D&D 5E: Fabricate, is it overpowered?
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Fabricate creates a finished product out of raw materials. Turning a patch of trees into a wooden bridge is one of the examples in the book. That's pretty neat. But is it broken?
Imagine studying magic for years just so you could turn trees into tabloid newspapers for a living
You say that as though they wouldn’t make an absolute fucking killing, which is the reason at least some people have to go to collage, so not that inaccurate. Could be fun to roll a wizard school less like a monastic order/library and more like a physical techbro linkedin
A wizard and druid could have their own business together.
I mean, that’s what they do on Eberon.
The Zine Wizard is an OP build.
@@armanhammer Zine? More like Zorn Wizard and his Zock wand.
My DM argues that this can basically be used as “Greater Mending” every time I bring up that I wish Greater Mending was a spell.
was
"It's like Mending, only GREATER!"
I actually made Greater Mending though it's more like pulling something broken together.
Finally, a way to mend Mending.
I love that you’ve got Socrates with a poison goblet 😂
I wasn't paying attention so I saw drink I assumed wine, not hemlock. 😆 Good eye!
Makes me think if you can create a goblet with one of the various colored molds to assassinate an enemy with
I don't think Plato would have loved it.
Plato, Aristotle, Socrates...Morons!
He's sicker than a hemlock sip.
Fabricate is one of those spells that REALLY QUICKLY make non-optimized martial characters wonder why they remain relevant once casters start taking off with 4th and 5th level spells.
Really wish that martials had out of combat features. The main ones that have SOMETHING are rangers and rogues, though you can kinda argue monks and also say its a bit unfair as rangers are half casters. But otherwise martials just have combat features while the casters have spells that can help out of combat. Really making martials only relevant because of their slightly bigger HP pool and higher AC because of armor and shields. But again, those mainly matter for combat.
@@slydoorkeeper4783 An even lightly optimized spellcaster dips one level of Cleric for heavy armor, shield and emboldening bond or Life goodberries anyway. Level 1-2 easy 18 AC while monk, barbarians, rangers and any Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master or Two-weapon Fighting martials cry.
A barb or fighter in a story would grab their squishy caster friend and jump across the broken bridge to safety. In D&D they can only jump 5 feet further and take fall damage anyway, the caster is more tanky and just creates a brand new bridge in 6 seconds. :P Or just casts Fly. Or 5 other options.
@@RaethFennec our party needed to get on board a dreadnought at sea to hunt down the cult of Talos, while my party rode a dragon who decided to help us, she only had space for two passengers, so... I decided to cast Summon dragonic spirit and just fly my own dragon along side them
Because you know, wizard, why on earth would I not be able to do that xD
@@slydoorkeeper4783 I have a Way of 4 Elements monk who uses his waterbending and elemental attunement in creative ways outside combat. I also gave him a backstory of being good at cooking/proficiency with cook's tools and herbalism kit (which we used to get in the good graces of a local crime lord), so between the two I get lots of out-of-combat RP opportunities. Monks actually have tons of non-combat utility, you just need some imagination.
@@ShinGallon I think that depends on subclass mostly though. That, and half the time I hear people offer things for martials in general to do outside of combat, its stuff casters also can do. But casters also have spells to make it more likely for them to succeed in some areas, or just do things faster.
I love how fast this goes from "well we could bridge this gap with that forest over there" to "well i could pull all the mortar from this wall and make a solid cube of mortar" to "i could take a bunch of resources and make simple armor and weapons like a model sprue, arming a worryingly large number of people in 10min"
my own idea, make a fort/palisade to provide favorable combat situations against a foe if you have time to prepare.
I like how a 4th level spell arming a bunch of militants with cheap weapons is treated as some kind of ghastly concern in D&D. Meanwhile in games like Dark Heresy our party kept around sandbags and crates full of lasguns and flak armor just in case we needed to spur an uprising at a moment's notice because it usually turns out that the guys in ruling positions are the bad guys.
Honestly, I kind of hate the D&D community because they've veered into this direction of acting like lulzfest bullshit is the "correct" way to play the game.
It seems pretty clear to me the spell as written wouldn't be able to pull mortar out of a wall or mass-produce equipment on a sprue, and that those were clearly not intended possibilities.
Using it to create fortifications is a good idea, but it's not a terribly overpowered one. Remember, it's 8 five foot cubes, or only one five foot cube of stone, metal, etc. So you'd be using, like, dirt, or wood for your fortification, probably, and even dirt might be construed as a "mineral substance."
Even if you can do 8 five foot cubes... that's for a fourth level spell slot, over ten minutes. So it's not super-quick, and a single cast of it won't offer you too much benefit. Of course, with many casts you could do something more useful... but even then, any more complicated fortifications would arguably require expertise in the tools typically needed, plus by the time you have days and days to prepare... and/or throw multiple fourth+ level spell slots into it per day... you're already going to be pretty powerful in other ways, and could probably afford to hire people in many contexts to build the fortification, so it seems entirely reasonable.
@@CrizzyEyes I'd like to point out that, even by my rough math, you can probably fit about 900 long swords into a 5 foot cube on a sprue structure. That enables a seventh level wizard to produce 13500 gp of longswords in 10 minutes. If you did something like scimitars instead, you could get 22500 gp of scimitars in 10 minutes.
A long sword is about four feet. if you alternative them upside and down that's 2 swords vertically. Then by staggering the guards, you can pack them in beside each other in about 4" per sword, or about 15 across the 5 foot length. Then swords aren't terribly thick, you can pack them like 2" per, so that's 30 layers deep. 2 x 15 x 30 is 900 longswords.
@@seigeengine i certainly understand if the players try to use it to break the economy and the DM doesn't react to it, or if they spend way to much time on something that should have just been mentioned in passing.
but i stand by the assumption that its the DMs job to respond in kind, if the players use spells in unorthodox but instantly lethal ways then guess what the next few mages the party fights will be doing!
@@ARockRaider This is such an inane behaviour.
Like, if someone breaks in and shits on your table, you don't respond by also taking a shit on your table. At least I don't. You can shit on your table if you want. It's your table.
We once fabricated a locked door open it was amazing.
"You watch as the metal of the steel door crumples and seems to melt into a solid floating sphere of metal, before it reforms into... The same door, but without a lock."
Where did the extra materials go?
@@nonya1366 a lock has a lot of empty spaces to allow it to function properly. So most likely the lock, if it was made with the same metal as the door, simply was incorporated in the door clogging those empty spaces
I love that, you guys used a 10 minute spell to do something a rogue could do with a set of lock picks using a single action
@@daltooinewestwood6380 Maybe they had neither a rogue nor a set of lockpicks, mate. What they did was a working solution, and we have no reason to assume they had any other options available.
@@daltooinewestwood6380 plus, y'know, much more memorable
I personally love that there's a number of seemingly harmless spells that can do really weird sh*t depending on creativity.
I find it crazy that you can rip open up bastian's walls just by making some chairs. Also you'll never have to unlock a door again when you can just make the door not exist
@@BLOODKINGbro you have to choose raw materials. A door or a wall isn't usually made of "raw material" is it?
@@ObsidianHoax Depends on your definition of "raw material," stone is what I would consider a raw material and I wouldn't say that cutting it into useful shapes really changes that.
alot of spells are like that. then there are also spells which are just game breaking. like heat metal for example, druid casts heat metal then runs away trans froms into a ant when out of line of sight. and the poor bastard in the plate armor is cooked alive
As a DM, I'd set a difficulty level to counter whatever seems like an obvious exploit to Fabricate as written. Once, a wizard needed to make rowboats so his party could travel down a river. City boy wizard had never seen a rowboat before he studied one for 5 minutes. His first casting, he rolled a solid 12, so he made a great copy out of trees on the shore. His second casting, he rolled a 20. I ruled that the improvements he made in his mind doubled the value of the rowboat, and that's what they sold them for when they got to their destination.
OK, so you want to create a block of metal out of all the nails in the drawbridge, from 100 feet away? Go ahead and roll (but I won't tell the wizard the difficulty is 25). Waste a 4th level spell slot and 10 minutes, unless you get an 18 with a spell attack bonus of +7.
Zee: "I hate that we have to do this Socrates every time we talk about a spell"
Me (and likely a bunch of DMs): "What do you mean"
Zee: "What is a Object"
Me (and likely a bunch of DMs): " *O H F U C K !* "
Player uses Lateral Thinking on a Vaguely-Explained and/or Exploitable Game Mechanic/Spell!
DMs: “Uh oh.”
Reminder: a corpse is an object.
@@lordadamant8182 what about animated corpse
@@szylaj Still an object. Just one that's been magically animated.
@@szylaj a corpse animated by the create undead spell is now an undead creature, no longer an object. A corpse animated by the Animate Objects spell is now technically a construct creature, no longer an object. Personally I define an object as "something made of one or more materials that is incapable of acting on its own". For example: a bridge? Object. Corpse? Object. Active or dormant golem? Not object. Golem that was never finished/turned on or dead golem? Object. Armor? Object. Animated armor? Not object. But in the end it's up to the DM.
