How to create the Ultimate Construct?

[magicalmagicman]

My DM is rolling some kind of apocalyptic campaign, and there are hordes of Dracolich Prismatic Great Wyrms with ridiculously optimized feat and spell builds.

We first have to take out one, then another one, then two at a time, then three. Then we have to defeat them in a macroscopic setting. Each dragon also has his own army of some kind. Most of them are some undead thing, because they're dracoliches

My character is a golem master, so he will be fighting the Dracolich Prismatic Great Wyrms with his own creations. Ideally he'll somehow buy time until he finishes his ultimate construct, then use it to kick ass.

So... here are some questions:
1. How do you get it to fly permanently? Or at least fly for a decent duration everyday by itself? (i.e. fly without a slave wizard living inside it casting fly).

2. How do you give it spellcasting? He's facing a dragon with caster level 39, so he's gonna need spells too.

3. The update booklet for monster manual II states Runic Guardians have a base attack of 2d8+78. Is this a typo? If it is, what's the real value? (Please show work. Need to present it to DM)

Right now the only thing I got right now is a Max HD Iron Colossus with a bunch of Runic Guardians embedded into its structure. Is there rules of directly adding the runic guardian's abilities onto the iron Colossus?

Oh and as a rule, nothing crazy is allowed (subjected to my DM's opinion). So Ice Assassin is banned, Epic spellcasting is allowed but abuse will result in its ban, etc.

I told my DM that I will have a Runic Guardian with the spell Simulacrum embedded into it to create an Iron Colossus simulacrum a day. He said its fine.

[Rebel7284]

Craft Contingent Spell can give you some free action spells to put on your creations.

[unseenmage]

Find out if Constructs count as Magic Items in your DM's gameworld and if they DO then start combining them to great effect.

Ask if you can use the PF Construct upgrading rules and just go nuts. It is literally a system of 'Pay gp -> Have better Constructs'. HD, Ability scores, you name it. In PF you can upgrade to your heart's content.

PF also has rules for creating and Construct just by pricing it by its CR. For normally free-willed Constructs like Warforged and Inevitables one should beware though because they have no implicit loyalty to whosoever brings them into being and with Inevitables they are basically alignmentally programmed to do what they do regardless of how they came to be.

Spells
There are several spells that, like Simulacrum, create Constructs from scratch.
Animate Objects is an obvious choice. Keep in mind that Alchemical items are not Magic Items and can be animated. As can the substance quintessence (condensed timestuff) from the psionic power Quintessence. Animate enough of it and it'll just roll over enemies, engulfing them (with DM approval only though) and timelock them.
(By the way this works because the duration of the Quintessence power is "Instantaneous", just like Wall of Stone. Which means the thing it makes is not a magic effect like an illusion or wall of force but a real and actual thing that truly exists.)

Special materials are also explicitly not Magic Items. Thinuan Steel from Complete Warrior(?) can trap the soul of a creature it hits when wielded as a weapon. Animated it wields itself as a weapon via slam attacks. Riverine from Stormwrack is said to be walls of force containing immense water pressure, it is immune to damage. Animate some and viola, indestructible Construct. Livewood from one of the Eberron books is a special material that is explicitly alive allowing you to fool detection magic to a degree among other neat side effects. And these are just my favorites.
Edit: Obdurium from the Stronghold Builders Guide has the best hardness in the game and FYI it is canon a dark to light metallic purple colored metal.

Corpses. You can Animate Objects a corpse because after its not alive anymore it is an object. Demoralize your enemies. Fake out necromancers. Get access to special trait s a given creature's body might grant that explicitly persist after its death. Like the toxic nature of a creature composed of a toxic substance or the renown another race has for its fearsomeness on the battlefield. With the proper bluff animated corpses can be a grisly, but effective, gambit.

There is also the upgraded Animate Objects that makes free-willed, sentient animated object-like Constructs that can be Dispelled and cease to be in an antimagic field. However, their sentience makes them valuable friends and there are ways to mind control Constructs. The spell is Minor Servitor from Savage Species. This spell, mostly as a relic of its being printed in 3.0, allows you to animate by volume so you can animate areas of liquid or particulate like hot ash; just keep it in mind.

Another spell to add to your list is Awaken Sand spell from Sandstorm. It makes a sentient, free-willed Construct out of an appropriate volume of sand or dust or similar material. See my sig for fun uses of this. The best of which is Black Sand and Shapesand IMHO. Commanding free-willed Constructs is just a couple of Diplomacy rolls away. Epic diplomacy rolls allow actual mind control and can be attained by non epic characters if their roll is high enough.

