Spell Component Pouch of Holding

A spell component pouch contains an infinite number of live spiders.

Phantom Trap

No matter how long you've been playing this game, no matter how many times you've reread the Player's Handbook, I find there's always some obtuse spell you've never seen before. Case in point: I recently stumbled across a core spell called phantom trap that I swear I've never laid eyes on. Unlike a lot of these obscure and worthless spells that crop up now and then, however... this one I kind of wish I had. It's strange, so strange that I'm having trouble thinking of any real, practical applications for such a spell. That said, it is worth investigating by virtue of how unique it is - and likely more for the DM than any of the players. The text for phantom trap is as follows:

Art Object Database

"Satisfied with a job well done at the end of an arduous dungeon, you pry open the old treasure chest to find... uh... seven +1 longswords!"

This is extending an olive branch to all of those DMs out there. When you're selecting (or rolling up) treasure for the party, do things not feel a little too... unrealistic? Using the tables provided in the Dungeon Master's Guide, and other published books, will lead to player characters mostly finding coins and gems, with some magic items when you're feeling generous. Who are all these dungeon-dwellers that mindlessly stockpile wealth in amounts perfectly divisible by 4, though? Wouldn't it make more sense to spend some of that coin? That said, it's never been the case for the wealthy to only spend on practical items. Not every one of someone's possessions are going to be potions, oils and magic weapons. Having egregious shows of wealth is the whole point of being wealthy!

In comes the second problem, though. The DMG does have a tidy table of art objects that can be found as part of treasure, for a neat alternative to raw monetary units. Said table, however, is woefully sparse - especially as a party approaches the higher levels, where the only pieces of art in circulation are gold rings and gold cups. Just how many nonmagical gold rings could one guy be reasonably expected to have?

Here then, I have an answer to your sparse and unrealistic treasure woes.

Cheap Items

Being an adventurer isn't easy. Sure, there's the delving into moldy crypts, the sleeping rough, having to pick through lethal traps and of course regularly fighting for your life versus eldritch monstrosities. But asides from all that, it's expensive! Naturally there's fantastic wealth to be gained in the deal, which is going to be at least partly why your characters got themselves wrapped up in this whole business in the first place, but the cost of entry is substantial. Like that John Candy-lookin' guy from The Yukon Trail said, it takes money to make money. Generally your character's going to start with 100-odd gold pieces to spend, which is basically nothing to a seasoned adventurer but on the other hand more than enough for a commoner to retire with and live comfortably.

Regardless, you're gearing up to brave the unknown and cross blades with whatever the DM throws at you, so you'd better make sure your money's working for you. There are of course ways to get more than your fair share, but when that's not really an option, you ought to know where to look to get the most bang for your medieval buck. Collected here, then, I have several cost-effective items - some well-known, others more obscure - that can provide useful effects most adventurers need for 1000 gp or less. Special attention was paid to inexpensive items that can replace the common, more costly choices.

Traps

They prowl dungeons the world over, lurking around corners, behind locked doors and in treasure chests. They have no conscience to appeal to, no mind to reason with. Negative levels or ability drain won't so much as slow them down, and even no-save, no-SR spells like forcecage or maze won't do a thing. They can threaten any character, from level 1 all the way up to level 20, and take many forms. What deadly creature could this possibly be...?

Traps!

Yes, the staple of dungeon hazards, traps have been dutifully stabbing, poisoning, dropping, slicing, dicing and polymorphing-into-spaghetti-ing hapless adventurers since time immemorial. Generally they are something to suspect and avoid, to shove the rogue at in hopes of tasty XP before moving on. But in truth, traps are misunderstood creatures. Their name might inspire fear and caution in seasoned adventurers, but with a bit of kindness and a lot of gold, one can bend these gentle, beautiful, inanimate creatures to their own whims. With some careful set-up and some rather gross subversion of the game designers' expectations (as usual,) traps can be a source of immense power.

