Benefits/drawbacks of permanent Magnificent Mansion

[Cirrylius]

What it says on the tin. A continuous-use Wondrous Item of Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion should run around 105k, which is comparable to the DMG's price tag for an actual mansion. On the surface of things, it seems pretty straightforward, but I thought I'd toss the idea to the hivemind to chew over possible unintended (dis)advantages.

As a secondary question, does anyone have any ideas/suggestions how a spell/property like this could interface with the rules from Stronghold Builder's Guide or Ultimate Campaign, either crunch- or fluff-wise?

[Red Fel]

I'd say that the key disadvantage is that, unlike a private demiplane to/from which you can teleport as you like, a Magnificent Mansion has a fixed opening. Even if you could make it permanent, that doesn't change the fact that the entrance point is fixed in relative space. Further, even if you had a Wondrous Item that could create one indefinitely, the entrance would be fixed at the point of creation, at least until/unless you uncreated/recreated it.

Even assuming nobody could bypass the protections on the entrance (invisible to others, can only be accessed by those you designate), your enemies could easily wait outside to ambush you as soon as you emerge.

Further, if the effect is created by the item, what happens to the item? Do you keep it on your person while inside the Magnificent Mansion? Do you place it at the point of entrance? What if somebody tampers with it?

I think the better choice is to construct a personal fortress, on a private demiplane, with a scrying pool and the proper metamagic enhancers to allow you to teleport without error to any location on the Prime you can scry, and protections designed to shunt any attempts to teleport in into a single room, attuned to your character, such that anyone who tries to get there will be trapped in that room until/unless you release them.

Alternatively, you could have a portal to your private demiplane fortress that moves with you - in effect, a TARDIS. Admittedly, this is much like what you're describing with your wondrous item, but unlike a Magnificent Mansion effect - which is magical, and by its nature ephemeral - a fixed demiplane exists even when the Wondrous Item is inactive or inert.

[Cirrylius]

I'd say that the key disadvantage is that, unlike a private demiplane to/from which you can teleport as you like, a Magnificent Mansion has a fixed opening.

Further, if the effect is created by the item, what happens to the item?
I was planning on enchanting a removable doorknob with a glamor and a Nystul's (non)Magic Aura, that'd create a setting-appropriate door wherever it was planted against a vertical surface.



I think the better choice is to construct a personal fortress, on a private demiplane, etc.

Alternatively, you could have a portal to your private demiplane fortress that moves with you, etc.

I was thinking in the 50-150k range. If I had ^that kind of money I'd be asking about extraplanar Wondrous Architecture.

[icefractal]

This reminds me of what I like to call Fractal Pseudo-Space, an expensive but potent housing option for high level characters.

You need an item which:
1) Is Intelligent (preferably pretty smart), and loyal to you.
2) Has Magnificent Mansion, and Gate (travel version), usable at will.
3) Has a way to access things out of direct LoS. Minions with some kind of link are a possibility.
4) Optional: If you want to store stuff, the item needs a way to move it around, either Telekinesis or using the aforementioned minions.

Basically, the item does this, repeatedly, all the time:
1) Make a new Magnificent Mansion, inside one of the existing ones.
2) Link its hallways up with Gates.
3) When one of the mansion is getting close to expiring, move any important items from it to a fresher mansion.

Now exactly how large your mansion can be depends on how rapidly the item can cast these and move stuff around. When I actually used this, I had some other spells to boost the rate it could act. But even at one mansion / minute, that's a volume of around 144,000 10' cubes - pretty large.

It's also fairly resistant to tele-ganking. Making your demiplane impossible to enter only goes so far, because Wish can still bring people there "regardless of local conditions". With this, there are a huge number of mansion spaces they can end up in, and when your controller item cuts off the gates, they're stuck in a tiny fraction of your base with nothing of note in it - which will decay and dump them into the Astral Plane in some random amount of time.

And of course, you can also integrate demi-planes into the structure, for the use of their planar properties.

[Deophaun]

Making your demiplane impossible to enter only goes so far, because Wish can still bring people there "regardless of local conditions".
Which is why the most effective demiplanes don't really prevent entry: they just do horrible, horrible things to you as soon as you enter while simultaneously planeshifting you to the equivalent of a fast-time plane of quantum singularities, so your remains are instantaneously removed from reality, or it takes a few thousand years for your own contingencies to go off and pull you to safety. But hey, for a brief instant, you were there. Wish granted!

