TL;DR - Arcana Cleric swung a deal to eidetic-memory read one of each copy of the Tomes that increase ability scores, and has the full capability of making them, setting us on a course for max ability score bustedness! It's a great example of the unwieldy combination of 'Will Do No Wrong' and 'Pure Living Spite' that my character embodies, I think. Mr Made-A-Bad-Habit-Of-Achieving-The-Impossible, at it again.
A more well-written recount of the situation is below the jump. Hope you either enjoy it and/or enjoy your day <3
We got an extremely rare opportunity - after finally beating 'That Mission That's Been Ominously On The Map Since The Start Of The Game', our heroes were offered a choice of one (each) studying of a copy of the Tomes - a series of magical manuals that increase current and maximum values of one of your ability scores beyond mortal value. Not to own the tomes, but to study them for the aforementioned benefit - a grand gesture, as the books only offer this benefit again after 100 years pass.
The other three members of our party - a Dwarf Changeling Swamp Druid, A Radiant Aasimar Crown Paladin, and an Assassin Rogue Wood Elf - agonized for a good ten minutes over their choice, eventually settling on their primary class ability scores, respectively.
My perma-Intellect-Headband-Wearing Warforged Arcana Cleric waited until everyone else had chosen, turning down extremely considerate offers to trade out any other for the Wisdom Tome the Druid had chosen, and once confirmed, he abstained from choosing any tome.
The King had previously expressed that these tomes were intended to be passed down to his children for them to use - children he now has back and alive thanks to us, among many other incredible feats we've performed of late. My Cleric noted his desire to leave these tomes for the King's children, but instead asked for a different, far less valuable reward:
The opportunity to thumb through each Tome over the course of a minute or so per Tome, and view the contents of each page at least once, fully. For this brief but detailed study, he offered, in exchange, to alter the extradimensional space being used to store the books, to double its temporal speed, recharging the books in only 50 years - so his sons might still be alive to use them, regardless of our choices.
"Such a generous offer. But... Why? You won't gain any effect from them this way."
"I will gain the most valuable reward on offer in this room: the formula to make my own Tomes."
Even after a very intensive many hour game, the shock and awe around the table as realisation of the possible outcome of my gambit came to pass, with many wild eyes, gasps, and high fives: I will not allow the party to simply coast into the fun banal existence of 'slightly above mortality's limits!'. I have single-handedly insured that this campaign will absolutely be the last 5e DND campaign we ever play, because we're goin' to full 30, baybeeeee!
And, yeah, it's achievable. When dozens of high-level Simulacra are at your disposal, and an extradimensional workshop in your fortress that both moves at 2x speed (halving crafting time), but further halves cost and craft time for all magic items made within it. Suddenly, jumping 2/+1 in an Ability Score is simply a matter of 10k gp in rare materials, and 250hrs of craft time. Warforged Simulacra splitting up the work into individual pages could divy that as low as 25hrs, and since Warforged neither sleep nor gain exhaustion from lack of rest, that's 25hrs in real time - or, it'll be done a little later tomorrow. Per book.
Buff up, sell the first book for a cool 60k, netting us enough scratch to turn out 6 more books in about a week. Currently at 32 Simulacra, so (regardless of grouping - it all ends up working out to be the same efficiency) roughly 8hrs a book. Aside from it RAW taking a week to sell a magic item, which is still fine, that's only just a smidge over 3 days of crafting time to turn out 7 books - 1 to pay for the rest, the other 6 enough to bump any one stat up to 30 - potentially several!
It's a crazy world, but, hey, we almost fucking lost that fight, and I was Wish-Polymorphed into a CR26 Topaz Greatwyrm with (equiv.) 900HP, and it was still a struggle. The Paladin crit for 238 dmg over two vulnerable radiant 4th level smites. Beautiful fight.
Absolutely wild.