Author Topic: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?  (Read 31045 times)

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Catty Nebulart

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How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« on: June 18, 2010, 01:36:17 AM »
I'm putting together a campaign and the BBEG is a lawful evil thrallherd.

I already have some ideas on how the extra fodder is going to be abused since it doesn't affect the leadership score and the people get replaced within 24 hours. But I'm no-where near as creative as some of the CO people here so I'm fishing for ideas.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Amechra

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2010, 03:53:59 AM »
Alright, here are a couple:
-Use them as building materials. Not cheap labor, building material.
-You know the Souls as Power section of the BoVD? Yeh, that.
-Crowd surf everywhere.
-Get him a full-blown Wardancer and some class with high BAB, and use Inspire Legion.
-Shitloads of Aid Anothers
-I wonder what a Thrall Hivemind would look like...

The possibilities are endless.
[spoiler]Fighter: "I can kill a guy in one turn."
Cleric: "I can kill a guy in half a turn."
Wizard: "I can kill a guy before my turn."
Bard: "I can get three idiots to kill guys for me."

On a strange note, would anyone be put out if we had a post about people or events we can spare a thought for, or if its within their creed, a prayer for? Just a random thought, but ... hells I wouldn't have known about either Archangels daughter or Saeomons niece if I didn't happen to be on these threads.
Sounds fine to me.
probably over on "Off-topic".
might want to put a little disclaimer in the first post.

This is the Min/Max board. We should be able to figure out a way to optimize the POWER OF PRAYER(TM) that doesn't involve "Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu".
[/spoiler]

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veekie

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2010, 08:30:08 AM »
-Crowd surf everywhere.
Hmm, how fast can you go with this...
The mind transcends the body.
It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

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I can barely read mine.

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Littha

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2010, 09:03:26 AM »
Technically infinite speed as passing an object is a free action.

that assumes you just get passed between the thralls rather than moving forward.

PhaedrusXY

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2010, 12:01:01 PM »
Here you go. http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=3389.msg126021#msg126021

Free XP, free powers known, free power points, free fodder. Metafaculty and Feat Leech really open up your possibilities...
[spoiler]
A couple of water benders, a dike, a flaming arrow, and a few barrels of blasting jelly?

Sounds like the makings of a gay porn film.
...thanks
[/spoiler]

archangel.arcanis

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #5 on: June 18, 2010, 12:06:12 PM »
Remember to make your 2 thralls classes that can buff large numbers of people. I am doing the same thing in my current campaign and one of the thralls is a Crusader with the 9th level White Raven ability to allow a metric shit ton of people to all make charge attacks at once and gain bonuses from it. I also had the BBEG enter via telepath and hijack the body of the Tarrasque via true mind switch, but i'm a bastard like that.
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Nunkuruji

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #6 on: June 18, 2010, 12:18:16 PM »
A little more roundabout,

Tainted Sorcerer / Cerebremancer

Blood Component to pay material costs.

Mixster

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2010, 12:55:36 PM »
Produce a lot of liquid pain. (BoVD)
Monks are pretty much the best designed class ever.

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Endarire

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2010, 04:37:11 PM »
Have all your thralls and believers start with the feat Mercantile Background.  That's +300G per minion!
Hood - My first answer to all your build questions; past, present, and future.

Speaking of which:
Don't even need TO for this.  Any decent Hood build, especially one with Celerity, one-rounds [Azathoth, the most powerful greater deity from d20 Cthulu].
Does it bug anyone else that we've reached the point where characters who can obliterate a greater deity in one round are considered "decent?"

Catty Nebulart

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #9 on: June 19, 2010, 01:31:44 AM »
Some interesting suggestions, but I was looking for something larger scale and more world breaking. Merly infinite wishes are not going to enable you to brush aside pantheons as a minor inconvenience to be slaughtered out of hand.

Also sacrificing your own believers for liquid pain and for blood is silly when there are plenty of people no-one will miss, or even better if you can take over your own country and get applauded for being tough on crime and doing something about the homelessness problem.

