Making A Base: Need Advice

[LastCenturion]

The Plan: I'm playing a campaign in which we attempt to take over the world (Eberron), but before we get started we need a base of operations. So far I have... nothing.

The Details: We have a square space 125 feet by 125 feet (assume limitless height). We have a budget of 1*10^6 GP. We have six party members, three of which are essentially wizards. One of them is a paladin, one is a sort of... sniper archer person? He can shoot things with reasonable accuracy at a distance of about two miles, and one isn't going to be joining for a few weeks, but is a Warblade. Everyone is 10th level.

My Ideas: I thought about buying a Wondrous Architecture that's just a pillar that gives everyone around it +141 to Craft (Weaponsmithing), then mass-producing stuff (using epic rules to make it go faster), then selling it to earn the money back, but dismissed that as impractical. (It takes 21 years of nothing but making arrows by six people to earn back a million gold) I thought about designing sort of a giant dome of something, but I didn't get very far.

TL;DR: I need some tips on building a giant base in only 15625 square feet, spending up to a million gold.

[Jowgen]

Okay, to state the obvious first, Stronghold Builders Guidebook is your friend. Wonderous Architecture, Wall Augmentations et al. are very handy things to consider. Draconomicon has a few extra "Lair Wards", which are just the same, if there are any more anywhere, I don't know them but would like to.

A few thoughts:

- A mobile base, or eventually mobile base, is very feasible and likely preferable to something static.
- Consider a living object as your base, for the inherent Disintegrate immunity. My suggestion: Fey Cherry tree (Dragon 357). There are (complicated) strategies for force-growing one in a relatively short space of time, and if you add all the magic while it is still more, that magic should grow with the tree itself, saving you a lot of cash (YMMV).

[Kelvarius]

(It takes 21 years of nothing but making arrows by six people to earn back a million gold)

Unless you or any combination of everyone else take the Leadership feat.

[LastCenturion]

Okay, to state the obvious first, Stronghold Builders Guidebook is your friend. Wonderous Architecture, Wall Augmentations et al. are very handy things to consider. Draconomicon has a few extra "Lair Wards", which are just the same, if there are any more anywhere, I don't know them but would like to.

A few thoughts:

- A mobile base, or eventually mobile base, is very feasible and likely preferable to something static.
- Consider a living object as your base, for the inherent Disintegrate immunity. My suggestion: Fey Cherry tree (Dragon 357). There are (complicated) strategies for force-growing one in a relatively short space of time, and if you add all the magic while it is still more, that magic should grow with the tree itself, saving you a lot of cash (YMMV).

Good idea about the Tree; probably going to use that. Can you give specifics on speed-growing it? And is there a way to make the tree mobile?


Unless you or any combination of everyone else take the Leadership feat.

Good idea, but all of us are taking two flaws to fill out feats already. Maybe once we hit level 12.

[Gildedragon]

So it looks like you desisted on the crafting wondrous architecture; but that bonus would have required epic magic to get.

If you want to create a crafting empire to rival the Cannith's you might be in need of a spellclock or trap...
What I would recommend, instead, is to gun for Jorasco's place.
With traps of healing and curing spells you can undersell them.

Cure Light Wounds Trap is 500gp
Jorasco cost 8gp
your cost is 1gp; even if you only got a customer a day you'd make back the trap's cost in a couple years.
even better: a Heal trap (crafted by a lvl 7 artificer) is 17,500gp
Jorasco sells it at 600gp a pop
you can sell a walk through the trap at 50 gp to make back your money within a year (with only one customer a day; if you assume 10 customers a day, 5gp will be enough)

Make the traps sufficiently affordable and resistant (house Jorasco WILL try to get them torn down) and you will run the halflings out of the healing business.

[Jowgen]

Good idea about the Tree; probably going to use that. Can you give specifics on speed-growing it? And is there a way to make the tree mobile?

Speed growing is not an exact science in D&D, because there is a lot of magic vs realism and RAW vs fluff stuff going on. When I do it, I like to throw everything there is at it and just hope most stuff sticks.