Last is a fun one but it is 3.0 and the 3.5 "conversion" leaves much to be desired. the Create Crawling Claw from the Monstrous Compendium: Monsters of Faerun splatbook. It turns a pile of severed hands into tiny hand shaped Constructs with the strength proportionate to a human. They're mindless and what's better the spell doesn't say the hands absolutely HAVE to come from dead humanoids. Due to that vagueness I've animated scores and scores of these Crawling Claws from severed statue hands and effigy body hands etc.

A Crawling Claw and an Awakened Sand are both created by spells with a duration of Instantaneous. Which means like Wall of Stone and Quintessence they are real actual creatures that exist.

There is a variant spell type called the War Spell you can find a thread about in my sig. It is cheesey. Very cheesey. However, if your DM allows it it can change how fast the above spells can create an army for you by a massive amount. Check it out but be warned it has been likened to Epic Spellcasting level cheese. I disagree and more liken it to Custom Magic Item/Custom Spell cheese but there you go.

Put the above spells on Resetting Magic Traps, heck even resetting traps in weapons or held items as per the DMG2 IIRC, and you can churn out tons and tons of Construct very very quickly.
I combine the above with True Creation traps and Wish for specific Magic Items like Planar Ring Gates from the Planar Handbook so my minions can come and go as they see fit across the multiverse.

Beware however, sentient Constructs can be Diplomacy-ed, commanded by a Cleric with the Warforged domain from Eberron, and outright stolen by the Rod of Construct Control from the Arms and Equipment Guide.
The spell Greater Humanoid Essence from Races of Eberron can also turn any Construct into a Humanoid for the duration. This allows the Construct to be mind-controlled and the mind control won't go away when they change back because if type change made spells stop functioning then the Greater Humanoid Essence spell itself would stop functioning ass soon as it took effect and changed the thing's type in the first place.

Last but not least is the spell Incarnate Construct from Savage Species. Again it frees a Construct from your control. And the resultant Humanoid or Giant requires a year to mature mentally. And it nerfs the creature removing almost all the great stuff it got from being a golem or homunculus etc. HOWEVER, it makes them into a real flesh and blood creature.
The rules are silent on the next two points so discuss them with your DM.
The language of the spell and template would imply that the Incarnate Construct is as real as real can be. Meaning it probably gets reproductive organs and it probably has a soul. Exploit those two possible facts as you see fit. You can definitely see the potential abuse of creating souls (or even the potential for a soul developing after a year of personal growth and maturation) en masse via magic and resetting traps right? Me personally? I used the Power of Faerun alternate use for Diplomacy, to convert folk to one's religion, to make War Spell created throngs of Constructs and Incarnate Constructs loyal believers in my deity and shifted the cosmic balance in his favor forever.

Edit: Almost forgot Awaken Construct from Spell Compendium. See below but if Sacred Guardian is available, don't bother with this or any other method of making sentient Construct that get Skills and Feats.


Constructs
As for more permanent Constructs the Runic Guardian is a great choice. Be aware also of the Spellsong Nightingale (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070115a) from the online Clockwork Wonders archive from WotC. It could even be a better choice because it actually "casts" the spells built into it. I've never worked out how to give it Metamagic Feats though.

Be aware too of the Effigy template from Complete Mage and the Elder Eidolon template from Lords of Madness. Elder Eidolon is basically a madness themed upgrade to the Effigy template. The strength of both is that they can be used to recreate almost any physical creature as a Construct. So basically, find the creature with the most natural attacks and build a magic robot of it and bam, plenty of Effigy Giant Octopus Tentacles to go around.

There is a template from the Dragonlance Bestiary of Krynn Revised called the Sacred Guardian. It is hands down the cheapest method of making an unintelligent Construct sentient. And it does not grant free will, meaning your control remains absolute. There is, of course, a catch. A couple really. Dragonlance is considered third party by most DMs, ask if it is available. Additionally, the Construct gets superpowers. Lots of them. Fast Healing, intelligence, skills, feats, languages, actual powers granted by the deity it is associated with... Yeah, the Sacred Guardian has to be associated with a deity and it gains powers based on that deity's domain(s). By RAW only the listed Dragonlance deities grant it anything and dedicating it to another deity would grant it nothing at best and not be possible at worst.
This. Template. Is. Worth. It. To the point of being almost broken. Compared to the Rudimentary Intelligence from Dragon Magazine, Brain Bioconstruct Modification from PF, and Awaken Construct from Spell Compendium it blows them all away for utility and price.
Broken? Maybe, again ask your DM about it. Non-thematic for most minionmancers because of that pesky divine requisite? Definitely.