Believers make for the ultimate conspiracy fodder, perfectly loyal in case you need deniable ops or fanatic assassins. There is also no worry about infiltration as long as you stick to believers, though mind-reading and similar measures still risk discovery. And suggested mitigating process for these problems?

What i currently envision is an evil mega-corp with good publicity running the LE mendicant scheme of free healing for lots of reasons, one of which is undercutting the financial power of the temples, an other is to get ambrosia for crafting (we don't need no painkillers, we have nipple clamps... surgery is such a joy.).
Along side that run a conspiracy, using money and influence to get believers into positions like interior minister, or even king, since dealing with the paperwork yourself is far too much trouble.

If you had 10'000 years and 3 wishes a day as well as hundreds of expendable loyal minions what would you do? Especially if you knew that the gods will likely oppose your master plan, so you need to be able to kill a few dozen as an example so you don't need to worry about interference from them while dealing with more important matters.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

jojolagger

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #10 on: June 19, 2010, 02:08:51 AM »
If you had 10'000 years and 3 wishes a day as well as hundreds of expendable loyal minions what would you do? Especially if you knew that the gods will likely oppose your master plan, so you need to be able to kill a few dozen as an example so you don't need to worry about interference from them while dealing with more important matters.
I'd use the wishes to fund each follower to start there own shop business.
11 minions per shop can hit 25 with aid another. 10000 gp, abusing the upgrade mechanic, will quickly make every shop self-sufficient.
How many minions do you have? I'll crunch the numbers. :D
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In other words, he thinks there's a "correct" way to play D&D.  *sigh*
There is: Kill shit and loot the corpse!
When you use a tool the way it was designed for -- its intended function -- then it will work very well for you.

But it's not the tool's fault if you use it for something else and you fail utterly, such as trying to eat cereal with a butterknife, pounding nails with a screwdriver, blogging to voice your political opinions, and brushing your teeth with a hammer.
[/spoiler]

Amechra

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #11 on: June 19, 2010, 06:55:59 PM »
Some interesting suggestions, but I was looking for something larger scale and more world breaking. Merly infinite wishes are not going to enable you to brush aside pantheons as a minor inconvenience to be slaughtered out of hand.

Also sacrificing your own believers for liquid pain and for blood is silly when there are plenty of people no-one will miss, or even better if you can take over your own country and get applauded for being tough on crime and doing something about the homelessness problem.

Believers make for the ultimate conspiracy fodder, perfectly loyal in case you need deniable ops or fanatic assassins. There is also no worry about infiltration as long as you stick to believers, though mind-reading and similar measures still risk discovery. And suggested mitigating process for these problems?

What i currently envision is an evil mega-corp with good publicity running the LE mendicant scheme of free healing for lots of reasons, one of which is undercutting the financial power of the temples, an other is to get ambrosia for crafting (we don't need no painkillers, we have nipple clamps... surgery is such a joy.).
Along side that run a conspiracy, using money and influence to get believers into positions like interior minister, or even king, since dealing with the paperwork yourself is far too much trouble.

If you had 10'000 years and 3 wishes a day as well as hundreds of expendable loyal minions what would you do? Especially if you knew that the gods will likely oppose your master plan, so you need to be able to kill a few dozen as an example so you don't need to worry about interference from them while dealing with more important matters.

Ooooh, I thought you meant something sane. :D

In which case, the gloves come off!

I submit transforming the thralls into a hivemind. They would still be under his control, and wouldn't count as thralls anymore.

Depending on how this is done, you could have a world-spanning hivemind, which would have an ECL of 9754, let's say (just a guess, anyway.). Grab the feat Reserves of Strength and smack those pitiful mortal armies with 4879 level draining missiles from a single casting of Magic Missile, or Shapechange into whatever you want, or trigger that old Arcane Supernova Bomb trick, which can cast (at the very least) infinite 1st and 2nd level spells with one action.

In other words, you rape the universe.

Alternatively, form the hivemind, and have a thrall that can use Psychic Reformation. You can turn your pet superorganism into whatever build you want, thanks to the class levels in [Whatever] that the thralls have.

Have you ever read about that build that created the Emerald Horde, which where practically invulnerable trolls? You can make them through a hivemind with epic levels.

Wait a second, epic levels? Epic Level Casting is all I'm going to say.

And he can still crowdsurf for style points.



Note: if hiveminds require below a certain intelligence to create, you can always use affinity field+something that creates intelligence damage.
[spoiler]Fighter: "I can kill a guy in one turn."
Cleric: "I can kill a guy in half a turn."
Wizard: "I can kill a guy before my turn."
Bard: "I can get three idiots to kill guys for me."

On a strange note, would anyone be put out if we had a post about people or events we can spare a thought for, or if its within their creed, a prayer for? Just a random thought, but ... hells I wouldn't have known about either Archangels daughter or Saeomons niece if I didn't happen to be on these threads.
Sounds fine to me.
probably over on "Off-topic".
might want to put a little disclaimer in the first post.

This is the Min/Max board. We should be able to figure out a way to optimize the POWER OF PRAYER(TM) that doesn't involve "Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu".
[/spoiler]

My final project for my film independent study course. It could do with a watching and critiquing

Catty Nebulart

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #12 on: June 19, 2010, 10:55:18 PM »
Ooooh, I thought you meant something sane. :D

Then why would I have asked here? This is for a game where I intend to give the PC's divine rank, so the challenge should match that.

In which case, the gloves come off!
...
In other words, you rape the universe.

Now we are getting somewhere. Which book is the hivemind from?

Also wouldn't that be kind of unsubtle and leave you open to a squad of deities dropping in on you to stop you? Still it makes for a good backup plan for when the primary plan fails.

Wait a second, epic levels? Epic Level Casting is all I'm going to say.

Epic casting faces some restrictions in this world and I would like the BBEG to work under the same restrictions as the PC's.

Quote
I'd use the wishes to fund each follower to start there own shop business.
11 minions per shop can hit 25 with aid another. 10000 gp, abusing the upgrade mechanic, will quickly make every shop self-sufficient.

As for number of believers I would say around 50'000 first level believers, but more money really doesn't help the BBEG with it's goals. The BBEG has a megacorp and if it can be had at any price the BBEG can have it. A good number of the believers are tied up in keeping it running, but the number of employees number in the tens of millions.

What is the limiting resource is the economic output of the material plane and the number of trusted employees (aka, believers). Think of a richer Lex Luthor who also happens to be an epic psion and immortal.

The essential problem the BBEG is faced with is that it has to get rid of the gods or render them irrelevant somehow without giving them a chance to retreat to their fortress plane, whose planar traits can be summed up as 'lol, you lose'.
Keeping the gods alive so they can help with step 3 of the plan, would be a bonus, it's just step 2 they would object to.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

jojolagger

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #13 on: June 20, 2010, 12:44:30 AM »
Have the highest level thrall be a wizard with eschew materials and Ice assassin.
Or just Hire NPC's at insane levels to kill the gods.
Say a level 9001 warrior for 2700.3 gp per day.
Countdown to Zombie Apocalypse 97
When you see this, copy it into your sig and -1
:lovefirefox
Quotes [spoiler]
In other words, he thinks there's a "correct" way to play D&D.  *sigh*
There is: Kill shit and loot the corpse!
When you use a tool the way it was designed for -- its intended function -- then it will work very well for you.

But it's not the tool's fault if you use it for something else and you fail utterly, such as trying to eat cereal with a butterknife, pounding nails with a screwdriver, blogging to voice your political opinions, and brushing your teeth with a hammer.
[/spoiler]

PhaedrusXY

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #14 on: June 20, 2010, 12:50:41 AM »
Gods can be killed. With that kind of resources, most of them would be trivial to defeat in a straight-up fight. There are a few that have SDAs that make them either unkillable or able to kill any mortal instantly with no save, though. So you should look at how to make yourself safe from those, or at least gain them as allies.
[spoiler]
A couple of water benders, a dike, a flaming arrow, and a few barrels of blasting jelly?

