Gavinfoxx
2021-10-01, 02:50 PM
Character Concept Help Needed: Magical Construction Foreman
So I am playing in a non-combat play by post game, and I need some help with an odd character idea I have. A recent, kind of disastrous previous thread helped me figure out how to better ask the forum for help with this.
First, some constraints! The character will be 3.5e only (No Pathfinder), All 3.5 WotC material allowed, un-updated 3.0e material allowed, licensed/authorized/'official product'-stamped 3rd party allowed, dragon magazine allowed, LA buyoff allowed, 32 point buy, 78k xp to spend, 110k gp to spend, Leadership and various methods of obtaining cohorts and followers allowed, but I have to stat them out and name them and all that.
So, here's my idea: I want to maximize, within some pretty extreme constraints, the versatility of a one-characters'-resources-derived magical construction/landscaping/architecture company. Of note, we will not actually be using the mundane Crafting or Profession rules as written. Having high checks in this stuff is still useful and necessary, but we won't be pushing for checks in the dozens/hundreds/thousands to get this done. Of more use would be access to a wide variety of relevant skills in the +15-+25 skill range, to deal with issues as necessary. Of more use is weird abilities that would be relevant to this sort of work!
Another thing of note is item reliance. The setting will be intrigue heavy, so using a lot of items to do the work that are very likely to get stolen is a bad idea. A Lyre of Building, maybe a Decanter of Endless Water is fine, but making a bunch of weird items that do the crafting for the people is asking for trouble and for them to get stolen!
Another thing, all the characters in the firm should generally be Large size or under, to fit in odd cramped locations and job sites. That said, having access to Heavy Airlift capabilities would be relevant. The character and familiar and mount and cohort and followers and planar ally and such are allowed to have odd species and templates, that's not a problem… within reason.
I'd like the primary character to be Good aligned, which means she's caring for her non-sapient worker's needs and stabling them appropriately and paying her sapient ones a reasonable wage and not requiring the ones that don't Have to sleep to work for a few days straight unless she's also doing so, as a temporary thing. It also means she'll tend to want to use Planar Ally over Planar Binding. I also don't want to actually break the local mercantilist guild economy, so she'll be part of whatever guild handles this stuff and following their pricing rules for labor and this sort of work -- the desired benefit is to have wider sort of things her crew can make, and to make them so significantly faster, with fewer supplies needed to be bought to the site, and of higher quality work, and less local disruption of nearby areas, and more types of wondrous architecture and fanciful landscaping and so on available, or even technological designs available.
So, a few thing on numbers. I'd like to limit this to 5 characters (main character + any cohorts, familiars, called help, etc that have int of 3+), and no more than 20 int 2, 1, or - workers at a time. This is a soft limit, let's call it guild rules on individual craftsman shop sizes. This includes long duration astral constructs, anything that acts like visible unseen servants, golems, hand-raised magical beasts, etc. Also of note, if a critter has a weird, crazy diet, she's going to have to provide that, at her own expense, so the critter better be worth it!
Theres a few sorts of abilities that I think would be extremely relevant for this concept. For one, let's just say Craft Wondrous Item for magical architecture. Also, the things that make construction materials -- wall of stone and wall of iron and plant growth and True Creation as a spell like ability are useful, as are the various shaping and transmutation spells for any of those things -- stone shape, greater stone shape, fabricate, transmute metal to wood, wood shape, ironwood, stone metamorphosis, greater stone metamorphosis, move earth, soften earth and stone, excavate, disintegrate, nature's rampart, shape metal, metal melt. Now, getting a few of these at will would be good, but getting access to a variety of them -- or the psionic equivalents -- would be more important, I think. Taking a few days for a big project and having the right spell for any project is a bigger deal than having, say, stone shape at will. Note: I want to stay away from things with a 'permanent' duration and focus on 'instantaneous' duration matter creation and changing instead. That said, making temporary matter via minor creation, major creation, shadow-matter-infused illusions, or similar is very useful for temporary scaffolding or tweaking the look and design of a build via mockups. That said, I'd need to know the illusion spells that don't require so much concentration, or would work best for this sort of task!
