I have read the rules for managing a business.  They provide a way to maintain a stable lifestyle between adventures, not quickly amass a fortune.  Telling someone that the answer they're looking for is not available is not the same as not contributing.

Quote from EightPackKilla >>

Artifice.

dont just Rob the banks...

rob them. Then sell them security to not be robbed again.

 

basically. ADT’s business model.

 i am pretty shure my devil lawyer did something similar to this where he scammed someone with distort value and them sold to them an wand of detect magic or something similar to avoid getting scammed in exchange for his soul

Quote from LeviRocks >>

Be a changeling. Kill someone rich. Look like them.

 great, but you cannot duplicate somebody's mind so to make it as belivable as possible get your changeling friends to duplicate all their loved ones so that they dont notice that you are actiually a changeling

Quote from VaivoraGrimlock >>

 

 

Quote from Greenstone_Walker >>

Quote from VaivoraGrimlock >>

Be a character with high charisma and start decieving and persuading people into buying crap that you don't need, literaly get a rock and convice people that it has magical powers, minor illusion a spark or something and sell it to them for some gold. Also go into a shop steal something, use command or charm person to make them go in the back of the shop, steal some crap and run, set up a bazaar in the next town over and sell the items you stole, while selling get your roage friend to use his slight of hand thieving abilities and pick pocket the customers. At a higher level i would use dominate person and have some rich bloke write me into his will, aferwards using  alter self turn into one of his maids/wife/daughter/anyone clos to him, and kill him in his sleep or just plainly kill him anywhere, then just use invisibility and hide, then collect your fortune.

At this point you are now a villain. The next D&D game will be a bunch of player characters trying to stop you. :-)

 

 Hahaha, true😈

 well i mean playing as the villain is an pretty appealing concept, i mean most murderhobo parties are basically the villains anyways so why not just violate everyone for a quick buck?

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

I have read the rules for managing a business.  They provide a way to maintain a stable lifestyle between adventures, not quickly amass a fortune.  Telling someone that the answer they're looking for is not available is not the same as not contributing.

 yeah there are no rules in game for "selling your services as an spellcaster" so yes i will need to some extent roleplay that, but at the same time the game has rules for buying spellcasing services and for selling magical items, so it could work. Yes an dungeon master could decide that there are no banks in this universe to steal, or yes the DM could say that nobody wants to purchase the abillity to create sturdy stone walls or quadruple the crop yield this year, but the dungeon master would be incredebly dishonest if he said so, of course there is going to be somebody who wants to buy your services, of course there is somebody wealthy to rob and of course more wealth can always be in the line.

Furthermore these exploits will hardly negate the need for adventures. Yes my character is absolutely loaded with cash, but the thing about spellcasters is you often want more, planar binding can cost thousands of gold pieces, as can create undead, and so on top of your very lucrative business is surely whould not hurt to take on a few quests from time to time in order to steal treasure and collect lucrative rewards. Furthermore as i said, we need this gold for a reason, and futhering those goals (usually creating an army of some kind to further some kind of goal, or forging mighty magical items) will serve as great ploot hooks for adventure, and simply having all of this money (wich you will not, again spellcasting is a gosh darn toll on your personal economy and you are doing this for a reason, your coffers will for the most part be empty) can also lead to plot hooks as thieves try to steal away all of your wealth, or as powerful factions try to get you on their side.

these exploits are just as much part of the world and part of the story as you make them. that is it

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

I am not telling you how to play.  I am telling you that what you want is not something that is supported by the rules because the game is not about accumulating wealth via managing a business. 

 I'm confused. If you're not telling me how to play, what were you saying here?

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

To be honest?  The game Dungeons & Dragons, not Stardew Valley; it's is about fighting monsters and looting treasure, it's not supposed to be a medieval economics simulator.  What you're doing is outside the scope of the rules.  If you want to make a lot of money in a hurry the GM should be providing more methods of doing so, either by adventuring or via roleplaying options.

 It is within the scope of the rules, a major part of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is running a tavern, if the players want to.