See my sig for the a thread about the 10 best feats that can be given to any creature. There are some real doozies. And all of them definitely make sentient minions more than worth jumping through hoops for.

As for giving your Construct spellcasting... The psionic power Fusion IIRC can do that kind of so long as there's a willing spellcaster handy. Use Simulacrum afterward and viola spellcasting copypasta. I think.
Me personally? I use feats. There is a chain of them used to make spellcasting Commoners and spellcasting Fighters. I apologize but I do not remember them off the top of my head. Too little sleep recently to be sure.

I hope this helps, and if I remember any more details about my run in with an epic manifesting, epic spellcasting aboleth and his armies that I only had 2 weeks to prepare for with my gestalt artificer/cleric/techsmith of gond character I'll try to add it.

[Bronk]

You might want to look into the Shadesteel Golem from MMIII. It's much less expensive, just as tough, already has a fly speed with perfect maneuverability, and has quite the following. It would appear that it has a list of possible shenanigans a mile long that might be useful for an already crazily premised epic game.

[magicalmagicman]

@unseenmage

Thanks a lot for your detailed post. You seem to be the true golem master on this forums.

[unseenmage]

@unseenmage

Thanks a lot for your detailed post. You seem to be the true golem master on this forums.

You are very welcome and thanks for the compliment.
Edit: Mind if I sig that?

My apologies for the rambling of the post too. I had pulled an all-nighter and was counting the hours until blessed sleep could blanket me once more.

When I was fighting my epic battle of Constructs vs the world I had disallowed Wish, Miracle, Gate, and Genesis. Not only was I not allowed to use them I wasn't allowed to hire them. But they still existed and I could assume they were used by higher order beings. This is why the previous post skirted around the more brute force methods of generating Construct armies.

If Constructs count as Magic Items then one can Wish for them. Some DMs even allow Wish to make Custom Magic Items in which case, again only if Constructs count as Magic Items, one can even Wish for a Custom Magic Item Golem that has been combined with the Magic Trap that recasts the Wish spell an so make the whole process mobile.
This of course is the stinkiest of cheese and no DM in their right mind should allow it.

Gate is another spell that shortcuts the creation process for complex Constructs without the need for the Constructs are Magic Items ruling. And it explicitly allows you to summon forth specific kinds of creatures. Which one would assume includes templated beings. For example, calling forth an extraplanar human might get you a human who is a werewolf. But calling forth a werewolf should never fetch you a base human.
So in theory one could use Gate to call forth an other planar built Shadesteel Golem. Then one could hit it with the Rod of Construct Control. Rinse Repeat (or have the Golems do it for you) and viola; nigh infinite army of Golems.


On the other hand, in an epic enabled game making a deal with all of a Wish-granting people (Solars Genies, etc) at once is very possible. And if one has struck a deal with all of a people who have Wish as a SLA at once it is very plausible that one could get them to channel all of their wish granting energies through one's Construct creation process.
This bit though has nothing to do with the RAW and would be more a storytelling tool.

Edit again: I forgot to mention, if you're looking to abuse Simulacrum look into the Mirror Mephit from Shadows of the Spider Queen(?). It gets Simulacrum as a SLA.
Also, the Half-Golem template from MM2 makes the recipient of a golem limb into an insane construct if they fail their save. This could in theory result in spellcasting constructs that you could Gate in and take control of.

[Bronk]

If Constructs count as Magic Items then one can Wish for them.

At worst, you could make the bodies the long way (or wish for them) then wish for the appropriate golem manual.

[Flickerdart]

Remember that a creature can voluntarily drop an immunity to something (PHB mentions elves and sleep effects, so it works on "inborn" immunities too). Your golems can drop their mind-affecting immunity to accept a magic jar or true mind switch from powerful spellcasting creatures. Greater planar binding can get you planetars, which cast as 17th level clerics, or you can create simulacra of real spellcasters and then put them into the golems.

[magicalmagicman]

@unseenmage

Sure go ahead.

@Flickerdart

Interesting idea. Simulacrum a spellcaster and then true mind switch it into a construct. Not a bad idea at all. Only problem remains is how I'm going to get a reliable infinite supply of the scroll-equivalent of true mind switches. Do you happen to know? :)

Also my DM considers constructs as creatures not magical items, even if it's just a clay golem. Still, wishing for a golem manual isn't a bad idea considering wish costs 5,000xp, where as an iron golem manual provides 5,600xp, more if you persuade your DM into allowing "advanced" golem manuals for creating max HD golems, like the greater stone golem manual.

Concerning Gate, I can predict my DM saying the owner of those golems would get angry and try to kill me. XD