Not the richest fastest but probably nice and discreet: electronics repair shop using mending.
Mending is so good, and as a Cantrip you don't even need to be a practiced caster.
You can't mend to fix magic smoke problems. Though it would be awesome to run your finger along a cracked screen to repair it
5 minute $10 screen repairs?
Would have lines around the block.
I think you would be able to
You can fix constructs and magical items with it, you can't put magic back into it though
Lawful Good:
Foresight to convince the smart, powerful people that they're making bad decisions, influence them to make better decisions for the world, only use it for enough personal gain to sustain a decent living.
Neutral Good:
Mass Suggestion Convince the dumb powerful people I'm a divine being and they better do as I say, use this power to force positive change amongst the easiest to control masses. Collection plates at churches now go to me.
Chaotic Good:
Gate, Use teleportation to extort billionaires by witnessing their depravity and threatening them with exposure, also portal tech. become Rick Sanchez. Rob swiss banks for fun and profit.
Lawful Evil:
Meteor Swarm: Hold cities hostage for ransom.
Chaotic Evil:
True Polymorph: I'm going to start turning politicians into lizards. For cash I'll turn random shit into itself but but made out of a different material and auction if off, passing myself off as a great artist of incredible talent.
Edit because I forgot about the money half way through.
I like how as you descend into evil and madness you increasingly discard the "don't draw attention to yourself" part and with chaotic evil the wealth generation aspect is pretty much forgotten. The progression feels right.
You mixed up ‘chaotic evil’ and ‘chaotic good’
But the politicians are already lizard people. You can't turn them into lizards if they're already lizards!
To maximise staying under the radar, probably fabricate. You'd not be amazingly rich, but you could establish a decent living with a lot of free time. If you want to be amazingly rich and you squint hard enough at fabricate and what tool proficiency count mean in the modern world you can probably make some bank with a bit of study of chemistry or engineering. Being able to magically create complex drugs or something is going to draw attention though.
Fabricate would work fantastically, and I think you're underestimating the amount of money you can make with some craftsman stuff.
People will pay a lot for well done custom made stuff. Knives, swords, furniture.. all of it is worth a sizable amount once you have any kind of reputation and start taking commissions. I mean thousand dollar chandeliers and multiple thousand dollar tables.
Fireball
The answer is always fireball.
Something my buddy always says is "Fireball isn't the answer. It's the question. And the answer is always 'Yes'." Wise words, i'd figure.
Step 1. Cast foresight
Step 2. Go to Vegas
Step 3. Profit- Get booted from every casino after making a mild amount of money
FTFY
Teleport from children’s hospital to children’s hospital casting heal.
DM says no
Fine raise the dead.
There are no healing/resurrection spells on wizard's spell list
Not super creative, but distort value would work pretty well. People would think you're just a really good salesperson.
Until you try to overthrow the kingdom and people start to pay attention to your actual finances and you're looking at 90+ felonies.
Phantasmal Killer, assassin for hire.
Polymorph, make an only fans.
Move Earth, get a job in construction.
Animate Dead, free labor
Magic Missile never misses
Summon monster (fire elemental) free clean power generation
I could go on all day. Having wizard spells would literally make you stupidly rich.
Dude, if I could shape shift for an Onlyfans, I'd give myself a zipper. I'd look sexy and hot, but with a zipper right down my back. i'd ignore all questions about my zipper. I'd use throwaway accounts to drum up drama about the sexy lady zipper. Saying it's an implant, or that I'm an alien. I wouldn't even tell the people I'm filming with what the zipper is for, and if they tried to pull it, it would be stuck, and filming would end then. Then one day I'd be Livestreaming to my Simps and my zipper would get caught on something and unzip. I'd come out as a gnome. Not even a cool gnome, like an annoying keebler elf sort of lawn Ignome. My simps would loose their minds realizing that they've been jerking off to a gnome in a slut suit. Then I'd go offline that day and start a new account with some other crazy antic.
This is sooo funny I'm adding it to my modern campaign by yesterday
So the first one then, to get rid of the competition?
Prestidigitation, and a residency in Las Vegas. David Copperfield was able to buy a private island, imagine what I could do with real magic!
True Polymorph is the easiest if we just wanna accrue wealth quickly
Buy some live feeder mice (a small animal that doesn't involve killing someone's pet) and transform them into jewelry. True Polymorph has none of the restrictions of Fabricate, so we can create fine jewelry without skill. Turn a mouse into a gold ring or necklace, with a large gemstone embedded into it. Sell it at a pawn shop. Repeat, use different pawn shops, and use Dominate Person with Modify Memory afterwards if theres some law about needing an ID. The dominated person can use theirs, and then you remove the interaction from their memories.
Sell fine jewelry made from mice all you want. Use that cash to buy cows or other massive animals, turn them into gold. We don't have to worry about how to pass the gold off though, the goal was to accumulate wealth. Use Fabricate to make the cow-gold into rough coins, build a secret dragon's den.
