Protecting an Enveloping Pit building.

[Tvtyrant]

One of the ideas I have been working on for a campaign is the use of Enveloping Pits inside of Enveloping Pits to make extradimensional tunnel buildings. An Enveloping Pit is a magic item which creates a 10 ft. wide door to a 10x10x50ft. hallway.

So you have a normal tower with an Enveloping Pit, and inside of the hallway it makes is 10 more doors. You can rinse and repeat forever to get a massive house/city, and it is cheaper than big houses/castles are. However since the portals only open and close one way, you leave yourself at risk when you build this way. What are the best ways to protect say a tower covered in Enveloping Pits from entry?

[FocusWolf413]

Ventilation is more important. With only the one opening, you aren't getting enough air for more than ten enveloping pits worth of space. This is far short of a city.

If the air breathing isn't an issue, then just have it closed all of the time. Money clearly isn't an issue if you have that many enveloping pits, so scrolls of gate or planar binding would work wonders.

Golems of varioustypes work well. You could somehow get ghosts, allips, or some other incorporeal creature. Traps work. Try using feather tokens creatively. With the amount of enveloping pits your city will require, anything is in your grasp. You could just hire an army.

[Tvtyrant]

I don't know why you keep saying they are expensive. They cost 1800 GP to make, and a mansion costs 100,000 GP. For the cost of a mansion you can get 55 of them, making a 27,500 sq ft house (IE a mansion). The whole city might not be in one, but they certainly are competitive for rich people housing.

[atemu1234]

I don't know why you keep saying they are expensive. They cost 1800 GP to make, and a mansion costs 100,000 GP. For the cost of a mansion you can get 55 of them, making a 27,500 sq ft house (IE a mansion). The whole city might not be in one, but they certainly are competitive for rich people housing.

Tax and build, with the help of people?

Either way, Gates to the Elemental planes would be useful. Air for... well, air, Earth for mining, Fire for waste disposal, and Water for water. Maybe also make traps of greater planar binding, for guards.

[Jowgen]

Luckily for you, I actually designed such a place once back in the day and put quite a bit of thought into it.

Some background: You might hear the argument about extra/non-dimensional spaces not stacking as a general rule (i.e. astral rift or other vaguely described hazards result). This concept was grand-fathered in from earlier editions, where it was indeed a solid rule, and it can be found in the descriptions of portable holes, bags of holding, and the Rope Trick spell. The EP likens itself to a portable hole, but it does not specifically cite this clause, so by RAW you're good. In terms of fluff, you can justify EP stacking by a) stating that it is a relic, and thus special, and/or b) that it would go against the intent of the item, as the EP is meant to function as a re-usable pit-trap and it would be a serious design-flaw if any adventurer with an extradimensional space falling in would destroy the pit and create an astral rift.

How to build: In D&D, the rules for building stuff and how long it takes/costs/etc. are very scetchy at best. Stronghold-builder's guidebook is probably your best bet if you want to use those. A single pit effectively equates to one stronghold space, but building this way gets really expensive real fast.

Your best bet is to buy a lyre of building and hire a single skilled bard (if you're not one). Hiring and architect may also be a good idea, if in-game fluff requires it. Pricing for such hirelings are in A&E, the lyre costs 13000, and if you don't want to keep it you can sell it afterwars for a total net-loss of 6.500 gp.

For building materials, you should be able to get around buying them by just going somewhere that has the desired natural resources, and have the lyre build from those materials. A remote forest with lots of wood, an abandoned stone-quary, anything of the sort will do. If you want fancier stuff though (e.g. adamantine doors) you will probably have to buy them though. Or, capture yourself some trolls, chop them up into neat pieces and use flesh to X type spells :P

What to include:

Air is important, as is water. The cheapest option here is the following green-house formula: Weeping flask (complete mage) + Liquid Sunlight (Complete Scounrel) + Air plant (Stormwrack). With this, you have a near-natural lightsource and a steady supply of water for yourself and your air-plants for 95 pg per set. How many you need for any given population is a tad questionable. May also want to hire a herbalist to do up-keep.

For food, everlasting rations (MIC) are cheap at 350 gp, and keep in mind that starvation only sets in after a number of days, so a single ration can technically sustain several people if need be. Still, I personally recommend going for something nicer: Basket of Delights, 1080 gp, feeds 3 people/day with "all manner of ripe, delicious-looking fruit, sufficient to feed three humans for one day". Found here. http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fey/20030613a

You will also want sanitation. The least-effort solution would be a piece of wonderous architecture (Stronghold builder's guidebook) that activates the cleaning function of prestidigitation as a command word. 250 gp for an auto-cleaning bathroom installed anywhere in your EP.

Defenses:

You may wish to invest in some for of dimension lock effect, as each pit technically counts as a Demiplane according to Manual of the Planes, meaning someone could gate of greater planeshift in without problem. You won't have to worry about ethereal incursions, as only the material has an ethereal plane by RAW, which excludes all extradimensionl spaces.

At the entry point, I personally recommend a buffer room of sorts. The luxury option would be a chamber made of magically treated Obdurium (stronghold builde's guidebook) with some form of proofing against transmutation. Make the entrance a secret door (350 gp, DC 35 Search check to find) and add some magical traps hidden with a permanenced magical aura spell. The exact layout of this room and its traps is obviously a creativity exercise.


Extra: I strong recommend a self-destruct button. :smalltongue: