How quickly can a Fort be built

[ChudoJogurt]

So, characters have been gone for several months from their homelands, and when they come back there is some sort of fortification made where their village used to be.

In a world of reasonably high arcane magic (a lot of magic items, casters up to level 8-10, a lot of magi tech and low-level casters etc), how big a fort could be reasonably made in a few (3-5) months?
Would a tower, or perhaps small stone castle possible, or would anything above wooden Fort severely strain credulity?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

With magic but otherwise putting in the effort to build "normally," well under a day for a really nice (albeit mundane) keep. Between wall of stone, wall of iron, greater fabricate, and various summon spells to pull in other spellcasters and various critters to further improve a structure, you can get a LOT done in that time.

With the right spell, a standard action (or less). Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion is a thing, after all. Illusionary [shadow] spells could also make you a keep in a few seconds, as well.

[Emperor Tippy]

How large is the available labor force? What is the environment? How much of an investment is the Fort for whomever is making it? What levels and number of casters are available?

I mean an Elan Egoist 7 could have Metamorphosis and Psychic Reformation. Psychic Reformation to get Assume Supernatural Ability, Metamorphosis into a Beholder if they can hit an ML of 11 (not that hard) and then get Eye Rays (Su). That gives them Disintegrate every round for ML Minutes. Just one of those will give you 110 castings of Disintegrate and each one can remove a 10 ft. cube of matter. Clearing and leveling terrain goes from a potentially arduous process to something done in a handful of minutes by a lone manisfeter.

Get a Mage's Lucubration Trap and a Wizard who has Wall of Stone prepared and they can give you unlimited Wall of Stone at ECL 9. Disintegrate down to the bedrock and then use Wall of Stone and Stone Shape to build what you want.

That combination can build better than real life paved roads at better than real life speeds.

On the other hand, if you are limited to Commoner labor you might top out at a wood and packed earth fort of decent but not dramatic size.

Of course, the reason why the Fort is built is one of the bigger questions. A Fort designed to hold a choke point against Goblins is going to be far different than one designed to stand off an enemy raiding force with caster support and flight.

[Fizban]

According to Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, which says its build times are much faster than reality and assume some unspecified amount of common magical enhancement (as well as sufficient labor of course), the standard build time is 1 week per 10,000gp, and you can spend up to 70% extra in order to build it in as low as 30% of the normal time. The example Cheap Keep is 28 stronghold spaces (20'x20'x10' units) and 70,000gp, so it would take from 2.3 to 7 weeks to build. Which for a respectable keep of solid stone is quite ridiculously fast indeed, pretty sure that would take years in real life.

Note that SBG does not give you a time cut for casting Wall of Stone (or other such "building" spells) yourself, but rather discounts, requiring CL 16 to get all your walls for free, while Fabricate merely makes more luxurious spaces cheaper.


If you want to do the math on the raw spells themselves, you'll need to start by picking walls. The real life stone castle walls that are functionally invulnerable to siege equipment are the 3'+ hewn stone walls (usually 6'). Wall of Stone is 1 inch thick per four caster levels and one 5' square per level. At minimum caster level you'll get one 20'x20' panel (or for a single floor, two 20'x10' panels, a corner piece) with a thickness of 4 inches or so per casting, vs your 1-3 spell slots that can cast it per day. So likely a day and a half per foot of thickness for that segment, and you need three feet unless you decide to cut corners and use the 1' thickness given for masonry walls. Still, a lone caster of minimum level can raise a small unfurnished keep pretty dang quick- SBG really fudges things on this one, though I can't say I blame them. Being able to personally raise the equivalent of a common local wooden castle, but made of stone, by yourself, in just a few weeks, is a massive change in strategic defensibility.

-However, note also the wording of Wall of Stone, that it must "merge with and be supported solidly by existing stone." This provides no barrier to the intended use of the spell (by adventurers in dungeons), but does allow the DM to very easily shut down free surface construction if desired: the more you want to build, the more stone needs to already be there in order for it to solidly support the Wall of Stone you want to cast. So you at least have to wait until a stone foundation can be laid, and the price of that can be why SBG doesn't let you do it for free until 16th level).

