Optimizing under a DM adversarial to metagaming?

[ace rooster]

@currency:
The DM said that coins and goods were still currency for normal trade - it's just that anyone selling magic commodities and services demanded to be paid in things of magical value. That since the DMG didn't specify whether an item's price could be met with copper, silver, gold, platinum, gems, or goods and services, vendors could ask for their prefered method - and obviously not go for something that would be worthless to them.


@custom items:
There were some weird stuff brought up. First, that we had to actually prepare and expend the spells required every day we created magic items, unless otherwise specified - and that this wasn't a house rule.
Secondly, that magic traps had no reset element.
Third, that Wish could create magic items but didn't say it ignored magic item creation rules.
Fourth, that having a called/gated creature make or give us magic items, treasure, magic, or anything that would last longer than the duration of Gate directly or indirectly counted as prolonged service, not brief command.

Magic supplies for items are always half of the base price in gp and 1/25 of the base price in XP

Bold for emphisis, gold is not used to buy supplies for crafting, gold is the supplies for crafting. Unlike the real world where currency is given value purely from exchange value, gold in DnD has inherent value. Usually I extend this to copper, platinum and silver, convieniently stabalising the relative value of the metals.

There doesn't look like anything particularly funny in the items things. Enforcing the rules regarding crafting is hardly something to get upset about, and not permiting PCs from access to unlimited castings of spells with no underlying power source is not draconian. Personally I tend to let auto reset traps exist, but require extensive underlying 'magic plumbing' to power them, in the same way that a mundane auto reset flooding room trap would require a source of water. Wish traps could in theory exist but there is nowhere in existence that has an appropriate power supply (which can be trap specific). If you suggest this to the DM then it reopens DM access to such traps (fiat a power supply into existence) but prevents tippyverse type abuse.

The wish thing is a bit wierd. House ruling that spell likes with variable xp component only ignore the base xp component is fine to prevent abuse, but I'm not sure that is what he is intending. Which magic creation rules do you mean? Do you mean that the caster has to have the relevant feats and take the time, or just that wish cannot create items that could not otherwise be crafted? The first seems a bit strange, but not a massive issue. The second is just RAW.

Ruling that gated crafters count as prolonged service is fine. Worth pointing out that it is pretty much risk free though, and discounted appropriately.