D&D General A Question about Waterdeep - Where does the Drinking Water come from?

[Paul Farquhar]

The Seattle comment was something that I believe Greenwood said about the city, so that was my basis for the comparasion.

He may well have just been going of Seattle's reputation for being wet. But actually it's pretty dry compared to Glasgow. 38 inches annual average in Seattle, 44 inches in Glasgow.

Don't disagree on the hills, but if you look at the maps of Waterdeep, the mountain which rises around 700-800 feet above the city is between it and the ocean, so the city would be more in the rain shadow of the mountain assuming the wind was coming straight in from the ocean.

If it's only 1200 ft., it aint technically a mountain. But it's clear that Waterdeep is already on rising land (it has cliffs), before the onshore wind hit's the so-called-mountain, so it's going to get the precipitation. The "mountain" is really just the tip of the rocky headland.

Llandudno get plenty rain.

 

[jasper]

Heh. Magic Mouth could be an easy solution.

"Then speak the message, which must be 25 words or less, though it can be delivered over as long as 10 minutes. Finally, determine the circumstance that will trigger the spell to deliver your message. When that circumstance."

Just have the command word repeated for 10 minutes with the trigger being water in the area.

Evil Grimtooth trap. 3 skulls.
The first door opens normally. But as soon as someone touches the second door the trap spring out the walls. One DEW per 5 square set at a 25 degree angle. A MM speaks the command word for 10 minutes. So the pc takes geyser damage every round for 10 minutes or until the room is full of water.

 

[Zaukrie]

"where is the realism in my game" is ok....but sometimes the best answer is...maybe the world should be more fantastic than just our world with magic. and monsters.

 

[Hussar]

"where is the realism in my game" is ok....but sometimes the best answer is...maybe the world should be more fantastic than just our world with magic. and monsters.

Oh hey absolutely. Yes I know I argued with people here. My bad. Too much habit.

But I do want to thank folks for some fantastic inspiration for my game. You all rock.

In my Dragonheist game, the Council had been spending lots of time and money preparing for construction of aqueducts and a canal into the city. All the planning is done. But the theft of the treasury has thrown these plans into complete disarray and the city desperately needs that money back.

Still noodling around the finer details. But this may actually create a faction within the Xanathar guild that wants the city to get the money back so they can then get in on the long term action rather than just sit on a big pile of gold.

Other factions want the money too for various reasons.

 

[Zaukrie]

Oh hey absolutely. Yes I know I argued with people here. My bad. Too much habit.

But I do want to thank folks for some fantastic inspiration for my game. You all rock.

In my Dragonheist game, the Council had been spending lots of time and money preparing for construction of aqueducts and a canal into the city. All the planning is done. But the theft of the treasury has thrown these plans into complete disarray and the city desperately needs that money back.

Still noodling around the finer details. But this may actually create a faction within the Xanathar guild that wants the city to get the money back so they can then get in on the long term action rather than just sit on a big pile of gold.

Other factions want the money too for various reasons.

I wasn't criticizing anyone here.....just a random comment.

There are some really good ideas in this thread, I just popped in and made a post that sounded critical, sorry.

 

[Hussar]

I wasn't criticizing anyone here.....just a random comment.

There are some really good ideas in this thread, I just popped in and made a post that sounded critical, sorry.

I have no idea what that’s like….

Ummmm

 

[Azzy]

Nor do you need huge mountains to trigger precipitation

Can confirm... I live on the over-glorified sandbar called Florida.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So the proper question we should be asking is "why doesn't the ocean drain into the Underdark?"

It certainly seems like someone would have tried to weaponize the ocean that way at some point.

 

[Hussar]

He may well have just been going of Seattle's reputation for being wet. But actually it's pretty dry compared to Glasgow. 38 inches annual average in Seattle, 44 inches in Glasgow.

If it's only 1200 ft., it aint technically a mountain. But it's clear that Waterdeep is already on rising land (it has cliffs), before the onshore wind hit's the so-called-mountain, so it's going to get the precipitation. The "mountain" is really just the tip of the rocky headland.

Llandudno get plenty rain.

That picture is actually pretty close to what I think Waterdeep actually looks like, although it's reversed, if you know what I mean.

But, here's something I stumbled across:

https://preview.redd.it/cldvud6s3qc...ed&s=a20842c1146c7f6f3acab1d512540b20f646bba8

From here:
Now, it's got some problems. The northern end of hte city should be elevated more, because you need to account for Undercliff. But, Undercliff needs to be higher than the docks ward or it would be underwater. Basically, the city is about 3 miles north to south, with the cliffs running along the north and east sides. Can anyone find how tall those cliffs are? I've been having a Google fail. But, they can't be much more than 30 feet since there's roads running straight down them. It's not like they are hundreds of feet tall, anyway.

So, even at 100 feet in the north (which is far too high, but, let's run with that), Waterdeep basically slopes down north to south to sea level. 100 feet in 3 miles is hardly even a grade. It's certainly not noticeable. Waterdeep is pretty darn flat, other than Mount Waterdeep, of course, but very few ctually live on the mountain.

 

[LordBP]

This is what you want to look at. The topographic map from the City of Splendors Box set.