Fabricate is the same level as Wall of Stone and works a smaller volume on mineral, so it makes no difference to the walls, only furnishings. Stone Shape has a larger volume, but ultimately only results in a hair less than 5+1/2 level panels of 5'x5'x1 inch, which even at CL 10 won't get you a single 5' square at 1 foot thick. If you're Fabricating wooden walls you can go up to 10 cubic feet per level, which is almost enough for one 5'x5' square to 5 inches thick per level, vs the 6 inch thick standard given for wooden walls- but wooden walls are also the cheapest (free at ground level as part of the basic room cost), and you still have to fell the trees and get them close enough- at which point Fabricate goes at about the same speed as Wall of Stone.

Move Earth is of course the big spoiler, since it defines its area in, well, area, a massive 750' square, and for this obvious utility in war and fortification, it's placed at a higher level of 6th. That said, the minimum dimension of a Shapeable spell is 10', so you can't do any fine detail work: there's no bar on using multiple castings to dig a deeper moat or build a higher wall, but said feature will be a minimum of 10' thick. Which is fine, because you want it to be thick anyway. Sloping up/filling in the entire area behind the curtain wall such that it becomes less a wall and more a hardened cliff is great: your people have easier manueverability, and if the enemy takes the "wall" they have less advantage. You still want an outer facing of stone down to a certain depth to prevent easy sapping, but yeah. Move Earth is enough to fortify a position on its own in a day. And quite possibly counter sapping on its own- collapsing a heavy stone wall by burning out the supports of the sappers' tunnel might not be nearly as effective with the more diffuse and supported weight of just. . . more ground. And even if it does cause a sink in a section, that much smaller section is much faster to repair with a new casting of Move Earth.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The stronghold building rules in the SBG are stupid. They ignore the actual rules in the game and insist that people be stupid instead of using their resources intelligently.

[Emperor Tippy]

It really does depend a ton on what magic you have access to. Get Lesser Planar Binding, Bind a Ravid, and then have it use its Animate Objects Su to, for example, animate shovels to start moving dirt. Or Animate bricks to lay themselves.

I mean in higher level play, Animate Objects a large sheet to take the shape you want and then hit it with Temporal Stasis (it's a Creature while Animated, making it a valid target) and you have an indestructible structure.

Or Shapechange to Zodar -> Wish for a CL one Trillion scroll of Fabricate (castle) -> Shapechange to Lilitu -> Item Use (Ex) the Scroll of Fabricate (castle) -> Get an instant castle made out of whatever you want for free.

Technically, scrolls include the material component of the spell. You will need a small bit of the material your castle is to be made of to count as a valid target for the scroll, but so long as you have that you can Fabricate up an entire dyson sphere if you are willing to get a high enough level of scroll and deal with the casting time.

If you want Extreme Fabrication!, you go with Fabricate (the spell) turned into a power via StP Erudite and then transferred to a Psion who uses Soul Crystal (MoI) to create the Soul Crystal Fabricate. Spells that become powers get the material component waved and Soul Crystal drops the casting time down to a standard action. Using that method you can instant build anything up to ML cubic feet in size (such as say a five cubic foot block of solid gold).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Also, if you use a psionic manifester, the Linked Power metapsionic feat can manifest [insert cheap power here] Linked to (greater) fabricate to craft the entire thing in 1 round, since the manifestation starts and finishes instantaneously at the beginning the manifester's next turn.

And if you cast shrink item on the materials first, you can (greater) fabricate 4000x as much material at a time.

[RNightstalker]

So, characters have been gone for several months from their homelands, and when they come back there is some sort of fortification made where their village used to be.

In a world of reasonably high arcane magic (a lot of magic items, casters up to level 8-10, a lot of magi tech and low-level casters etc), how big a fort could be reasonably made in a few (3-5) months?
Would a tower, or perhaps small stone castle possible, or would anything above wooden Fort severely strain credulity?

With a few Lyres of Building, you can have a castle up...there's no specified limit as to how long someone can play, so there's some abuse-ability there.

[Emperor Tippy]

And if you cast shrink item on the materials first, you can (greater) fabricate 4000x as much material at a time.

Nope, Shrink Item makes it a magical object.

[Melayl]

-However, note also the wording of Wall of Stone, that it must "merge with and be supported solidly by existing stone." This provides no barrier to the intended use of the spell (by adventurers in dungeons), but does allow the DM to very easily shut down free surface construction if desired: the more you want to build, the more stone needs to already be there in order for it to solidly support the Wall of Stone you want to cast. So you at least have to wait until a stone foundation can be laid, and the price of that can be why SBG doesn't let you do it for free until 16th level).

