Is this broken?

[green slime]

Well aboyd, the solution is to actually require the player to play through the consequences of all his actions, if he is so determined to do so.

From the SRD

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

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

Casting requires 1 round per 10 cubic feet (or 1 cubic foot) of material to be affected by the spell.
Material Component

The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.

So,

1) You need "the same material" (DM definition). Assuming he can purchase a vat to contain the liquid (or fabricate one from wood and iron) and furthermore, the glass vials to package the alchemist fire for sale. I would not allow a player to create 5000 seperate glass vials with one casting.

2) you are perfectly within in your rights to claim alchemist fire contains a mineral component, and therefore the amount is reduced to 9 cubic feet, rather than 90.

3) No individual shop is going to want large amounts of items. Most shops dealing in alchemical goods are going to be individual "mom & pop" stores, where the proprietors can guarantee their own merchandise, either by having made it themselves, or, by buying from reputable, guild-aligned manufacturers. Assume most stores will be suspicious of buying large quantities, and will want to check the quality, first. Most will outright refuse if the manufacturer is not guild-approved. Aquiring guild-approval requires years of apprenticeship. Off course there will always be minor black markets, but profit will be drastically reduced in a buyer beware situation. Assume perhaps at most each establishment is willing to purchase 1d10 -6 vials, with all negative results being treated as 0. This gives a average result of 1 per shop. Consider how many vials have been purchased and used in your own campaigns.

4) Absolutely no handwaving of the search for a place to sell all his alchemical fire. Teleport notwithstanding. Remember there is a fail chance for the 5th level version of the spell.

5) I wonder if the world has 5,000 different establishments selling alchemist fire, if they can be easily found, and if someone really wants to visit each and every one. I also wonder if there really isn't something more adventurous happening in the world, and what the other players feel about Mr Merchant chasing a slow buck while the world disintegrates around them.

 

[El Mahdi]

I agree with everything Green Slime said, which is why I think it's neither broken nor a problem, just not a very smart thing to do and probably not even possible to do the way he envisions it. (I think the risks will definitely outweigh the rewards - In other words, you won't be able to enjoy the fruits of your labors if you destroy yourself in the process - see below).

The purpose of the spell is to magically make items out of raw materials, like armor from raw steel (plus the leather for the straps, gold/silver for decorative inlay, etc., with a seperate fabricate spell for each material component). The caster must also have the necessary craft skill with enough skill points to successfully beat the DC required for the object, and the quality of the object, he's attempting.

Alchemists Fire is a very complicated compound, not simply one material. Steel is a complicated compound also, but once the materials needed are combined into steel, it can be made into almost any form. Your player wants to do the equivalent of taking iron, carbon, and other trace elements, and use the Fabricate spell to combine them to make raw steel. I'm pretty sure that's not the intent of the spell, nor allowed the way the spell is written.

Also, although maybe not exactly RAW (but it does make sense to me), Alchemists Fire is a very dangerous compound. Both dangerous to make and dangerous to handle. I think it's only fair that a critical failure on a Craft Check (rolling a natural 1) should have possibly serious consequences (read as A BIG BOOM!). I'd also make him roll a Craft skill check for each and every vial he's attempting to create (that's if you even let him use the spell to combine multiple products into one product). You mentioned he wanted to make 5000 vials at a time. I wonder what the odds are of rolling a 1 with 5000 rolls? I'm pretty certain at least a few of those rolls will be natural 1's, with the resulting BIG BOOMS.

Now, if he started out with Alchemists Fire (the one material as described in the spell) and wanted to use the Fabricate spell to put it in another form (such as a putty like solid - Medieval C4) then more power to him. Of course that means he's have to buy all of the expensive materials to make the Alchemists Fire, and make his Craft skill check for making the Alchemists Fire, and then use the Fabricate Spell to change it's form. Of course, that's pretty much what he needs to do anyways in order to accomplish what he wants. The only difference is, IMO, he needs to cast a seperate Fabricate Spell for each and every seperate ingredient he needs to make the Alchemists Fire. Doesn't sound very practical to me.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

I'd be inclined to disallow it. As green_slime said, fabricate is used to change the form of a material. Being an alchemical substance, alchemist's fire is the result of a change in fundamental composition of some other substance (or, most likely, substances).