First I like to optimize mundane growing conditions: soil nutrient content/retetion, aeriation, moisture and microbiome; air humidity and CO2/O2 balance, and lighting. Then I add all the things that should aid plant growth as per the fluff, and then lastly tack on RAW approaches.

Personal Soil composting recipy: chips of silverwood and Duskwood (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?479663-Magical-Plants-and-Where-to-Find-them-WIP) that have been made into biochar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar), mixed with plant waste and lots of blood & bone taken from a Fey creature (give it fast healing and a Dukar Hand Coral to ensure a lasting supply). Mix it all together in a large basin that's heated to the right temperature, keepmoist exclusively with Holy Water and propegate a lot of Pixie Table mushrooms. Keep free of other plants as best you can and shield from rain to avoid nutrient leakage.

Silverwood is disease immune and Duskwood is both common and highly durable, so having those as ingredients might help. Making it into Biochar helps breaking it down and improves the soil in a range of ways. The Fey blood and bone act as nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, and also should make the compost count as a Fey Mound (MoF p. 43), which amongst other things, are said to have magical properties that spur plants to grow. The Pixie Table mushrooms should break down the biomatter in a way that creates soil ideal for a Fey tree (Plant Growth: Overgrowth function should help spread the mushroom roots). Keeping it heated to the right temperature should speed up composting. As per EE p. 107, Positive Energy is good for plant life, and Holy Water is infused with the stuff, so it should also help here.

For the air and lighting conditions, the only thing you can do is make a massive airtight greenhouse. Light a fire till the air is sufficiently depleted, keep boiling Holy Water till its humid enough, and then lastly add a lot of appropriate lightsources. Angel Radiance (BoED) and Liquid Sunlight (CS) are cheap and will hopefully suffice. As long as the mundane conditions stay optimal, there should be nothing to hamper the Fey Cherry's growth metabolism. The Fey Mound magic should provide a boost to this naturally maxed out growth, as should the positive energy saturation achieved via Holy Water, and the the Pixie Table should form a symbiotic relationship with the tree's root system.

Casting the Enrichment version of Plant Growth boosts this base growth rate by another 3rd. Then you can use the Overgrowth version of Plant Growth to make the Fey Cherry become "thick and overgrown", followed by an application of Wood Shape to reshape the overgrown parts in a way that adds to the desired overall shape. The Overgrowth-Wood Shape combo can be repeated to keep giving bursts of growth on top of the already maxed out growing rate. How fast you can get the Fey Cherry to max size with all this is up to the DM.

There are also some spells in the Darksun setting that might help, but I doubt you'd have access to them. If you can get yourself a Wood Element creature (MotP), its Woodsense should also be helpful in monitoring progress. Getting planar traits into the mix (e.g. fast time) is cheesy but can also help things if more is needed.

Knowing how to do all this IC and doing it right is a different matter. Sufficiently high Knoweldge Nature might do, but the better/safer option is to use Speak with Plants and Plantwatch to monitor the tree's condition, so you can make adjustments whenever the plant feels like it and avoid doing anything detrimental.

A Basket of Delights (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fey/20030613a) should be able to provide a Cherry seed to grow it from, plus some coposting plant matter and Pixie Table spores (if your DM goes with the dictionary defintion of Fruit); if you can get a Sacred Vessel (BoED) your Holy Water needs are covered, and all the growing aid spells should be available as Eternal Wands in sufficient quantity if need be.

Making the tree mobile might be achieved by using the stronghold mobility options in SBG, on which you should get a 10% discount thanks to the Fey Cherry's properties. It is unkown how many HP and what Hardness Fey Cherry has ("supernatural durability isn't much to go on), but if you did things right, it should get an extra 5 hardness and 50% exp thanks to "expert handiwork and building materials" (Dungeonscape p. 144). If you apply the Hardening spell early on, you should be able to harden the whole tree by atleast another 5 points; and the same should apply to Magically Treated, which will double the end result of Hardness and HP both. You should end up with at least 30 Hardness I think.