Economy, Downtime, and Crafting

Newly-made characters may not engage in trade, crafting, or downtime activities outside of character creation, and anything done during character creation must be done with a DM's approval.

These restrictions are lifted once a character goes on their first expedition.

Characters may only gift other characters items on their birthday or during gift-giving holidays.

Exceptions for minor gifts can be made at the discretion of a DM.

Players may choose to sell items to NPC traders. Generic NPC traders will buy any item for 10% of its base price, and cannot be negotiated with. Specific NPCs may offer better rates, however they may only be interested in certain items.

When selling to other players, mundane items and adventure loot cannot be sold for less than 50% of their base price. Crafted magic items cannot be sold for less than 75% of their base price.

If you are selling an item or charging for a service, you must charge to make a profit of at least half as much as an NPC would earn by default. For this reason, mundane items are sold for at least half price, and magic items are sold for at least three-quarters base price (assuming you crafted the item yourself). These rules only apply to items sold to other players; you may always sell items you have crafted to an NPC at half base price. You do not need to charge for services rendered to members of your party during an expedition.

Your characters may enter into debt up to the total experience required for their next level. For example, a Level 5 character could enter into 15,000 gp of debt.

A character cannot pay for any form of ressurection or reincarnation while they are in debt.

A character may borrow money from players or NPCs if they wish. Loans taken from NPCs have an interest rate of 20%. Loans taken from player character must have an interest rate of at least 10%.

You may lend your items to your party-members on expeditions with no restrictions, but the items must be owned by the character doing the lending, and must be returned at the end of the expedition (assuming the items were not lost or stolen).

Players may craft magic items, provided they have the relevant feat and meet the prerequisites to do so.

Characters may assist each other with magic item crafting so long as the assisting characters have the relevant crafting feat. For example, a wizard with the spell fox's cunning could help a cleric craft

When creating magic items, characters must spend and equivalent number of crafting points in lieu of experience points.

Each level, your character starts with a reserve of crafting points equal to a hundred times their level times the number of crafting feats they possess. For example, a character with the Craft Wondrous Item and Brew Potion feats that reaches level 5 has a reserve of 1,000 Craft Points (5 * 2 * 100).

Crafting points do not persist between levels. At each level, unused crafting points are lost and a new reserve is gained. Crafting feats acquired at the new level count towards the new total, but crafting feats that are trained into part-way through a level do not.

If you retrain out of a crafting feat, you can never retrain back into that feat again on that character.

If you lose a level and later regain it, spent crafting points are still missing from the reserve. Your reserve for each level is only calculated the first time you gain that level.

Many DnD 3.5e communities consider “Table 7-32: Summary of Magic Item Creation Costs” to be player-facing material and that any item made using those rules is “Legal” and allowed. Similarly many communities use the rules for customizing magic items in the Magic Item Compendium.

In this server, we use the table as a guide for determining costs, but any item created using those rules (including items from books we do not allow) is still a homebrew item, and needs approval from a DM like any other homebrew. If you want it to get approved (or rejected) as quickly as possible, you can do the math on what the cost should be yourself. You don't have to do this, but it may speed up the DM response.

This includes changing the slot a magic item occupies, combining magical items into one slot, or creating an item that does not take up a body slot.

Certain special materials, such as Dragonhide, Deep Crystal, Starmetal, and Adamant, cannot be bought from NPC merchants; they may only be found in adventures, typically by slaying dragons and clearing psionic crystal mines, respectively.

Wands, Scrolls, and Potions of the following spells do not exist and cannot be created:

• Vigor (including all lesser, greater, and mass variants)

The Twilight armor enhancement is considered part of core, and can be crafted and purchased without taking any book as a +1.

Every day that passes out-of-game represents a week of in-game time.

Players may engage in profession and craft skills during their time outside of an adventure. To engage in Downtime, you can make a posting to either the downtime or research channels in the discord under the Barrow's Maw channel group.

Characters can engage in mundane crafting using the craft skill. On the Axe and Sickle, crafting progress is measured in gold pieces instead of silver pieces as specified in the PHB.

You are only charged for food and rent at the Axe and Sickle if you have a job in town. Keeping track of expenditures and passive income is completely voluntary and opt-in.

This primarily includes passive income earned from performing professions and owning businesses, as well as passive expenditures from permanently-retained hirelings, food, and rent.

Per rules within the 3.5 SRD on Profession Skill, a player may earn half one's Profession check in gold per week. Normally, this means a player “Taking 10”, adding their Profession skill, and dividing by 2. It is preferred to track passive income in 7-week in-game periods, corresponding to out-of-game weeks (ie, multiply your profession check by 7). Please declare your time-use by including [YYYY WEEK #] in your comment.

While earning income, you are also assumed to enjoy a particular lifestyle, which subtracts from your income. Lifestyle expenses for staying at the Axe and Sickle are as follows; they have no mechanical effect aside from bragging rights:

• Good: 2.5 gp/day (25 gp/week). Inn 2 gp, Meals 5 sp. Includes a suite at the inn with full service and extravagant meals.
• Common: 8 sp/day (8 gp/week). Inn 5 sp, Meals 3 sp. Includes a private room at the inn with food to order and use of facilities.
• Poor: 3 sp/day (3 gp/week). Inn 2 sp, 1 sp. Includes a bed in the common room, use of a lockbox, and a ticket for the soup of the day.

[2021 Week 4] Exampleon the Cleric plies his trade as a carpenter. He has Profession(Carpenter) 8, taking 10 for a result of 18. He earns 63gp [18/2 * 7]. He practices a Common lifestyle at the inn, costing him 8gp/day for 7 days, costing him 56gp. His total profit is 7gp for the week.

For full details, see the Research

Players may expend downtime performing research. Research does not grant any income, however it does contribute to the completion of Research Projects.