an authority the salt market would be so flooded that it would become essentially worthless.

You're factoring in a 10th level alternate class feature even though you're only 9th level?

I wrote 10 to show you his effective character level in the wizard class, the alternate class feature is taken at first level.

I can do this without magic.

Aristocrat 1 (For the increased starting money)

Aristocrat is an NPC class.

[Amechra]

I seem to not be remembering a rule against taking NPC class levels...

Oh well, go ahead and take Leadership. Have a small army of the guys.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Dragonlance noble has same starting gold.

Not that it reallllly makes a difference.

[bearofsmiting]

I seem to not be remembering a rule against taking NPC class levels...

Oh well, go ahead and take Leadership. Have a small army of the guys.

How are you selling at full price?

[Amechra]

Trade goods have a rule specific to them that says that you buy and sell them for the listed price.

Obscure, but that might be closer to the fact that the grand majority of people don't pay an excessive amount of attention to mundane equipment.

[Maat_Mons]

The CL increase would only let you qualify to make these items earlier or craft with a higher CL than you normally could.

The text quite clearly says the caster levels apply to cost.

Actually, words of creation says:

The interesting question is, does it increase market price?  For items with prices that are explicitly a function of caster level, you've got a good argument that it does. 

All I'm concerned with is what is possible by a strict interpretation of the rules.

Is there a rule against mixing campaign settings? 

That would be a house rule.  Also, salt production in 2006 was 250 million tons.  If this sorcerer produced salt at full capacity for a year, he would produce about 0.0165% that amount.  He can sell the salt on multiple planes.  Your predictions seem overly dire. 

[Bastian]

See my handbook (in sig).

[Nachofan99]

Since this is related...:dons flame resistant cape and wizard hate.:

Is there any rules text anywhere that explicitly says whether crafted items count against wealth by level by their market price or by the crafting price?

Again, I'm looking for 100% explicit rules text that conclusively states the answer, either way.

[Maat_Mons]

There's text indicating items you craft count against starting wealth by crafting price.  I'm not aware of anything discussing items you craft and wealth-by-level in general. 

[Nachofan99]

There's text indicating items you craft count against starting wealth by crafting price.  I'm not aware of anything discussing items you craft and wealth-by-level in general. 

Do you have the source for that?

If you're referring to DMG pg. 199, the way I read it does not make it conclusive.  If it's another source, by all means, share it.  I'm curious.