Sounds like the makings of a gay porn film.
...thanks
[/spoiler]

jojolagger

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #15 on: June 20, 2010, 12:56:36 AM »
Gods can be killed. With that kind of resources, most of them would be trivial to defeat in a straight-up fight. There are a few that have SDAs that make them either unkillable or able to kill any mortal instantly with no save, though. So you should look at how to make yourself safe from those, or at least gain them as allies.
As I said before, Ice assassin and eschew materials.
Countdown to Zombie Apocalypse 97
When you see this, copy it into your sig and -1
:lovefirefox
Quotes [spoiler]
In other words, he thinks there's a "correct" way to play D&D.  *sigh*
There is: Kill shit and loot the corpse!
When you use a tool the way it was designed for -- its intended function -- then it will work very well for you.

But it's not the tool's fault if you use it for something else and you fail utterly, such as trying to eat cereal with a butterknife, pounding nails with a screwdriver, blogging to voice your political opinions, and brushing your teeth with a hammer.
[/spoiler]

Amechra

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #16 on: June 20, 2010, 01:00:28 AM »
Hiveminds are from the Book of Vile Darkness. They get massive sorc casting, and a shitload of feats.

Ooooh, I thought you meant something sane. :D

Then why would I have asked here? This is for a game where I intend to give the PC's divine rank, so the challenge should match that.

In which case, the gloves come off!
...
In other words, you rape the universe.

Now we are getting somewhere. Which book is the hivemind from?

Also wouldn't that be kind of unsubtle and leave you open to a squad of deities dropping in on you to stop you? Still it makes for a good backup plan for when the primary plan fails.

Wait a second, epic levels? Epic Level Casting is all I'm going to say.

Epic casting faces some restrictions in this world and I would like the BBEG to work under the same restrictions as the PC's.

Quote
I'd use the wishes to fund each follower to start there own shop business.
11 minions per shop can hit 25 with aid another. 10000 gp, abusing the upgrade mechanic, will quickly make every shop self-sufficient.

As for number of believers I would say around 50'000 first level believers, but more money really doesn't help the BBEG with it's goals. The BBEG has a megacorp and if it can be had at any price the BBEG can have it. A good number of the believers are tied up in keeping it running, but the number of employees number in the tens of millions.

What is the limiting resource is the economic output of the material plane and the number of trusted employees (aka, believers). Think of a richer Lex Luthor who also happens to be an epic psion and immortal.

The essential problem the BBEG is faced with is that it has to get rid of the gods or render them irrelevant somehow without giving them a chance to retreat to their fortress plane, whose planar traits can be summed up as 'lol, you lose'.
Keeping the gods alive so they can help with step 3 of the plan, would be a bonus, it's just step 2 they would object to.

Have you ever read the Terminator thread? You know, the on where it creates an unnoticeable temporal motion? Have your hive mind come from the future.

Also, isn't there some planar feature that lets you perpetuate a spell effect for an insanely long amount of time? With said hivemind, Genesis a plane that has that trait, go in, cast Time Stop, and laugh at the gods, because they can't get in.

Also, if you don't have Book of Vile Darkness, see if you can get the stuff to do the Omniscifier. Having a Pun Pun level bein at your beck and call is super nice, and you can have more than one of them.

The gods won't know what hit them.
[spoiler]Fighter: "I can kill a guy in one turn."
Cleric: "I can kill a guy in half a turn."
Wizard: "I can kill a guy before my turn."
Bard: "I can get three idiots to kill guys for me."

On a strange note, would anyone be put out if we had a post about people or events we can spare a thought for, or if its within their creed, a prayer for? Just a random thought, but ... hells I wouldn't have known about either Archangels daughter or Saeomons niece if I didn't happen to be on these threads.
Sounds fine to me.
probably over on "Off-topic".
might want to put a little disclaimer in the first post.