Other abilities that I think would be relevant would be stuff like at will Telekinesis or Greater Mage Hand, giving everyone Spider Climb or the ability to shape change into forms that are useful for construction work (like Girallon -- strong and extra hands! Or Roper or Darktentacles for similar), or having access to a creature with the ability to burrow -- not earthglide -- through dirt and stone and which leaves a useful tunnel, having access to a form of long duration flight which doesn't send wind everywhere and allows precision hovering, having the ability to fill out the roster with unseen servants, unseen crafters, wood wose, mount, and similar summoned long duration entities, having access to telepathic bond between everyone, access to Magecraft so anyone can be an assistant to whichever of the team is the expert in a given mundane craft, reverse gravity to move very heavy things to particular altitudes, etc. etc. Again, I don't know psionics very well, so any psionic equivalents to this stuff would be great!
Another thing I think might be useful is plant growth and permanent blessing (hallow or unhallow?) or making lair wards (or similar), and anything involved in making magical structures beyond just normal 'wondrous architecture'. I'm not sure if there are any spells or effects that create or conjure living soil or make normal grass (maybe researching the grass effect of the rod of wonder? Is that Instantaneous? Would they rot, and provide nutrients to plants? Could you grow plants via wall of iron -> transmute metal to wood -> wood rot -> (place seeds) -> plant growth? Could you use the grass trick to make hydroponics or mistponics along with Create Spring?) outside of Dark Sun, if anyone has suggestions for that, I'd appreciate it! What if you definitely wanted to kill some sort of problematic plant infesting a site, would you want access to Charnel Touch, in particular? What else might work if its one of those that burning and cutting doesnt kill?
I do have a lot of questions about things, though. Is a Phasm capable of holding up a lot due to being able to take mobile forms with lots of inherent compressive strength? Is there a feat that would let one use a lot of limbs at once? Those guys have lots of skill! Also, is a Constructor's Utility Construct actually have utility in Construction? What constructs are good at this sort of work in general? What are some good ways to get these mentioned spells as At Will, or the expensive or troublesome ones as Spell Like Abilities? What are the gating feats and spells for access to various types of magical architecture? What classes offer the most nonmagical or technological crafting options relevant to this? I was thinking of Archivist going into Runecrafter into Techsmith, would that work or is there something more ideal? What craft cost reduction feats would be most relevant to this sort of management-heavy work? What profession skill most closely matches what this sort of concept would actually do? How well would making someone a Ghost help with TK access, and is there anything that requires less investment for similar?
I'd really appreciate some help, and thanks!
So I am playing in a non-combat play by post game, and I need some help with an odd character idea I have. A recent, kind of disastrous previous thread helped me figure out how to better ask the forum for help with this.
First, some constraints! The character will be 3.5e only (No Pathfinder), All 3.5 WotC material allowed, un-updated 3.0e material allowed, licensed/authorized/'official product'-stamped 3rd party allowed, dragon magazine allowed, LA buyoff allowed, 32 point buy, 78k xp to spend, 110k gp to spend, Leadership and various methods of obtaining cohorts and followers allowed, but I have to stat them out and name them and all that.
So, here's my idea: I want to maximize, within some pretty extreme constraints, the versatility of a one-characters'-resources-derived magical construction/landscaping/architecture company. Of note, we will not actually be using the mundane Crafting or Profession rules as written. Having high checks in this stuff is still useful and necessary, but we won't be pushing for checks in the dozens/hundreds/thousands to get this done. Of more use would be access to a wide variety of relevant skills in the +15-+25 skill range, to deal with issues as necessary. Of more use is weird abilities that would be relevant to this sort of work!
Another thing of note is item reliance. The setting will be intrigue heavy, so using a lot of items to do the work that are very likely to get stolen is a bad idea. A Lyre of Building, maybe a Decanter of Endless Water is fine, but making a bunch of weird items that do the crafting for the people is asking for trouble and for them to get stolen!
Another thing, all the characters in the firm should generally be Large size or under, to fit in odd cramped locations and job sites. That said, having access to Heavy Airlift capabilities would be relevant. The character and familiar and mount and cohort and followers and planar ally and such are allowed to have odd species and templates, that's not a problem… within reason.
I'd like the primary character to be Good aligned, which means she's caring for her non-sapient worker's needs and stabling them appropriately and paying her sapient ones a reasonable wage and not requiring the ones that don't Have to sleep to work for a few days straight unless she's also doing so, as a temporary thing. It also means she'll tend to want to use Planar Ally over Planar Binding. I also don't want to actually break the local mercantilist guild economy, so she'll be part of whatever guild handles this stuff and following their pricing rules for labor and this sort of work -- the desired benefit is to have wider sort of things her crew can make, and to make them so significantly faster, with fewer supplies needed to be bought to the site, and of higher quality work, and less local disruption of nearby areas, and more types of wondrous architecture and fanciful landscaping and so on available, or even technological designs available.