How is it not supported in the rules to make money besides adventuring? There are prices for cheese, and goats, and all of that stuff. Goats can be milked. Cheese can be made out of milk. You can then sell the cheese for a profit. There are rules for how to make money.

Artificers make magic items, and can make a large profit by selling them? Is that not supported by the rules either?

I was asking for help. If you don't want to help, don't comment. If you don't want to tell me how to play the game, why post about what D&D is supposed to be? That is telling me how to play the game. 

I am very aware of what D&D is about, and what the rules allow. There are rules that can be exploited that let you make money, I want some ideas.

Please, don't reply to this. I don't want to derail the thread anymore, just stop making excuses. If you want to reply, do it in a PM, but not here.

not to sound like an self-advertising broken record player, but did you read my response on how to grow your empire?

Quote from ArtificeMeal >>

not to sound like an self-advertising broken record player, but did you read my response on how to grow your empire?

 Yeah, I did. Thanks.

Quote from ArtificeMeal >>

also dude, hire or become a bard, cast plant growth (yeah it works with druids too but nobody cares about those), that will help increase lumber, grass and bread production, the bread and hay can be turned to produce to create more cheese and more butter.

if you have the right spellcaster and your population does not object to doing so, using animate dead you can turn the recently diseased soldiers or farmers into more soldiers and farmers to increase the potential labour force, also if you get the invocation of never ever sleep ever again, kill an humanoid and enslave its spectre to do physical labour and tasks too dangerous for your population

the spell stone wall can permanently create stone walls (if you concentrate for 10 minutes) that can prevent your citizens from escape and can protect your empire from invasion

love potions to increase the population perhaps?

and forget what i said about druids earlier, if you can you should contact an druid as an state spellcaster and have druidic magic be part of the culture, since in doing so you can have your entire population persist of nothing but goodberries and use speak with animals and awaken to better communicate with your little money making machines that are cows and goats, so that you can know if some of them are dying soon or if they are sick or for them to explain why exactly they are so spooked, it can be a wise investment and it might pay of to be on the right side of nature (you cannot both do this and also animate dead, they are mutually exclusive for obvious forgotten realms reasons).

 

 I don't want to multiclass to bard. We don't have a local druid, just some priests. I could try to find a druid in a nearby settlement.

We don't have anyone with Animate Dead. Once I get to level 6, with the Cursed Specter feature from the Hexblade, I could get some labor out of invaders/criminals that need execution.

We currently have persuaded some Rock Gnomes to live under our city, giving us the stone that they collect to build houses, maybe could use it for a wall. I'm only level 2, so I can't cast any spells above 1st level yet.

I don't want to use love potions like that, and I don't have them. This seems sooo wrong.

Do you have a map of Faerun on you? I don't need it, just want to show you where we are. You see that dot near the northern Anauroch desert? The one that says Ascore? We're there. 

Quote from Bhuraelea >>

No they are not, circle of spores has a lvl 5 or 6 feature that allows you create a zombie slave.

 well yes, but the circle of spores are an very niche sect of the normal druidic religion, and their views on undead differ quite drastically from the views of other druids. Most druids are champions of the natural order and see undead as abominations that should not be allowed to exist, weras the spores druid sees undeath more as an companion to life and death, one that may coexist between the two. The spores druid still seek to uphold the balance and the natural cycle of life and death and so they will still try to oppose liches who try to seek immortality or undead who seek to replace life with undeath, this is why the undead servant created by them only has 1 hit point, it is meant so serve the living for a brief time, then return to the dead, it is not meant to persist for long, they too get animate dead but their undead are not as powerful as the undead created by an wizard who studies necromancy, becuase they seek not to master undeath, just like how they dont seek to master or control nature, they see themselves as extensions of it, and so too does the spore druid see itself as an extension of life and theat.

so TLDR, normal druid: no, they hate undead and will destroy on sight; spore druid: it is complicated, also they are from guildmasters guide to ravnica so they may or may not not even exist at all in faurn.