One of my favorite moments as a DM was having to figure something out on the fly when my partner made friends with a tribe of Chwinga. To help the party get to the castle across a ravine, the Chwinga collectively cast a druidic version of Fabricate to cause vines, roots, and trees to knit themselves together and grow across the ravine towards the castle. A very Ghibli moment
That's awesome!
That is awesome and thematic
I think Chwinga are, in general, the Ghibliest things in D&D.
Absolutely beautiful. Great work all around.
I imagine Skenk gets a fair bit of use out of it. He can convert raw diamonds into cut and polished diamonds, which you need for a Clone lab.
Heck, you could probably turn carbon into cut diamonds, if you can get it pure.
@@benjaminoechsli1941 And he has PLENTY of carbon based lifeforms to get that from.
@@benjaminoechsli1941 you wouldn't necessarily even need pure carbon, since you would pull the carbon out of whatever object.
You could burn wood and get charcoal and then farbricate a 5 foot cube of diamonds (which for reference is over 100m gp worth) that is so broken@@TheGreyKami
@@johndave8017in a medieval setting though, how would your character know that coal and diamonds are made of the same stuff? They didn’t have elements as we think of today back then
The answer to “Is it broken” is the same answer as “Is money important in your campaign”.
I’ve played games where the DM just assumes you have enough money for what you want, and just limits what’s available for purchase. In that game, no, not broken.
It's not even that bad. This doesn't even need a fictional scenario.
To exchange the 1500 gold armor into 1500 gold you actually need to find a buyer. And that poses an interesting set of problems in itself.
So there are a lot of bottlenecks which at the very least limit the amount of armors you could sell every day on average. Logistics. Just taking stuff and putting it somewhere else is part of the value. Short: The only reason the store can take that much is you coming there to buy it.
I had a campaign where you could buy an entire town’s worth of magical materials with the gold he gave out from quests.
Initially though. After that scarcity hit and it fed into other nearby towns and caused a reaction that drastically increased the price of magical materials until it just so happened to be too expensive for us 90% of the time.
We were playing Pathfinder by the way, so they just call it “magical materials” when you’re trying to craft something.
That is precisely the scenario in which fabircate *is most useful.*
Player: "DM, can I has buying full plate for da palerdin?"
DM: "No, best I can do is ring mail."
Artificer: "This means *fabrication."*
Dm: "Oh no, please- stop fabircating heavy plate mail from the iron in the blood of your enemies!"
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece Still, at the level you get fabricate, even doing it once is pretty decent economy shake.
And y'know, you're a wizard.
Spells known isn't a huge issue with em
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece Unfortunately you're wrong. If that 1500 gold is better then 1000 gold armor then a shop keeper might buy it for 400 if they throw out their old armor. Higher quality and rare armor sells for more. If they keep their original you're looking at closer to 1,000 gold.
The bottlenecks only come if you're being spiteful otherwise there is legitimate reasons for shop keepers to buy said armor even at less then full price. (At 250 if it is a 1,000 armor that the shop keep sells is a 750 profit.)
In cases you might even be able to go up to them and say "I'll use this spell to make you X sets of armor in return for X money." since they skip a lot of the steps, time, and even some resources used in production.
You literally need to be spiteful to the players to stop them from breaking everything.
I love the idea of just ripping the mortar out of a brick wall or pulling all the nails from a wooden wall into a weapon or barricade.
That's when you make the Incorporate Materials spell, so that it locks the materials into one object, so that Fabricate can't pull down the Noble's stone wall by removing the mortar or stone.
The nobility has money and power, so access to the same kinds of magical resources as the players. So it should not be easy for players to thwart the nobility.
@@steveaustin2686 You are suggesting turning the wall into one material to thwart a spell that can disassemble one material? Instead of targeting the mortar in the wall we now simply target the wall itself.
@@KitKom No, locking all the materials in the wall together magically, so that Fabricate can't remove any of them.
@@steveaustin2686 you don't have to do that. Fabricate wouldn't be able to pull materials from a wall because its in a wall. Its not raw materials when they've already been used to make something. Zee is wrong.
It still takes ten minutes to cast, and requires proximity and line of sight, so using it against anything guarded is tough.
The range of emotion that goblin went through with such a simple design has given my morning life. I love this little guy, even if I fear he shall one day become... James Workshop. May Sigmar save the souls of that world.
Saw goblin, hoped for Gabriela.
Now imagine if Zee taught Gabriela the fabricate spell.........
Fun fact: if you're inside or underground (and have time), Fabricate can become like Passwall.
Bonus Fun Fact: The spell specifies gathering "materials", plural. Meaning if the object being created requires multiple types of material or different forms of material (such as wood planks and hemp fibers), you can gather them all at once and use them together when building complex objects (such as a rope bridge)... assuming you have the tool proficiency to do so.
Oh, so the full plate thing should work fine. Honestly, I think a revised version could use tweaking original complexity and time into the spell requirements.
That makes me think you need to KNOW the composition of the materials in order to acquire them. Like, you could use fabricate to dig, but it's not gonna move any rocks out of the way unless you correctly identified them before hand, because that cube of dirt that you're building in a place that's not the place you want to move there doesn't require volcanic rock, let alone sand... clay, all kinds of miscellaneous junk. I also assume the casting fails if the dirt has a healthy microbiome, because the spell explicitly says it doesn't work on creatures.
@@ccggenius It only says that "Creatures or magic items can't be _created or transmuted_ by this spell." It doesn't say the spell can't pull material out from under a creature, nor does it say it can't harm a creature.
It also doesn't say the materials have to be within a certain number of otherwise unoccupied spaces - just within range - so, moving all the dirt from an earthen wall while accidentally leaving stones you didn't know about, is legit.
Also... it doesn't say _where_ the fabricated object must appear: So, a 5ft block of granite weighing 10 tons, could be fabricated up to 120ft off the ground. The ten-minute wait could limit applicability in combat but consider the implications for large-scale construction!
@@prophetzarquon1922 Oh, my point wasn't that you couldn't do it, just that the results might not be what you expected. Like, lets say the DM lets you do whatever with the spell, but oops, your actions directly led to a bunch of rocks being dropped on a family of badgers when the dirt was removed. Enjoy the karma.
@@prophetzarquon1922 First line. "Creatures/magic items can't made created or transmuted by this spell." And your second sentence too. These are correct, and the implication is this: you can create an item within/bisecting a creature. Fabricate is my favorite torture spell for this, strap a man to a chair, and then start building him into the chair. We've ruled that the object is formed over the duration of the casting time, so interrogations while the victim can feel nails and wood being driven into their body is deliciously effective.
“I had to actually invent a civ level rule set to handle the economic shockwaves his character, Malden Fenster was sending through the realm!”
I LOVE hearing about this kind of thing in D&D. When a player figures out how to game the system so hard that they force the DM to improvise on the kind of scale, or just upturn the whole game world with that level of power. It’s always a treat to hear how DMs handle it as well.
CAN WE PLEASE GET MORE ON THIS OP?
Me and my brother broke a friend's session by using Dimension Door + Feather Fall on my brother (Dwarf with big Warhammer) to do a drop attack on a Dragon's head resulting in a massive amount of weapon damage, fall velocity bonus, and Warhammer damage. Long story short if you have ever seen the walking dead, we Negan'd the dragon, and as a result we took it's head and plaqued it up on the front of our guild that we went on to build with some of its hoard. Stone shape to build the entirety of the guild over the course of weeks and then we dug out a giant hole under the guild, spent a few days dimension dooring the rest of the gold to the guilds newly dug vault, and then popped all the gold into the astral plane so that if anyone decides to break into the vault, ITS EMPTY. 😂
Your dm is very nice! I mean as soon as you bring feather fall into the equation fall damage goes out the window and you're just swinging at a dragon with disadvantage...@@tylertech9583
@@tylertech9583 and then some Githyanki happens by, "Hey, free dragon hoard!"
The idea of a single Transmutation Wizard tearing places apart with Fabricate and other such transmutation spells is pretty funny and terrifying. Just imagine a giant gate and some guy walks up touching it for 10 minutes before the nails and hinges all rip out, turn into a block and drop to the ground while that gate collapses to the ground in splinters.
Not even touching - could be 120 ft away. Probably hidden.
And then we have to Socrates what a "raw material" is. Is a gate made of wood "raw materials" for any wooden object, like it's Fullmetal Alchemist up in here? Or is "raw material" only like stuff that hasn't already been fashioned into an object?
Back at the height of online discourse of 3rd Edition, there was a treatise floating around about how Fabricate could be used to isolate all the trace amounts of rare elements out of common substances, and otherwise be used to derive pure elements more easily and in larger quantities than we can do even today.
But then there is the question "Would the gate be raw material?" Because since the bridge is an object it would make sense to rule that constructs are not raw material but objects and because of that they are not affected by the spell.