Of course, if we're willing to be a little less subtle, True Polymorph is also great for doing some light faith healing, restoring blindness due to injury by transforming them into another person that's basically identical, or we could make people look like their ideal selves. Not in the bounds of the question though.
Suggestion. And then go to Wall Street :)
oh I like you.
Eldritch blast + spell sniper for no particular reason
Eldritch Blast + Eldritch Spear + Spell Sniper + Distant Spell = 1200ft distance that ignores most cover.
Add Subtle Spell and no one will be the wiser.
Fireba- Oh wait, without drawing attention? Invisibility and Dimension Door to steal riches.
Look, I didn't ask about the size of the room. I said fireball.
You could get some great use out of fabricate and proficiency in something related to computer architecture.
Legend Lore could equally grant you valuable knowledge to sell, and similarly half the divination spells could make you a very successful gambler.
I convince people to buy my junk using Charm for exorbitant prices.
If there is a spell capable of breaking down things into its basic raw elements, that would be it.
Garbage is abundant, as well as junk.
Imagine deconstructing anything back to its basic elements and then sell it. A gigantic pile of mixed junk instantly deconstructed and turned into ingots of pure metals, carbon, and other elements.
Not only profitable but helpful to the environment. Convert that floating mass of garbage in the Pacific and you're set for life.
Instantly buy the largest swat of land I can amass and have it turned into the planets largest wild life preserve.
Source of income: observation tours and nature escapes in full eco villages. Max occupation: 50. Max number of villages: one per 100 square kilometer.
Free access to scientists and wildlife reseaechers.
Security: enforced by snipers.
Astral Projection head to America set up an evangelic church
Boring
Invisibility,
swipe money from anywhere that old large amount of cash
Or use it to watch people enter passwords?
Use Augury to slightly improve my odds in online poker. My winnings are legal and legitimate, I don't have to leave the house so no one can tell I'm doing magic, and there's nothing to notice other than I'm unusually good at the game.
EDIT: On second thought, online sports betting is a thing now. I'm changing my answer to that.
Charm, Modify Memory, Illusions, Disguise Self, ...
Always make yourself look way richer and important than you are, smaller millionaires and celebs will flock to you and the bigger fishes will try to use you but they can't because... repeat from the start.
Mending, open a phone repair business. People would just think I’m really good at my job!
Also: Borrowed Knowledge + Fabricate
So does nobody read the spell description for Mending, or...
This spell repairs a single break or tear in an object you touch, such as broken chain link, two halves of a broken key
How many people are neatly snapping their phone into two halves?
A single broken solder joint on a board sounds like it qualifies.
How many people are neatly snapping their phone into two halves?
As a former cell phone repair tech: Quite a few more than you might think.
First off, multiple pieces requires multiple mendings, it's true. Second, the break doesn't have to actually divide the object in two, otherwise it couldn't fix, say, a rip in the sleeve of a shirt, or a hole left from stabbing through a tent wall. So you repair the phone screens. One crack = 1 break.
You could try to be pedantic and say a dropped phone could arguably have hundreds of little cracks, but the same pedantism applies to any cut in fabric, it's actually hundreds of individually cut threads. There's a point where you have to stop lumping tiny things into one "break", obviously, but that point is when lumping them together creates a break that's more than a foot across.
Fixing phone screens should be valid with mending. Of course, phones are more than just screens, so you might need multiple Mendings to fully fix a phone, but you'll do great at screen repair at a minimum.
At a high enough level, I’d use creation on either gold or diamond. Might be hard to sell a 5x5 block if either but you’d make good money if you could. Or just become a human 3D printer and sell off the things you make.
Wish is an easy one, since it can be used to cast most of the other spells talked about here
Clone, immortality without any of the normal downsides (I can choose to die still and don't need souls or any bs like that)
Identify and go pawn shop hunting and the like
Really most divination spells would be solid for stock market manipulation
Enchantment spells for manipulating the corporate ladder, or getting into politics or something (mass suggestion in the really any political nexus, geus for more targeted things, modify memory, etc).
Healing and revivification spells and sell my services to the elite, bring back the dead, speak to loved ones, etc. Clone works well here too, especially since it has age manipulation.
Suggestion. I could really use a better job with better pay.
Not very experienced, but I'd probably True Polymorph dirt/Steve Huffman into some gold and sell it.
Plan 1: Raulothim's Psychic Lance. By the time I get to take that spell, I must have had at least one ASI so I'll just take metamagic adept for subtle spell. I just have to know the name of the target and be within 120 feet of them (240 if the second metamagic option I take is distant spell), and it's pretty close to a guaranteed kill vs. a commoner, no murder weapon, and nothing showing that I was there.
Plan 2: Clone. Claim that it's some revolutionary stem cell rejuvenation therapy and sell it to the super-rich. (Though I might make it fail accidentally if it's someone like Murdoch or Kissinger. Payment in advance, no guarantees, and I'll do it on international waters.)
