Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe Building Question

[Pielorinho]

For those of you who haven't seen this book yet, I can't recommend it highly enough: it's one of the most fascinating, unusual, well-researched RPG products I've ever seen.

I do have a question about part of it, though: the building section in back confuses me.

Specifically, I have a player interested in building a small (20' square) stone temple to his god. He's an eleventh-level cleric, and he'll be creating walls, floors, and ceilings almost exclusively with the wall of stone spell.

My understanding is that the initial estimate for the building, assuming 4" walls that are part of the 20' square layout, is 1,000 gp (400 square ft. x 2.5 gp for a church). It'll need minimal excavation (16 gp worth, I think). Building it entirely from stone raises the base cost to 2,032. After he adds on the different styles and portages and such, the cost ends up around 5,000 gp.

All well and good. My questions are as follows:
1) In this specific example, how does his repeated casting of wall of stone affect the cost? The book mentions something about WoS reducing stone cost by x cubic feet/casting or something, but I don't see how this interacts with the building formula.
2) If he's not paying for stone or portage or expert labor, what, besides the style of the building, is his money purchasing? He's unhappy about the several-thousand-gp cost, and I'm having trouble justifying it to him.

Daniel

 

[jgbrowning]

For those of you who haven't seen this book yet, I can't recommend it highly enough: it's one of the most fascinating, unusual, well-researched RPG products I've ever seen.

I do have a question about part of it, though: the building section in back confuses me.

Specifically, I have a player interested in building a small (20' square) stone temple to his god. He's an eleventh-level cleric, and he'll be creating walls, floors, and ceilings almost exclusively with the wall of stone spell.

My understanding is that the initial estimate for the building, assuming 4" walls that are part of the 20' square layout, is 1,000 gp (400 square ft. x 2.5 gp for a church). It'll need minimal excavation (16 gp worth, I think). Building it entirely from stone raises the base cost to 2,032. After he adds on the different styles and portages and such, the cost ends up around 5,000 gp.

All well and good. My questions are as follows:
1) In this specific example, how does his repeated casting of wall of stone affect the cost? The book mentions something about WoS reducing stone cost by x cubic feet/casting or something, but I don't see how this interacts with the building formula.
2) If he's not paying for stone or portage or expert labor, what, besides the style of the building, is his money purchasing? He's unhappy about the several-thousand-gp cost, and I'm having trouble justifying it to him.

Daniel

This is how I'd do it. Seeing the player is going to exclusivly use wall of stone for all his building needs you could simply remove that whole section from cost. That would only mean he has to do excavation and style costs (carraige and materials being cut out through the use of the spell)

Run the building as if there were no walls of stone spells. Determine style costs based off that structure and use that amount as the style cost for the all wall of stone building.

I'd never thought of a completely wall of stone built structure. My apologies in not making it clear, as I should have thought of that. This should reduce his cost significantly and just let him know that what his money bought is religious carvings indicitive of the style level and all expected furnishings also indicitive of style level.

You might want to tell the player he'll need a builder with him, unless he has knowledge about building with stone, but that's entirely a RP idea.

Hope this helps,

joe b.

 

[Pielorinho]

Re: Re: Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe Building Question

This is how I'd do it.

He'll be happy to hear this. If I'm reading you correctly, then, you're suggesting that I should do the following:

Figure out estimated cost (1,016)
Figure out base cost (1,016 + 1,016 for materials)
Figure out styles
Subtract 1,016 from the final cost?

That sounds about right to me. I'll require him to have a builder handy, but I might rule that since he's getting his followers to help in the construction of the building, the labor costs are a wash.

Thanks again; the book is really inspiring. My non-gamer historian wife is even tossing around the idea of doing something similar for 17-19th-century North America: MMS:WE is far and away her favorite of my gaming books .

Daniel

 

[jgbrowning]

Re: Re: Re: Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe Building Question

He'll be happy to hear this. If I'm reading you correctly, then, you're suggesting that I should do the following:

Figure out estimated cost (1,016)
Figure out base cost (1,016 + 1,016 for materials)
Figure out styles
Subtract 1,016 from the final cost?

That sounds about right to me. I'll require him to have a builder handy, but I might rule that since he's getting his followers to help in the construction of the building, the labor costs are a wash.

Yep. I should have thought about buildings built entirely with spells and how to address them. Its a pretty big oversight. ah well....

Thanks again; the book is really inspiring. My non-gamer historian wife is even tossing around the idea of doing something similar for 17-19th-century North America: MMS:WE is far and away her favorite of my gaming books .

Daniel

Glad to hear it. So far everyone's seemed to really like the book and we've gotten several historians commenting positivly as well. I guess I really did learn how to do good reasearch in college.

joe b.

