Optimized Looting - ways to get much more treasure?

[Tr011]

Do you know the moments, when the DM gets a literary moment and starts to describe some environment in a dungeon that causes you to think "that would bring some gold" but it's not handy enough to get it away? A good-looking statue, an ornated chest with expensive parts (golden look, adamantium shell), a door of adamantium or something similar?
There are some ways to get it out of the dungeon, but what are the simplest ways if you don't have a huge-sized troll with strength over 30 in your party?

I think of some spells, but I'm sure there's much more that every random party got. Especially useful is of course things that are cheap to get (like low-level spells or cheap magic items).

Get the item more easy to transport:
• Shrink item (1/4000 volume)
• Fabricate (get the item into a better shape)
• Polymorph any object (morph it into a pebble and dispel later)
• Skate (1/10 weigth for 1min/lvl)

Increasing the ability to carry:
• Enlarge Person (only 1min/lvl)
• Bull's Strength (only 1min/lvl)
• Bite of ... (from spell compendium)
• Polymorph, Baleful Polymorph, Shapechange...
• Draconic Polymorph (Draconomicon)
• Druidic Wildshape

Let spells/items carry your loot:
• Tenser's Floating Disk (1h/lvl)
• Leomund's Secret Chest
• Bag of Holding (decrease the weight by huge amount)
• Enveloping Pit (huge portable hole from MIC)
• Mount (2h/lvl)
• any spell to animate the corpses (they "carry" themselves + some part of your loot)
• Artificer's ability to get craft points out of items (Magic items ONLY)
• Ancestral Relic (feat from BoED) with portable altar
• Greater Tenser's Floating Disc (Spell Compendium)

[archangel.arcanis]

Bags of holding are ok. Enveloping Pit's are great (especially the relic one). Combine either of these with shrink item and a Handy haversack since enveloping pit and bag of holding combination for an astral tear is only for those specific items. You may even be able to argue combining this with secret chest so you don't even have to carry the bags in the first place.

You can add polymorph and shapechange to the ways to carry more. Even better is Draconic polymorph as it adds an extra +8 strength to your form.

[Tr011]

Ok added these things. The Pit is great (hoho in both ways).

[genuine]

I've found Skate to be useful.

[PhaedrusXY]

Doesn't the wildshape description say that "all equipment melds into the new form"? So the druid could wildshape into an elephant or something, have his companions load up his giant backpack with all the loot, and then wildshape into a sparrow. All the loot would meld into his new form, and he could wildshape back to pachyderm form retrieve it. Right?

(I actually used this once with a gnomish druid. )

[Tr011]

Doesn't the wildshape description say that "all equipment melds into the new form"? So the druid could wildshape into an elephant or something, have his companions load up his giant backpack with all the loot, and then wildshape into a sparrow. All the loot would meld into his new form, and he could wildshape back to pachyderm form retrieve it. Right?

(I actually used this once with a gnomish druid. )

Indeed a possiblity. Should work I think.

Added to list and added Skate. Skate is really a cool way indeed to get something great out of a dungeon, especially since it only costs one PP.

[Bozwevial]

Nonstandard sources of treasure are always a good idea to consider. Corpses can be harvested for spell components, stuffed and sold by a taxidermist, and if you know a necromancer, he'd likely appreciate them.

Edit: If you can animate them on the spot, you can use them to carry treasure out and save them for later.

[Tr011]

Edit: If you can animate them on the spot, you can use them to carry treasure out and save them for later.

That's a nice one, added that to the list.

[KellKheraptis]

Seeker of the Lost Wizard Traditions 4 has Harvest Magic, which lets you poach parts from monsters for gp and xp towards crafting.  Doesn't get more efficient than that

[archangel.arcanis]

Seeker of the Lost Wizard Traditions 4 has Harvest Magic, which lets you poach parts from monsters for gp and xp towards crafting.  Doesn't get more efficient than that

That reminds me. Artificier has the ability to strip magic items to refill his pool. Some type of conversion of heavy junk to weightless currency.

