Coidzor
2017-04-23, 07:10 PM
The idea of making a dungeon and harvesting XP from the adventurers that make it to the end came up in the What Would You Do in Forgotten Realms thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520343-You-wake-up-in-Faerun-what-do-you-do), and got me wondering.
Let's say for the purposes of the thread that we're looking for a dungeon crawl that would cause 4 PCs to level up once while going through it, targeted at either level 1, level 5, level 10, or level 15 characters as the tiers of targeted audience.
As a limitation against infinite wealth loops, let's say you have the full WBL of either a single PC or a group of 4 PCs, half of it is invested in your combat and utility gear and the other half is in the form of more liquid wealth such as currency, and you can only create wealth equal to half of a single PC's WBL for any one expenditure.
For bonus points, could you get it set up and operational within a year of in-game time? What about making it take a week or less to restock or repair it between batches of adventurers?
What about making a dungeon that one could run through one's self and gain experience from? Could that be done?
I know that in PF at least, a level 1 Wizard could make a maze for free given enough time, just casting Expeditious Construction and/or Expeditious Excavation to build walls or dig channels respectively. Expeditious Excavation could probably do the heavy lifting with digging a pit-trap as well. Unseen Engineers, a third level spell, could make a Pit Trap or connected series of them that would add up to CR 50 or nigh-instantly assemble the raw materials into another form of mechanical trap. Blood Money allows a way to use Animate Dead to create uncontrolled undead to stock rooms with for a fraction of the cost or free depending upon how one comes into bodies.
In 3.5, the earliest spell I know of that permanently gets creatures is Halaster's Fetch I, with is a 4th level Wizard spell.
In either game, a Lyre of Building would easily take care of getting the physical room layout taken care of in a jiffy. There are also a number of spells like Fire Trap or Explosive Runes that create some low CR traps in exchange for a spell slot and maybe some material components.
Let's say for the purposes of the thread that we're looking for a dungeon crawl that would cause 4 PCs to level up once while going through it, targeted at either level 1, level 5, level 10, or level 15 characters as the tiers of targeted audience.
As a limitation against infinite wealth loops, let's say you have the full WBL of either a single PC or a group of 4 PCs, half of it is invested in your combat and utility gear and the other half is in the form of more liquid wealth such as currency, and you can only create wealth equal to half of a single PC's WBL for any one expenditure.
For bonus points, could you get it set up and operational within a year of in-game time? What about making it take a week or less to restock or repair it between batches of adventurers?
What about making a dungeon that one could run through one's self and gain experience from? Could that be done?
I know that in PF at least, a level 1 Wizard could make a maze for free given enough time, just casting Expeditious Construction and/or Expeditious Excavation to build walls or dig channels respectively. Expeditious Excavation could probably do the heavy lifting with digging a pit-trap as well. Unseen Engineers, a third level spell, could make a Pit Trap or connected series of them that would add up to CR 50 or nigh-instantly assemble the raw materials into another form of mechanical trap. Blood Money allows a way to use Animate Dead to create uncontrolled undead to stock rooms with for a fraction of the cost or free depending upon how one comes into bodies.
In 3.5, the earliest spell I know of that permanently gets creatures is Halaster's Fetch I, with is a 4th level Wizard spell.
In either game, a Lyre of Building would easily take care of getting the physical room layout taken care of in a jiffy. There are also a number of spells like Fire Trap or Explosive Runes that create some low CR traps in exchange for a spell slot and maybe some material components.