Post/Author/DateTime	Post
turalisj 08-29-06, 10:38 AM	This guild is for any of you who consider sitting down at night and drawing up designs for a new dungeon or keep for a character or boss fun. Because what could be more fun than making a 5-story tall castle perpetualy surrounded by murderous fog? Member list: Turalisj- Grand Architect. Dyne Karn Dragonsbane- student
Dyne 08-31-06, 08:17 PM	Sign me up.
turalisj 08-31-06, 09:41 PM	Great to see you Dyne. Hopefully we can have some contests in the future to see who can build the best fortress with a set amount of money and spaces. Meanwhile, my next project is figuring out a way to make strong fortress for under 1mil gold.
Dyne 08-31-06, 11:15 PM	I kinda want to make an Elven forest fortress, with living wooden walls. Have all sorts of nasty enchantments on it and such.
turalisj 09-01-06, 12:45 AM	How big? Castle sized, huge castle sized, or maybe just a keep that could be spread out through the forests?
Dyne 09-01-06, 12:59 AM	Haven't decided all that yet. It's just a vague concept in my head right now.
turalisj 09-03-06, 07:17 AM	I have my elven live wood fortress mostly done. At 65 stronghold spaces its huge. It has it;s own garrison of cavalry trained for woodland fightting, aswell as a large compliment of soldiers. All in all, not bad for the price. Here it is, the elven version of the dwarven redoubt: first Floor: 12 Barracks 5 Combat Training Areas 4 Basic Armories 2 Dining Halls 6 Kitchens Second Floor: 10 guard posts- The fortress is a pentagram shape, with two posts at each corner. Fancy Chapel Fancy Library fancy Office Servents Quarters Fancy Storage Underground: 10 Prison cells Torture Chamber. Cost: 69,00gp Cost with Live Wood Walls: 80,000gp I did the math by hand, so please tell me if I'm off. Staff: 8 Cooks- 24gp per month 16 Grooms- 72gp per month 100 soldiers- 600gp per month 26 guards- 156gp per month 852 per month total.
Karn Dragonsbane 09-09-06, 10:09 AM	Hey, can I join... And how did you calculate those costs? Where can I learn to do that? EDIT: Give me the title of student, please!
turalisj 09-09-06, 10:22 AM	Stronghold Builders Handbook. Actualy, I cheated and just used premade sets and put them together. One Cavalry Base Set, one Prison Set, one Temple, and Four Guard Towers. Just minus the cost for the Live Wood Walls, then change the wall material and you can have diffrent kinds of Bases. What I'm hoping is to test these in a series of mini-wars. Perhaps making a number of bases and a map......
Karn Dragonsbane 09-09-06, 10:24 AM	Hmm... Since I donīt have the stronghold builders handbook, if I really want to learn, Iīll have to sit down and listen to everything you use... Oh, and please: Sign me up.
Dyne 09-11-06, 12:36 AM	The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook is probably the best $22 I've ever spent. Lots of good stuff for making castles and dungeons and the like. I believe someone posted up some of the basics of the book awhile back, I'll try to find it for you. I have a challenge for the guild: Design a stronghold that centers around the "storm" theme. Examples could be a tower in the sky, a castle that always has a continual storm surrounding it, and underwater fortress that causes powerful currents around it, stuff like that. Maybe even try to come up with some enchantments of your own. I'll post up my ideas for this stronghold in a bit.
turalisj 09-11-06, 06:42 PM	Pssh, that is easy to design. Expensive, but easy. Make the fortress fly, immune to elec, and armed with lightning ballistae. :D You'd only have one, but it would be worth it.