[Tr011]

Seeker of the Lost Wizard Traditions 4 has Harvest Magic, which lets you poach parts from monsters for gp and xp towards crafting.  Doesn't get more efficient than that

That's homebrew, isn't it?
@archangel.arcanis: Thought of the same since our party has an artificer.

[KellKheraptis]

Seeker of the Lost Wizard Traditions 4 has Harvest Magic, which lets you poach parts from monsters for gp and xp towards crafting.  Doesn't get more efficient than that

That's homebrew, isn't it?
@archangel.arcanis: Thought of the same since our party has an artificer.

It's Tome, if that means anything to you.

[Lycanthromancer]

A couple of things:

The Ancestral Relic feat from the BoED allows you to sacrifice expensive items to directly convert them to gp values on a single item. If everyone in the party has one, just sacrifice all the expensive stuff that would normally go to waste. Simply ensure that you have a portable altar available (and preferably a spell like Hallow as well). Sacrifice that evil temple or massive statue to your item.

There's a psionic power in Hyperconscious called Dream Vault. Whenever you manifest the power within 8 hours of sleep, any item of 10 lbs/lvl or less that you touch is transported with your dreaming self into a special nondimensional space that is completely impervious to anyone but you (and this includes things like Plane Shift). When you want to retrieve something, manifest the power again before going to sleep. All you need to do is touch the item when you fall asleep (even if you fall asleep on top of the item, so long as it's 'clutched in your hands') and it's transferred to your dream vault. Each power point you augment the power with grants you an additional item or another 10 lbs/lvl per item. Combine this with Shrink Item and/or interdimensional/nondimensional spaces for best effect. Also protects against the Lucid Dreaming skill!

Also, what about Shrink Item + Fabricate? If the item is just too damned big for ANYTHING, break the item apart, Shrink the pieces, the Fabricate back to its original shape. Just make sure all the castings of Shrink Item have the same command word.

Also, since non-animated corpses have no Wis or Cha scores, they should be considered objects for all purposes. Fabricate the various tissues together for easy travel, or for things like bone plate mail.

[Tr011]

A couple of things:

The Ancestral Relic feat from the BoED allows you to sacrifice expensive items to directly convert them to gp values on a single item. If everyone in the party has one, just sacrifice all the expensive stuff that would normally go to waste. Simply ensure that you have a portable altar available (and preferably a spell like Hallow as well). Sacrifice that evil temple or massive statue to your item.

There's a psionic power in Hyperconscious called Dream Vault. Whenever you manifest the power within 8 hours of sleep, any item of 10 lbs/lvl or less that you touch is transported with your dreaming self into a special nondimensional space that is completely impervious to anyone but you (and this includes things like Plane Shift). When you want to retrieve something, manifest the power again before going to sleep. All you need to do is touch the item when you fall asleep (even if you fall asleep on top of the item, so long as it's 'clutched in your hands') and it's transferred to your dream vault. Each power point you augment the power with grants you an additional item or another 10 lbs/lvl per item. Combine this with Shrink Item and/or interdimensional/nondimensional spaces for best effect. Also protects against the Lucid Dreaming skill!

Also, what about Shrink Item + Fabricate? If the item is just too damned big for ANYTHING, break the item apart, Shrink the pieces, the Fabricate back to its original shape. Just make sure all the castings of Shrink Item have the same command word.

Also, since non-animated corpses have no Wis or Cha scores, they should be considered objects for all purposes. Fabricate the various tissues together for easy travel, or for things like bone plate mail.

Very nice indeed, I think depending on your DM-style items with that +20 to one skill roll and Fabricate are very nice to fabricate a good bone plate (f.e.) on the go. Is Hyperconscious 3rd party?

@KellKeraptis: What's that, Tome? o.O

[Lycanthromancer]

Hyperconscious was published by a 3rd party company, yes, but it was written by Bruce Cordell, the main author of the XPH, partial contributor to CPsi (basically, everything good in the book), and the author of a number of other 1st party supplements.

[Endarire]

Tenser's Floating Disc (Wiz1) and its Greater version (Wiz4 - Spell Compendium 96) aid in carrying.

In short, anything that increases your ability to transport stuff helps, such as by reducing its volume/weight/lethality or increasing your STR/party size/carrying capacity.