Flying "Fortress" help at level 9

[WebTiefling]

I'm (almost) a level 9 Dwarf Cleric with Leadership score of 15 (20,2,1 followers) and our party is looking to start setting up more large-scale effects in our world. To this goal, we're looking to create a flying fortress staffed with my followers.

We pulled out the Stronghold Builder's Guide and promptly fainted at the cost of a flying Castle. (20 spaces) But a Slow fortress (1 mi/hr - 24 mi/day) would cost 11,000 gp per space! Wildly outside our available gold.

They put it to me to come up with a cheaper scheme. The DM won't let major cheese through, but for this he is giving some leeway.

I came up with an idea, but need some second opinions.

Instead of a "Flying Castle", I'm thinking of a massive flying platform with walls, and inside that we can build our "castle". A Wonderous Item of Suspension (command word) costs around 25K to make. (cost optimizing might help this a bit)

I'll cast a bunch of Wall of Stone to form stone platform/floor chunks that get fitted together. We'll also Harden it with some scrolls (~4K). SBG has prices for iron walls around the outside edge. (~3600 gp)

Use the Suspension magic device to cast a BUNCH of Suspensions on the whole thing, and voila! Floating platform with iron walls! It would have 5' square floor chunks, and each chunk can lift up to 7000 lbs, and the weight of the floor and walls would leave almost 2 million lbs of lift. Renew the spells each week, and we're golden!!

After that, we'll build our castle on the inside with normal costs according to the SBG.

The cost would run around 25K for the Suspension casting item. 4K for the Hardening. 4K for the iron walls. Maybe something for the building of the platform if the DM thinks we'll need to hire people. We're looking at 33K to 35K for the platform. Then we'll build our 20 spaces of castle inside according to SBG guidelines and costs.

Seem doable? Breaking any rules too horribly? Am I going about it the hard way?

[Fouredged Sword]

That may work, but consider an alternative. Not one castle, but many ships. Soarwood flying ships are from the eberon setting, but they are reasonably priced all things considered, and can be made rather than bought to reduce the cost further. Fabricate is within your grasp, and multiple castings can create the sections of a ship that are then assembled into the full vessel.

[Icarusthefallen]

I'm curious to see what your DM says. Please let us know. Sorry, but I don't have my books in front of me, as I am at work, and have never tried to build my own flying fortress... If I think of anything once I get home and have my books I will repost.

[WebTiefling]

92K per ship if bought straight up. Drop it down to 46K if making ourselves and maybe only 40K if we optimize stuff. That's still starting to break our price envelope for more than two.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by WebTiefling
That's still starting to break our price envelope for more than two.

Flying catamaran?

:smalltongue:

[WebTiefling]

Oh, wait. I'm not thinking outside the box. Creating a large structure of alchemically-treated soarwood would work, since that's the stuff that makes the ships float.

With some Googling, I'm seeing a bit of a problem. How much can soarwood lift? How much does it cost?

I know, I know. Ask the DM. If he just has to make up stats for a material out of thin air, I suspect it will be shot down. Something along the lines of "The soarwood only flies because of their secret alchemy techniques which you don't know. Want to infiltrate them or try to steal the secrets?"

That would be a complete 180 from where the campaign is. Wouldn't "fly".

[Gavinfoxx]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14zilT4WGOyHM0AfpG4-GmD2FkgDg1HZ9HC1cTleQHds/edit

Read that.

[WebTiefling]

Moar Googling! http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/soarwood

Costs 4x normal wood.

That's completely insane.

It says it's rare and necessary for the flying ships which are also rare and in high demand. That means the price should be through the roof. Think of Teak ($24/board foot) vs Pine ($1.5/board foot).

And that page still doesn't say how much those ships can lift. Can that soarwood rowboat still float with my and my four party mates along with all our gear? We total up and easy thousand pounds.

Put that in a regular water rowboat and you just might go straight to the bottom depending on the boat.

Help?!?

[WebTiefling]

Oooooo!

Thanks Gavinfoxx! I'll digest that one for a bit.

Any other brilliant ideas?

[Gavinfoxx]

Just read the living in a flying box link that is linked within that file I gave you.

Also, I believe that soarwood price is entirely homebrew.

[WebTiefling]

Whew! I hadn't seen the Living in a Flying Box before. That's laying on the cheese a bit heavily for the moment, but some of those ideas are great!

I especially like the Spell Turrets. Muwahahaha! I know it's not optimized, but having a bunch of those with nothing but magic missiles of some sort gives me all sorts of awesome visuals:

Dozens of antiaircraft-style tracers of Magic Missiles ripping through the sky in streaks of glowing blue as a swarm of fighters wyverns twists and turns trying to get at the base through the seeking streams of deadly Force!

[WebTiefling]

Hmmm, I think I actually like the method I came up with - make the flying platform and build the castle on it.

Easy to expand as our wealth grows and we want to add more stronghold spaces to it. Eventually we could wind up with more of a floating city than a floating fortress.

[Gavinfoxx]

Which method will you use for a floating platform? There are several...