This is a scam my high charisma character keeps rolling well enough while negotiating to not need but I'm excited to try sometime. 1) Write a contract strongly in my favor (trade, adventure, guild, whatever...). 2) Use Illusory Script to make the terms appear in the other party's favor. 2b) Disguise the illusion with Nystul's Magic Aura if paranoid. 3) Everyone sign contracts and keeps their copy. 4) Take more than 10 days to complete contract. 5) Collect on awesome contact terms, we both have a copy written clear as day and nothing left on the paperwork is magical.

Quote from Bixington >>

This is a scam my high charisma character keeps rolling well enough while negotiating to not need but I'm excited to try sometime. 1) Write a contract strongly in my favor (trade, adventure, guild, whatever...). 2) Use Illusory Script to make the terms appear in the other party's favor. 2b) Disguise the illusion with Nystul's Magic Aura if paranoid. 3) Everyone sign contracts and keeps their copy. 4) Take more than 10 days to complete contract. 5) Collect on awesome contact terms, we both have a copy written clear as day and nothing left on the paperwork is magical.

 this is why my lawyer leucis has illusory script, it is indeed a perfect spell for this kind of stuff

Wall of salt. The salt sticks around after. Salts 5gp per lb. One casting of Wall of Salt at the minimum Caster Level (for Clerics, Druids, and Wizards) creates 102.1 cubic feet of salt, with a mass of 7870 pounds, equivalent to 39,350 GP.

Quote from Outlawzero >>

Wall of salt. The salt sticks around after. Salts 5gp per lb. One casting of Wall of Salt at the minimum Caster Level (for Clerics, Druids, and Wizards) creates 102.1 cubic feet of salt, with a mass of 7870 pounds, equivalent to 39,350 GP.

 
Pretty sure this exercise is limited to official stuff, as homebrew can do anything you want.

Wall of Salt isn't an official spell.

Sandstorm Mastering the perilsof Fire & Sand is a book but now that you mention it it may be 3.5.

Quote from Outlawzero >>

Sandstorm Mastering the perilsof Fire & Sand is a book but now that you mention it it may be 3.5.

 
That book is 3.5. It has no relevance to 5th Edition.

Yes, it's a spell from a book that was published two editions and 16 years ago.

Your best way to make money in D&D is the same way that you make money best in the real world: control other people's money.

Either go adventuring and then instead of spending the money, invest it in businesses. Raise those businesses up and make sure that rival businesses in the same area fail. If you want to do it through spellcasting you can either destroy their goods (e.g. buy a blacksmiths outside of town, then go capture Rust Monsters, set them loose in the town, then go kill the rust monsters when you're paid to - and voila! You're the only supplier of iron goods in the area!).

Ultimately we're talking about being an Evil character and committing crime here. "Get rich quick" and "crime" go hand in hand. I would never enable a full-on evil character being a murderer for hire or anything like that in one of my games, but if you want to take control of, or start a thieves' guild and then target only the wealthy, corrupt evil priests - well, that I could get on board with.

Consider the Dream spell as a major money maker. How much would the wealthiest people in the land pay for bespoke, made to order dreams - basically their perfect virtual reality. Charge them 500gp per hour. Work for the queen, give her a perfect 8 hours sleep every night for the paltry sum of 4,000gp a day. You can even approach them in a dream to give them some freebies up front.

Basically though, once you have access to spells like Teleport you can charge crazy money to the rich.

But ultimately, going adventuring and taking a dragon's treasure is probably the best option.

I actually never thought about the Dream spell that way. You can, indeed, make the dream whatever you want and the sleeper gets full memory of the whole thing so it's basically custom VR. That's a clever use of the spell. I can see a lot of people would pay good money for that.

I know! Be an armed professional mercenary and tomb robber. What do they call those…? Oh yeah, “Adventurers.”

Semi-relevant, but mold earth is something I would have paid a decent amount for when I was doing digging around sprinkler pipes last year. Any delicate digging operation could be safely done in a fraction of the time it would normally take, which could most likely be easily capitalized on to earn some money. Examples of this can include the aforementioned hole in the ground near fragile pipes, quickly and easily plowing fields, landscaping and others like this. Most members of upper classes would probably love to hire workers who could cast this.