Building a wizard's tower on the cheap

[der_kluge]

There was a famous sculpter who, when asked how he created his sculptures said, "I start with a block of granite, and then I chip away anything that doesn't look like a statue." (paraphrased)

Beautiful.

Step 1.
Acquire a sphere of annihilation.

Step 2.
Find a mountain.

Step 3.
Annihilate anything that doesn't look like a wizard's tower.

 

[yennico]

Hate to be a stick in the mud, but if your character is doing the designing, how many ranks in knowledge: Archatecture and Engineering does he have?

Call me mean if you will, but if one of my players tried to throw together a tower using spells without having any applicable skills, they'd get about half way through it before the thing fell apart under its own weight.

I totally agree. You need professionals to build the tower.

Oh, and check out your neighbors too, my partys dungeon is currently occupied by some local giants that decided to move in while the party was off on a diplomatic mission.

I love this idea. You always have to secure your tower.

 

[Gez]

Step 1.
Acquire a sphere of annihilation.

Step 2.
Find a mountain.

Step 3.
Annihilate anything that doesn't look like a wizard's tower.

It's probably the most fun way to do it, although a mountain, being much less homogenous than a solid block of granite, will probably give you bad results if you don't acquire the help of a expert team of dwarves to know just which non-tower-looking bits you need to keep anyway if you don't want the whole structure to collapse...

 

[azmodean]

There was a famous sculpter who, when asked how he created his sculptures said, "I start with a block of granite, and then I chip away anything that doesn't look like a statue." (paraphrased)

A friend of mine's grandfather is a carver. He says the first art piece he did came about when he picked up a piece of wood and thought to himself, "hey, there's an indian in there, I just have to cut off all the other crap" (paraphrased)

He has hundreds of statues and busts he's carved now, a few in a local museum.

Oh, and slightly more on topic, don't forget about the ethereal plane. It's driving my players crazy how dificult it is to secure a fortress from ethereal attackers. It's mutual though, since the party has the ability to go ethereal at will, so if I place a "normal" structure in their path they tend to just go around it

 

[Jdvn1]

I believe it was DaVinci who said, "Inside this stone is a statue."

But I like the Lyre of Building idea.

 

[ARandomGod]

I believe it was DaVinci who said, "Inside this stone is a statue."

But I like the Lyre of Building idea.

I say make a tapestry to a pocket dimension, and make a simple smallish mansion by a stream with some fields, etcetera. Hire a peasant family to take care of it.

In that mansion you should have portals to several other dimensions, including ones with time differentials, fast time and slow time.

 

[Zephyrus]

I tend to agree that some knowledge of Engineering and Architecture is in order here.. but getting a low level expert to help design and consult on it shouldent cost too much.

You can actually construct a fair amount, you just need a form. using Minor or Major creations to create 'forms' for you pouring mud into (hire a bunch of local peasents laborers shouldent be too hard or expensive, their just wheeling around mud). Simple take your cliffside (or 'stone' source and turn rock to mud... have the peasents fill the forms and then dispell the Rock to Mud spell. This will insure that construct remains that of a hard stone. Keep moist as nessisary if it the mud is prone to evaporation.

The Mud from 2 castings of Rock to Mud is enough to create a 10ft thick wall around a 25ft square room! Then use your wall of stone spells for flooring. This is where most of your time will be consmed as a 2" floor for that 25ft square room is gonna take 11 castings of Wall of Stone (and will still leave a 5ft 'hole' somewhere). Assuming Two 5th level Spells a day it'll take roughly a week to construct a 10ft high by 25ft square 'room' with 10ft walls and a 2" thick floor. 2" topping slabs are fair, Lumber could be laid down to reinforce and provide structural support for the slabs. Wooden beams can be leviated (upto 900lbs) into place minimizing special lifting equipment.

Working aggressively you could theoreticaly build a single story every 2 weeks. Higher levels will be more difficult to work on (to pour the mud) but a reasonable work force and raw materials wont cost you a whole lot. Use Fabricate as nessisary to reshape materials if need be or if the character has a craft skill to create finished goods to sell/give to the villagers providing your labor. If nessisary either get a cleric to cast 'weildskill' reaserch the 'anyspell' spell and cast 'weildskill' yourself so as give yourself a good chance of crafting items with a reasonable degree of profiency. Being a Wizard with a good Intellegence even without that spell gives you a fair inclination in crafting things anyways.

I'd suggest spending like 2-3 months to construct a 3-6 story tower, perhaps dig a dungeon/store-room area below the tower or into the cliff itself to provide you extra 'room' without having to have an excessively tall tower <at least yet>.

Consider also some of the other things you can do (expecially with alot of transmutation magic). Polymorph some of the workers to turn them into Giants or flying forms or similar to allow them to work better. Rewards or Incenstives to be willingly polymorphed could be extra payment (in the form of fabricated goods perhaps). Alternatly use Mass Enlarge Person to make 9 people bigger and stronger for short periods of time.

food for thought at least..

 

[Arnwyn]

So, any suggestions on building a tower into the side of a stone mountain on the cheap?

A dozen stories? On the side of the mountain? Questionable/no architecture & engineering skills? On the cheap?





...Good luck with that!

 

[Jeph]

So here's a queston: how much does rock weigh? Mud? I ask because I'm thinking that I could use a Transmute Rock to Mud spell and the teleport and dimension door it away, thus saving a great deal of time in excavation. Also, how much raw earth, mud, and stone can elementals move around, and how quickly?

Hate to be a stick in the mud, but if your character is doing the designing, how many ranks in knowledge: Archatecture and Engineering does he have?

This is a non-issue: he's got eleven ranks. Total bonus of +17.

 

[azmodean]

Wow, I wouldn't feel too safe standing on a 2' thick stone floor, especially in a 25' square room. Then there's the furniture...

The other problem with the Rock to Mud method you propose is that unlike Wall of Stone, the spell says nothing about the mud or the resulting stone being attached to any adjacent stone. So once again we have serious stability problems.

A 3 or 4 story tower? No problem, but once you get higher than that, you're going to need some serious ranks in Knowledge:Archatecture and Engineering, or something similar. As an estimate I'd say somehing like DC 15 + 2*number of stories to design it and a lower but still substantial check to oversee the construction. On the plus side you should be able to take 20 on the design.