Move Earth is of course the big spoiler, since it defines its area in, well, area, a massive 750' square, and for this obvious utility in war and fortification, it's placed at a higher level of 6th. That said, the minimum dimension of a Shapeable spell is 10', so you can't do any fine detail work: there's no bar on using multiple castings to dig a deeper moat or build a higher wall, but said feature will be a minimum of 10' thick. Which is fine, because you want it to be thick anyway. Sloping up/filling in the entire area behind the curtain wall such that it becomes less a wall and more a hardened cliff is great: your people have easier manueverability, and if the enemy takes the "wall" they have less advantage. You still want an outer facing of stone down to a certain depth to prevent easy sapping, but yeah. Move Earth is enough to fortify a position on its own in a day. And quite possibly counter sapping on its own- collapsing a heavy stone wall by burning out the supports of the sappers' tunnel might not be nearly as effective with the more diffuse and supported weight of just. . . more ground. And even if it does cause a sink in a section, that much smaller section is much faster to repair with a new casting of Move Earth.


You would only need to lay a thin foundation of stone, and build one "wall" section. It would only need to be strong enough to stand on its own for a short time. A thin foundation of stone is still "existing stone", after all. You use wall of stone to lay a real foundation on top of the thin foundation (assuming move earth hasn't gotten you down to bedrock) and the wall section, then add the rest of your wall of stone castings attached to the new wall of stone (or bedrock) foundation and the wall section, then each other. Using transmute mud to rock, you wouldn't need to worry about laying a foundation or using move earth to get down to bedrock.

Many medieval castles (IIRC) have a thick layer of rammed earth between 2 stone walls, which makes them even harder to destroy. Make your initial wall of stone walls 8-12 inches thick and 2-3 feet apart, use move earth to fill the space with packed soil. You can always add more. Castings of wall of stone to thicken the stone walls afterwards.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Nope, Shrink Item makes it a magical object.Are items affected by temporary buffs considered "magic items," though?

[SangoProduction]

Define what "fort" means in this context. What material? What size? What features? How long do they need to last?
Are palisades good enough, or do you need proper walls with machicolations and kill boxes and what not?

Because people, without magic, have historically been able to clear nearby trees to chunk them down as walls around a town in a rather short deal of time (a few days warning). People work fast when their livelihoods are on the line.

[Thurbane]

So, characters have been gone for several months from their homelands, and when they come back there is some sort of fortification made where their village used to be.

In a world of reasonably high arcane magic (a lot of magic items, casters up to level 8-10, a lot of magi tech and low-level casters etc), how big a fort could be reasonably made in a few (3-5) months?
Would a tower, or perhaps small stone castle possible, or would anything above wooden Fort severely strain credulity?

Even without extreme cheese, you could get a LOT of building done in the typical D&D world in 3 months, with magic and creatures that don't exist IRL.

Tireless 24/7 workforce of constructs and/or undead; massively large and/or strong creatures like giants; spells that create, transport and/or shape materials; things like the aforementioned Lyre of Building...

It's hard to put an exact figure on it, but I agree that the Stronghold Builders Guidebook estimates are VERY conservative about what could be accomplished.

I'd say take what could be done in the modern day world with virtually unlimited resources, and use that as the starting point of a guesstimate.

[Fizban]

You would only need to lay a thin foundation of stone, and build one "wall" section. It would only need to be strong enough to stand on its own for a short time. A thin foundation of stone is still "existing stone", after all.
If it can only stand on its own for a short time, it is not "supported solidly." You have specifically defined your intent as not solidly supported. This only works if the DM wants it to work.

You use wall of stone to lay a real foundation on top of the thin foundation (assuming move earth hasn't gotten you down to bedrock) and the wall section, then add the rest of your wall of stone castings attached to the new wall of stone (or bedrock) foundation and the wall section, then each other.
Quarrying your own stone off Wall castings is the hack to reduce costs for the rest of the foundation, yes, but you still have to meet some initial minimum. If you start with a single boulder that can support a boulder's worth of extra stone, you're going to be limited to one boulder per spell until you've extended the foundation (assuming you start with such a boulder where you want it of course).

Incidentally, this is also where Stone Shape comes into assumption, since it allows you to re-fuse blocks into flat walls, so instead of masonry, you have "hewn stone." Getting a pile of big rocks in position and then using Stone Shape to turn them into an actual support structure is what you would want before casting the Wall- Stone Shape is Clr 3, but Sor/Wiz 5, so sourcing that personally for an arcanist will add X more days before the main Wall casting can begin.

