bjt current biased in ltspice
the current source needs to produce a massive amount of voltage. Why would this be?


Because you haven't provided any path for current to flow into the base, you aren't operating the transistor in the forward active regime.

Instead you're just driving the collector-emitter junction in reverse. If the device model includes this behavior you might be driving the c-e junction to zener breakdown. If the model doesn't include breakdown behavior, you're probably driving the 3 mA through the "hidden" gigohm resistors to ground that the simulator typically adds to each node to avoid circuits being unsolvable.