Magical Floating Wizard Sanctum?

[tadkins]

You're all likely familiar with this classic wizardly trope. A magical flying sanctuary that a wizard creates as his or her own private domain. What I'm wondering though...

1. How practical is it for a PC Wizard to eventually acquire/construct one?

2. Spending a lot of money and time spellcasting is a given. What other kinds of costs would one expect to incur, such as feats?

3. Can it be made to do other cool things? Defend itself, move across the world, perhaps even transport itself to alternate planes or worlds?

[Hanuman]

You're all likely familiar with this classic wizardly trope. A magical flying sanctuary that a wizard creates as his or her own private domain. What I'm wondering though...

1. How practical is it for a PC Wizard to eventually acquire/construct one?

2. Spending a lot of money and time spellcasting is a given. What other kinds of costs would one expect to incur, such as feats?

3. Can it be made to do other cool things? Defend itself, move across the world, perhaps even transport itself to alternate planes or worlds?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252794

[Gildedragon]

Depending on the level; by 20 it is virtually expected of you.

Costs: you might want Craft Wondrous Item for building elements of wondrous architecture as well as Craft Construct for a foreman (dedicated wright) and labor (golems of all sorts); necromancy can overcome the need for the latter, but the former is most useful to have. The Landlord feat makes it cheaper to build, though it requires the Leadership feat. But that means you can have another caster as foreman to help out build this.

And whoa boy can a stronghold do stuff. be at the center of a hurricane is one that comes to mind.
As for building and accessing:
You could just build it inside a demiplane of your making; there's options for that; and planeshift there and back at your convenience. Heck you can have the whole thing planeshift. Flight at its cheapest is 20000

I'd recommend checking the Stronghold Builder's Handbook, it has all the info on doing this.

[Coidzor]

There's rules in the stronghold builder's guidebook from 3.0 and I believe you can accomplish something similar with the airship rules in Eberron if you aren't set upon something too massive.

Pathfinder might have some other material on the subject, but I don't recall offhand.

There's a spell which creates a floating trap which is supposed to be able to support up to X pounds per trap, and if you make the trigger for the trap something impossible it'll just stay up forever/until dispelled.

There's also other workarounds (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i8KWw/edit) which I cannot recall offhand, but usually involve some kind of Tippyverse (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007).

[Clistenes]

Sword and Sorcery - Relics and Rituals has a 9-level wizard spell that does that. You need assistance (followers or Simulacrums) and it's a day-long ritual, but you get your own flying castle that you can drive as a vehicle.

[tadkins]

Perfect, thanks guys, for pointing that info out. :)

The character I had in mind that would actually go through with this project is in fact a necromancer, so I figured that having a group of risen undead minions to do a good portion of the labor would work. The wizard would concentrate on the more magical and technical aspects of the construction.

[Quirp]

Great spells for this concept are Stone Trap (Shining South) combined with Stone Shape (PHB). It even gives you the ability to drop unwanted visitors through the floor, if you choose the password option of stone trap.