Building a stronghold on shoestring budget

[Nish]

Greetings!

Our party recently acquired some land and we'd like to build some kind of "stronghold" or base of operations. But ya see, we're not all that wealthy or all that powerful. Nor do we even have a significant amount of time in which to work. Yet we still feel that we can rig something up using just the spells and abilities we have readily at hand, or things that can be easily acquired (and preferably will be useful later for other things).

Here's who we have at the moment:

Halfling Wizard(Sp. Necro, op sch Evoc.) 10
(currently dead) Human Fighter 8 (After Raise Dead)
Gnome Cleric: 8
Halfling Rogue 3/Bard 2/Fighter 2/Ranger 1
(probable) Half-elf Fighter 4/Wizard 3
(possible) Half-orc Monk 7

Those last two characters are new players, and I'm not sure how consistently they will show up.

Anyway, most of us are a bit on the under-equipped side of the DMG guidelines, and no one in the party has more than a few thousand g.p. worth of expendable assets. Most of the cash we currently have is likely to go to raising the fighter and trying to make ourselves less under-equipped.

So far our strategy has amounted to summoning xorns to dig a small network of tunnels. This would be augmented by polymorphing the medium size characters into trolls and buying some huge size shovels. The cleric could then use Stone Shape to make crude stone furnishings out of the floors and walls.

For defense we'd simply rely on the obscurity of the location of the tunnel entrance. Maybe an Illusory Wall or two if I could find the time and money to get that spell.

Its not much at this point, but we don't need too much yet. Which is another reason we'd like to spend as little money on the project as possible. However, we'd like some suggestions as to getting more mileage out of our abilities. Right now all we need is a relatively safe place to regroup, rest, research, create magic items, and maybe store a few nonessential items.

If anyone has questions about the specifics of our characters and equipment, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them, but the only one for whom I can guarantee accurate information is my character, the halfling necromancer.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ziggy]

Hi!

Can't see many ways to improve on the basic idea, I like it

Some small improvements, mainly defensive (magic focused):

1. Wall of Iron (Wiz 5) gives you permanent iron walls if you want that.
2. Wall of Stone (Wiz5/clr5) is equally nice to produce stone where you need it. When your cleric gets another level (s)he can cast a couple a day
3. Arcane Lock (wiz2) for the doors you want to be locked.
4. Fabricate (Wiz5) for all the items, furniture etc that a stronghold needs. Very useful spell in furnishing a stronghold.
5. Glyph a warding (clr3) costs xp, but usefull for those doors/places that needs to be warded
   [/list=1]
   
   .Ziggy

 

[Hejdun]

A lyre of building (Is that hte name? It's a Lyre or something) is always nice. The bard could play it for a while, and after a few months you could eventually have your stronghold up.

 

[Nish]

Wall of Stone (Wiz5/clr5) is equally nice to produce stone where you need it. When your cleric gets another level (s)he can cast a couple a day

I like that one. Especially because its a cleric spell, which means that I don't have to go track it down myself

Fabricate (Wiz5) for all the items, furniture etc that a stronghold needs. Very useful spell in furnishing a stronghold.

Ooh, I forgot about that one. I like it. Which means that now I'll have to try and get that spell eventually.

Glyph a warding (clr3) costs xp, but usefull for those doors/places that needs to be warded

Actually it costs gold not xp. But it still might be a good idea to throw a couple of those in since they're not too terribly expensive. Although, the cleric's deity is Garl Glittergold, so we can only imagine what he'll pick for a password.

A lyre of building (Is that hte name? It's a Lyre or something) is always nice. The bard could play it for a while, and after a few months you could eventually have your stronghold up.

That's definitely a good idea, but that would require a significant (from our perspective) gold cost to try buy one, and to make make one would be cheaper but would also take time to create. Plus I'd first have to get Frabricate, while its on my list of things to get now, picking up another spell carries its own costs. We'll definitely keep it in mind for later though.

Thanks for the replys so far. Keep 'em coming.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

At your level, your foes will be likely to have access to teleport and other powerful magics. The obscure entrance to the underground fortress will be useful for defense but you'll really need more than that if you don't want to arrive home after a long day of adventuring to find a group of Slaadi waiting for you.

I'd recommend some research for this. See if there are any areas in the campaign world where divinations don't fuction properly and build there. If you could dig your tunnels in a lead vein that would help against scrying (and hence against teleportation). Also see if anything reasonably common blocks teleportation or scrying directly.

Lighting: Unless you need light somewhere, don't have it. At least some of your enemies without darkvision won't be able to scry your area if it's dark. Of course, you only have one character with darkvision so you'll need a number of continual flame items in order to see but find a way to cover them when they're not in use.

Other good defenses:
Explosive Runes--damage like a glyph of warding and no expensive material components. If you have any labels of signs in places you don't expect visitors, use explosive runes. (You can designate people who won't set them off).
Magic Mouth--A good alarm spell
Arcane Lock--for 25 gold, you can lock your doors and make them harder to bash in. Plus it's permanent
Fire trap--Better damage than Glyph of Warding and much much cheaper
Illusory wall--Spiked pit traps are really cheap to make and with an illusory wall, they can be very well disguised. As a bonus, you can put really huge warnings above the corridor in explosive runes that read "Warning! Trap Ahead. Do Not Proceed!" You can read them without triggering them. Invaders probably wouldn't believe such an obvious warning but if they read it they took damage. And if they ignore it and fall into the pit, they'll feel really stupid.

On Glyphs of Warding:
-Use blast glyphs [sonic] on likely entrances. First, sonic damage is often overlooked by enemies who protect against elements. Second, the loud noise may alert you and/or your guards that something is going on.
-Use groups of spell glyphs all set to the same trigger or triggered on each other. A glyph that summons a pair of celestial eagles is annoying. A glyph that casts hold person followed by a glyph that summons an angry celestial bison next to the held character is deadly.

 

[Conaill]

If your party is so inclined, Hallow (or Unhallow, I guess) provides some *really* nice protections:

1) Magic circle against Evil
2) turn undead at +4
3) dead bodies cannot be made undead
4) one protective spell that lasts a full year

You can only have one Hallow on an area at a time, but you could always have different Hallows in different areas of your stronghold. For example, one Hallow with Dimensional Anchor for your inner sanctum, surrounded by a layer of Hallows with Dispel Magic?

 

[Vaxalon]

Consider that by building underground, you don't need to pay for walls.

That's a HUGE discount.

 

[jgbrowning]

I'd recommend some research for this. See if there are any areas in the campaign world where divinations don't fuction properly and build there. If you could dig your tunnels in a lead vein that would help against scrying (and hence against teleportation). Also see if anything reasonably common blocks teleportation or scrying directly.

I'd vote against the vein of lead idea. Lead vapor is unfriendly, but then again, most PC's wont live that long anyway...



joe b.

 

[Berk]

Since your character is a necromancer just create some undead as workers. Course you need bodies for that but hey, I'm sure there are some orcs or goblins or kobolds around that your group can kill. Undead workers are nice since they can work without rest and all that. Plus ya don't have to pay them. That cuts down on costs extremely. Other then that as a cost cutter I don't really know what your group can do. With the current group I run with we would prolly just let the land be and go off adventuring until we have enough supplies and money and such to build a stronghold there. If anything has laid stake to the land just kill it. =op

 

[kaboom]

So far our strategy has amounted to summoning xorns to dig a small network of tunnels.

Unfortunetly this won't work.