I would argue that it isn't. The forward to the spell implies that it is specifically materials in the natural environment:
"You convert raw materials into products of the same material. For example, you can fabricate a wooden bridge from a clump of trees, a rope from a patch of hemp, and clothes from flax or wool."
From this passage, it wouldn't even be able to turn wooden planks into an object, only the unworked trees. I'd say you could work from felled trees (the wool section would imply you can have already harvested the materials otherwise it would be altering a creature by way of shearing), but anything more worked than that is no longer raw material
I had been discussing possible uses for this spell with one of my players. He had planned on leading a slave revolt in a game and wanted a way to protect his freed slaves. Using the cuttable mold idea, it seemed reasonable that he could fabricate multiple stacks of wooden panels that could be snapped or cut off at the edges, then secured in place to build a small fort, much larger than the original area of the spell. There are building techniques that use wooden pegs instead of nails, allowing it to be built with only wood.
Does the player have the wood-working skills for it though? Because if nothing else, if those pegs are poorly crafted, that might weaken the structure.
At that point I would force the name of the spell to be changed to 3-D Printing
Cute, but you could just build the fortification and several small houses with 8 5x5x5 cubes.
This is essentially an IKEA fortress. I love it.
You're casting IKEA
At some point, regardless of the spell, the overpowered part becomes creativity rather than the spell itself
Lateral thinking is the greatest D&D superpower.
I agree. A lot of what gets labeled overpowered just boils down to a lack of creativity on the DM's part.
@@monstermoo4191 Yep, polearm master/sentinel isn't THAT overpowered if the DM just tosses multiple units at the party or makes it hard for melee to get close to the target. That's one main example I see.
I know someone who was using wheat to make diamonds because "they are both made of carbon"
@@slydoorkeeper4783 Sentinel + Spell Sniper + Booming Blade + a whip.
Using this on my kobold arcane trickster rogue/fighter.
Beastly little combo.
In 3rd edition, Fabricate was my favorite spell. My DM was pretty lenient. Also he was a chemical engineer. His opinion on Fabricate was, "eh, just treat it like transmutation from Full Metal Alchemist, but you aren't allowed to use it to deal damage." Also, back then it was instantaneous. I had 1 skill point in 10 different crafting skills. Applications included, turning moonstone ruins into knick-knacks for rich people, turning acid vials into alkali vials, breaking chains and bars, digging holes, repairing items, turning clothing into parachutes, collapsing tunnels, extinguishing fires, making the smart-ass bard's chair fall apart, Making your chair look much cooler than the smart-ass bard's broken chair, making the bad guy's hide-out smell like egg farts, trapping pixies inside fishbowls and much much more!
One of these is not like the other...
Why would you trap pixies inside fishbowls. 💀
@@drakegrandx5914they’ve had it too good for too long
The thing about Fabricate is that it does not *seem* like a strong spell, but in practice there are almost limitless applications of "Make finished thing out of parts".
The limiting factors, however-spell level, materials, tool proficiency, and time-all prevent you from breaking combat with it. It''s just a very, very good out of combat spell.
If you have the Fabricate spell and you take the Skilled Feat, choosing Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Woodworking, you can potentially keep your monk/barbarian/fighter well stocked
It is one of the spells that is broken from the dungeon crawling focused design of DnD that becomes exploited when you take it out into a bigger world.
That makes perfect sense. Though Zee does mention the disassembly aspect. Sorry lich lord, your mortar was too good to pass up!
Ever heard of Eberron. It was designed with spell casting in mind. The main continent where the players are has access to up to level 3 spells, it has massive ramifications on what the world looks like.
The continent of dragons has access to 9th level spells, they society is beyond imagining.
I'd love to see a video of Eliot breaking entire economies with a single spell!
You just did
@@gamercore5216 more like te story telling of how he did it instead of a discussion of what he did.
Breaking the economy is low tier. Look up the locate city bomb.
I think it would be a easy fix to just say the object crumbles into its composite materials after some time, just like minor alchemy. and if you want it to be permanent you could say that you have to concentrate on the object for a whole day or entire week depending on the complexity to make it permanent.
@@danilooliveira6580 Wombo combo, if you're getting into alchemy. you might as well say he can rip holes into walls and form a bomb with the remains. in front of damaged wall for doing double damage to a bastion.
As a DM, I fear the day the Artificer/Wizard in my campaign gets this spell. Because, in game, he's invented the steam engine for airships. And gave me all the math and blueprints needed to get it to work realistically.
single handedly gonna create the industrial revolution
Just make the object totally magical or it can only stay in shape for 24 hours, after which they need to recats the spell each day (aka like undead), if teh time runs out it will go back to its orginal shape. Retains its power for most cases, you cannot blueprint money with it but make a makeshift bridge for 24 hours. Can be used to demolish walls, but not to crash an econemy.
engineers should be banned from dnd
If you want you can limit what they can create since certain knowledge, that they might not have, is required to create that stuff.
If you don't like the idea or it proves troublesome for your world tell them no and why. You can just wave your hand and say that physics are different in your world and steam power is impossible but just saying that implementing this kind of invention is out of your scope should be enough. If your player has a problem with that, then they need to reevaluate, not you.
If you want to print books, you need the Keen Mind feat so that you can instantly recall the whole book while casting the spell.
Reasonable
reasonable, but not RAW. Though you would need whatever proficiency would be required to make a book, as a book definitely requires a "high degree of craftmanship"
@@kitsunekaze93 It's completely consistent with RAW, as long as you consider the knowledge contained in a book to be one of the "raw materials" required to make that book.
Google has two definitions of "material" and one of them is the contents of a book.
@@saltypork101 Using for the same word in the same text and context two different definitions isn't the same as RAW. First you decide/understand which definition is being used, then work out the RAW from there.
@@drakegrandx5914 It's not the same context if you're trying to make a different object with the spell.
You need to have all the materials. If you're making a book, that means you need to have the contents.
Just a little fun fact, chronurgy wizards can use arcane abeyance to cast the spell, then turn it into a bead, then release the spell as an action.
Go wild.
I used the 'many connected objects' version. Turned a wide area of covering trees around a village into 120 feet of clear space. I turned them into a daisy chained set of spiked barricades the village could set up to repel any incoming invaders.
We later learned that that village single handedly took multiple days for an invading army to get past.
I used Fabricate A LOT when I last played a Forge Cleric. The DM basically told me "Gond literally will not let you disrupt the entire economy of the realm. If you try to create hundreds of suits of platemail or similarly rare and expensive items and flood the economy, he will take away your ability to cast the spell. Be more creative than a money printing machine"
All that would do is make platemail really innexpensive. The people who make it wouldn't even be out of business because fitting it is so much work.
Just use dimishing returns on price, its wierd thst the god of forging is telling you not to forge.
Each set would still cost 750 gp to make, so just cut the profit margine in half with each sale as word got around.
Or you know, use Guilds, this is literally what they're there for.
@@aduck5639 No, guilds are literally there to protect their monopolies and prevent new competitors from entering the market.
(Not unlike licensure today.)
@@bsmith6784 why do you think you're disagreeing with me?
@@aduck5639 I read "use guilds" to mean "have them join guilds," rather than "have guilds (try to) stop them"
Gond would never take your ability to make things away from you. He is the god of Craft and Invention, THIS is the the prayer that would be MOST in tune with him as a God. Really your DM just needed to institute diminishing returns if he was really concerned about that. Personally the argument could be made that your acquiring money to learn more methods of Crafting(Tool Prof). Also, what do we do in our daily lives? That's right, work to make money to support ourselves. Why wouldn't our character do the same? You make things and demonstrate the power of Gond, all in one go.
I love the idea of using this spell to create spell components. You could take gold coins and shape them into a statuette of yourself for contingency or shape raw stone to make a sarcophagus for clone.
Doesn’t clone require crystal?
@@asdasd-ty9se it doesn’t. It just requires a “vessel worth at least 2,000 gp that has a sealable lid and is large enough to hold the creature being cloned”. One of the examples it gives is crystal filled with salt water, but it doesn’t have to be that specifically.
i have literally done these things
@@talongreenlee7704How would the value of a stone vessel be determined though? Would it depend on the type of stone or the craftsmanship of the vessel? Sorry for arguing semantics, I’ve had very…. Particular DMs over the years
@@valiensr1037 It would be determined by your DM, he might say something like "there are no materials within 120' that could make a vessel worth 2000gp" and that would be that
In theory, with very very large quotation marks around "Theory" - a necromancer could use Fabricate at the site of a massive battle, to turn all the dead bodies into fully cleaned and intact skeletons; since corpses are Objects in 5e and so long as you make them all medium size corpses they aren't too large for the restrictions.
You would save a significant amount of time on making sure the bodies they're raising are in good condition, and you'd also have an easier time taking the equipment off the dead due to the last of bones.
Now imagine said necromancer uses Fabricate and creats a giant bone golem/dragon from the bones on a battlefield. Or if corpses count as "one object" a corpse/flesh golem and or flesh dragon ....