This is the Min/Max board. We should be able to figure out a way to optimize the POWER OF PRAYER(TM) that doesn't involve "Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu".
[/spoiler]

My final project for my film independent study course. It could do with a watching and critiquing

CustosTheFluffy

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #17 on: June 20, 2010, 07:25:44 PM »
If you had 10'000 years and 3 wishes a day as well as hundreds of expendable loyal minions what would you do? Especially if you knew that the gods will likely oppose your master plan, so you need to be able to kill a few dozen as an example so you don't need to worry about interference from them while dealing with more important matters.
I'd use the wishes to fund each follower to start there own shop business.
11 minions per shop can hit 25 with aid another. 10000 gp, abusing the upgrade mechanic, will quickly make every shop self-sufficient.
How many minions do you have? I'll crunch the numbers. :D

56,000 Orcs

Azrael

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #18 on: June 21, 2010, 04:58:37 PM »
If you are a DM (I can't imagine a player actually wanting to deal with this), and want to create a thrallherd-based villiage-large city...I present you with this.


Village of the Thralls

psion 10, thrallherd 10

2 thralls

psion 7, thrallherd 10
any level 17 char

2 thralls

psion 6, thrallherd 10
any level 16 char

2 thralls

psion 5 thrallherd 10
any level 15 char

2 thralls

any level 14 char
any level 14 char


Not to mention...

540 1st level chars
52 2nd level chars
28 3rd level chars
16 4th level chars
8 5th level chars
8 6th level chars

Total = 661 Characters; the the size of a Villiage.



Or, if you want to maximize followers instead of free (unique/non-psion) high level characters...


City of Thralls

psion 10, thrallherd 10

2 thralls

psion 7, thrallherd 10
psion 7, thrallherd 10

4 thralls

psion 6, thrallherd 10
psion 6, thrallherd 10
psion 6, thrallherd 10
psion 6, thrallherd 10

8 thralls

psion 5, thrallherd 10
psion 5, thrallherd 10
psion 5, thrallherd 10
psion 5, thrallherd 10
psion 5, thrallherd 10
psion 5, thrallherd 10
psion 5, thrallherd 10
psion 5, thrallherd 10

16 thralls

psion 5, thrallherd 9 x 16 (assumed min cha of 12)

16 thralls

psion 5, thrallherd 8 x 16 (assumed min cha of 16)

16 thralls

psion 5, thrallherd 7 x 16 (assumed  min cha of 20)

16 thralls

psion 5, thrallherd 6 x 16 (assumed min cha of 24)

16 thralls 79

any 10th level character x 16 (I could just keep going down the line with a thrallherd on a 1:1 ratio but that might get a bit too insane, besides, I think it would be more advantageous to have sixteen 10th level characters other than psions.)

10,665 1st level chars
1,027 2nd level chars
553 3rd level chars
316 4th level chars
158 5th level chars
158 6th level chars

Total = 12,972 characters; the size of a large city. :D




Admittedly, you could probably get up to metropolis level, but I would rather have those 16 unique 10th level characters.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2010, 06:32:36 PM by Azrael »

Felix Underwood

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Re: How to (ab)use Thrallherd for fun and profit?
« Reply #19 on: June 22, 2010, 05:59:24 PM »
I've never been a big fan of cascading Leadership/Thrallherd pyramids.  It just doesn't seem right to me to have someone that follows you be a leader in their own right.  ...I know, I know, chain-of-command.  But to me, that's flavor-text that can be handled outside of the feat system.

Here's the ironic part though:  I have absolutely no problem with Dorjes of Fusion and Staves of Simulacrum.  Fuse with as many thralls and believers as you can.  Shoot for the perfect mix of class features, ability scores, racial modifiers, HP Sums, PP Sums, etc... then Simulacrum your bad-arsed fused-self until you pass out from extreme evilgasm.

Then all of the Simulacrums spread out and attract Believers and a Thrall for themselves... to spread the worship of you of course.


But the number of people doesn't seem to matter to Catty Nebulart (see the megacorp comment).

I'd use them to choke out the worship of your competitors.  Catty Nebulart, you're the DM, right?  If so, then you get to define how Gods get their power.  You could roll with the paradigm where Gods rely on prayer and worship.  Rip the foundation out from under them.

I think More money actually can help you.  Use it to buy up more items (either more Fusion / Simulacrum outright or for an Artificer Thrall to use retain essence on).

Does your campaign allow for the multiverse?  The existence of other material planes would remove your limiting factor of the Prime Material Plane.  Open your megacorp up to interplanar trading.