There are plenty of other factors that can be called upon to "justify" the cost of building a castle (as if such costs required a justification)- SBG has altered the stats for stone walls to match Wall of Stone, and both their prices and times aren't far away from the price and time is would take to pay a caster to cast Wall of Stone. But what you get for that markup also includes all the professional skills that the "PC" quite likely does not in fact have: while Stormwrack allows Know: Architecture and Engineering to build ships, that represents the planning and management of a team of specialists (and thus should actually be a Profession skill, really). A caster attempting to do everything themselves needs the appropriate skills, is liable to fail some checks (which can in turn waste an entire day's worth of spells), and even if they do everything perfectly will still have need of some amount of labor and detail work. Just cutting down the trees without smashing whoever's doing the cutting is a particular learned skill. And each spell spent on attempting to overcome X is a spell not spent on conjuring raw material. And Fabricate for raw materials that aren't already laying around will require purchase of those materials (which by Craft skills is still 1/3 the final price).

So it's just more reliable to hire someone else to do it. Accept some small amount of gp and time cost baked into things to account for having professionals lay the foundation, cut the trees, design the specs, source the raw goods, move the furniture, lay in the doors and windows, etc. Since SBG is already building at near Wall of Stone/Fabricate spam speeds, the main benefit is that if you can cast them yourself, you get to slash costs dramatically. But not entirely, because unless you're a straw-PC built explicitly for building castles, you don't actually have all the skills and support staff and connections for free.


Many medieval castles (IIRC) have a thick layer of rammed earth between 2 stone walls, which makes them even harder to destroy. Make your initial wall of stone walls 8-12 inches thick and 2-3 feet apart, use move earth to fill the space with packed soil. You can always add more. Castings of wall of stone to thicken the stone walls afterwards.
Layered walls indeed, but I capitalized Shapeable for a reason. That's a base definition in the spell area rules: no dimensions smaller than 10' (ten feet) so you can't fill in your layered walls using Move Earth, the spell does not work that way. If you want to fill the wall with packed earth, you'll need to do that with labor. And if you want it to be packed earth, it will need to be packed, as in compacted in stages rather than simply dumped from the top of the ramp, which means more effort.

But that's fine since an artificial cliff of earth (with out without extra moat in front) is plenty defensible on its own, until you can roll in some boulders and grow out the rock face and anti-sapping foundation.


It's hard to put an exact figure on it, but I agree that the Stronghold Builders Guidebook estimates are VERY conservative about what could be accomplished.
I would be cautious in assuming that magic can just "do things," because just about every time I have actually tested such claims, they have been found wanting. SBG is already assuming use of such magic, and there isn't much to justify it getting much better than that in any practical sense (no, I do not find the various TO cheeses above relevant).

[Maat Mons]

Psionic Fabricate and Greater Psonic Fabricate already exist. You don't need to create them with Spell-to-Power Erudite.

Unfortunately, eliminating the material component doesn't eliminate the need for raw materials. Fabricate requires the materials as both a target and as a component. Arguably, this means you need twice as many raw materials as normal, except with the psionic versions.




Usually, my go-to answer for constructing fortifications is DMM:Persisted Undermaster. But while that give a truly ludicrous rate of construction, it doesn't kick in until 17th level.




Nature's Rampart can give you some pretty decent defenses pretty fast. But then again, the kind of earthenworks structures you'd get from this could also be created in a pretty reasonable timeframe by average villagers. It might actually turn out to be more efficient to use creatures with a burrow speed though.

If you've got a little time, you could try planting some thorny plants for enemies to struggle through. Just be careful not to plant anything that will grant enemies cover or concealment. And definitely don't create any blind spots.

If you have a Decanter of Endless Water or a well-positioned river, you could turn the ditches into a body of water. I don't know that water is necessarily harder to cross than a ditch, but you could try stocking the water with nasty fish. I mean, you could put nasty creatures in the ditch too, but I'd be a little worried about them getting out. Most fish can't get too far away from water, so they're more manageable… unless your moat is connected to a river.



Transmute Mud to Rock or Transmute Sand to Stone might also be avenues worth looking into for building stone walls. Their major downside though is that they're permanent, not instantaneous. It would be super annoying if someone Dispelled your fortifications.

Arguably, it may be possible to cast Wall of Salt, and then follow up by casting Stone Metamorphosis to turn the salt into a mineral that doesn't dissolve in the rain. Though using two 4th-level spells slots to duplicate the effects of a 5th-level spell might not be a good deal.

Wall of Iron doesn't care what the stuff it's anchored to is made out of. But 50 gp per casting can add up fast. Also rusting.



