Magic Construction Projects

[Varianor Abroad]

While reading a forthcoming manuscript on medieval towns, I got to thinking about some of the issues in a D&D context. This led to wondering, how would you use magic for construction projects. Example: road maintenance. In a medieval town, property owners had to repair the road in front of their shop or home. Might a neighborhood collective get together, accumulate funds, and pay a wizard to cast mud to rock (or equivalent) on their street (after suitable preparation?). What else might happen?

 

[Tarek]

In the 1st edition D&D campaign I was in, there were Gnomish construction crews. They'd be hired by local nobility to survey the land and build keeps and towers, sometimes whole castles.

They frequently used earth elementals and other magics to aid the construction, but rarely if ever actually created materials out of magic.

This is because magically created materials were vulnerable to Dispel Magic or Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Having part of your castle fall down because an enemy cleric dispelled it is embarrasing, and soon, fatal.

Why Gnomes and not Dwarves? There weren't any Dwarves on that continent... they were all across the sea on the other continent.

 

[DMH]

Ironically I was just reading up on that today in 2 issues of Dragon. 242 has an article on the subject and 253 has day jobs for wizards, including magical construction. One idea I got was wizard guilds that manipulate the topography of the ground via move earth, dig and such- anyone who can afford them can build hills in the middle of a plain or swamp, turn a mountain into a city via terracing and burrowing or create an island for the capital.

Don't forget druids who assist with agriculture. Powerful enough spells could allow fields below ground to provide food during sieges or natural disasters.

 

[Warren Okuma]

I'd just use lots of walls of stone as auxiliary construction or just to add reinforcements to sieges.
Rock to Mud and Mud to Rock and some moulds or wooden forms would be an idea.
Control weather is a possibility.

 

[Destil]

Lyre of building. No better item with a high level bard.

Low level arcane types would use a lot of unseen servants to get the most bang for their buck.

Wall of Stone is pretty handy, too.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

The lyre is very cool, but is a high ticket item. Most local villages won't use it. A spellcaster might make good use of mage hand though. The duration is Concentration. You can get small things under 5 pounds to high places. As a 0 level spell, the odds of someone around being able to cast are good.

Casters might be needed to cast reduce person to let craftsmen into smaller areas (assuming that dwarves and halflings aren't present). If grease lasted longer, I could see moving a lot of material that way. Instead, it's probably used selectively in areas to get stuff moved quickly.

 

[Kerrick]

This is because magically created materials were vulnerable to Dispel Magic or Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Having part of your castle fall down because an enemy cleric dispelled it is embarrasing, and soon, fatal.

Most conjurations, like wall of stone, are instantaneous effects - they become permanently nonmagical one round after being created.

Our campaign uses a lot of spells to help with quality of life, work, etc. Trim stone, for instance - trims a block of stone up to a 10 foot cube to make it smooth (not polished, just smooth enough for placement into a wall. Force arch - creates an arch of force that can be used to lay stone on to make arches. Fortify material can be used to strengthen walls; weatherproof domicile seals cracks and such in a house.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

This is because magically created materials were vulnerable to Dispel Magic or Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Having part of your castle fall down because an enemy cleric dispelled it is embarrasing, and soon, fatal.

True, but magically created materials could be used for civilian applications to ease the burden of government & military construction. You could also do things like create one simple shelter out of wall of stone every 10 miles along your kingdom's roads for travelers (of course that might have the effect of encouraging banditry).

Wall of Iron would also be useful to cast to act as a source of raw materials.

... they really need to re-think the durations of some of these spells in 4e.

 

[Pyrex]

Magic would definately be used for construction when efficient.

Ponder. A single casting of Fabricate can replicate the work of potentially months of crafting checks, but by the NPC spellcasting guidelines costs 450gp.

Ditto for Stone Shape at 280gp.

9 times out of 10, it's cheaper for the person wanting labor done to hire a laborer and let them do it.

The 10th time, however, when you need the work done right now you shell out the big bucks for magical construction.

Of course, economy of scale kicks in when your local government is a magocracy (like the White Wizards of Fairhaven constructing highways all over the place in the Magic of Recluse series)

 

[The Green Adam]

My main campaign world utilizes a vast array of spells for construction and maintenance with the majority being handled by Dwarves. Spells used in this manner include but are by no means limited to: Heat metal, Mend, Rock to Mud (and the reverse), Stone Shape, Wall of Stone and similarly related spells. Magic of this nature is somewhat more mass produced and therefore the npc prices are a good deal less. The majority of the worlds' spell casters are employed in this way (adventurers are special because they risk life and limb in one-on-one encounters with hostile forces and use combat oriented magic as well as more day-to-day functional spells).

AD