"...an object is a discrete, inanimate item like a window, door, sword, book, table, chair, or stone, not a building or a vehicle that is composed of many other objects."
Corpses are not items, and they are composed of many parts, that being cells.
Nowhere in the rules in 5E does it ever say corpses are classified as Objects. Corpses are referred to as corpses, not "dead objects"
@@haku8135 Saying that a corpse is not an object because of cells is like saying that a sword is not an object because of atoms...
I very much doubt any DM is gonna accept to include a cell within the definition of "an object".
@@drakegrandx5914 No it's not, you've taken it to extremes.
Under that definition, literally everything, including living things, must be classified as objects.
Cells are distinct living components of an extremely complex organism. Even discounting them, corpses are never classified as objects anywhere I can find. The definition absolutely precludes them.
@@haku8135are houses objects?
This sounds like an artificer spell more than a wizard one and I'm all for it. Artificers need some more interesting high level spells just for them!
It's (IMO) equivalent to a spell at least a few levels higher (in theory) when wielded by an artificer especially if you are flavored to be technology based, even if you can't fabricate a finished product you can just fabricate all of the pieces and assemble them to vastly reduce crafting time, if you manage to get it via a magic item and take a three level dip into fighter (gunslinger) you can just mass produce firearms, not just arm a town in a few days give them all weapons that surpass everything man portable but mid-high level magic users, and without the limitations of needing to spend years learning magic. you need tool proficiency? I have all of them!
@@bookreaderman6715 Artificers start proficent in firearms at level 1.
@@stm7810 technically that is up to the DM but I would assume that if the gunslinger is allowed than they probably did give you the proficiency, so you are correct and have me there
I now imagine a fantasy style assembly line that's been enchanted with a permanent fabricate spell and constructs or other minions who keep feeding it the raw materials needed
Great idea!
And the magical grey-goo scenario that results from that.
@@andrewnewell1142 But why would a party need so many paperclips?
Even better - fighting *against* this kind of assembly line. Golems rampaging across the world, mindlessly consuming resources, eventually towns and cities, to create more of themselves.
@@andrewnewell1142
Well it's actually Green Goo. And a cube.
Fabricators are my favourite type of Ooze (Gelatinous cube that fabricated objects as if it where this spell).
If you're focusing on the import of turning trees into a resource, what about turning a forest into untold gallons of syrup? That sounds like a real power play to me.
Great idea for a trap! :o
Wouldn't work. The raw material for syrup is tree SAP, and the spell only works on materials you can see.
You'd have to get all the sap out of the trees before the spell could target it, and at that point you've already done the hard part of making the syrup and the spell isn't necessary anymore.
@@TheGregamonster Depends on how asanine you are about the interpretation. When I look at a tree, I don't see all the wood inside of it, only the bark.
An endless supply of all natural maple syrup? Now that is god-tier thinking. 👍
@@FruitNDoggie When turning the forest into a bridge the spell uses the whole tree. wood, bark, sap, and all.
That's very different from trying to extract sap from the tree and leave the wood intact.
The spell Player Resentment actually has an indefinite effect and length! It is entirely dependant on later actions of the GM, and the general ability of the player(s) in question to resolve these things/hold on to grudges *(I like to write mine down in a small notebook, so I remember for all eternity)*
Let me guess, you play dwarf, right? lol
Good plan!
Gotta say, I love the idea of writing hundreds of copies of the novel in my head after only ten minutes of magic and proficiency with calligrapher's tools.
Could you actually store every word of a book so thoroughly in memory that you could fabricate it though? I as a DM would allow you to fill the area with copies of a book you have on hand, but creating a new one solely from vague ideas in your head is not possible.
Unless you have Keen Mind. In which case, go nuts lmao.
@@Sivanot yep, the living library build. Keen mind, calligraphy, fabricate, a ton of writing supplies
@@Sivanot I like this solution
@@Sivanot The author of the Gulag Archipelago memorized his book word for word while imprisoned in several camps and prisons in the USSR. Also, the spell doesn't require specific measurements for the Plate mail to be made, just the general skill. That being said I do think the same way the spell requires the knowledge needed to make the item being represented in tool proficiencies, calligraphy is just the skill of making letters on a page, not composing compelling words, & that point, if we're following the spirit of the rules, the caster should take a proficiency, feat or class feature representing the content of the book.
@@AlabasterXnight My allowance of copying a book was with the idea of flipping through the book and essentially transferring the words from the book to the newly fabricated books. But yeah I imagine it wouldn't fit perfectly well with the actual rules or other interpretations.
"You convert raw materials into products of the same material." - It clearly states that it is not one material but materials. Even if we look into trees into bridge example, trees are not one material so. the bridge created is probably wooden bridge with rope made out of leaves. Otherwise they would just call it plank.
What is more they specifically state "PRODUCTS" so you by rulles you can create as many items as you can in that area as long as you have enough materials, they don t have to be connected.
But does it mean that you can instantly make common potions of healing, or poison. You would only need sand (or stone/earth could replace as there is some of it in them) and correct plants.
The same thing goes for alchemist fire. You probably only need a bottle/flask and alcohol with some cloth to make tons of it.
You can also instantly make alcohol if you have Brewer’s supplies proficiency and have some fruits
You could also create explosives
Also if you can make bridge without Carpenter’s tools proficiency, it means that you could instantly create massive cage around enemy if you take "metamagic adept" feat and quickened it. Dispelling it would not work as it already real object and you could make it extremally thick if you decide to make it just out of wood.
Over all this spell is op for fighting if you take it with "matamagic adept"
Quicken spell takes a spell that takes an action to cast and makes it take a bonus action. It has no effect on spells that take multiple minutes to cast like fabricate.
@@talongreenlee7704 :( Well you can still do it with glyph of warding when you need to defend a place.
@@greedier-7661 unfortunately I think glyph of warding works the same way.
@@Steamer-fp1nl No you can do it, it will just take you an hour and you would have to upcast the glyph of warding.
This is why it's important to remember that the world exists outside of your players. If they come up with a get-rich-quick scheme, assume someone else has had the same idea and imagine what safeguards would have been put in place against it.
Patent laws, vendor's licenses, supply and demand, taxes, finding a buyer, unions and so on. Maybe the local smithing guild doesn't take kindly to adventures stealing their jobs by making quick weapons. Starting a smear campaign or strike to get the party to stop.
Not necessarily. Remember the Romans had everything needed for a the beginning of the Industrial Revolution but lacked the mindset and conditions to push it through. It could be just as simple as your character ended up in the right situation to look at something right and now has upended everything. Since most DND settings are feudal in nature it is not unreasonable that conditions are not right for another to come up with the idea. But remember that doesn't mean others won't try and stop you. Lets say you found a way to mass produce armor well now blacksmith guilds and the like are going to be against you simply because you are now a threat to them. Bow makers, carpenters, builders and more would all be in fear of losing their livelihood even if your method could not be adapted the sheer threat that it could would make you enemies.
I like the roleplay ideas of the party committing to the scheme anyway and being accused of pulling a "fabricate scheme" by the local authorities. Then have the party trying to evade persecution and having to plan around safeguards and protections from their scams. Make them earn their scheme if they want to commit to it, and if the party want to follow through with it then turn it into more intrigue campaign à la magical wolf of wallstreet. That way you can reign in its abuse of mechanics while allowing the party to work harder for it if they so choose. Always better to "Yes And" them.
People gonna hate you for making profit quickly with magic. But I doubt any safeguards would be put in place against fabricate, other than the trade exclusivity some guilds may secure against any and all non-members. The end result is a perfectly good permanent non magical item. Fabricate is not a scam, it's a shortcut to the normal manufacturing process. If the party can sell looted items, they can sell fabricated items too.
"Say my name"
"Y y y You're Heisenbook"
"Your gods damn right!"
The DM casting "Player Resentment" is way too real.
My forge cleric wasnt allowed to use fabricate to fix some armor lmao
Hmm, with Fabricate could you make a person into leather items?
That's hilarious, given that the mending CANTRIP is supposed to be able to do exactly that.
The oppressive DM is when players are trying to obviously game the system
@@cindywomack1113 Thats terrifying, I'll add it to my DM toolkit
@@cindywomack1113 A person is a creature, not an object. A *corpse*, however, is an object...
It'd be potentially interesting if objects made by fabricate had markings to indicate their source, like "Fabricated by Scank McGank" or had a visual indicator to indicate that they were created by fabricate, like pink and black squares that's you'd see in missing textures from valve source games.
In Full Metal Alchemist whenever Alchemists transmute materials to create new items it leaves a sort of checkered pattern on it, that's how people know if an Alchemist is doing stuff like making money from gold.
I had a 'Ten Gold Piece' chain of stores that exclusively sold fabricated items and weapons for 10 GP or less (as a parody of dollar stores). The only problem is they looked really cool but came in -1, -2 and -3 versions costing 10g, 1gp and 1 copper as attempts to enchant them went bad...so were hawked off to unsuspecting adventurers. Ths wasn't all bad as they still counted as magic weapons for bypassing resistance...but each of them carried 'Made in Chinya' or a similar maker mark.