Karn Dragonsbane 09-12-06, 12:08 PM	Sounds nice... How do you make a fortress fly? That question has me going even since before I joined the boards as Yan-C-Bin, 3 years ago. I thought a wall of forceīd do OK, but itīd be too damn expensive to make permanent, as well as vulnerable to disintegration in its foundations, which would be the most exposed point since it flies. The only real way I can imagine a fortress could fly, would be a massive globe of hydrogen... again the vulnerable thing. Anybody heard of the Hindenburg? Now add a fireball on the thing, itīs gotta get worse. Also I thought of custom spells, but itīs hard to ascertain when the thing youīre doing is OK. Itīs not meant to deal damage, I mean! Perhaps a Genesis spell, limiting the access to the demiplane to a spherical point high in the air? No, no idea. How do you make a fortress fly? P.S: If you tell me you do it by paying the appropiate price, youīll make me cry...:weep:
jagggar 09-12-06, 01:17 PM	How do you make a fortress fly? Why with magic of course! SBG uses the reverse gravity spell for making strongholds capable of flight. It only shows it used in a magic-item way though. A flying fortress has a base price of 15,000gp per stronghold space (Important term!: A stronghold space (ss) is a 20x20 ft square of space in a stronghold. Most stronghold components are priced by the ss while a few are for 1/2 an ss or 2 ss.) with an additonal price based on the speed of movement you want. Now if all you want is a floating fortress, just buy a bunch of immovable rods and build it on that. Make sure there's more than enough to cover the weight, and you wont' be as vunrable to the destruction of one rod.
Karn Dragonsbane 09-16-06, 10:18 AM	Err... 1.500 gp per stronghold space 10x10x10 ft...? I think weīre being ripped off here, guys. No offense to the writer, but... Imagine this: An item that, use-activated (leave nailed down to the ground), renews constantly a reverse gravity effect... Costs: 7x13x2.000 gp. Each casting of reverse gravity reverses 26 10-ft. cubes. It may create twelve other effects before the first one collapses, right? Round 1: 1-13 Round 2: 2-13, 1-12 Round 3: 3-13, 2-12, 1-11 Round 4: 4-13, 3-12, 2-11, 1-10 Round 5: 5-13, 4-12, 3-11, 2-10, 1-09 Round 6: 6-13, 5-12, 4-11, 3-10, 2-09, 1-08 Round 7: 7-13, 6-12, 5-11, 4-10, 3-09, 2-08, 1-07 Round 8: 8-13, 7-12, 6-11, 5-10, 4-09, 3-08, 2-07, 1-06 Round 9: 9-13, 8-12, 7-11, 6-10, 5-09, 4-08, 3-07, 2-06, 1-05 Round A: A-13, 9-12, 8-11, 7-10, 6-09, 5-08, 4-07, 3-06, 2-05, 1-04 Round B: B-13, A-12, 9-11, 8-10, 7-09, 6-08, 5-07, 4-06, 3-05, 2-04, 1-03 Round C: C-13, B-12, A-11, 9-10, 8-09, 7-08, 6-07, 5-06, 4-05, 3-04, 2-03, 1-02 Round D: D-13, C-12, B-11, A-10, 9-09, 8-08, 7-07, 6-06, 5-05, 4-04, 3-03, 2-02, 1-01 Round E: 1 goes to 0 rounds left, so it is renewed. Round F: 2 goes to 0 rounds left, so it is renewed. Etc. That leaves us with 26 (CL 13, AoE) x 13 (CL, rds) or 338 "stronghold spaces", for the measly price of 7x13x2.000 gp, or 182.000 gp. 182.000 divided by 338= 538.4(615384) gp per stronghold space! Even assuming that we have to renew before it gets to 0 rounds, at 1 round, for example, it gets to be 312 stronghold spaces. 182.000 divided by 312= 583.(3) gp per stronghold space! Weīre being majorly ripped up here! And there comes the best part! Using widen, extend and so on, I thought weīd be able to make it more cost-effective. But well, widen spell doesnīt affect most shapeable spells (i.e. Reverse gravity), and enlarge spell doesnīt really do much when you already have a range of 230 feet. So only extend would do really something... That leads us to 30 (CL 15, AoE) x 15 (CL, rds) x 2 (extend spell) or FRIGGIN 900!!! "stronghold spaces", for the not-so-measly price of 8x15x2.000 gp (240.000 gp), and the added prerequisite of Extend spell! And the cost per space is... Hold tight to something... 240.000 divided by 900 is 266 and 2/3 (266.(6)7) per stronghold space! And if we have to renew it the round before... Then itīs 30 x 29. 870 spaces. 