Or you could force captured enemies to form a line around your town, facing outward, with arms linked. Then you just walk a tame basilisk around, and you've got a wall of sorts. It wouldn't be that hard to break down with siege equipment. But are your enemies going to smash their own friends?

Getting the wall higher could be tricky if you're not fighting a force made up entirely of cheerleaders.

[redking]

So, characters have been gone for several months from their homelands, and when they come back there is some sort of fortification made where their village used to be.


Before you do anything else, the characters need to survey the land. A fort should be on a hill so any attackers have to come uphill. Planting a fort in the wrong place, on flat land or heaven forbid downhill, will create a deathtrap.


In a world of reasonably high arcane magic (a lot of magic items, casters up to level 8-10, a lot of magi tech and low-level casters etc), how big a fort could be reasonably made in a few (3-5) months?
Would a tower, or perhaps small stone castle possible, or would anything above wooden Fort severely strain credulity?

You can make a wooden fort. Your need a tar mixture fire retardant to cover the wooden walls. This won't stop fires, it will only keep the wood from immediately going up in flames. Maybe assign an ad-hoc fire resistance of 10 to these walls. Fire any stronger will set them alight.

Ancient and mediaeval societies used stone for protection against assault by fire. If you have access to a Lyre of Building, you should be able to easily finish a decent stone fort within a three month time frame, including various counter measures such as arrow loops and killing fields. It's worth looking up Wikipedia for ideas to implement in your fort

[ciopo]

Assuming whoever uses the lyre of building can hit the DC 18 on a 1 and has adeguate support to not need to stop for food/sleep/exhaustion/other reasons, in 3 months they would be doing the equivalent work of what 100 humans do in 35 years and an half.

it feels to me that the raw materials would be the bottleneck, but part of the lyre "labor" could be quarrying/lumberjacking or what-have-you.

The limit you're putting is lots of magic item, caster level 8-10, so I would say "go nuts"

[Maat Mons]

If you've got a pre-existing town, and you're trying to add a bit of protection to it, your hands may be tied on location.

I guess you could try building a new town slightly to the left (or whichever direction), fortify that, and abandon the old town. But the day-to-day activities of the townsfolk might turn out to be substantially more difficult to carry out from the new location.

Or there's the classic approach of building a fortress in a highly-defensible location nearby, and evacuating the town into the fortress when enemy troops draw near.

Maybe some sort of hybrid effort would be best. Pick the most defensible area in or near town, wall it off, and move as many of the city's vital functions inside as is feasible. Those vulnerable locations that are just too convenient not to use on a daily basis could continue to have structures outside the main defenses. Maybe even give the vulnerable areas some basic walls, sufficient to fend off casual raiding parties, but have the understanding that, in the event of a large-scale military assault, those places are all going to be abandoned?

[ChudoJogurt]

The village that used to be there was razed, so pre-existing tenants aren't an issue.
But on the other hands there isn't much in terms of local infrastructure.

[Tiktakkat]

The Normans could put up a medium-sized motte and bailey with about 10,000 man-days of work with no magic. That is your basic wooden fort.

Without going into excessive details, I would say you could safely magic up a small stone keep in 3-5 months without suspending disbelief, applying too much handwavium, or otherwise tormenting the rules.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Psionic Fabricate and Greater Psonic Fabricate already exist. You don't need to create them with Spell-to-Power Erudite.Arcane (greater) fabricate creates mass instead of targeting the material, while destroying the targeted material as a material component. Meanwhile the psionic version just targets and changes it. So if you can negate the material component of the spells (such as via the StP erudite), you can create stuff ex nihilo.

[liquidformat]

-However, note also the wording of Wall of Stone, that it must "merge with and be supported solidly by existing stone." This provides no barrier to the intended use of the spell (by adventurers in dungeons), but does allow the DM to very easily shut down free surface construction if desired: the more you want to build, the more stone needs to already be there in order for it to solidly support the Wall of Stone you want to cast. So you at least have to wait until a stone foundation can be laid, and the price of that can be why SBG doesn't let you do it for free until 16th level).

