Need Help creating a Arcane Academy in tower form 3.5~

[PotatoNinja]

Alright, here are the specs for the tower in terms of dimensions. It is 40 stories tall. The stone walls are 15 feet thick at the base and 5 at the top. It is 200 feet at its base above ground, and 480 feet tall. Each floor is 12 feet tall.

It lies in a Metropolis of about 1,250,000 people.

The tower is a neutral ground for all mages, Ala dragonlance. There is no violence within the tower itself and it is a place for study and learning of the high arts.

1. 10 floors at the base that are 200x200 feet
2. 15 floor above that that are160x160
3. 10 floors above those that are 120x120
4. 5 floors above those that are 80x80

The foundation sinks 140 feet into the ground and could have 11 more floors at 240x240, but there are in game reasons why those areas may or may not be safe, hesitant to use them, but if it works in somebodies build, go ahead and throw some suggestion in there.

I am using the Stronghold Builders Guide as a rouge base for sizes, ignore prices, this structure has no limit.

Student Living, The Dorms

SO far i have 8 floors jam packed with servants quarters (housing 4 instead of 60 to avoid double bedding issues and barracks style long rooms) for the students to reside in, they take up floors 3-10. Each floor can house 308 students. This gives me a student population 2464. (i might ass better quality rooms to higher floors for upper level mages/residents/apartments)

Eating Halls
The Mess halls take up 4 of the 15 160x160 floors. Each has 6 maxed out kitchens + Staff, and enough dining room squares to feed around 650 people per floor.(Around 22 components total, taking up 44 ish stronghold spaces.) This feeds every member of the student body and then some.

Class rooms
I plan to have class rooms set aside for every school of magic. I am still uncertain about how to pick these classroom sizes, i think an auditorium would substitute in as a class room if i cut the people from 30 capacity to 20 to account for desk space and what not, or is 30 fine?(30 people in a 20x20 taking notes? Gah! is this realistic?) Which level of floors should these be on?

Libraries
Reserved for later notes, suggestions welcome on size and topic/complexity

Arcane Laboratory
Same as above, i know i will need them, but i haven't begun to scratch the surface on how m,any i will need yet, or how large to make them.

Administrative
The first two floors of the tower will be occupied by administrative. This assumes enrollment, payments student files, Research Grants/Aid, Research Enrolment, and the like. The School's Magic Item shop is located here as well. (thought many mages run their own shops outside the tower.)

What other major components am i missing? I might include alchemy labs in addition to the regular Arcane Labs. Should i add more housing floors to up the number of students? Any thought at all are welcome :D

right above these floors will be 8 floors of housing, and above those is 4 of mess halls. Is this setup ok? any suggestion on maybes squeezing floors around, mixing the orders?

Feeling a bit tipsy and tired, gonna stop posting now before i make an arse of myself, and go back to my grid paper and flesh out a few more floors.:smallredface:

[PotatoNinja]

could a mod move this to world building? I blame the flu for my herp derp wrong forum post :smallredface::smallfrown:

[Analytica]

I would say assume a laboratory/office for each faculty member (and for 3000+ students, you probably want hundreds of these), as well as larger communal laboratories for each school of magic, plus alchemy and the like. Additionally, teaching laboratories, about as many as you have auditoriums. I guess the dining halls can double as study halls for students when not otherwise in use.

[jiriku]

A section of this structure should be given over to the personal quarters of faculty and resident high-level wizards, and their labs, libraries, and equipment vaults. This section should feature dramatically higher security than the rest of the structure. The stone walls are clad in lead, and sheathed in permanent walls of force (which block ethereal access). The rooms are covered by permanent mordenkainen's private sanctum spells to block scrying and permanent dimensional lock spells to prevent teleportation. Teleportation traps at the entrances to these zones eject unwanted visitors into designated cells, to prevent overly curious apprentices from getting in. Tenfold masterwork locks are used on all doors to frustrate attempts to brute-force the security, and greater alarm spells are used throughout. Golems and incorporeal undead are stationed within as security.

[ZardozSpeaks]

Stronghold Builder's guide is pretty nifty. I'm currently using it with my pc to make a flying ship. Its much smaller though.

Will you be mapping it all out?

You could have vaults where dangerous things are kept. These might be in the lower floors.

With that many people you'll need Stables. This should probably be on a ground floor, or a few above or below it. It might also function as a loading/unloading dock.

The tower might have people who are breeding magical animals, building golems, studying the stars, making portals to other dimensions, binding outsiders or doing all sorts of wizardy things. I'd just browse through all the phb spells. Take Clone, there are probably wizards with big glass tubes growing clones. Another good way to brainstorm is the wondrous architecture section of the stronghold builders guide.

Also Dragon 295 has a bunch of extra stronghold components, wondrous architecture, walls and other cool stuff related to the SHBG

[ZardozSpeaks]

Oh, maybe an elevator. There is also a wondrous architecture called, i think, a chamber of flying. It allows you to fly in the section, and shows how you can use this to make a vertical shaft that connects floors.

[PotatoNinja]

I was going to post something, but i'm to sick with the flu to make it coherent. I am doing detailed maps of every floor, and i will upload them when i get them finished. Gonna go pass out before i respond to every bodies post in detail :smallsmile:

[Arbitrarious]

Regarding space. Remember mages tell physics to sit down and shut-up. You could have halls lined with doors that from the outside imply on a closet worth of space but open into far more spacious accommodation based on the mages abilities. Things from re-purposed bags of holding to permanent magnificent mansions.

[Mangles]

Your library should be every library at once, so that should anyone ever be able to navigate it they could be anywhere. The Librarian should be an orangatun

[Elemental]

Well, when it comes to the number of floors to leave devoted to classrooms, the bare minimum would be the same number as the dining areas.

However, for reasons of practicalityand in the interest of proper education, I'd suggest at least triple that number so that there's space in each classroom for practical demonstrations, display shelves, models, globes, and other things you'd need whilst learning how to control reality. You'd probably want to set aside room for auditoriums and lecture halls. And don't forget extracurricular activities.

[wiimanclassic]

Genesis to expand room size dude. Some doors to the demi planes, just have it be 1 or 2. Its a school for wizards so why not?

[Analytica]

Genesis to expand room size dude. Some doors to the demi planes, just have it be 1 or 2. Its a school for wizards so why not?

Yes. At the very least, you want treasure vaults, high-security holding cells for outsiders and laboratories for risky stuff to be in demiplanes.