Creating an Intelligent, Animated Fortress

[WebTiefling]

Is there some way to make a fortress self-functioning? Make it intelligent, or semi-intelligent, so that it operates all the day-to-day jobs itself: cleaning dirty dishes, cooking food, sweeping dirt, etc?

For added bonus, how about auto-firing all the embedded crossbow stations according to directions? Firing off the trebuchets, catapults, etc.

I can think of two methods:
A bazillion constructs built - brooms, crossbows, etc. All created constructs.
A bazillion Animate Object + Permanency combos. Nasty XP cost, though.

Anything else? Something to make the fortress itself sentient/semi-sentient? I suspect I might be talking about Epic-level stuff there.

[kabreras]

Apart the mooving fortress all that you ask can be acomplished by a brunch of unseen servants

[Caligstro Smith]

You could use caster level boosting to require way fewer animate objects spells...

CL 32 = 1 Colossal object animated
CL 64 = 1 Colossal+ object
CL 128 = 1 Colossal++ object
etc...

Of course, you'll need to make sure you can qualify your whole fortress as a single object for the purposes of the spell, but if you were careful with how you built the fortress you could manage it.

Then you'd only need 1 permanency. If you just want it to be self-aware/intelligent but not necessarily the whole thing animate, you could not worry about permanencing the spell and just throwing an Awaken Construct at the fortress after you Animate Objects it. Then even after it ceases to be animate it's still intelligent so it can think and communicate (assuming something can use telepathy or something to talk to it) and remember stuff.

The plus side of this is that if you DO permanency it, it's also going to have such a high caster level on it that almost nobody's going to ever dispel the animation effect. At least not with a similar level of shenanigans as you used to make it in the first place (so probably like some kind of big circle magic thing during a siege or such).

Unfortunately for the effects that you're looking for (sweeping, dishes, firing crossbows, etc) wouldn't work with just animating the structure itself unless you have a bunch of built-on weird arms that are built into the structure to come out of the walls, floor, ceiling, or wherever. Again you end up solving the problem just by being very careful and specific about how you build the structure.


My recommendations for building such a thing:
1 item of Wall of Stone at will/on command (81k gp = 5*9*1.8k gp)
1 Lyre of Building 13k gp
1 Bard with +17 or higher on his perform check.

No matter what sort of fancy features you want built into this fortress, the lyre can make it because it works as 100 men working for 3 days per 30 mins of playing the lyre. Well fortunately even if we assume that all 100 of the men are unskilled laborers with +0 on a craft, 1 of them could take 10, and then the other 99 have a 50% chance to succeed on aid-another for a net of +99 more to the check on average.

109 average craft (whatever you're thinking of, as long as you can make it out of stone or if you supply the other materials you'd need for it) is way more than needed to craft whatever it is. And the check's so high that they're producing value really quickly! You only need your bard to play for like... 12 hours and you've probably finished building your fortress.

[WebTiefling]

I think I'd make an Wonderous Item of unseen servant to cast enough of those. Renewing every X hours would be nasty, though.

Every X hours I have to re-create unseen servants and give them all their instructions over again. Need 1000 servants to do it? Fine, just spend 6000 seconds casting all the spells and giving orders until your voice fails. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe hiring some servants to do that would work.

Is there maybe some way to make the unseen servants permanent? That would work!

[gomipile]

a brunch of unseen servants

That doesn't seem very appetizing to me.

[gomipile]

I think I'd make an Wonderous Item of unseen servant to cast enough of those. Renewing every X hours would be nasty, though.

Every X hours I have to re-create unseen servants and give them all their instructions over again. Need 1000 servants to do it? Fine, just spend 6000 seconds casting all the spells and giving orders until your voice fails. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe hiring some servants to do that would work.

Is there maybe some way to make the unseen servants permanent? That would work!

A resetting trap of Unseen Servant would work. That or a spell clock. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a)

[WebTiefling]

Daaaaaang!

Ok, I apparently need to learn how to boost my CL WAY more than I already do. (Ankh of Ascension and Strand of Prayer Beads) Any links for that?

I like the segmented fortress concept. Do the rules say anything about an animated object having detachable parts? The idea being to have a bunch of smaller "mechs" built into the castle, and then detach to do the work once it is animated.

Awaken construct only works on "humanoid shaped" things, so I'm afraid that idea is out, since the castle is more or less traditionally shaped.

[WebTiefling]

Gomipile - those would certainly make lots and lots of unseen servants, but I'd still have to be giving them directions each time a new one comes along. :smallfrown:

[kabreras]

few traps of servants each in a room with a magic mouth in each room keep giving instructions for a specific task

[WebTiefling]

Oooo, that's not too bad!

[WebTiefling]

Slightly off topic: Death Knell. Can that stack with itself? It doesn't have a type of bonus to CL, so I'm guessing it does.

Can I get a 50 rabbits, a Wonderous Item of Death Knell, and then stab the rabbits and Death Knell them? That would get me up to CL +50 easily.

Use that to cast my spells.