The screwiness with Wall of Stone comes from what 'solidly supported' mean, after all a wall section that is made on the ground and thickness is vertical is solidly supported. So the way I see it all you need to do is make a base pad of stone as the foundation of your fort. All this really means is you need to be a cleric, have a helper that can cast create water, or some commoners with jugs and a large water source close by and you need Transmute mud to rock. Its pretty straightforward and doesn't take long to make a large muddy area then turn it all to rock and there you have your base for wall of Stone to merge with. Next you make your exterior walls stacking the walls (45 square foot section 2" high) up on themselves until you get the height you require. Remember you can make bridges, crenellations, battlements, and so forth with Wall of Stone so making doorways and windows also falls into the rules without any handwaving. Once you have created your first section of exterior walls with the required 'thickness' you have all the support you need and want for creating the other walls you wish.

[Maat Mons]

No, the arcane version of Fabricate doesn't use raw materials as a component instead of targeting raw material. It uses raw material as a component in addition to targeting the raw material.

"Target: Up to 10 cu. ft./level; see text" (entry for spell)
"Target: Up to 10 cu. ft./level; see spell text" (entry for power)
It's the same target entry for both. If that target entry makes the power require raw materials to be targeted, it also makes the spell require raw materials to be targeted. And removing the material component doesn't in any way modify the target entry.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

No, the arcane version of Fabricate doesn't use raw materials as a component instead of targeting raw material. It uses raw material as a component in addition to targeting the raw material.

"Target: Up to 10 cu. ft./level; see text" (entry for spell)
"Target: Up to 10 cu. ft./level; see spell text" (entry for power)
It's the same target entry for both. If that target entry makes the power require raw materials to be targeted, it also makes the spell require raw materials to be targeted. And removing the material component doesn't in any way modify the target entry.Except material components are outright destroyed upon casting the spell. So what you're saying is, since the target is the material component, you cast fabricate and get vaporized nothing in return. Works much better than creating matter to replace what was destroyed, eh?

Meanwhile, the power doesn't use material components, merely targeting and changing them, and thus works as intended.

[Maat Mons]

That's why I said up in post #15 that you need twice as many raw materials to cast Fabricate as would normally be required to craft an item. One complete set of raw materials to serve as the target, and another complete set of raw materials to serve as the components.

Fabricate needs a house-rule to work "as intended." Putting forth a "reasonable" house-rule, and showing that it results in unlimited free mundane items (with a little optimizing) is... fine I guess. But it's not really the same as finding a RAW free mundane item exploit (though I'm sure there are several of those scattered around).

Anyway, if you're going to houserule Fabricate to avoid the dumb-ness of requiring twice the raw materials, I'd houserule away the material component, rather than houserule away the targeting requirement. That way, the "fixed" version isn't quite as easy to break.

[Jack_Simth]

Transmute Mud to Rock or Transmute Sand to Stone might also be avenues worth looking into for building stone walls. Their major downside though is that they're permanent, not instantaneous. It would be super annoying if someone Dispelled your fortifications.
There's a trick to that:
Use Transmute Rock to Mud on existing stone, transport and shape the mud as desired, then dispel it.

So you find a bunch of stone higher than where you want your fortifications, build forms (wooden construction, Wall of Iron, Wall of Stone, whatever) where you want the final result, and a channel of some form to transport the mud. Transmute, transport, dispel. Instant effects that way. Of course, it's still unworked stone, so you're one Transmute Rock to Mud spell away from missing a wall....

[Thurbane]

I remember the 2E Castle Guide having some good info, but not sure how well it would translate into 3E.

[Gusmo]

As far as I can tell, literally all you need is stone shape and wall of stone. You'll fail 30% of the time when making a door, but just try again. If there's no existing stone to bootstrap the process, just plant a nice big mundane rock in the ground. Then stone shape the rock into the foundation after you've cast wall of stone a few times to set the foundation. If you want to be extra tricky, apply invisible spell to wall of stone to make all your windows.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

As far as I can tell, literally all you need is stone shape and wall of stone. You'll fail 30% of the time when making a door, but just try again. If there's no existing stone to bootstrap the process, just plant a nice big mundane rock in the ground. Then stone shape the rock into the foundation after you've cast wall of stone a few times to set the foundation. If you want to be extra tricky, apply invisible spell to wall of stone to make all your windows.But but but...! According to the SBG, casting those spells yourself to build stuff costs money, for some reason!