Items of Creation

It's said that half of an adventure's successes are determined beforehand in town. Actually, nobody's ever said that, but I figured it would lend some credence to my words if I make it sound like an established idea. Really though, asides from preparing spells (which only some of us get to do,) before every adventure it's wise to properly equip oneself. How can you be exactly sure what you need, though? Rope and torches are safe bets, but will you need a mirror? What about a shovel, or a crowbar, or chalk? How much easier would things be if you had antitoxin or holy water? Will there be a water hazard? A cliff wall to be scaled? A chasm too wide to cross...?

Forewarned is forearmed, but most of the time you'll ultimately be guessing at what obstacles you'll encounter, or simply settling for the most standard useful items and hoping ingenuity will take care of the rest. After all, it's not like you can afford to haul around every single mundane tool and semi-magic item in existence 'just in case.' Wouldn't it make things so much easier if you could, say, choose which items you brought after the fact? I'm not advocating for lying about what's written on your equipment list, but rather relying on a single item that can replace a whole suite of mundane tools on a whim!

Aptitude Weapon

For the sword-swinging adventurers of the world, you don't have to worry about spell selections. Your big choices in leveling are going to be feats, those precious resources that all-too-often give less than they ought to. Feats that add a bonus to something you can already do - what one might call "number feats," since they only make your numbers go up - are rarely worth it. While it's nice to be able to do something better, it's more important to be able to do something at all. The other option is "ability feats": those that give you more options in what you can do.

Asides from the more general combat maneuvers (tripping, disarming, sundering etc.) most ability feats are going to be hindered by specificity: if you want the option to do something cool with your weapon, chances are it's going to have to be a specific kind of weapon. Want Boomerang Daze? Well, you'd best be using a crapsack boomerang or it's not happening. Think of it as the divine/arcane split, except much more unfair and crippling. We're not here to complain, though, we're here to break the system open a little and make it work for us. This game is about open-ended character creation, and one should be able to fit together options however they please. So wouldn't it be nice to make use of all those neat weapon-specific feats on whatever you like?

Fabricate

On the previous episode, we talked about using a spell to create most any material you wanted. Conjuring up hundreds of pounds of raw materials at a time can be plenty useful, but sometimes you want something a little more refined and purposed. Say, if you want a snazzy-looking carriage, a mid-level caster shouldn't deign to call up a bunch of darkwood and then laboriously craft the whole thing with his bare hands. As it happens, there is a spell that is the natural next step from minor creation, one that lets you create any sort of fashioned object so long as you have the raw materials on hand. The spell I'm discussing is fabricate, the haymaker in the one-two punch that is creating abstract wood carvings during your downtime... or useful items, if that's your thing.

Minor Creation

In the world of Dungeons & Dragons, spellcasting is king. Nothing can stand up to a being who increases their caster level with each HD, except for a higher-level spellcaster. While roaring infernos and rays of enervation all have their place on the battlefield, perhaps the most powerful - and most versatile - thing a spellcaster can do is to create. Sometimes you're creating an entire mansion with a single spell, other times you're creating a small puddle of bacon grease on the ground. In terms of creation for creation's sake, then, there's no spell more versatile than the aptly named minor creation.

Spell Storing

As we all know, classes that can cast spells will always be stronger than those that cannot. There's no quick fix for this disparity - every single spell printed is another option for the casters, yet sword-swingers have to pick from a variety of band-aid-type patches to make them more viable. So what if, instead, they had a way to cast spells of their own?

All right, yes, there is some rather lengthy fine print to that statement, but there is an efficient way for anyone to sling a spell every now and then. All it takes to qualify is the ability to swing a stick around - the harder, the better. Enter the spell-storing weapon special ability from the Dungeon Master's Guide: essentially it allows a spellcaster to store any one targeted spell of up to 3rd level in a melee weapon. Whenever the spell-storing weapon hits a creature, it can immediately cast the stored spell on the foe, regardless of who or what its wielder is. It can only store one spell at a time, but it can be refilled any number of times. Now, chances are you aren't going to take the time to store a spell in a weapon mid-combat, so it amounts to one quickened spell on the first strike in a fight. If the spell was stored the day before, it even amounts to one extra spell slot. Not bad for a +1 bonus!