[Gavinfoxx]

http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1128391

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

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

[WebTiefling]

Um, Gavin, that first link is to the Living in a Box page. I don't think it has anything about animating a fortress or providing tons of permanent unseen servant sort of help.

Post-Scarcity D&D link is the same way. Make tons of money? Sure. Make an animated fortress? No.

Same for the Airship Building link. I guess the Effigy method might be able to be tweaked to make a self-operating fortress, though I don't see how off the top of my head.

Is there something I'm missing?

[Gavinfoxx]

Yup. The list of intelligence creating methods in airship. The repeating traps of unseen servant and unseen crafter. The fabulous cats item. The idea of casting a bunch of spells over and over again to do work on an airship. The making it a construct ideas. Haunt Shifting. Etc. etc. etc.

[Pathagaron]

You could hire a maid/caretaker etc whose only goal in life is to make sure the fortress is clean/maintained to the exclusion of all else. Find some way to get them killed in the line of duty (preferably in some dramatic fashion). Then they come back as ghosts with obsessed with cleaning/maintaining your fortress.

Edit: Give them ghost touch gloves of some kind.

[Derpldorf]

Uhmm... Far be it from me to interrupt but wouldn't an automatic repeating trap of Animate Object + Permanency be far more efficient?

Admittedly I'm not familiar with spell traps, but i figured I'd ask.

[Gavinfoxx]

Uhmm... Far be it from me to interrupt but wouldn't an automatic repeating trap of Animate Object + Permanency be far more efficient?

Admittedly I'm not familiar with spell traps, but i figured I'd ask.

That's what I was saying! Look into repeating traps to lower costs!

[unseenmage]

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, Wondrous Architecture is magic items as rooms that cost half as much because you can't carry them away as treasure.

From here we wander over to the Intelligent Magic Item rules in the DMG and the Combining Magic Items rules in the Magic Item Compendium and go to town.

Viola, intelligent magic rooms. Apply the movement modes in the SBG and you're good to go.

[WebTiefling]

Embedding a Sentient Magic Item in the object - where are the rules on that? I could see doing something like that.

[Gavinfoxx]

Embedding a Sentient Magic Item in the object - where are the rules on that? I could see doing something like that.

There aren't any -- it's a bit homebrew.

[John Longarrow]

WebTiefling,

Depending on your scope of "Fortress", you can use something I've had for my campaign for a while. Crazy pixie necromance that's animated a gaints skeleton, then built a duplex inside. Likes to ride around in the skull to make sure it goes where she wants.

She sublets to a nice monkey couple (one awakened, the other the result of a reincarnation) that like the "Travel" aspect.

[unseenmage]

There aren't any -- it's a bit homebrew.


Embedding a Sentient Magic Item in the object - where are the rules on that? I could see doing something like that.

If by 'a bit homebrew' you mean 'using the rules', then yes it is.

It works just as I laid it out. MIC has the rules for combining magic items, SBG has the rules for items as rooms, and the DMG has the Int Magic Items. It's that simple.

Now should you ask your DM before unleashing the full wrath of the Custom Magic Item guidelines (no matter their source)? Yes, yes you should.

But this is certainly not some half-brained homebrew rife with rules ambiguation. It's just the rules as they are, applied creatively, and with permission of one's DM.

[Icewraith]

You can also use the epic spellcasting rules and the Mythal seed (in one of the FR books IIRC) to do this explicitly, with the aid of your DM. You just have to find, summon, or bind enough spellcasters to mitigate the spellcraft DCs you can run up building your own sentient custom mythal.

You can also relegate less important functions to self-resetting (and cheaper!) spell traps. However, epic spellcasting will get you a sentient, mobile fortress packing a mile-long beam of arbitrary d6es of pure destruction, that can blow through antimagic fields and has a shot at breaking epic-level abjurations. Spell traps can get you a cool custom mobile lair, epic spellcasting can get you the Death Star.

[Silva Stormrage]

Also multiple consumptive fields + a bunch of rats is a good way to pump out REALLY high caster levels.

Also note that a single disjunction will remove animate object so get some way of blocking that, maybe epic magic if need be or coat the outershell of the fortress in non magical material that blocks LoE (I suggest something durable)

[WebTiefling]

unseenmage - where in the MIC does it talk about combining items? Maybe it's just because it's late where I'm at and I'm tired, but I don't see it in my book.

Here's what I would make the rules of combining items. If there are actual rules for this, I'll go for those instead, but until then I think these would work.

EDIT: Wording and changes to gold cost
Overlapping abilities drop the lower ability. Period. Combining Gloves of Dex +2 and an Amulet of Dex +4, would wind up with one or the other of Dex +4. And thus would be a stupid move.

All of abilities are transferred to the compound item other than overlapping abilities. The work must be done by someone with all the necessary Feats for all the abilities/items being merged. The cost is the difference between the price of a new item with all the merged abilities, and the costs of the items being merged.

If the gp cost of the resulting item can't be determined, the cost is half the cost of the individual items.

The total ability levels in the final object cannot be greater than +10.

Examples 1: two rings, one of Protection +3 (18000 gp) and the other of Mind Shielding (8000 gp). A ring with both abilities would normally cost 30K, so the cost to merge the rings would be 30K - 18K - 8K = 4000 gp. Someone with Forge Ring would need to do the work.