Maybe something like the sharp edges created on plastic items that have been made by using injection molding.
Between the book-headed dragon and Zee outing himself as a 40K fan, this is a pretty good episode
i used fabricated to basically setup a small ancient roman fortress with palisade walls, barracks, common room and a moat.
also made a statue of a fallen PC.
it was supposed to be a small campsite for some NPCs to support us from while we ran around the nearby mountains
This is why I like these shows, helps me put more details into my magical kingdom. Now some mages are going to have to take classes in armor smithing, engineering, or other skills in order to do some truly magical actions and bring the kingdom up to the renaissance.
Legitimately, can we get a video that's an overview of those rules? I'm reaching territory where such tips might be really really useful in my campaign. "A forge cleric and an artificer walk into a shop with things to sell" and now I feel like I need a deep dive in economics and to have the entire Eberron setting memorized the moment they think about walking near the city center
The fact is that in Eberron specifically you're not going to crash an economy this way. It already assumes magewrights are doing exactly this. The big crafting guilds probably make liberal use of the Fabricate spell to create most of their item bases, then just spend the time enchanting them. Eberron is post magic-industrial revolution. The player character is not special in this regard there. And in fact one of the houses like Cannith would probably charge them union or guild dues to be able to sell anything they craft legally to begin with.
@wanderer202 yeah, this is exactly what I mean, all of the things I'd worry about running into are already there and established and set up in Eberron. So if this goes deep enough I'd need to familiarize myself with the way they handle it, even if I don't do it with that setting
I've always have issues when trying to use this spell in campaigns. Because no matter how you want to use it there's a good chance the DM will have an interpretation very different of the spell. When I DM I allow the spell to be used as broadly as possible, but I use the in universe restriction of relevant guild(s) refusing to do business with the party after an initial warning given by a representative NPC, because they now directly compete with them, meaning they now struggle to get the raw materials or anything they lack the tool proficiency to make. Then when the party runs into a significant reason to need to trade, I have a representative offer them a contract which in exchange for none of them trying to turn a profit off of fabricate, they can trade with the relevant guild(s). It went wrong 1/4 times where the party decided destroying the local Kingdom's entire economy was the most eloquent response they could think of. So much fire...
Great ideas! This reminds me of in my Star Wars game a player noticed that Hoth was just around the corner (galactically speaking) from Tatooine and said, "Let's sell water!" After a bit of math (Price per liter of water in the book, add 50% markup for scarcity in a desert. Liters per ton. Tons the light freighter can carry. Even at only 2 credits per Liter from the book it gets ridiculous FAST!) I gave them one run for free as a reward for a clever idea, but told them that a second run would attract the attention of the Hutt Cartels who would be very upset at the players for ruining the economy and making the Hutts look dumb.
That's not a bad constraint! It would also totally work on the one character idea I have who would want to use this spell. Iggy the Goblin is more of the mindset of "Make...Money...? But I don't wanna make money, I wanna make BALLISTA! :D "
*Needs more fire.*
@@marcusdire8057 Honestly, that just sounds like a phenomenal campaign hook to me. If I were at the table I'd totally bite into that one.
I go the other way. I let it be broadly used, with proficiencies of course for most things, but the fact is the player isn't special in this regard. The spell is a known quantity not something new. All the crafting guilds already use this method, and charge a premium for the faster turn around than traditional crafting methods. Good luck making any more profit off of this method than any other merchant or crafter who is already using it. Also, sure you may have to pay union dues to be a registered merchant or artisan and sell your goods legally.
I like the imaginative players that come with ideas like using Fabricate to become a living printing press and create a technological renaissance.
Funny joke that Ill try to remember: The DM is casting their own spell "Player Resentment". Casting Time "1 Argument", Duration "The
Campaign"
Happy new year ❤
Congratulations you have a package for the year
🎉
Send a Dm🎊
another fun spell is the 5th level "Creation", create non-living object from nothing that last depending on the material.
The kicker is that object and material is something you have seen.
The trick is recreating unique things you have seen, like a key or emblem.
I used it in combination with arcane eye to scout an area and then copy something.
Note* my DM makes me roll to remember the finer details,
One of my favorite Terry Pratchett quotes is: "Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things." So what if a truely evil being uses this spell?
No need just declare the things in the body like blood, glucose or just water. You basically turn into a Tzimisce flesh crafter.
@@TheLastSoundNL "raw materials that you can see within range". blood is not a raw material, and you can't see it through the body.
@@Alcadeias90 How is blood not a raw material? Also all you need is a single cut to be able to see it. And if you can't draw all the blood from a single cut can you only use the *bark* of a tree since you can't see the wood beneath it? That would make the description of using it to make a bride impossible
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 yes, you could draw all the blood from a cut
but by definition, raw material is "An unprocessed natural product used in manufacture." blood is not used in manufacture
@@aelanarbrightfield6817 Blood is definitionally not a raw material, it's manufactured by the spleen and bone marrow.
My question when it comes to Fabricate has always been "If you can't make magic items, then could you use magic materials to make a mundane item with the properties of the magic material?" Like, if you had adamantine for whatever reason, could you make armor out of that and have it be adamantine armor and thus be immune to crits?
Id allow it. You got ahold of adamantine, thats like a campaign defining feat.
Well by RAW: no. Adamantine weapons are still magic items.
@@theposhdinosaur7276 Which is kind of dumb, since it's just the material's property to be very very very hard
@@theposhdinosaur7276 Adamantine armour is. There’s no mention of Adamantine weapons in official sourcebooks, aside from the part in some monster statblocks where it says “immunity to nonmagical weapon damage that isn’t Adamantine,” which seems to imply that Adamantine weapons aren’t magical.
@@twinostrich8045 Ah you are right. They do exist, as their rules are listed in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, but they are not listed specifically as a magic item, but rather exist in a space similar to silvered weapons.
It seems like it's the kind of spell where the intent was some sort of cinematic scene like the party has to defend a wizard as he uses the spell to move rocks to make a staircase, or the aforementioned bridge example that someone slapped together some mechanics in 5 minutes without really thinking about potential ways to break said mechanics.
Honestly, I do really like that view of it, protecting wizzy while they make an escape path. Or tear down a path that may have an endless conga line of baddies.
Maybe make it higher level?
Could you do a video on crafting Material spell components which have a cost?
"An undead eyeball encased in a gem worth at least 150 gp" _could_ be difficult to obtain, but if you can get hold of a gemstone & an undead eyeball, then *Fabricate* & Jeweler's Tools proficiency can allow you to craft one. So could _using_ Jeweler's Tools to split the gemstone & hollow it out, then casting *Mending* to meld the two halves back together with the eyeball inside. Perhaps best of all, *Stone Shape* could shape the gemstone around the eyeball, _without needing a proficiency,_ in just one Action.
Are there other ways to craft a material component which has a cost? I'm not sure, but I bet there's a few Druids & Rangers who'd love to know how to put "a feather, tuft of fur, and fish tail inside a gilded acorn worth at least 200 gp"! Especially since Druids & Rangers are probably the _least_ likely to have shops catering to them (not big on towns).
Also... an acorn _shell_ can be hollow, but _an acorn_ has a nut inside. Now add a fish tail, fur, and a feather? That's a lot to pack inside one acorn!
If you combine this with the forge cleric's ability to just generate metal and tool proficiencies, you can absolutely break the economy. This is because a hundred gold worth of iron is instantly far more valuable if it can be converted to weapons and armor in 10 minutes
Given 5es rules on economics, it actually isn't more valuable. When crafting an item worth 100 gold, you need to spend 100 gold in materials to craft it. Magic items actually devalue, as the spell cost isn't accounted for, so you may end up spending 100 in materials, then another 100 in spells, to make an item worth 100 gold. This gets worse when you figure out that you will only sell for 50 gold to any merchant.
I'm going to be giving each of my player characters a necklace/amulet to signify their party's "friends of the church of the Allhammer" status after reclaiming a lost temple/holy site/forge. Each of the amulets will have a singular casting of Fabricate in them. Can't wait to see what they all do with them.
I’ve always imagined bridges from the spell to be one solid blob of wood. But the armor thing certainly is a canundrum
Id be much more willing to deal with that version of the spell. One material in one solid shape entirely connected and fused.
@@Jasonwolf1495 But would you allow them to essentially make multiple objects if they were connected by a thin wire of material?
@@DangStank No that's too technical. like if you used fabricate to make plate armor it'd be one solid thing of it so either you gotta cast it a bunch to make each piece then assemble it with the other parts like leather and such, or you have basically a plate shirt that the person can't doff and the spell literally built it around them.
@@Jasonwolf1495 But you can make plate armor. Which is basically that. Many smaller pieces fitted together. The spell kinda set itself up for it.
@@Jasonwolf1495 or they are intricate enough that they can be worn without the leather straps, fabricate is more like a magic printer, so some rules don't apply. if you have a problem with the player making something too intricate then you could just ask them for a proficiency roll. or you could ask them to cast the spell multiple times for every different material.
