TalonOfAnathrax
2018-05-02, 11:46 AM
I want a flying castle. Something that can be lived in, look awesome, and be an effective weapon of war. Aerial bombardments with Shrink Item would be nice, but just getting the thing flying and stopping it from falling down when a Disjunction is cast would be good.
Any RAW ways to make that happen?
My first thought was making a Colossal Golem shaped like a castle and that had a native (Ex) fly speed. Golems are pretty much immune to magic and this guy would be immensely tough! Expensive solution, but seemed viable. Then I realised that I couldn't actually find any rules for crating that kind of Golem.
My second solution was to use the Raise the Keep ritual from Relics and Rituals, a third party book I have and that seems pretty good. Never used those ritual rules, but apart from the huge cost in Gold, time and allied casters needed it seems to work well enough.
I'll accept third party or Pathfinder stuff too if needed, but please make the source of your solution clear.
This is for a long-term plan: assume that I have mostly unlimited resources and numerous allied arcane and divine casters who could help if needed, but that I would prefer to keep it as foolproof and cheap as possible.
Context in spoiler:
So I've been following A Sword Without A Hilt, which is a Quest over on Sufficient Velocity. It's a D&D 3.X/ASOIaF fusion where the main character is a Vyserys Targaryen who becomes a level 1 Sorcerer when Ser Darry dies and he would have become a beggar (and eventually gone insane). Here, things go... Differently. Less psychotic madness and more insane ambition, but the insane ambitions of the past are very possible today as magic and monsters return to the setting and you're a full caster!
The worldbuilding is very cleverly done, the GM is great, and overall it's a lot of fun. It's gotten extremely frequent and regular updates for years on end now, and as of today stand at 1.7 million words. The first few updates suffered from a few typoes and phrasings that annoyed my inner-grammar nazi, but it gets better quickly and overall the archive binge is fun and rewarding.
Now for the D&D fanatics here, the Lore (Planar structure, history, ect...) is a little odd because it's an ASOIaF fusion, and pretty much every main character eventually get a personal Prestige class. The GM just amps up the difficulty if something looks too overpowered, and the players turn down opportunities to get Mirror Mepits and stack Nightsticks and instead just balance everything with "DMM Cleric" as a baseline. The main character just became a Dragon as his PrC captsone feature, for example. The setting and GM can cope, so it makes for a great and well-ran high-powered game!
The quest features combat challenges defeated with judicious planning and optimisation (and the occasional main character death, but in D&D that isn't that annoying), social challenges dealt with by clever write-ins from players and a social-specced Sorcerer as a main character, social and political reform dealt with by optimising character skill ranks and by great OOC debates, and political machinations. Lots of politics.
Also monsters. So many monsters. We have Vyserys running around putting out fires every so often because half the ASOIaF are too incompetent or stupid to stop literal demon-summoning apocalypse cults from growing everywhere. And let's not even talk about the Deep Ones (mind flayers) or Tiamat's rather personal beef with us... :/
Overall, 10/10 great stuff, go read it! I regularly reread choice bits of it (of which there are a lot), and it's even readable if you know little about D&D and ASOIaF!
We have a bodyguard who kicks a ridiculous amount of ass thanks to the special training and gear we got him and all the leveling he's been doing from following the main character around killing demons and Divine Avatars of Tiamat and whatnot for years on end. He is incredibly loyal, but refuses immortality and will eventually retire and marry. All he wants is a small keep somewhere, and his relatively inconsequential ancestral lands which shouldn't be too much trouble to rule.
Of course this looks like a rather poor reward even if it is what he wans, and so it was suggested to get his castle to fly. He'd be strong enough to defend it and loyal enough to trust with an engine of mass destruction, and it's exactly the kind of reward he'd want: small enough not to be too much work, but really damn cool and good at crushing demons if needed. We already have about 8 level 12+ full casters and a school training magelings by the dozens, and a decent enough kingdom. By the time he's ready to retire we should be the Emperor of at least half the material plane (if everything goes as planned) and insane wealth and 20+ lv17+ full casters, so we should be able to get him pretty much anything. The GM will okay pretty much anything as long as it works by RAW and we put in the IC time, effort and wealth to research it, and he is open to third party material if it doesn't seem too broken. This is mostly an "end of campaign, time to go wild" thing, so feel free to go wild in your suggestions!
Of course, we are in the "world conquest" stage now. Rules for flying Constructs would be useful! Maybe not indestructible huge castles requiring CL 20, but getting a ship or two to fly and drop bombs or carry people around fast would be a useful use of our time. So if you have suggestions that are expensive but theoretically feasible at around level 14/15, I want those too!
