DnD 3.5 Ancient fortress price check

[Malanthyus]

Heya,

Kind of in an unusual situation for 3rd level characters. We've managed to gain access to what appears to be a completely empty and surprisingly well preserved ancient tower. The tower's effectively 16stories tall, a diameter of around 250 ft for each. There seems to me 3 floors worth of what appear to be an "army" of automatons, 3 for material storage, 3 that's kind of like a pump works plus server automatons, 3 of labs, 3 of library (No books, just shelves) , 2 floors of residential quarters (furnished with common but well made furniture and extremely well made paintings), and 1 floor of officers quarters with extremely well made furniture and paintings. The final floor is a sort of "hanger" with a small airship(!). The air ship apparently is about the size of a 40 ft yaht, and has movement 200ft "good" with an arcane pilot.

What I'm looking for is a worst case scenario half market price estimate of how much all this stuff is worth. o.0

[Mr.Moron]

Worst Case Scenario: 0. Doesn't seem like the type of thing intended to be sold.

That said, the "real" value by the book: Insane. I only know of one source for fully statting out the price of buildings, Stronghold Builders guide. The rules in that book are very silly, and try to be way too simulationist . As such they're out of whack with the impact a owning a building would have on adventurers.

Honestly though, I'd just ask the DM. He probably has a far more reasonable real value for it than would be found in any book.


EDIT: The poster below me has the right idea. Just enjoy having a home base.

[Hat-Trick]

Why sell it? Base, man. Keep it and come up with a party name to derive a base name from.

[Coidzor]

Heya,

Kind of in an unusual situation for 3rd level characters. We've managed to gain access to what appears to be a completely empty and surprisingly well preserved ancient tower. The tower's effectively 16stories tall, a diameter of around 250 ft for each. There seems to me 3 floors worth of what appear to be an "army" of automatons, 3 for material storage, 3 that's kind of like a pump works plus server automatons, 3 of labs, 3 of library (No books, just shelves) , 2 floors of residential quarters (furnished with common but well made furniture and extremely well made paintings), and 1 floor of officers quarters with extremely well made furniture and paintings. The final floor is a sort of "hanger" with a small airship(!). The air ship apparently is about the size of a 40 ft yaht, and has movement 200ft "good" with an arcane pilot.

What I'm looking for is a worst case scenario half market price estimate of how much all this stuff is worth. o.0

Definitely investigate the automatons. You'll need to figure out if you can control them, they'll try to destroy the place, or if they're dead.

If you end up taking the landlord feat, the DM'll have to figure it out anyway...

So you have 3 warehouses, 2 floors (how many rooms?) of fine/good living quarters, 1 floor (#of rooms/suites?) of lavish/fine/master living quarters/suites. Probably include that as just the one library, and figure out how many of the labs are arcane versus alchemical. and 16 floors of a hewn stone tower.

With whatever modifiers due to how far from civilization you are that it's not currently occupied or claimed.

Actually, you probably will have to watch out for someone trying to lay claim to it that controls any lands nearby.

[Oblivious]

With a 250 feet diameter, you're probably talking 10~11 stronghold spaces per floor with the stronghold builders guidebook. This number could easily be fudged and will have a huge impact on the total price. With 16 floors at ten storage spaces per floor, this would be beyond what anyone in the known universe could actually afford by the book.

Most likely the construction wasn't done with the recommended size of a stronghold space, in which case we would have no ability to quantify the site's value.

edit: Your tower is probably about the size of a small city.

[Kol Korran]

i have no idea how much it's supposed to cost, but i'd wager on "pretty damn high". the DM will decide that.
problem is, anyone who has enough of money to buy it, can also just hire a small attack force/ army and take it from you (unless the automatons are on the power levels of golems and such)

but as was said before, this place doesn't seem intended to be sold, and the fact that you have a series of automatons also might mean you guys are going to be attacked someitme, probably soo nafter you learn to operate them...
i'd say investigate, and investigate hrad- what's in the labs? what current projects? why weren't they continued? why the hell 3 floors filled with pumps? for the automatons or research or something else? who lived there before you, why are they gone? this seems like an awefully war planned outpost, are there more? who is in them?

i think you guys just got a super cool thing, but also a bunch of trouble to boot. my suggestion- try to keep it as secret as possible... i fyou don't want it, somebody will, and they won't ask nicely...

Kol.

[Sebastrd]

edit: Your tower is probably about the size of a small city.

Not even close, actually. All 16 floors don't even constitute 1 square mile. Just sayin'...

[ericgrau]

^ Actually 0.03 square miles. There are 5280 ft. x 5280 ft. ~= 28 million square feet in a square mile, not 5280.

Based on a keep cost of 150,000 gp for 25 rooms, I'd guess it costs about 5 million gp to make, so maybe less than 2.5 million to sell if anyone wants it. That doesn't include furnishings. 250 feet across and 19 stories high is still rather large. You can't sell the stone for squat any more than you can sell the local mountain. Well, technically you can, but all the value of a quarry is in labor.

I'd sell all the art, see if the army can be scrapped or if it can become your personal army, set up a base of operations in the giant tower, and call it a day. Now you get to put in traps and what not. See also guards and wards (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/guardsAndWards.htm).

[Oblivious]

I was under the impression that cost went up per floor, but I can't find that in the SBG.

As for the small city thing, I guess I suck at unit conversion. Tanks for the correction. I still think this would cost more than anyone except governments could pay.

[Seonor]

Another important factor is probably the location. Is the fortress usefull to control a trade route? A border? Is the land fertile so settlers could live there? Other ressources like gold or silver? A lone tower somewhere in the wilderness is pretty useless, if there is nothing to protect/control.

[ericgrau]

I was under the impression that cost went up per floor, but I can't find that in the SBG.

As for the small city thing, I guess I suck at unit conversion. Tanks for the correction. I still think this would cost more than anyone except governments could pay.

Yeup, it should go up quite a bit for supporting such a height. My estimate ignored that, since I don't have the SBG on hand. So the cost is a lot more than 5 million gp, which was already kinda crazy high.

[DamnedIrishman]

The price is entirely dependent on the buyer.

If I was DM, I'd probably go with 'nothing' because nobody would buy it - anyone with the required degree of wealth wouldn't need to buy it off you, because they'd either already have a perfectly good stronghold or because they could just take it (or one like it) by force if they wanted it.

[TheCountAlucard]

Not to mention, if you go by the basic tenets of the wish-based economy, you can't buy that sort of thing - at least, not with money.

[Asheram]

My... I'd love that in the campaign I'm playing...

Anyhow. try to find out who's actually owning it. Perhaps it's just up for keeps. Otherwise there's always the possibility of "stealing" it.

Just make sure about the local politics first, perhaps there's some ruler not too far from you that'd rather not see another player on the field.