[Yora]

I think in theory, you could suspend an infinite amount of weight off a single immovable rod. You can't move it, but it should stay above the ground.
It would need a sufficiently strong structure to not break apart by all the stress that is focused on a single bolt, but magically treated adamantine should do the trick to create a basic frame. Then add more steel beams to make a tighter cage and fill the spaces with wood. Possibly metal plating the whole thing on the outside to protect against fire arrows and such.

--

My mistake, a single rod can only support 4 tonnes. Even for a moderately sized structure, you'd need a couple of hundreds of those.

[John Longarrow]

You could really think outside the box...

Effigy Master makes a medium dragon.

Medium dragon effigy has Magnificent Mansion 1/day (renewable if DM is cool, since spell last 26 hours from a 13th level caster). Opening is the belly of the dragon (being a construct, dragon lands, stands on hind legs, and hinged belly open to be the doorway) so you now have a very fast method of moving around.

In one campaign I'm running, these USED to be a major asset of a main kingdom, up till some epic wizards came and shut down extra-dimensional access on a massive scale..

[Crustypeanut]

I know this is PF and you're not playing PF.. but Airships can carry 100 passengers or 30 tons of cargo, and only cost 50,000 gp - 1/3rd of that if you craft it yourself.

Since the rules and stats are already there, it probably wouldn't take much to reconfigure it to 3.x.

Not to mention they can carry siege weapons.. :P

[WebTiefling]

I saw the Effigy, and I think I like it, but trying to find something big enough to work for all the different stuff we want to cram in would be tough.

My mobile flying platform:
1) A "trap" of Suspension spell.
2) Create a (modular) huge platform of stone squares using Wall of Stone.
3) Harden it.
4) Iron walls according to the Stronghold Builders Guide.
5) Use the "trap" to Suspension each of the stone platform squares each week.

Costs:
1) 14,000 gp. 500 * CL * SL = 500 * 7 * 4 = 14000 gp
2) Free. Cast it myself. Make 10,000 sq ft of 0.5" thick stone.
3) 6,600 gp. Hardening CL 11 does 110 cu. ft. 0.5" thick = 2640 sq. ft. 4 castings. Scrolls are 1650 gp each.
4) 4,500 gp. Free standing Iron walls according to SBG. We can't cast Wall of Iron yet.

Total: 25,100 gp. for a 10,000 square foot platform with 10' iron walls all around it that can fly at 45 ft/round. It can lift over 2,000,000 lbs even after the weight of the stone and iron walls.

That gives us 25 stronghold spaces to play with, and we can expand later as our funds allow. The five of us have around 55,000 gp total to put toward this.

This fits our budget pretty well. Thoughts?

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, you should also read this:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i8KWw/edit

It SOUNDS LIKE you are still thinking that the actual rules in the stronghold builder's guide should be used. They shouldn't. The cost of those rules imply that, as much as possible, you should make sure to never use those rules ever, except in niche applications. You can do pretty much all of your construction magically, yourself, you know. You DO have a primary caster, yes?

[WebTiefling]

Yes, we have a 9th level Cleric (me) and a 9th level Wizard in our party. Neither of us are crafters at all, though. Not even one crafting feat or skill beyond his Scribe Scroll.

I looked through the link you gave, and it's awesome for generating massive wealth using cheese. Not a game anyone enjoys.

The iron walls, for example. Neither of us can cast Wall of Iron, so we have to get them somewhere. The SBG seems as good a place as any to find the costs. I could find the price of iron and then figure out the costs of hiring people to craft the walls, etc. Or I can just use the SBG price which is cheap. The walls would weight 490,000 lbs, and at 1sp/lb they would cost 49,000 gp just for the raw material. Thanks, but I'll go with the SBG prices.

I can't see any way to more cheaply create the platform and walls.

So what would you suggest for building the castle itself?

[Gavinfoxx]

...

You can't buy scrolls and scribe them to your spellbook? Whyever not?? And I wasn't suggesting you do this everywhere -- just use these techniques -- wall of X, shapesand, fabricate, unseen crafter, shape metal, stone shape, greater stone metamorphosis, etc. -- yourself, by purchasing and scribing the scrolls. :|

[WebTiefling]

Because Wall of Iron is a 6th level spell and neither of us can cast 6th level spells yet.

We're only at 9th level.

[WebTiefling]

And yes, I'm sure we could make everything else ourselves using the "Take 10" technique in place of actual crafting skills or something like that.

But, that is spending 50,000 gp to buy half a million pounds of raw iron, and months of in-game time to shape 900 cubic feet of iron into walls. Then we'll cast all the spells to have Unseen Crafters do the floor/wall assembly, and because there are more of them it will only take another year or two. And we'll do all the raw materials collection, purchasing, and crafting of all the buildings in the castle, taking 10 and generating lousy stuff with our Unseen Crafter lousy skills, and should get it all done in hopefully not more than ten years of in-game time.

Or, we can just hire people to do the work and buy the raw materials, which is what the SBG is (poorly) estimating with its prices and have it done in a month or two while we're out adventuring.