Doomstriders: Cost and Construction times

[Giorgio]

I posted the following at the Bastion Press message boards and didn’t get any replies, so I am posting here to see if I have better luck. I require help in figuiring out the cost and time to build doomstriders, as found in the Doomstriders book from this company (http://www.bastionpress.com/Products/doomstriders.htm). Any help appreicated.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello All,

Its been a while since I last read Doomstriders and I just started to read it again, and I have some questions I need help with. I get the impression that I am calculating the cost and construction times for a Doomstrider wrongly. Any help appreciated.

In my (non-standard/official) dragonlance campaign set in the year 346 AC, the dwarves of Kayolin have embarked on the construction of Doomstiders a decade before the War Of the Lance was to begin. They knew that a mayor war was coming, and that their enemies had Dragons, Giants and other large monsterous creatures on their side. The dwarves needed something to counter these units, and doomstriders where their answer.

Lets start with a figuring out how to build a Medium doomstrider:

1-Determine Materials: Normal (+0 cost)

2- Determine Torso Size:
Meduim Torso (20,000 gp; 4 slots; 4 limbs (Small to Large) HP x1; AC/Att +0, Crew Space 1, Space 5ft, +4 Max Dex Bns, +0 Str Bns)

3- Determine Head Size: N/A (0 gp)

4- Determine Limbs:
x2 Medium Arms (7,000 gp; 1 slot, 1d4 dmg; reach 5 ft)
x2 Medium Legs (15,000 gp; 1 slot; 1d4 dmg; reach 5 ft)

5- Determine Base Cost:
Head (0 gp) + Torso (20,000 gp) + x2 Arms (14,000 gp) + x2 Legs (30,000 gp) = 64,000 gp base cost

6- Determine Build Time:

A) The project will be lead by Senier Engineer Glomir, a 10th level Expert (Engineer). He has 13 ranks in Craft (Doomstider), Skill Focus – Craft (Doomstider) for a +3 bonus, an Intelligence of 16 (+2 bonus to craft), he is a dwarf working with metals (+2 bonus), and he is working in a state of the art engineering & manufacturing facility (+2 master work tools bonus) for a total modifer of +22 to his Craft (Doomstrider) skill checks.

B) It requires 1 chief crafter and 5 assistants per 5,000 gp of the base cost [64,000 gp/5,000 gp= 12.8= 13), so I need 13 chiefs and 65 assitants to build the body.

C) I convert the base cost from gp to sp, so it goes from 64,000 gp to 640,000 sp.

D) I pay 33% of that cost in materials (640,000 sp x 33%= 211,200 sp).

E) I roll a skill check for building the doomstriders body. Since I want to figure out the average time it will take to build multiple units of this size, I will not roll a d20 for each week of work (per doomstrider) as it will prove way to much bookkeeping for what I need to know, and instead I will assume I got an average roll of 10 each time (not the same as Taking Ten).

I am using the basic DC 20, as no special materials where used.

So my check results looks like this:
Roll D20 (got a 10) and add the Senior Engineers skill check modifers (+22) for a total of 32 on my skill check result. This is over the DC of 20, so I pass the check.

Now I take my check results (32) and multiply it by the DC (20) to get a total (average) of 640 sp/ week of construcion.

Now I take the base cost of my doomstriders body (640,000 sp) and divide it by the work done per week (640 sp/week), (640,000 sp/ 640 sp/week= 1,000 weeks) and I get a total of 1,000 weeks of labor to build the body.

At 52 weeks per year, (1,000 weeks/52 weeks/year) it will take 19.23 years to finish constuction of the body.

At this point I stop, because I just KNOW that is too long and I am doing something wrong.

Help?

George

 

[tjoneslo]

No, your math is correct. It will take the better part of 19 years to build a medium doomstrider. Given the fact that you have a crew of 79 building a small mobile building with medieval technology, this is really unsurprising.

You will need to make some modifications to the rules to make this any shorter.

1) Borrow the rule from the Enchiridion of Treasures where the amount completed each week is the skill check squared (rather than skill check times DC). This gives a completed per week of 1024 silver, and the final build time of just over 12 years.

2) Look in the Stronghold builders guide for their build times. There they assume a crew trying to build a building, similar to the building of a doom strider. The authors of the Stronghold builders guide admit their rules are completely unrealistic, but it may reduce your build time to a few months or a year or two. (The book is not at hand so I can't figure it out for you).