At a minimum, I'd rule it a mineral sustance, and require Craft checks at a higher DC (just because making big quantities of stuff is a different process than making a single dose).

 

[irdeggman]

Another thing to look at is the Generating Towns section of the DMG (pg 137).

Each town has a GP limit (used for many things).

One of the things is that this limit is the highest proce of any single item available to buy in the town. {So having infinite gold is only as good as what you can buy with it right?}

Another thing is to use this to determine the maximum amount of cash available at any given moment in the town.

The formula for this is: 1/2 the gp limit times 1/10 the town's polulation.

Pg 140 talks about the laws of supply and demand.

So you need to determine the number of towns available and the size of each one.

Also check pg 142 for possible restrictions that each town might have (say against teleportation spells in order to prevent any assasination attemts at the paranoid power monger of the city).

Basically if you are opening up this can of worms then you need to determine the potential "markets" and what restrictions exist - don't forget having differing types of currency (pg 140 moneychangers typically charge 1/10 to change your money).

So many ways of inserting limits to prevent abuse by players, but they all take time and attention by the DM.

 

[Veril]

It's very simple, what he is trying to do simply does not work for a multitude of reasons, any of which is sufficient to make it fail.
Here is the writeup of Fabricate:

You convert material of one sort into a product that is of the same material. Creatures or magic items cannot be created or transmuted by the fabricate spell. The quality of items made by this spell is commensurate with the quality of material used as the basis for the new fabrication. If you work with a mineral, the target is reduced to 1 cubic foot per level instead of 10 cubic feet.
You must make an appropriate Craft check to fabricate articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship.
Casting requires 1 round per 10 cubic feet (or 1 cubic foot) of material to be affected by the spell.
Material Component: The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.

"convert metarial of one sort into a product that is of the same material." This is the critical sentance in the whole thing.
This means you convert "wood" to "planks". You convert "iron" to "sword".

You *can* convert wood to a bridge, but of course the bridge is entirly wooden, there are no screws or nails in it made of of iron, it is entirely constructed of wood. You would need to mak apropriate craft checks for this, probably more than one IMO.

You CAN convert coal into diamond. To produce a 100gp diamond needs 100gp of carbon - see the last sentance about material components. However a character in a mediaval campaign would NOT know that carbon -> diamond and you can dissalow this.

Here's how you stop the player from destroying the underlying fabric of your campaign, all legitimate and within the rules IMO. Each of the methods outlined below is independent of the others.

1) Alchemists Fire is not simply "oil". It also includes stuff that makes it stick to people. It also bursts into flames on exposure to air so it's probably got some naptha in it. On this basis Alchemists Fire is a complex material composed of many different substances blended together. Since it's not one material into another it cannot be made with fabricate.

2) Acid, Alchemist’s fire, smokestick, tindertwig, Antitoxin, sunrod, tanglefoot bag thunderstone can only be created by spellcasters as noted under the Craft skill. This implies that some magic is involved in the creation of these items. This implies that to some extent these items could be said to be magic. (if only those who wield magic can make it then that's a magic item). Therefore the Alchemists Fire cannot be made with fabricate as fabricate cannot make magic items.

3) With fabricate you make "a product" that is a singular reference. So at most with one casting of the spell you could make one dose of alchemists fire. That puts a cap on what can be created, based on the number of fifth level spells that the character can cast per day

4) With fabricate you must still have the correct raw materials - these simply are not available in the quantities that the player is imagining they are available in. By restricting the amount of raw materials available you can control how much he can make. The craft skill notes that only in cities can you buy what is available and that you must have an alchemists lab and be a spell caster.

