Hallowed Arctic Research Base

[Lysander]

One of the spells Hallowed ground can maintain for a year is Endure Elements. So logically, any world with clerics would have remote desert and arctic monasteries protected this way. No need to resupply, food graciously provided by Create Food and Water.

[Gralamin]

One of the spells Hallowed ground can maintain for a year is Endure Elements. So logically, any world with clerics would have remote desert and arctic monasteries protected this way. No need to resupply, food graciously provided by Create Food and Water.

2000 gp in herbs, oils, and incense, a year is rather expensive, and acquiring it in far off lands would be even more difficult. And even then, this price is only for one 40 ft radius burst (as whether you tie it to a site or building, the area doesn't change), which means you probably need multiple castings to have enough room. I'd say unfeasible.

[Myshlaevsky]

2000 gp in herbs, oils, and incense, a year is rather expensive, and acquiring it in far off lands would be even more difficult. And even then, this price is only for one 40 ft radius burst (as whether you tie it to a site or building, the area doesn't change), which means you probably need multiple castings to have enough room. I'd say unfeasible.

It's a neat idea for one, particularly powerful/wealthy sect though.

[Lysander]

It's a neat idea for one, particularly powerful/wealthy sect though.

Pretty expensive for an individual. But how much do you think the government spends to maintain a single arctic base now? Millions a year no doubt. Casting Hallow a few times each a year is cheaper.

[Myshlaevsky]

Pretty expensive for an individual. But how much do you think the government spends to maintain a single arctic base now? Millions a year no doubt. Casting Hallow a few times each a year is cheaper.

I meant a particular organization, not an individual person.

[Gralamin]

Pretty expensive for an individual. But how much do you think the government spends to maintain a single arctic base now? Millions a year no doubt. Casting Hallow a few times each a year is cheaper.

It might be cheaper, but the majority of the people today make more then a few silver pieces a day. Because there is more money going around, businesses and taxes have an end result of more money. Because they have more money, they can do things like arctic bases. In D&D, they probably won't have this money though, and so the cost of doing this, logically, might be too expensive.

So cheaper doesn't really mean much in entirely different economic situations

[Lysander]

Well, casting the spell is equivalent to buying 2,000 goats or 1 pound of cinnamon in the middle ages in terms of cost. How much is that worth in 2009 US Dollars? Hard to say. But it's easily affordable for a large church with many thousands of people tithing.

The real question is why they would want to have a base in the middle of nowhere. Obviously they're not going to spend lots of money to weather proof a base for no reason. I guess that's a question for the DM. Maybe they need a top secret location far from any intruders, or perhaps there's some kind of holy site or artifact buried under the snow they need to be near to investigate.

[thefinalbattle]

excuse me, but how is cinammon more expensive then goats? i could think of at least 5 good uses for goats in DND:
1: you can trade 5 of them for a dire goat
2: you could make an undead one
3: you can use their horns in a spike trap
4: you can use them in rugs
5: you can wear them

....whats the email adress for WOTC?

[The Neoclassic]

excuse me, but how is cinammon more expensive then goats?

... Prices are directly related to supply and demand, not necessarily usefulness of a product. Why is caviar far more expensive than bread?

In a pseudo-medieval world, cinnamon is very rare. All the rich folks want it because it's awesome & delish & exotic. Goats are very useful and in high demand, but they are also far, far easier to produce (you can just have a couple of goats get it on, and soon you have a bunch of baby goats- you don't have to sail halfway across the world) and there are far more available.

WotC does kind of suck at economics from what I've seen, but they were perfectly accurate on making cinnamon ridiculously expensive and goats cheap (prolly shouldn't be that cheap though).

[thefinalbattle]

i want their email adress to ask them to make dire goat and undead goat monsters

[Yora]

Though it would probably work, I guess there would be far cheaper ways to archieve the same results.

Something like a really really cheap (relatively) Mythal that has only the single effect of creating a (for a mythal) small area affected by endure elements.
But I don't think there are any rules for that in an official book.

[Jack Zander]

What if it was underground, and you only cast the spell to emcompass the doorway? Would the interior still be comfortable?

[Lysander]

What if it was underground, and you only cast the spell to emcompass the doorway? Would the interior still be comfortable?

Unfortunately not. Endure Elements doesn't change the temperature, it just prevents creatures from being harmed by extreme temperatures. Something like a permanent Wall of Fire might do the trick though. Put a few walls in a central furnace room and their heat would spread throughout the base. That just requires 2,000xp and it's good forever.

[vampire2948]

You could use a Rod of Extend and Widen spell to make it last longer, and cover a wider area. Thus costing less money per year, and covering a larger area.


Alternatively, you could make a continuous item of Endure Elements for 2k gp.

Get an artificer/anyone else with Craft Wondrous Item, with the Extraordinary Artisan, Magical Artisan (Wondrous Item) feats, and it'll cost you just 1k gp per item, which lasts for ever. And you can use it if you have to leave the hallowed area.

[Set]

Are there any celestial critters one could summon that have hallow as an SLA? I'm not seeing any in the Monster Manual (nor any with unhallow, for that matter).

Hallow is Evocation, so it can at least be spellstitched into an undead of at least 17 Wisdom (a heucuva or ghoul templated character with a decent starting Wisdom would do the trick), although the notion of having a dedicated undead creature maintaining a holy temples wards is kinda freakish. (Use Deathless, perhaps. A 'saint' of the faith, whose unmoving body sits in repose in the center of the arctic retreat, radiating a constant endure elements / hallow combination. When people claim that the saints bones are a sacred relic of the faith, they really mean it!)

It does look like the easier options would be to make a wall of fire permanant, or Create Wondrous Item of heat metal (piece of metal that always stays red-hot).