I'd love it if you shared those civ-like rules, that sort of design space really interests me and I'd be curious to hear your spin on it!
Yeah he really buried the lead! Give us the goods!
Gonna have to agree with that. SHOW US THE MONEY!
@@Critrol This was what I came here for too. "oh you made civ level economic rules, cool cool cool ... post when?"
I gotta know! This system sounds absolutely fascinating!
I don't know how developed their system might be, but there are woefully few good economic example charts for things in D&D, particularly for things artificers or certain mages can do.
2:18 My party did exactly this for the Rime of the Frostmaiden "Lost Netheril Spire" adventure. The Wizard came up with the amazing idea of making a big fragile mold to make a bunch of Adamantine weapons and armor for the party..... our DM somehow was cool with it
People need to remember that once you're casting 4th level spells, you essentially have miracles on hand. The setting matters for this, because in a place Eberron this is not new and there ought be systems in place to handle that sort of upheaval, while in a much less magically advanced society this is a moment of unbelievable power. Here's the thing, sometimes the players *should* be able to make miracles and do incredible things. At 7th level a Wizard can do this once a day, and in the right setting, yes, the character should be able to do something miraculous, while in a high magic setting there should be many wizards doing this kind of shit for mundane reasons. Don't say "you're just breaking the game" but instead make this a chance to implement new story elements. Did someone try to make themselves into an instant printing press? Maybe the very mafia-like ink and paper guild has some issues with that....and members with lots of sneak attack damage. Someone toy-mold style cast a village's worth of weapons at once to arm a group of peasants? Maybe that's a rightful miracle to happen to save them from raiders, and then the King summons the party and questions them about upgrading his army's equipment. Or maybe its what saves a rebellion against and evil ruler, and now the party have become crucial to a resistance becoming a rebellion. USE THE SPELLS! USE THE ABILITIES! USE THE FEATURES! LET THE COOL MOMENTS HAPPEN! IT'S GROUP STORYTELLING, SO LET THE PARTY BREAK YOUR STORY TO MAKE NEW AND MORE STORY! AND MORE STORY! AND MORE STORY! STOP BEING AFRAID OF THE D&D AND PLAY THE D&D!
or have the caster get kidnapped by the bbeg's army. put them to work in the forge. he has many like powerful wisard/ forgers who mass produce armor for the bbeg's endless hordes. the only issue is, most of the wisards are there by choice, and the ones who arn't are kept in line by the rest. the rest of the party needs to break into this fortifed stronghold, and help their party memeber escape. it encourages steath as there are many high level casters present who could overpower them.
People need to remember your DM sucks if they constantly let you duplicate other spells with a single spell. I've read enough here to know I would nerf that spell immediately.
@@mehmeh533 You must be fun as a DM.
If you make it useless in combat, and barely worth anything out of combat, then why would anyone ever pick this spell up?
@@mehmeh533 You can have your opinion, just know it's the wrong one. So long as spells aren't invalidating other spells **from the same school**, it's cool. It makes sense that transmutation wizards would have analogues of conjuration spells.
@@mehmeh533People need to remember that your DM sucks if the group agrees they suck
DMs can do whatever the fuck they want. Whether they suck or not is up to the people they're DMing, not anyone else
FINALLY YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT MY FAVORITE SPELL!!! This spell rules, in any "real" world with DnD spells, every wizard would be using this spell. I think this is one of those spells that's just supposed to "work" in one cast. I think by virtue of the bridge being mentioned, it implies multi-piece objects.
While a bridge can be a single continuous object made of one material, the mention of armor makes it indisputable, as a set of armor cannot function if it isnt made of multiple pieces and multiple materials.
@@2MeterLP The issue is that in most interpretations of the spell, the limiting factor is more the requirement for "raw" materials. This generally prevents it being used destructively as "mortar" is not a raw material, nor "stone bricks". Arguably it could work for earthen embankments and PERHAPS for a wooden palisade, but wood poles are not "raw wood". So it ends up being a "meh it's either going to turn into a discussion with the DM or a largely irrelevant spell". Or, if the DM is lenient, a campaign derailing tool where whatever was happening before just became irrelevant because suddenly it's THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
@@GeckoOBac personally, I diaagree. Picture this: Is raw hide a raw material? What about the hide still on a dragon's corpse? Is a pile of scrap iron considered raw iron, or do you only count iron ore? If iron ore counts- what about other natural sources of iron, say, blood in a steak, or the veins of your enemies? The way I see it, you could make an arguement for sneaking into a stronghold full of enemies, casting fabircate and sucking all the iron out of the blood of the guards from within hiding to have an opening cast of "fk you you're all dead"
@@bodaciouschad I'm not saying I agree or disagree with any particular interpretation, I'm saying that using that spell either requires at lenght discussions with the DM in case it's being used in any actually very impactful way, or it's a largely non-impactful spell that is hardly worth using. The impact it can have varies so much on interpretation and accepted effects that in most cases it's just a case of "I don't want to deal with that kind of bullshit, I'll just ignore it".
While a CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS definition of how it works would probably nerf it in "power", it would also most likely make it far more usable with less extreme results.
@@GeckoOBac The wording "raw material" indeed is quite limiting if you take the dictionary definition.
Though no matter the interpretation, its not going to kick off any kind of industrial revolution. The indutrial revolution was kicked off by machines that could produce goods cheap and in large quantities, needing a Lv7+ wizard and a Lv4 spell slot for each casting is neither cheap nor easily scalable to large quantities.
I love the Fullmetal Alchemist implications of this spell
FMA also came to my mind.
@@whatewer23 it’s essentially giving defined rules to that series Alchemy. Fun times
I don't think you can make a dog girl with this spell.
@@jtyranus have you tried?
@@jtyranus "What is an object" my friend... WHAT IS AN OBJECT?
Me: Zee's sure been quiet lately.
*sees piles of "civ like" rules because a player using this spell.
Me: yeah that'll do it
"I cast Fabricate and start constructing an object made out of the stone blocks that make up the tower wall in front of us"
DM: "Ok, what's the object you want to make? I'm not gonna let you cast it without a goal in mind."
"A statue of a hand curled into a fist with it's middle finger raised"
I'm not sure how to say it, but THIS IS MY PLAYERS SO HARD
right now im playing a forge domain cleric and the channel divinity for forge clerics is similar but much more limited. Like fabricate it uses up raw materials but you can also substitute gold, the single object you create must be made of primarily metal, and there is a 100 gp limit on what you can make. The ritual also takes 1 hour so much longer than fabricate takes however channels come back after a short rest. As an example of what I have used it for so far I spent about a week of downtime making enough arms and armor for a uprising, spent another week of down time putting basically every blacksmith in the city out of business and made 3000 ish gold, and i used it to altar some metal ID badges that we needed to enter an ancient dwarven ruin.
It’s a great spell. My wife’s dwarven necromancer has been using it to sink a mine/fortress into a mountainside. Each 5’ cube of raw stone gets shaped into a stone block for a growing outer curtain wall. Further she has notched out spaces in walls for storing bones as a summomable army reserve.
Great spell!
Oh snap! Someone else is playing a dwarven necromancer in 5e!? I thought I was the only one!
@@RCReilly She has always played unusual characters. They’re usually pretty compelling too. 😄
Now that’s a great use of the spell
Kind of wanting to do similar with my Dwarven Wizard (Order of Scribes). Also because we need to train up a magic army fast, might include pillars with spells from their book carved on them - basically making the architecture a magical library. Multiple trainees can meditate on and copy from them at a time.
More paranoid wizards might think it irresponsible, but my scribe is all about free flow of information.
@@DarrylCross that is a cool idea! Obviously wizards have that skill required for the spell. Damn I never would have considered that!
My wizard who knew the spell but lacked proficiencys, and me the artificer who had proficiencys but lacked the spell worked together for a while to build a boat. The DM was iffy on the concept at first, but now likes it because it's a good home base and a convenient place for characters to hide out when a player misses the game. Also I called the boat sailor moon
Alright that's awesome and please keep using goblins as your example I love love love it!
I feel too many D&D player underestimate the actual size of a 5ft Cube.
There's a great example online of a guy who made a 5ft x 5ft x 5ft Rubik's cube, and just the size comparison alone is jarring.
His name is Tony Fisher if anyone wants to look him up.
I love the gleeful sadism in the Zbashew spider’s eyes as he raises all those questions and makes the example goblin question himself.
Once made a character who’s whole shtick was that he was a “support alchemist” artificer but he had literally almost every single tool proficiency and the main goal was to get fabricate so I could make almost anything instantly given the proper materials
*scribbles notes furiously and adds another character to the stack of characters I probably will never get a chance to play*
Sadly this is now easily done via Artificer 1 with an all purpose tool (can turn into any artisan's tool which you get proficiency in, AT WILL) and have the rest of the levels be in wizard. You'll be at level 8 but can cast it 3 times/day. Remember artificer levels count as half full caster levels but are rounded UP for spell slots, not down like everything else.