Any RAW ways to make that happen?
My first thought was making a Colossal Golem shaped like a castle and that had a native (Ex) fly speed. Golems are pretty much immune to magic and this guy would be immensely tough! Expensive solution, but seemed viable. Then I realised that I couldn't actually find any rules for crating that kind of Golem.
My second solution was to use the Raise the Keep ritual from Relics and Rituals, a third party book I have and that seems pretty good. Never used those ritual rules, but apart from the huge cost in Gold, time and allied casters needed it seems to work well enough.
I'll accept third party or Pathfinder stuff too if needed, but please make the source of your solution clear.
This is for a long-term plan: assume that I have mostly unlimited resources and numerous allied arcane and divine casters who could help if needed, but that I would prefer to keep it as foolproof and cheap as possible.
Context in spoiler:
So I've been following A Sword Without A Hilt, which is a Quest over on Sufficient Velocity. It's a D&D 3.X/ASOIaF fusion where the main character is a Vyserys Targaryen who becomes a level 1 Sorcerer when Ser Darry dies and he would have become a beggar (and eventually gone insane). Here, things go... Differently. Less psychotic madness and more insane ambition, but the insane ambitions of the past are very possible today as magic and monsters return to the setting and you're a full caster!
The worldbuilding is very cleverly done, the GM is great, and overall it's a lot of fun. It's gotten extremely frequent and regular updates for years on end now, and as of today stand at 1.7 million words. The first few updates suffered from a few typoes and phrasings that annoyed my inner-grammar nazi, but it gets better quickly and overall the archive binge is fun and rewarding.
Now for the D&D fanatics here, the Lore (Planar structure, history, ect...) is a little odd because it's an ASOIaF fusion, and pretty much every main character eventually get a personal Prestige class. The GM just amps up the difficulty if something looks too overpowered, and the players turn down opportunities to get Mirror Mepits and stack Nightsticks and instead just balance everything with "DMM Cleric" as a baseline. The main character just became a Dragon as his PrC captsone feature, for example. The setting and GM can cope, so it makes for a great and well-ran high-powered game!
The quest features combat challenges defeated with judicious planning and optimisation (and the occasional main character death, but in D&D that isn't that annoying), social challenges dealt with by clever write-ins from players and a social-specced Sorcerer as a main character, social and political reform dealt with by optimising character skill ranks and by great OOC debates, and political machinations. Lots of politics.
Also monsters. So many monsters. We have Vyserys running around putting out fires every so often because half the ASOIaF are too incompetent or stupid to stop literal demon-summoning apocalypse cults from growing everywhere. And let's not even talk about the Deep Ones (mind flayers) or Tiamat's rather personal beef with us... :/
Overall, 10/10 great stuff, go read it! I regularly reread choice bits of it (of which there are a lot), and it's even readable if you know little about D&D and ASOIaF!
We have a bodyguard who kicks a ridiculous amount of ass thanks to the special training and gear we got him and all the leveling he's been doing from following the main character around killing demons and Divine Avatars of Tiamat and whatnot for years on end. He is incredibly loyal, but refuses immortality and will eventually retire and marry. All he wants is a small keep somewhere, and his relatively inconsequential ancestral lands which shouldn't be too much trouble to rule.
Of course this looks like a rather poor reward even if it is what he wans, and so it was suggested to get his castle to fly. He'd be strong enough to defend it and loyal enough to trust with an engine of mass destruction, and it's exactly the kind of reward he'd want: small enough not to be too much work, but really damn cool and good at crushing demons if needed. We already have about 8 level 12+ full casters and a school training magelings by the dozens, and a decent enough kingdom. By the time he's ready to retire we should be the Emperor of at least half the material plane (if everything goes as planned) and insane wealth and 20+ lv17+ full casters, so we should be able to get him pretty much anything. The GM will okay pretty much anything as long as it works by RAW and we put in the IC time, effort and wealth to research it, and he is open to third party material if it doesn't seem too broken. This is mostly an "end of campaign, time to go wild" thing, so feel free to go wild in your suggestions!
Of course, we are in the "world conquest" stage now. Rules for flying Constructs would be useful! Maybe not indestructible huge castles requiring CL 20, but getting a ship or two to fly and drop bombs or carry people around fast would be a useful use of our time. So if you have suggestions that are expensive but theoretically feasible at around level 14/15, I want those too!