So which spells are the best choices for your rider effect? The restriction to targeted spells means no Rays are permitted, so things like ray of exhaustion and enervation are off the table. The level cap of 3rd means you won't be wishing upon any stars - or anything else, for that matter. Still, there are a healthy number of effects that most assailants won't want cast on them within that criteria, some particular standouts being listed here.

Exotic Weapons

The Flying Guillotine. Oddjob's Hat. The Noisy Cricket. The Power Glove.
The most common and archetypal weapons have earned their status generally because they're the most tried-and-true, but they all melt into the background upon the arrival of that one troublemaker with the unique weapon nobody's ever seen before.

I'm talking about exotic weapons: those instruments of war so obscure and exacting that only the most dedicated can bring them to bear against their hapless foes. The use of such weapons is rarely seen, since the cost of a feat is generally not worth whatever they have to offer, but the psychological edge of someone wielding a weapon that A) Is unknown to you, and B) They're convinced is worth the cost of a feat, can sometimes be power enough.

So the inevitable question stands - which exotic weapons are worth it? Surely the price of a feat isn't worth one extra point of damage or a +2 bonus to disarm... nevermind the roleplaying nightmare of tracking down a blacksmith able and willing to forge your Kaorti Resin Elven Courtblade. There is no obscure weapon out there that closes the gap between magic and mundane, no matter how many times they fold the steel, but there is the occasional standout for combat utility or sheer brute force. At the very least, the use of a unique weapon can provide interest and roleplay potential to a character, or distinctiveness and mystique to an NPC. So if you're planning to do it anyway, might as well pick up something that can perform decently well while you're at it.

Special Materials

The choice of one's weapon or armor is an important one, with entire character archetypes being defined by whether they're using full plate or studded leather; a greatsword or a quarterstaff. However, many players then fail to consider a very important part of their equipment - what it's made of.

Dungeons and Dragons, being set in a fantasy equivalent of medieval Europe, gets to enjoy medieval Europe's relatively higher concentration of forgeable iron, meaning steel arms and armor for everyone. However, being a fantasy setting, it also gets to enjoy psychic crystals, screaming silver and dragonhide. Heck, you can even wear armor made of water - and I don't mean in a frozen state. Throughout the various books there is a long list of possible building materials: some impressive, some regrettable. Here I've collected every one printed in official capacity and given a brief explanation of what they do and what they're best suited for. Also included is the short but nonetheless exhaustive list of templates that can be added to your equipment.

Get Rich Quick

In D&D, much as in real life, how well you're doing is ultimately contingent on how much money you have.

So much for a fantasy game, huh?

No joke, though, a character's worth will generally comes from two places: magic and magic items. (The fact that one of these is not inherently available to all characters is a small reminder on this system's balance.) Monks, oft maligned as the bottom of the barrel for core classes, need a boatload of practically standardised magic items just to bring their class features up to a passably-functional level. Druids, meanwhile, do go gently into that good night as naked as a jaybird - and in the form of a jaybird, too, at their option.

So if you want to get rich quick, what are your options? If you look at the Craft, Perform, and Profession skills, even astronomical DCs still result in paltry income. Fortunately, as is the case with any sufficiently large system that has enough different minds behind it, there are exploits in place that can be capitalized on by the players. It's probably safe to assume that none of these were intended by the game designers, but as is always the case, too bad ha ha ha.
Presented here, then, is a handy list of Ten 100% rules-legal, 100% obscene methods for amassing in-game wealth. You may not be rich, but you can at least pretend to be for one night a week.