 

[Pielorinho]

On rethinking this, I may be a little confused. What real costs are included under the square footage costs? That is, the initial estimate comprises square footage (in this example, 400 sq. feet x 2.5 gp) and excavation; what does that 1,000 gp pay for? I'm wondering if I should subtract 2,000 from the final cost instead of 1,016. I'd still use the square footage figure for interior/exterior style, and I could see how the material used (stone) might impact the excavation costs maybe (resulting in the +100% applied to the initial estimate).

Daniel

 

[Pielorinho]

The system might look like this:

Using magical construction: when conjuration (creation) spells with a duration of instantaneous or permanent are used in the direct construction of a building, determine what percentage of the building is composed of the products of these spells. Once the final cost of the building is determined, multiply the building's base cost by this percentage and subtract it from the final cost.

Daniel

 

[Utrecht]

I actually have a couple of questions on this as well.

I would assume that a Wall of Stone spell would be great for most of the structure of the building - but the detail work is where the cost would be - hence a stoneshape spell would be more appropriate - correct?

Further, in modern construction - completion of the structure is pretty quick - especially since this is not precise work - what takes a long time are all the woodwork, cabinets etc..... How would you reflect this?

Second part of this - realistically how much can a builder help out here. The builder does not really understand magic (unless they are an extreme expert) - and the PC does not have knowledge Engineering (unless of course they do) - thus I would think that very little use would be gained from this.

 

[jgbrowning]

The system might look like this:

Using magical construction: when conjuration (creation) spells with a duration of instantaneous or permanent are used in the direct construction of a building, determine what percentage of the building is composed of the products of these spells. Once the final cost of the building is determined, multiply the building's base cost by this percentage and subtract it from the final cost.

Daniel

This sounds like it should work. I'd have to look over all the spells to see if holds for everything, but I think in your example this would probably work.

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

I actually have a couple of questions on this as well.

I would assume that a Wall of Stone spell would be great for most of the structure of the building - but the detail work is where the cost would be - hence a stoneshape spell would be more appropriate - correct?

Further, in modern construction - completion of the structure is pretty quick - especially since this is not precise work - what takes a long time are all the woodwork, cabinets etc..... How would you reflect this?

Its hard for me to answer this one. If its a temple, I'm inclined to beleve that the stone would have to be worked stone by stone to fit the plan.

Second part of this - realistically how much can a builder help out here. The builder does not really understand magic (unless they are an extreme expert) - and the PC does not have knowledge Engineering (unless of course they do) - thus I would think that very little use would be gained from this.

I mentioned it because I don't really know what the floorplan of the structure is like. Something simple may not need any help for the PC, but arches or other more complex things could perhaps use someone a bit more experienced. It would really depend on what's being built, and who's building it.

joe b.

 

[Pielorinho]

I would assume that a Wall of Stone spell would be great for most of the structure of the building - but the detail work is where the cost would be - hence a stoneshape spell would be more appropriate - correct?

Keep in mind that wall of stone is shapeable; you can use it to create ramparts, arrow slits, etc., so I think you could create at least some crude windows and such with it as well. However, you're correct that you'd need stone shape or a mason or sculptor for anything beyond crude outlines, IMO. Furthermore, stone shape explicitly disallows sculpting "fine detail": for such work, you need manual labor.

Further, in modern construction - completion of the structure is pretty quick - especially since this is not precise work - what takes a long time are all the woodwork, cabinets etc..... How would you reflect this?

I'd say this is reflected in the overall cost of the building. IIRC, MMS:WE says that you can build 5,000 gp worth of church in a week. For my example church (admittedly tiny), building the walls cuts about 2,000 gp, or roughly 3 days, out of the building time.

Second part of this - realistically how much can a builder help out here. The builder does not really understand magic (unless they are an extreme expert) - and the PC does not have knowledge Engineering (unless of course they do) - thus I would think that very little use would be gained from this.

I'd probably say that you'd want to get at least one master builder to help with magically building any but the simplest structure. Master builders in a magical medieval society ought to be closely familiar with a very narrow range of spells -- specifically, those spells used in construction. They'll also be accustomed to working alongside spellcasters and even giving them orders -- "Right, now, you'll be wanting to create your next stone wall with six-inch-wide notches in it every six inches along the horizontal edges, fitted in nicely with the last wall you created." Without this builder's assistance, the construction could take longer or result in a structurally unsound building -- woe to the priest who builds a temple out of walls of stone, but discoveres after the first rain that her inadequate foundation and unconnected walls tip over when they're stiting on mud!

A large religious organization might have at least one master builder working for them, which they could send out to aid in the building of new structures; this builder might also ensure that the new temple conforms to any sort of standards required by the organization. The builder may have a few levels in cleric, or may just be an expert.