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Skulan 12-14-04, 12:52 PM

While paging through the scroll section of the DMG, I noticed a curious thing. A 2nd level arcane spell costs 150 gold. A wizard could craft one at a cost of 75 gold and one XP, and sell it off for 75 gold. Obviously not worth it. The whole system is designed to prevent PCs from using item crafting as an infinite money loop, trading in minor amounts of XP for wealth. With that in mind, here's a money loop, which they actually point out right in the text. Tasha's Hideous Laughter is a 1st level bard spell. As such, a bard can scribe it for a cost of 25 gold and 2 XP. However, the spell is a 2nd level sorcerer/wizard spell, and thus a scroll of it has market price of 150 gold. So, unless I'm missing something, a Bard could theoretically scribe the scroll at a cost of 25 gold and 2 XP, and sell it off for 75 gold, essentially trading in 2 XP for 50 gold. I've checked the rules, but so far I haven't found any mention of selling bardic scrolls based on their bard caster level, and not the pricing chart. So if that is indeed the case, a 2nd level bard could wait until he had 2000 XP (halfway to third level), and then spend 1000 of it on crafting scrolls. At 25 gold per 1 XP spent, he'd gain 25,000 gp, which would buy him a very nice cloak of resistance +5. I don't have any special build to use with this, nor have I bothered much with the potential drawbacks (flooding the market with Tasha's Hideous Laughter scrolls, explaining to the shopkeepers why the scrolls are slightly less powerful than a spell with a minimum caster level of 3 should be, and general DM disapproval). Most of the problems can be dealt with by a sufficiently charismatic bard (or player, in the case of an angry DM). But I thought I'd throw the trick out, in case anyone else can see a potential use for it. I apologize if this has been thought of already. I did a search for such a trick, but didn't turn up anything, so I thought I'd add it to the CO toolbox. Refute, rejoice, use, or ban as you see fit. -Skulan