Example 2: +2 Breastplate (4000) and a Periapt of Health (7400). A Breastplate created with both abilities would be 20,100 gp (1.5*(4000*1.5 + 7400)). The cost to meld the two would be 20100 - 4000 - 7400 = 8700. The being doing the work would need the Feat Create Wondrous Item and Craft Magic Arms and Armor.

Example 3: A sentient magic item costing 20,000 gp and an Animated Object fortress costing 40,000 gp. It will cost 30,000 gp to combine the sentient item with the animated fortress. The fortress with then be both Animated and Sentient, complete with the sentient item's abilities. The person doing the work would need the Feats used to create the sentient item.

Example 4: A +5 sword and a +1 Vorpal sword being combined would cost 200,000 - 50,000 - 72,000 = 78,000 gp.

It lets lots of abilities be munged together into weird combos. However, it doesn't allow the creation of +X items just by putting together X +1 items.

Thoughts?

[Gavinfoxx]

Combining items in the following places:

The Dungeon Master's Guide
The Dungeon Master's Guide errata (this changes it!)
The Magic Item Compendium


I don't believe it's part of the SRD.

Basically, here is how it works:

For different like slotted items, you add a premium of 50% to the cost of all but the most expensive item you wish to combine in the same slot, unless it is on a list of easy to add options in the magic item compendium, which do not incur the premium cost.

For example, you could combine a Shadow Cloak (5500 gp) with a Cloak of resistance +1 (1000 gp, but the premium makes it 1500 gp), and it would cost 7000 gp.

And you are making up rules, it sounds like. A +5 Vorpal Sword is a +10 sword, and costs as such.

[WebTiefling]

Yes, gavinfoxx, I was making up rules. I specifically stated that was what I was doing until I found some more official rules.

I don't think that's quite how they would work together, but as I looked through the books, I don't think there is a way that they're supposed to work together to do what I'm asking.

The method you mentioned isn't actually joining two items together, it's throwing one away, and then adding the ability onto the other for just what it would cost to add it on anyway.

Sounds like an area the rules don't really cover.

[Gavinfoxx]

Some locations for you.

DMG page 288, "Adding New Abilities", and table 7-33 on page 285
https://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DMG_Errata032004.zip (pay attention to the update to table 7-33)
Magic Item Compendium, pages 233-234.

Here are the updated rules for making custom magic items, with the errata in them:

www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm

Isn't that what you want? You want one single cloak that does the things of arbitrary number of cloaks?

Or one single headband that does the thing of an arbitrary number of different types of headbands?

[WebTiefling]

Not quite.

I've gotten four different shields in my adventures, all with different magical abilities. I want to put them together to make one shield.

NOT just add abilities to one of the shields so it has the abilities of all four shields.

Other example:
A perm animated doll and a sentient amulet. Put together how? NOT just make a sentient animated doll, but have the sentient amulet conjoined with the doll somehow.

Like I said, it doesn't seem that the rules ever address that situation directly. To deal with it, it seems I'll need to homebrew something based on the general guidelines of generic adding abilities to items.

[Gavinfoxx]

Uh, if a magic item is already made, it's already made... it can be upgraded, though.

Use an artificer with a bunch of these:

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7274.0

to drain the XP in three of the shields, and use the XP and his discounts to cheaply add the abilities of three of the shields into one of the shields.

[WebTiefling]

Yes, but that's just another way of creating a new magic item that happens to have the abilities of other magic items.

I am looking to specifically merge items together.

[Gavinfoxx]

Yes, but that's just another way of creating a new magic item that happens to have the abilities of other magic items.

I am looking to specifically merge items together.

Trust me when I say, there are no rules to do that. Just like there are no rules for making a non masterwork item magical; it can't be done...

[unseenmage]

Yes, but that's just another way of creating a new magic item that happens to have the abilities of other magic items.

I am looking to specifically merge items together.

The Custom Magic item rules at the back of the DMG are the closest you're going to get. The x1.5 combination rules that Gavinfoxx was kind enough to lay out for you really are what you're looking for.

The only way I can think of to have it be more mechanically a fusion is to apply the Flying weapon enhancement from MoF to them causing them to be treated as Animated Objects then somehow get them to use the Fusion psionic power on each other over and over until you have one super shield. I'm not sure how you'd keep the Fusion power from ending but there you go, 4 shields become one.

As far as getting the rules to represent precisely, exactly what you want, they never do. The rules will always need some creative allowance to be fun to utilize. I suggest using the x1.5 combining method and just describing it as a fusion instead of 'tacking on and throwing away'. How the game rules are represented visually and thematically is up to the players and the DM, always.

Don't be a prisoner of the rules. Use them to find fun. That's their purpose; above balance, even above cooperative roleplaying.

[nickia]

Instead of Unseen Servants you should just fill the dungoen with Caryatid Columns

[Tim Proctor]

1 Intelligent Item Spell Turret that creates other Spell Turrets, which create everything else. That's how I did it, left them as remnants of a long-gone civilization, etc.