So, a few thing on numbers. I'd like to limit this to 5 characters (main character + any cohorts, familiars, called help, etc that have int of 3+), and no more than 20 int 2, 1, or - workers at a time. This is a soft limit, let's call it guild rules on individual craftsman shop sizes. This includes long duration astral constructs, anything that acts like visible unseen servants, golems, hand-raised magical beasts, etc. Also of note, if a critter has a weird, crazy diet, she's going to have to provide that, at her own expense, so the critter better be worth it!
Theres a few sorts of abilities that I think would be extremely relevant for this concept. For one, let's just say Craft Wondrous Item for magical architecture. Also, the things that make construction materials -- wall of stone and wall of iron and plant growth and True Creation as a spell like ability are useful, as are the various shaping and transmutation spells for any of those things -- stone shape, greater stone shape, fabricate, transmute metal to wood, wood shape, ironwood, stone metamorphosis, greater stone metamorphosis, move earth, soften earth and stone, excavate, disintegrate, nature's rampart, shape metal, metal melt. Now, getting a few of these at will would be good, but getting access to a variety of them -- or the psionic equivalents -- would be more important, I think. Taking a few days for a big project and having the right spell for any project is a bigger deal than having, say, stone shape at will. Note: I want to stay away from things with a 'permanent' duration and focus on 'instantaneous' duration matter creation and changing instead. That said, making temporary matter via minor creation, major creation, shadow-matter-infused illusions, or similar is very useful for temporary scaffolding or tweaking the look and design of a build via mockups. That said, I'd need to know the illusion spells that don't require so much concentration, or would work best for this sort of task!
Other abilities that I think would be relevant would be stuff like at will Telekinesis or Greater Mage Hand, giving everyone Spider Climb or the ability to shape change into forms that are useful for construction work (like Girallon -- strong and extra hands! Or Roper or Darktentacles for similar), or having access to a creature with the ability to burrow -- not earthglide -- through dirt and stone and which leaves a useful tunnel, having access to a form of long duration flight which doesn't send wind everywhere and allows precision hovering, having the ability to fill out the roster with unseen servants, unseen crafters, wood wose, mount, and similar summoned long duration entities, having access to telepathic bond between everyone, access to Magecraft so anyone can be an assistant to whichever of the team is the expert in a given mundane craft, reverse gravity to move very heavy things to particular altitudes, etc. etc. Again, I don't know psionics very well, so any psionic equivalents to this stuff would be great!
Another thing I think might be useful is plant growth and permanent blessing (hallow or unhallow?) or making lair wards (or similar), and anything involved in making magical structures beyond just normal 'wondrous architecture'. I'm not sure if there are any spells or effects that create or conjure living soil or make normal grass (maybe researching the grass effect of the rod of wonder? Is that Instantaneous? Would they rot, and provide nutrients to plants? Could you grow plants via wall of iron -> transmute metal to wood -> wood rot -> (place seeds) -> plant growth? Could you use the grass trick to make hydroponics or mistponics along with Create Spring?) outside of Dark Sun, if anyone has suggestions for that, I'd appreciate it! What if you definitely wanted to kill some sort of problematic plant infesting a site, would you want access to Charnel Touch, in particular? What else might work if its one of those that burning and cutting doesnt kill?
I do have a lot of questions about things, though. Is a Phasm capable of holding up a lot due to being able to take mobile forms with lots of inherent compressive strength? Is there a feat that would let one use a lot of limbs at once? Those guys have lots of skill! Also, is a Constructor's Utility Construct actually have utility in Construction? What constructs are good at this sort of work in general? What are some good ways to get these mentioned spells as At Will, or the expensive or troublesome ones as Spell Like Abilities? What are the gating feats and spells for access to various types of magical architecture? What classes offer the most nonmagical or technological crafting options relevant to this? I was thinking of Archivist going into Runecrafter into Techsmith, would that work or is there something more ideal? What craft cost reduction feats would be most relevant to this sort of management-heavy work? What profession skill most closely matches what this sort of concept would actually do? How well would making someone a Ghost help with TK access, and is there anything that requires less investment for similar?
I'd really appreciate some help, and thanks!