[icefractal]

Which is why the most effective demiplanes don't really prevent entry: they just do horrible, horrible things to you as soon as you enter while simultaneously planeshifting you to the equivalent of a fast-time plane of quantum singularities, so your remains are instantaneously removed from reality, or it takes a few thousand years for your own contingencies to go off and pull you to safety. But hey, for a brief instant, you were there. Wish granted!That one's not a guarantee against serious opposition though. I can't think of any ways to transport people to another second plane without some kind of save, and they can use Planar Bubble to deal with unpleasant local properties like ultra-slow-time (and if they can't, how are you living there?).

[Seerow]

It is nice. I forget how big 1 SS is offhand, but 3 10ft cubes per caster level (minimum 39 10ft cubes) is a pretty sizable mansion.


Your big upside? It's portable. You have a fancy place to rest wherever you go. I've had characters who would kill for something like that.


The downside? It's expensive. I'm not sure where you're getting 105k from (I'm seeing 7th level spell, caster level 13. Continuous makes it 7*13*2000 = 182,000. CL13 makes it a 26 hour duration, which is greater than 24 hours, and so qualifies you for the 50% cost reduction, making it 91,000gp.


Just for comparison, since you're using the Stronghold Builder's Guide, if you invest that same amount of money into a Stronghold, and utilizing yours/your party's spells while building, it's totally within reason to end up with a stronghold actually worth 400k gp (based on my experience with a level 11ish party getting a 4-6x return on investment). Depending on your level, 1mil+ from the 90k investment isn't impossible (really getting access to CL16 Wall of Stone is your breaking point for making huge returns. But Lyre of Building is another big factor, and Fabricate and lots of luxury SS spaces will save you tons of money).

Why does the overall worth of the castle mean anything? Because strongholds get you money. Specifically 1% of money invested annually, plus 1% per income source available. Start up a mine? 1% of all money invested into your whole keep is generated by the mine. Start up farming in the area? Same deal. It's easy to end up with 5-10% of your stronghold's worth as total income. Meaning depending on level, you can easily end up with between 20k and 50k coming back to you every year from a 90k investment. And have an awesome stronghold out of the deal. And don't forget, Wondrous Architecture counts in that total, so you can have things like the Teleportation Room, used to get you to your next adventure, for a fraction of the price of a magic item and still generating you income.

Of course, depending on the type of game you're running, that income may be irrelevant to you. You may not be playing for a year of game time. But I know when we played around with it, having everything pay for itself and then some was a big part of the appeal. (Of course we just reinvested that money back into the castle/surrounding area for more awesome, but hey).

[Deophaun]

That one's not a guarantee against serious opposition though. I can't think of any ways to transport people to another second plane without some kind of save, and they can use Planar Bubble to deal with unpleasant local properties like ultra-slow-time (and if they can't, how are you living there?).
I'm not living there. I just have a (few) self-resetting Wish trap that sends people not me there. After, of course, another 50 or so self-resetting Wish traps get done with them.

[bekeleven]

Depending on your level, 1mil+ from the 90k investment isn't impossible (really getting access to CL16 Wall of Stone is your breaking point for making huge returns. But Lyre of Building is another big factor, and Fabricate and lots of luxury SS spaces will save you tons of money).
A CL20 Wall of Salt creates 562k GP of salt as a standard action with no expensive component.

[Seerow]

A CL20 Wall of Salt creates 562k GP of salt as a standard action with no expensive component.

When is the last time you actually got 562k gold for casting Wall of Salt in a game? There's a big difference between "Hey I got this thing that gets me extra money over time" and "Hey, I'm just going to gain 50x my wealth by level by spamming wall of salt for a day".

Typically the response to wall of Salt is "Sorry, someone else already ruined the market trying that, salt is effectively free now", or simply "Nope, not happening".

[bekeleven]

When is the last time you actually got 562k gold for casting Wall of Salt in a game? There's a big difference between "Hey I got this thing that gets me extra money over time" and "Hey, I'm just going to gain 50x my wealth by level by spamming wall of salt for a day".

Typically the response to wall of Salt is "Sorry, someone else already ruined the market trying that, salt is effectively free now", or simply "Nope, not happening".

I was responding to your "Break WBL by casting a wall" with "Break WBL by casting a wall." I'm sorry that offended you.