240.000 divided by 870 is 275.86, followed by an infinite number of decimals. Weīre being gigantically ripped off here, guys. Ah, I forgot! The range... Well, perhaps a range of "anywhere in the same stronghold" DOES mean a multiplier of x3 in the price. No, really, weīre being ripped off here! Not to mention the part where physics come into play, further cheapening all this. Suppose instead of reversing gravity inside the fortress, we reverse the gravity in a massive load of lead. I feel like the Hulking Hurler here, but Iīll do anything, really, anything. 900 (stronghold spaces) x 1.000 (cubic feet in each) x 712 (pounds in each) is 640.800.000 pounds of push-up... Not recommended for a bra, eh? :) Well, that assumes youīre using lead. Since 640 mill. pounds of lead would probably not be cheap, just do as the ancient Netherese and slice the top of a mountain. Or... start a magical item that transforms rocks into lego bricks, and pay a dozen hundred hobos (or make larger blocks and pay a smaller team of giants 10 times as much) 1 gp a day each to piece the bricks together for a dozen-and-half hours each day! A month will be 30 x 1.200 gp, or 36.000 gp, and they wonīt be able to protest, since most people living by their jobs donīt earn even 3 gp a month! Well, they shouldnīt. 1 gp is enough to buy a goat. Donīt you think the upkeep cost in page 130 of the DMG is kind of hardcore high? You pay the cost of 45 goats a month to live a common life!Perhaps a lyre of building and a bard would be more cost-effective...Anyway, you can push up so much weight. And if the lead tries to fly away, it will fall back when it leaves the gravity area! As you weigh it down, it will only sink a bit, like a weightless boat floating between the vacuum and a sea of liquid lead! Not quite a tight ship, huh! ... Of course, a 13th level sorcerer/1st level archmage with the Spell Power +1 (or a red wizard of abjuration far under that level, I think) can make it drop the hell down for 1d4 rounds... with a roll of 10 in his Greater Dispelling. And it wonīt be able to recover... Because when it resumes working, the lead will have reached terminal velocity, and small bubbles of anti-gravity wonīt help. Just as bad as Mordenkainenīs disjunction... Well, not SO bad. I mean, the disjunction wouldnīt let anyone restart the system once back on good olī dirt, right? Ah, no. 1d4 rounds of supression only allow for 1d4x30 stronghold spaces to start falling. Letīs keep it to 870 spaces, then, so the thing can have a time to recover? Perhaps it IS necessary to pay 1.500 gp per stronghold space. :P Finally the construction issue... Reverse gravity requires line of effect. Should we tunnel the lead up with 1-inch channels leading to all important places, an airtight construction, and a permanent deeper darkness around the object, on a space which we make sure is impossible to copy, know of, recognize, or somehow acquire info enough to teleport in? Perhaps using some cloaking spells on the thingamajig. Thereīs still the issue of fine-sized creatures crawling through the aiming passages after entering through the Ethereal, armed with something to destroy the item... Most wards that killed them would probably clotter too the line of effect with their corpses... Forbiddance! And if someone tries to drill through the lead... Well, nothingīs perfect. Of course... The issue of antimagic shells... We can block them with Prismatic sphere, permanent! Err... I think Iīm being way too paranoid, perhaps... But donīt you think 1.500 gp per 10 ft. square is WAY too much for the floor? Itīs alright for the walls, but the floorīs surface increases in squares! If you double the size of a room, you multiply the stretchedness of the walls by x2, but the floor goes by x4! And I donīt have to tell you what itīs like to use cubes. Err... Looking at the web enhancement... I think I misunderstood what the frets is a stronghold space... And look at how much I had already written! Whoa, Iīm feeling kind of dumb, boy... P.S: If you hadnīt already noticed, I wrote this at home.
Karn Dragonsbane 09-30-06, 09:09 AM	:bump:
Karn Dragonsbane 10-07-06, 11:53 AM	Extra bump, and a message... I propose we crossover with mī puzzle makers guild. We at the puzzle makers have a mansion, but actually weīre on the outside all day īcuz I dinīt make any maps... Would you guys like it? Iīve already asked the Puzzle Makers in my sig, and Iīm awaiting an answer.