[Jack_Simth]

But but but...! According to the SBG, casting those spells yourself to build stuff costs money, for some reason!
With Wall of stone, they have the discount scale by caster level. It makes for free stone walls past a point (CL 16). Lower caster levels give discounts on hewn stone walls. I imagine they were thinking about thickness of the Wall of Stone spell vs. thickness of the SBG Hewn Stone Walls, and just how many castings you'd actually need at lower caster levels per stronghold space. Wall of Stone is only 1 inch thick per 4 CL, and one 5-foot square per caster level. Hewn stone walls for a standard stronghold space are three feet (36 inches) thick, and a stronghold space is approximately 20x20x10 - if you count the ceiling and floor, you've got 64 5-foot squares to cover with that 3 feet thick. At minimum CL (9 5-foot squares, each 2 inches thick), you'd need... looks like about 128 castings per stronghold space to create the necessary volume of stone to match the SBG definition for them. How many 5th level slots does your wizard-9 have? How many days will this likely take per Stronghold Space? How many stronghold spaces in your stronghold, again? There comes a point where it's not worth it to make all the stone yourself, and you're better off just using it as forms or facing for mundane stone placed a bit more traditionally.

And stone shape explicitly produces crude things, especially when it comes to moving parts. It'll be very obvious that's what you did if your stone doors are that way, they'll have lots of air gaps, and so on.

[Bohandas]

Nope, Shrink Item makes it a magical object.

Also it would require finer manipulation and thus raise the craft DC

[Martin Greywolf]

Ignoring rules and taking cues from reality, if we're talking just time, it takes shockingly little.

A Roman legion could put up a fortified pallisade-wall every night to rest in, if they wanted to, total construction time was probably about 2 hours. A motte and bailey castle can be built in two weeks without much trouble, IIRC one of those was built just before the Battle of Hastings.

Stone castles are much harder. Provided you aren't building something at the scale of Krak de Chevaliers or Minas Tirith, you will be able to do it in 3-6 months, depending on size. For the really big ones, the time goes up to 2-5 years, but at this point, we hit seasonal limitations pretty hard, what with needing most of your local workforce to tend to the farms and not being able to work in winter.

These are all, obviously, done without any magic greasing the wheels of industry.

All of the above applies to when you are limited by time only, and can afford to throw manpower and, more importantly, money, at the problem. Most of the real castles and forts took significantly longer to build because their owners couldn't do that. They started with part of said castle, built that, then took a year or two to gather enough money and built another bit. Or modified already existing building.

This is how you get cathedrals that take almost a century to complete, the technical skill to finish them is there, the money, not so much.

As for manpower, that one can be substituted for by money, up to a point. If you really need to get every hand on deck to build a thing, you can import food, or more likely, import skilled craftsmen - this has been done fairly frequently, and is why you see Italian castles in former Kingdom of Hungary, or German underground mines all over Europe.

Having magic to help is going to drastically reduce those times, since most of it is spent on making the stone bits of castles and transporting them. Use a spell to do that and you are now effectively building with wood, if not play-doh as far as necessary time is concerned.

A single Wall of stone gets you 10 panels of 300x300x15 stone. Since your floors are about 300cm tall, that is 30 meters of exterior walls for a single casting, 15 if you double up the thickness. Taking into soncideration that most exterior castle walls I saw were about 1 meter thick towerds the top and about 2-3 at the bottom, you get 5 meters of top wall and about 2 of base wall. A quick jaunt to google maps reveals Krak de Chevaliers has exterior walls ~600 meters long, and has outer wall height of 9 meters. If all of those are the 2 meter thick wall, we get 600/2*3=900 casts of Wall of stone to recreate it. That does look like a lot, but it means a single caster who can cast this spell can remake one of the most imposing medieval castles in existence in under 3 years if he casts one spell a day.

A more average castle, Beckov, has exterior wall of ~200 meters long and 6 meters tall, which only needs a total of 200 castings to recreate - this being a fairly large ducal castle, albeit with 2/3 of exterior wall missing due to good terrain. Even so, 300 meters would get us 300 castings.

A small castle, such as Ostry kamen/Sharpstone is only about 150 meters in length with 6 meter walls, giving us 150 castings.

One of the absolutely, stupidly largest castles ever built is Spissky hrad, that one has 1 kilometer of outer walls (almost matching movie-verse Minas Tirith's outer walls at 1.2 km) that are 6-9 meters high. That means 1000-1500 castings are necessary.

[Fizban]

Usually, my go-to answer for constructing fortifications is DMM:Persisted Undermaster. But while that give a truly ludicrous rate of construction, it doesn't kick in until 17th level.
You'd think there would be more monsters with Wall of Stone at-will, but I've actually only ever found one: the Dao, from Manual of the Planes. But of course, negotiating the price for one to build you a castle. . .