5) fabricate says you need a craft skill roll. Now lets look up the craft skill.
"you must make an appropriate Craft check when using the spell to make articles requiring a high degree of craftsmanship."
I think it's pretty clear that you must make a skill check to make alchemists fire Alchemists Fire is DC20, 20gp for a single dose.
It's clear that he is attempting to make "progress by the day" by casting the spell, so he accumulates value using the per day rules.
I assume he has an effective skill of 22 in alchemy at 9th level (13 points,
+4 from int, +2 from lab +3 from feat). Assuming he gets an average result of 11 on the dice, that's a skill check of 33.
33 (skill check) * 20 (DC) = 660. This is the numbe of Copper Pieces progress made towards creating alchecmist fire from the materials. 660cp = 6.6 gp. That's ALMOST one third of the way to succeed. The raw materials have been used up (cost 20/3gp) and the alchemists fire has not yet been created. You should allow him to cast a further THREE fabricate spells to complete the process.
6.6 + 6.6 + 6.6 = 19.8 - so 3 spells isn't enough.
This shows that the likely production rate is limited to one flask per four
castings of fifth level spells. Using the above rules, he pays one thirs of the cost - for raw materials, casts 4 fifth level spells and produces one alchemists fire. That's exactly what the rules support, the benefit of using 4 fifth level spells is that he didn't have to spend time doing it and he can do other things.

6) It doesn't matter how much you produce, there simply isn't the market to sell 100's of flasks of alchemists fire. It's not a matter of "market glut" there aren't 100's of people wanting to buy it. Where and how is he selling all of this?
Make the player use the rules in order to sell all this Alchemists Fire in
massive quantitles. This is a "Profession: Merchant" check. It takes him a week to do this, make a skill check. You gain GP equal to 1/2 your check in that week. Owning a shop to sell in, buying the right to buy/sell
in town, paying taxes etc are all rolled into this one dice roll. And he cannot go adventuring that week, he is busy.

7) Selling in the sorts of quantities he is outlining will draw the ire of the
Alchemists Guild. They almost certainly have an patent of exclusivity with the city council/king etc to be able to buy/sell alchemical items. This is how medieval guilds operated.
The guild sends someone round and tells him to stop - explaining that they have the exclusive rights. Decide how you want to proceeded from here.
7a) he is clearly breaking the law of the city/kingdom, set the law on him, have him arrested, charged, fined, magic items confiscated etc. The guild is willing to drop charges in return for a payment of XX,000gp and becoming a guild member and obeying the laws of the guild.
7b) The guild trys to have him killed. Approach his comrades, tell them of
this wizard transgressing their laws etc. Offer them XX,000gp to kill him and make sure he does not get rezzed etc.
7c) The guild pays the assassins guild to kill him and his comrades. Game on!

 

[green slime]

Veril, I think most swords would be made from steel, not iron. Steel is an alloy of Iron, Carbon and other metals. What exactly 'cold iron' is, I have no idea.

 

[Thanee]

Iron, Cold: This iron, mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures, is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties.

I don't think 'cold iron' exists in real-life... it's mythic, like adamantine or mithril.

Bye
Thanee

 

[El Mahdi]

I believe "Cold Iron" means Cold "Forged" Iron. If I'm correct, that means Iron that is simply hammered into shape, not heated and hammered or melted and poured into a die. I think this can be done with Iron because it's relatively malleable by itself. Steel, however, isn't malleable enough to do this.

 

[irdeggman]

I believe "Cold Iron" means Cold "Forged" Iron. If I'm correct, that means Iron that is simply hammered into shape, not heated and hammered or melted and poured into a die. I think this can be done with Iron because it's relatively malleable by itself. Steel, however, isn't malleable enough to do this.

Nope.

Thanee has it right.

It is a special material and not a manufacturing process (in 3.5 that is).

The same with Alchemical Silver - it is not silver plating. Silver plating has no weapon effect against DR/alchemical silver.

 

[El Mahdi]

Nope.

Thanee has it right.

It is a special material and not a manufacturing process (in 3.5 that is).

The same with Alchemical Silver - it is not silver plating. Silver plating has no weapon effect against DR/alchemical silver.

Uhmm, Thanee said "I don't think 'cold iron' exists in real-life...".

Cold Iron does exist in real life, it's called cold forged iron.

It's very rare, and mostly impractical. Which is why Iron (and also Aluminum) is almost always forged either Hot or Warm (emphasis on the almost always).

Forging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But you are right that in D&D, it's an entirely different animal.

None of which, of course, has anything to do with the OP. So, I'll stop sidetracking the thread now.