Use githyanki and swap all of those weapon proficiencies for tool profs.
I don't know why, but the image of the goblin saying 'HERESY' at 2:28 got me to laugh SO hard XD
An excellent video as always, and quite honestly a fascinating spells. Personally I lament the lack of thought that goes into the economics of magic in the rulebooks, I would love for there to be cities where mages have effectively stopped industry and technological development because of this kind of stuff, and the mage guild basically absorbed every other artisan guild.
I'm picturing the guilds of such cities banding together and protesting the Forged products. "There's no craftsmanship, there's no labor, they're just taking the raw materials that we use and running it through a magic algorithm to mass produce stuff! They only know what to make because they copy the work we do!"
Honestly at least from the info you've given it's hard to imagine it not being broken. Your whole setting would have to be based around the spell being used to mass produce things or construct buildings. Massive droves of magical construction workers teaming up and combining their spells to make buildings in a matter of minutes..
Then again, it fits rather well with the very high level legendary wizard character who lives in the woods, is "done with adventuring" and just builds bridges out of nearby trees whenever he encounters the slightest of waterways without so much as a thought
Shotgun wizard all over again.
Level 7+ wizards are just not that common, and are so powerful and eccentric that it would be very hard to find a decent number of them with the goal of just mass producing stuff in most settings. You don't become a wizard because you're interested in turning a profit or working a day job, you are by default a deeply weird and unusual person.
@@fatterperdurabo42069 isnt this a level 4 spell
@@sid6645 Fabricate isn't a level 4 spell?
@@fatterperdurabo42069 It is, Creation is Level 5.
The best way to think of this spell and mending is the magic is a time saver for manually doing the work.
An easy out for a DM to limit the spell is introduce obstacles in the form of trade guilds and unintended consequence. Making large quantities of refined goods leads to the smiths and scholars guilds forcing the merchants to jack the prices on the party buys and introduce powerful mercenaries encounters when the party stays in a town for a few days or have the party pay off the guilds.
For demolition simple. the cast causes an echoing rumble that alerts all the enemies to the breach. When the sneaky breach becomes more well guarded than front gate the party will have to stop.
Reminds me of the conversations my group has had to have about Guidance. It's so splashable into any skill check (and one player in particular is pretty annoying about it) that my DMs have had to limit when it can be applied.
The easiest summation of our answer was "it can be used if your skill check is for an action that'd take about a minute or less"
Thanks for the Christmas present of an animated Spellbook Zee.
3:27 So how about letting us see that Civ-level economy rule set? 👀
The nerds hunger
My favorite part about fabricate is "What make a 'humanoid skeleton'?" I posed the question to my DM, he said it was the structure and shape of the bone rather than composition. I smiled in and out of character when my former doctor, necromancer elf wizard looked at the pile of dead cows that we were investigating as part of our next quest.
you wouldn't have the proficiency to *make* a living being's skeleton tho. To create something with Fabricate it has to be something that you'd still have the knowledge to make on your own without the spell. So you need to know how to make armor sets to fabricate them. Nobody knows how to physically craft a skeleton.
@@giordihero Full metal alchemist would beg to differ. We know the average weight, chemical balance, the number of bones, the change in number of bones, how they fuse together and the list continues. We knew this as humans, now if you find it unreasonable that the up to 750 years old 18 INT Elf fueled by the dark arts and a background in surgery who is specifically a necromance and has the direct interest in the dead would not know these things, then you must also admit that metal wouldn't be a valid target because I work professionally with a forge and metallurgists and have a degree with it as a requirement. Between the 3 three molecular structures of steel, the chemical changes of the carbon balance, and the heating and cooling rates changing the properties, a line of dwarven smiths would know enough to use fabricate to make armor. They'd only know that it works, now how it works.
@@shanemacmillan5732 knowing what's the composition of something doesn't mean you can create it or know how to create it. As a matter of fact, i know the composition of most objects, but I have no idea how to make those objects. Full Metal Alchemist is not D&D.
You seem to misunderstand. The requirements of the spells is not knowledge on what the thing is made of, only how to make said thing. A dwarf blacksmith doesn't know exactly what the structural martensite composition of steel is required to make good plated armor. He just knows how to make it. The process itself is the important part.
Now, seen as you know what a corpse is made of, how would you go about creating a corpse? From raw materials?
@@giordihero First, I never said DND was FullMetal Alchemist, I only used as to show how common of knowledge it can be to know the materials of the human body. So to start, you're already misrepresenting what I'm going on about. Second, bone synthesis, unlike flesh, is actually fairly simple to understand. TL;DR of it is basically that you can grow bones like you can make rocks, slowly and with mineral deposits of the correct composition. BUT, if all we need is the knowledge and not the innerworkings things get simpler. To answer your rhetorical question, Lethal Damage + commoner = corpse. By what you've said, that's the method and all it would take. And before you say "that's not good enough" you have to show me where this isn't by definition: A Method to create a corpse.
@@shanemacmillan5732 fine, then the raw materials to make a corpse is a live person. Which unfortunately for you, is not a possible target for Fabricate.
And dude, growing something is not a crafting process. Otherwise you could use Fabricate to transform dirt into wood. But that's not how it works. There is no crafting process to make plants or to make people. Fabricate cannot be used to make such things. And even if you could make a surrogate duplicate of bones, which I guess would be possible, those would not be a viable target for Animate Dead.
Fabricate feels like molding materials, pit traps, bridges, wholes into stuff, are all in and fun
This is literally how one of my settings used the spell. There was a military set of wizards whose whole purpose was to unmake weapons, armor, structures, etc. Literally anything an opposing army had could be broken down almost invisibly into useless cubes of matter, often above entire platoons of soldiers, crushing them with their own arms. In 3.5, it's a 5th level spell with a short range but fast speed, meaning it can only be cast by 9th level wizards/sorcerers minimum. Once a day. The range was 25 ft.+5 feet per 2 caster levels. So at minimum, it could affect up to 90 cubic feet of material at a range of 45 feet away, taking 1 round per 10 cubic feet affected. It was not common enough that it became a massive threat. But they were literally disarming enough that they were known about. It was actually weaponizeable in combat.
And this is why I love low-magic settings. Not because I don't want my players to do dope things with their spells, but because I don't want them asking why they're the only ones who have thought of doing it. Also feudal economies, because the question of "Can I sell all my stuff I made/found" can quickly be answered with "Yes of course, but there's only like 6 people who have enough money to pay for it"
After hearing about this spell that's just how I assumed things were built in a campaign setting- no craftsman just hundreds of wizards and longrests.
A wizard with 4th level spells would be a skilled tradesmen and probably hired by guilds for their crafting prowess but magic users are (generally in most campaigns) fairly rare so they haven't completely industrialized the economy yet. If there's a lot of magic users- then yeah these guys are probably working in sweatshops producing the majority of sellable goods, laying bricks for a wall, building homes etc.
But yeah, if you didn't consider this spell when creating a world then you might need to comeback with some hotfix like 'the work is shoddy and not acceptable standards' or 'the king has outlawed it'. I don't envy the job of DMs haha
@@DoABarrelRol1l And this is why I shill PF2e, where “making the DM not get headaches from trying to adjudicate everything while making casters less capable of outright breaking campaigns in half at high levels” is a selling point.
Fabricate is one of those spells that is only an issue if handed to a particularly clever and devious player.
And will almost never be used otherwise.
Gotta up the price of those iron bars :D
I wanna have fun with a Transmutation Wizard with Fabricate; Transmute stone to wood, make a wall with a wooden door with fabricate, transmutation wears off and you have an immovable door that only transmutation wizards or people with enough strength can open.
and here i was feeling satisfied with the aim of making impossible sculptures out of shed dragon scales
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Corpses are objects. Combine 6 corpses into a Deluxe Corpse Supreme and then animate it.
Fabrucate turns every fantasy into high fantasy. Love it
Mold Earth. A tiny itsy bitsy cantrip without years of study. But also capable of fundamentally changing the work force of a kingdom.
A fourth level spell capable of doing the same really doesn't seem that bad.
I realised how powerful this spell was when I played a warforged forge cleric. We had to infiltrate an enemy ship moored just offshore and take out a few individuals on board. The look of horror in my dms eyes when I described walking over to the ship pirates of the carribbean style, climbing the anchor chain, and using fabricate to turn every rivet and nail in the hull into a tasteful suit of plate armor... It was that day the dm ruled to nerf fabricate
It has verbal and somatic components, no? So if he's having the bad guys sit there for 10 minutes not noticing someone hanging from the side of their ship chanting and waving their arcane focus around... that's kind of on him.
The crew has 10mins to figure out what's happening to the ship and stop the wizard, (who may also be invisible).
