Building a wizard's tower on the cheap

[azmodean]

Heh, nearly max ranks in an appropriate and rarely-used skill? That gets rid of most of my objections

Unfortunately mud and rock are extremely heavy, I don't think teleportation would help that much. I actually looked into excavating with spells at some point, take a look at summoning those fire elemental worms, can't remember the name offhand. They have a burrow speed, and they leave tunnels, so that's a lot of excavation, even if it is limited to 9 rounds a spell.

For moving mud around, it could be very quick, depending on how far you want to move it. If you just want to get it "out of the way", you might be able to set it up to flow downhill, perhaps aided by adding water. (grease spell on a block of stone on a slope could also get you some fast movement, but a bit dangerous.)

 

[Jeph]

Maybe I should just consider doing some of the hard stuff (like softening up the stone of the mountainside) with spells, and paying grunts to do the rest? I like being generous, so I'd pay 5 sp/day to masons, and 2 sp/day to laborers. For 10 GP a day, I could get 4 skilled craftsmen to oversee the construction and 40 more to move things from Point A to Point B.

Let's see. I have 36 10' cubes to work with per day, using Transmute Rock to Mud. If I don't want to have to use Wall of Stone to create floors, than I can only make one room per casting (which gives me 18 cubes to work with per room). That's enough foor rooms with a radius of about 23 feet.

This is starting to look not-so-hard. Now all I need is a nice sheer rock cliff face...

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I actually looked into excavating with spells at some point, take a look at summoning those fire elemental worms, can't remember the name offhand.

Thoqqua?

They aren't all that large, unfortunately.

A thoqqua is about 1 foot in diameter and 4 to 5 feet long. It weighs about 200 pounds.

 

[Koewn]

Think Flat!

You know, reading through this - it's not a far stretch to say that this is why there's so many 'dungeons' in any given campaign world.

Your average wizard with no Know(Engr/Arch) will eventually find it too costly or complex to build an actual tower. Even the ones with the money or smarts may find it too time-consuming.

The quick conclusion to an Int 20 mind would be, hey - let's drill through this here hill, since it's already built for me. I've got a lot of spells that simply 'dig' or 'drill', and lots of summonable creatures that can do the same.

It's just as defensible, if not more so, and quite a bit more private, as it's not jutting out of the earth like a dagger for all to see. Gotta think horizontally. Turn that 3-story colonial into a sprawled out ranch.

So, he digs his hole, confident that he's doing a better job than a hobbit, and sets up shop. Later on, he's killed by adventuring, or an experiment goes horribly wrong, and the wizard's 'tower' turns into a run-down series of halls that hold XP for younger wizards. They eventually level up and get the same idea.

Circle of life, and all that.

Eventually a circle of druids or earth clerics put 2 and 2 together and start eradicating these hole-digging wizards; thinking them to the earth as termites to a tree.

And so that little bit of DND ecology is somewhat solved.

Heh.

Koewn

 

[Zephyrus]

I guess you wouldent feel real comfortable knowing your walking over 2 x 4 with only 1/2" to 3/4" plywood cover the floors in alot of homes. Belive it or not, in many homes before you add in tile or carpeting or similar thats the only real 'support' your flooring has. its surprizingly sturdy if prone to warping over age or water damage.

As for standing on 2" thick of concrete effectivelly.. you'd be surprized how often thats the case. Even though more would be better, expecially if your expecting alot of furniture... 4-6" would be preferable. a whole 12" wouldent be a bad idea. But I did also suggest wood timber reinforcing. 2-4" of contrete over wooden support members would make for effective flooring (at least enough that you could strengthen it more later).

Going at a very casual pace of 3-4 weeks per floor a tower will go up fairly quickly.

as for Rock to Mud not being joined.. I'd imagine it behaving in much a similar manner as concrete which bonds to the stone around it. you could include metal rebar into the blocks to help further join and strengthen the walls.

I did a lil searching and a 1ft cube of Granite is gonna weigh around 150-175lbs. Admitantly thats granite. so depending on teh stone you use. a 10ft 'block' of stone is likly to weigh in at about 1,000-2,000 lbs. With mud you figure it might be heavier due to the water so 2-3 trips with a Levitate spell will move you nearly a Ton of rock in mud form.

I can picture it now... laborers filling a dump truck(wagon) with 500lbs of mud and seeing it lift up on its own off the ground, tip and dump the mud into wooden 'forms'


Thouqua (I think I mispelled that) are the fire worms that burrow your thinking of..