[Cirrylius]

I'm not sure where you're getting 105k from (I'm seeing 7th level spell, caster level 13. Continuous makes it 7*13*2000 = 182,000. CL13 makes it a 26 hour duration, which is greater than 24 hours, and so qualifies you for the 50% cost reduction, making it 91,000gp.

Oooh, yeah. I think I rounded it up to CL 15 to make the math easier to find a ballpark number, then forgot that it was a ballpark number :smallannoyed:



1) Make a new Magnificent Mansion, inside one of the existing ones.

Isn't this disallowed by dimensional stacking? I could only see this working if you could convince the DM that the spell was being cast on the naked edge of the interior space (which I don't think is exposed), so as to effectively tack a second Mansion onto the side with no overlap. I think even that would have some weird Astral implications, not to mention the dangers of letting the original Mansion expire and losing the link back to the Prime.

As far as the money stuff goes, I'm trying to keep it as non-abusive as possible; even though the DM's most recent statement for starting 21st level money is "whatever you could conceivably have", he's notoriously capricious, and since I'm the only player who knows the rules for pricing magic items (and the only character who has Craft Item feats) I'm trying to hold to WBL and keep wealth spamming to a minimum so the DM doesn't disallow my outrageously stacked item slots.

Anyway. Just out of curiosity, if you tried to customize a Magnificent Mansion with mundane craftsmanship and Wondrous Architecture (not that I'm really considering it) what would happen in-game?

Oh, I just thought of a new drawback. You couldn't open your Bags or Haversacks inside. Bummer.

[TuggyNE]

I was responding to your "Break WBL by casting a wall" with "Break WBL by casting a wall." I'm sorry that offended you.

Wall of stone is being used here for raw materials for building the stronghold; it directly offsets the price of buying those. Wall of salt, OTOH, requires you to sell the salt off. The difference between "you don't have to pay for X amount you otherwise would" and "you gain X amount if people are willing to buy" is pretty substantial.

[animewatcha]

Canj the magnificent mansion be bigger than colossal size or something?

[Seerow]

Anyway. Just out of curiosity, if you tried to customize a Magnificent Mansion with mundane craftsmanship and Wondrous Architecture (not that I'm really considering it) what would happen in-game?

That's going to be wholly DM dependent. Personally, I'd allow it. The Magnificent Mansion is roughly 1 SS per caster level (I checked, 1 SS is a 20x20x10ft section. Each caster level gets you 3 10ft cubes, or about 3/4 of an SS. Just rounded up), and it specifies you get to choose the floorplan. So I'd straight up let you have 13 SS (assuming a CL13 item) of whatever room types you want, with the benefit of not needing to bother with a kitchen or servants quarters (since the spell provides all the food and servants). If you want to upgrade the rooms beyond that (which is mostly going to be wondrous architecture, but could also include things like filling in a library with books, bringing equipment in for your labs/workshops, etc), you can pay for it normally.

I also agree that having Magnificent Mansion stacking within itself repeatedly is getting really weird in terms of how D&D cosmology works, and probably wouldn't allow casting a mansion while in a mansion on those grounds, but would have no problem with (as part of the permanent mansion from magic item) paying more to effectively have a single larger mansion. But each after the first would have the +50% cost for multiple effects on a single item. Basically the single magic item casts a couple of mansions concurrently and is able to combine them because of handwavium. So you get a CL13 Mansion (13 SS) and it's 91,000gp. A CL20 mansion (20SS) is 140,000gp. 2 CL13 Mansions (26SS) is 227kgp. 2 CL20 Mansions (40SS) is 350kgp. 3 CL20s (60SS) is 560kgp. So it gets to be pretty expensive to have a castle-sized portable mansion.

But your DM may feel differently. That's really just a case of you need to talk to him.

[Kraken]

Don't forget Mordenkainen's capable caravel, if you want a mobile mage's mansion. It lasts 1 day per two CL, and is basically a boat with a mage's mansion built into it.

[Sith_Happens]

Reminds me of a pair of spells I came up with a while back:
An 8th level that creates a permanent Magnificent Mansion (with some additional bells and whistles) whose entrance is invisible to all but the caster and anyone else he designates upon casting.
A 9th level that creates additional entrances to an existing Magnificent Mansion created by the caster. The extra entrances last as long as the Mansion itself does, and any of them can be exited through.