If you have a Decanter of Endless Water or a well-positioned river, you could turn the ditches into a body of water. I don't know that water is necessarily harder to cross than a ditch,
A dry moat can be more easily filled in- a water-filled moat you'll have to drain the water and then work in the (possibly disease ridden) muck, or build your own bridge over it.


The screwiness with Wall of Stone comes from what 'solidly supported' mean, after all a wall section that is made on the ground and thickness is vertical is solidly supported.
By existing stone. If you can support an entire flat "wall," you already have a foundation of existing stone- not sure why you're saying this when you immediately go to building a foundation with Transmute spells.

If the DM wants to be extremely harsh, they can rule that the stone has to track all the way down to natural stone, either bedrock or some surface outcropping. Which with a quick googling is looking like should be at least 100' to 300' down if it's any distance from a mountainous area?



There's a trick to that:
Use Transmute Rock to Mud on existing stone, transport and shape the mud as desired, then dispel it.
I'm not convinced the mud will stay runny long enough to make it however far it needs to go. It's still 5th level spells anyway.

Of course, it's still unworked stone, so you're one Transmute Rock to Mud spell away from missing a wall....
Which is an interesting weakness- but the oft-forgotten Passwall is also 5th, creates a passage which gets longer with level, and when it wears off or is dismissed leaves you with an intact and functioning wall rather than needing to rebuild the one you just destroyed.

The existence of spells that go straight through walls gives reason to build "dungeons" out into deep rock (even without adding natural scrying/teleport resistance as is often suggested), where the foe will require more spells and special scouting ability to even consider tunneling in via magic (particularly since magic also makes that initial excavation so much easier), or failing that simply making their walls 15' thick, or of course using concentric walls.


A Roman legion could put up a fortified pallisade-wall every night to rest in, if they wanted to, total construction time was probably about 2 hours.
For an extremely large and well-trained professional army that carries the materials with them, sure. A faux-medieval army is going to take significantly longer, though magic can also much more easily support the bureaucracy required to establish nation-states that can raise those sorts of armies.


A quick jaunt to google maps reveals Krak de Chevaliers has exterior walls ~600 meters long, and has outer wall height of 9 meters. If all of those are the 2 meter thick wall, we get 600/2*3=900 casts of Wall of stone to recreate it. That does look like a lot, but it means a single caster who can cast this spell can remake one of the most imposing medieval castles in existence in under 3 years if he casts one spell a day.

A more average castle, Beckov, has exterior wall of ~200 meters long and 6 meters tall, which only needs a total of 200 castings to recreate - this being a fairly large ducal castle, albeit with 2/3 of exterior wall missing due to good terrain. Even so, 300 meters would get us 300 castings.

A small castle, such as Ostry kamen/Sharpstone is only about 150 meters in length with 6 meter walls, giving us 150 castings.

One of the absolutely, stupidly largest castles ever built is Spissky hrad, that one has 1 kilometer of outer walls (almost matching movie-verse Minas Tirith's outer walls at 1.2 km) that are 6-9 meters high. That means 1000-1500 castings are necessary.
And of course, once you're able to just magic an entire fortress out of nothing, you ought to be protecting your populace as well. With the walls of Contantinople reaching 5.7 kilometers. Sure that's like the biggest ancient city- and aren't people always assuming the Important City of the campaign is a Metropolis? Have fun spending/asking for multiple years of downtime to do all of that personally.

[Fuzzy McCoy]

You'd think there would be more monsters with Wall of Stone at-will, but I've actually only ever found one: the Dao, from Manual of the Planes. But of course, negotiating the price for one to build you a castle. . .

There is also the sun giant in MM2.

[Gusmo]

One method to getting lots of wall of stone is to persist Undermaster from the Spell Compendium. How early can that be done? With it, once per round you can use any of these as a spell-like ability: earth lock, earthquake, excavate, flesh to stone, meld into stone, move earth, reverse gravity, soften earth and stone, statue, stone shape, stone tell, stone to flesh, transmute mud to rock, transmute rock to mud, tunnel swallow, wall of stone, and xorn movement. Because it's being used as an SLA, that seemingly allows the move earth spell to accomplish all of its actions within a single round, versus its much longer normal casting time. So that's a cool extra.

Really, the more general question would be the best way to get as many 5th level spells as possible, and many methods have already been mentioned for that. Wall of stone and stone shape by themselves remain adequate as I've said, even if the results will be crude. But the point at which you have the resources to cast those spells enough times, you're also probably not limited to only those spells. Fabricate is probably the next addition you'd want to make.