@@kingcole5977 He said he was a Warforged Cleric hanging off the side of the anchor chain. And he could not have been invisible because as soon as he started casting, invisibility would end. It would be pretty easy to identify the source of the sound and shoot an arrow at his face from the deck of the ship. Maybe a DC10 perception check to locate him within 5 minutes. But within 10 minutes? Gotta be kidding me that you don't think you'd be able to find a giant robot man, probably in heavy armor, hanging off the side of your boat chanting and waving his hand and probably glowing with divine magic.
doesn't it say raw materials that you can see within range? nails are not raw materials, they are processed materials or even a finished product. plus you can't see most of the nails
@@Alcadeias90 Lol that's a good point. That also precludes most of the applications in this video. Like you could convert sand and some kind of raw bonding agent into mortar but not convert already manufactured mortar in a brick wall into a block of mortar at your feet.
I had a party member use this spell in a one shot to basically put in a video game cheat code. We had to get from one side of a stone building (where the entrance was) to the other side (where the boss was) while dealing with all the traps and encounters in between those two sides. This forge cleric just said fuck it and used fabricate to take out a patch of the outside wall from the back room , allowing us to just skip the entirety of the rest of the one shot. He even used the materials to create a small statue of our party. Legendary level use in my opinion, the whole party and the DM we’re laughing their asses off the whole time.
it is a combat opener spell in the under dark. Fabricate on the roof of a giant under dark city. Dropping stone cones from the sky at high speeds. I mean this spell was powerful in 3.5 and I loved every minute of it.
I could just see two sufficiently skilled casters, with enough prep time and motivation, who just so happen to be fighting in front of a very large mountain of metal and rock, using a combination of Telekinesis and Fabricate to recreate the battle between Shiro and Gilgamesh from Fate/Stay Night......
I uh, I gotta go talk to my DM.
Gate of Babylon is a 9th level spell for sure.
Fabricate is one of my favorite spells that my Dwarf Forge Domain Cleric (with proficiency in smiths tools, carpenters tools, and mason's tools) has. Used it to create a defensible wall in the underdark, a stone bridge over a rushing sand river in a pyramid dungeon, and (over the course of a week and change of downtime) a village for an orc clan that we'd been helping.
Reminds me of the opening of Stromlight Archive. A man sent to kill a king has a cool sword and one power going for him: gravity manipulation. On touch, he can make objects and people, including himself, suffer the effects of increased gravity, decreased gravity, and control where "down" for them is. Walking on ceilings, freezing and then moving massive stone blocks from the wall to devastating effect, so on. Simple powers can become monstrously terrifying, more so than more directly powerful abilities, with just some ingenuity. Take some non damaging spells sometimes, see what chaos you can wreak.
So… telekinesis but only for things you’ve touched?
@@Aaa-vp6ug Worse. Imagine someone takes a giant stone block, makes it ten times heavier, and makes it move horizontally, pulping an entire guard group
@@notoriousgoblin83 yeah, telekinesis but only for things you’ve touched!
Stormlight mentioned 🗣️🔥🔥🔥
_"Szeth Son-Son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king."_
Just had another troubling thought about fabricate . . . corpses count as objects. So if your party & dm are willing, you could change a character's race by swapping out most of their body before they get resurrected. But you could also splice together multiple dead creatures to jumpstart making an unholy monstrosity, such as a flesh golem or an undead chimera.
Fabricate is as op as the DM allows it to be. It is ultimately up to them if the materials and tools are available to create the item.
The skill is obviously meant as a problem solving tool, not as a pseudo wish spell.
New DM: you can't do that!
Experienced DM: sure, you can do that. Here's all the reasons I'm gonna make you regret doing it.
Veteran DM: that was a pretty creative solution. It succeeds. On to the next encounter, which I'll make more challenging.
A magician who can cast fourth level spells absolutely SHOULD be able to arm an entire village! By the time you're casting fourth level spells, you're already the most powerful magician most normal people in a d&d campaign have probably ever met. It should feel that way!
This is why my Pathfinder sorcerer took enough ranks in blacksmithing, and hired a half-orc blacksmith. He'd fabricate a network of adamantine sword blanks all connected by little metal sprues, and then the half orc smith would snip them apart and finish them up as masterwork adamantine swords. Eventually, after becoming a "Mythic" character, he could crank out two or three +2 adamantine swords a day. Made a large fortune up in the World Wound.
A very simple counter to some shenanigans is that nasty cast time. If you were trying to dismantle a wall with enemies on the other side, they could witness the change in real time to react during the cast.
Imagine a setting that's ruled over by an archmage dictator who rose to power by controlling the economy with this spell, and he orders his minions to hunt down and enslave anyone else who's suspected of having proficiency with magic, partially to keep potential rivals in check and partially so he can put them to work in his magic factories.
This reminds me of an idea I had for a 3.5 set up. Basically I was playing around with an idea for a dragon fire adept character, and how that would work as a kobold, and that snowballed into working out how to abuse various low level spells, and the nature of Kobold society to build a sprawling empire.
Basically kobold tribes settle where they can mine, and only leave when 1) the mine runs dry or 2) the tribe grows too big so it splits like an ameoba and half head off to start a new mine. My idea was having a charismatic Kobold leader set up tunnels and paths- connections, to future mine sites ahead of time, and then implement societal and technological advances to expand the populations so the tribe would split, but with the path to a new mine laid out already, they would stay in contact, and under the same leadership, and then rinse and repeat. As part of that I had all sorts of crazy ideas of how to use 3.5 spells, things like wood shape, stone shape and iron wood, to create precise machine parts or disguised structures( hidden kobold outposts) using goodberry to vastly inflate the food supply. I even had an idea for a sort of floating kobold mine- using a woodshaped framework turned into ironwood, and with a stone shaped shell, it would be a fake mountain/island that would allow the kobold empire to expand, working as sort of off shore drilling platforms, fisheries etc, that outsiders would mistake for rocky outcrops or tiny islands.
Holy shit. This needs to be a setting.
@@Drekromancer I am not a dm, but if become one I might use it someday, but feel free to use it yourself or tell others about it. Frankly I am annoyed there aren't any settings I can find that have something like a kobold nation or empire- one that isn't just them as an underclass being bossed around by dragons or other creatures. They have a high percentage of sorcerers, they build traps, are highly communal and self sacrificing for said community, and reproduce like mad, you just need one group to decide to go big and survive long enough for their advantages to snowball. One idea that simplifies the concept revolves around dragonwrought kobolds, who are treated as holy, sometimes brought to holy sites to be raised because their nature is decernable even as an egg, and they live as long as a dragon. That means you have a ready made leader, who lives in a location kobolds already will travel to, and which is inhabited for reasons other then being a mine, so it won't be abaondoned. So a ready made capital as well. You could start out the tunnels as for making it easier for kobolds to travel to such locations, and build up the location with tricks like the goodberry abuse and hidden farms, and turn around and use the tunnels to share the wealth. Really we have nations of goblins, orcs and drow, all of which get along with each other way worse then kobolds do in many depictions, a hidden Kobold empire is just waiting to rise... You could even use it as the premise of a campain, where the players are kobolds sent out BY this leader to do work for this goal, missions for them to gain experience and skills they can teach to other kobolds, scouting missions to find sites for mines and paths for tunnels, assasination missions against groups that threaten the secrecy of the empire etc...
I think of this more as soul-casting from the Stormilight archives, there they use a device to create grain from stone, or bronze from clay. So it’d come with some amazing applications but at the same time be surprisingly crude. Like said armour. It’s not complicated, just a single bronze chestplate, easy to make but not very protective or capable of being more complex.
top tier reference
the difference being that Soulcasting doesn't care about what raw materials you have, so long as you're turning something into one of the ten essences, and that soulcasting preserves shape. If you have a block of metal, you can't soulcast it into being a sword, unless it's already shaped like a sword. You're better off making a mold of a sword, filling it with wax, and then soulcasting the wax sword into a metal sword. I suppose you could take a cheap potmetal sword and soulcast it into the finest steel, but it needs to be sword-shaped already.
I think you'd also need to do multiple soulcastings to get something with multiple different components worked together. Like, one casting to make hemp rope, one casting to make each plank in a bridge. and then you'd need to assemble them by hand.
But a soulcaster would be a great partner to a fabricate wizard
If you've got the time, the spell is great for reconfiguring dungeon topography. Turn a wall into a doorway while simultaneously blocking off another path.
I hadn't thought of ripping the mortar or stone from a position before. Rip the mortar out, make a bunch of hollow spheres with the snap out model feature, fill them with alchemists fire, acid, oil, whatever. Use catapult or prepare a bunch of scrolls of catapult, launch them over the walls of a city or at a dragons face. I once did a campaign where we had downtime between every mission to do whatever, but I just kept making wands of magic missile. Gave them to everyone so there was always force damage hitting something, but this sounds like fun too.
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I would recommend the book series "Wake of The Ravager". The main character essentially gains a spell that allows them temporarily summon "X mass" of any ingredient they can clearly locate/see and the series is essentially how the character slowly begins to abuse the mechanics you outlined XD
I have seen some downright horrid ratings for the story you mentioned :/
Yeah it.... gets weird.