castle design DND 3.5

[deephelldragon]

So I have been given the chance to make my own castle the dm said I could make this as advanced as i want the king would pay for every thing so what should i put in this castle and how should i make it you can get as creative as you want all books can be used so go wild.

[Asheram]

So I have been given the chance to make my own castle the dm said I could make this as advanced as i want the king would pay for every thing so what should i put in this castle and how should i make it you can get as creative as you want all books can be used so go wild.

*whimpers* Good God, you're lucky.
First of all, do you have "stronghold builders guidebook"?
Second. How much money does the king have? When we're talking "As advanced as you'd want" We're talking billions. ;)

[gbprime]

*whimpers* Good God, you're lucky.
First of all, do you have "stronghold builders guidebook"?
Second. How much money does the king have? When we're talking "As advanced as you'd want" We're talking billions. ;)

Lucky indeed.

Yes, stronghold builder's guide is where you'll find everything, including examples of castles.

Their first example is entitled "the cheap keep" and runs a mere 70,000 GP. The "Dwarven Redoubt" is a sturdier structure, partly underground, and runs 600,000 GP. Both of these do not use magic in their construction.

You want magic, there's an example of a "Floating Tower". This is basicly the Cheap Keep upgraded to fly, include scrying defense and environmental controls, and includes two "satellite platforms" for additional defenders. 2,800,000 GP.

[deephelldragon]

*whimpers* Good God, you're lucky.
First of all, do you have "stronghold builders guidebook"?
Second. How much money does the king have? When we're talking "As advanced as you'd want" We're talking billions. ;)

No I don't have the stronghold builder's guide so any thing you could tell me would be alot of help. the king has I presume as much as I want the Dm did not tell me a price he said to go crazy build me and my party a nice castle so ya i think that i can use as much as i want

[Shademan]

I believe the DMG stat prices for stuff such as "keep. tower. walls. moat"
simple, boring and...er... uh... some third thing.

How about the next best thing? you DRAW the castke you want and tell the king to make it. map it out and write down details such as "hotspring elemental keeping bath warm here" "fighting pit(here be monsters)" etc

[JaronK]

Start thinking with portals. Build a castle inside a giant mountain in Ysgard (the plane of battle where everybody gets fast healing 2 and auto true resurects when they die). Put portals in the castle. Have the exits located on a floating disk (Greater Floating Disk will work). Now you can sit in your castle and fire out of the portals at enemies.

Basically, your DM just handed you unlimited wealth. You win. Move on, the game is over.

JaronK

[nedz]

Go for the flying keep - it will be much more fun.
Alternatively you could have a floating, burrowing, walking, planeshifting or even teleporting one.

[Asheram]

Spoiler

Show

If it's big enough, it counts as a castle.

[WeLoveFireballs]

To make the castle self-sufficient you need good farming area nearby to rent out to farmers, this will attract merchants then comes sales tax and away you go. Don't forget to pay your soldiers my 2nd ed books have lists of different soldiers and monthly pay. If you have an AD&D 2nd edition DMG that should help. I don't know of anything like it in 3.5 ed. Let me know if you do.

[Ormagoden]

Make sure to give your castle a burrow speed!

[Starscream]

If you don't have Stronghold Builder's Guide, how about Draconomicon? It has a section on "Lair Wards" which offer some nice security systems for castles and such.

[deephelldragon]

If you don't have Stronghold Builder's Guide, how about Draconomicon? It has a section on "Lair Wards" which offer some nice security systems for castles and such.

Yes I do have Draconomicon so I will look in there thank you all for helping me I don't think the DM know's what he has given me and I will make sure to let him know the hard way (not to hard just show him that he can not be giving away that much power it can end very badly for him and it also cause's strain on the players to have to deal with that kind of thing) This is of course just my thoughts.

[JeminiZero]

To make the castle self-sufficient you need good farming area nearby to rent out to farmers

Or just commission some Create Food Traps.

[Alvrick]

ooh! are you a necromancer, or are able to get one? Taken from the Revised Necromancer's Handbook:

Undead Fortresses
Ok, so you’ve decided to build a base of operations. There’s a few things to remember. First, despite what everyone tells you, you are not going to have walls made out of bone or permanently desecrated hallways or pools of blood or any of that dramatic and expensive accessory items of out of The Sims, Necromantic Style. You are going to build it along a few practical lines.

You will have “dead-man rooms”, which are rooms full of masses of uncontrolled undead, and you’ll have taken a feat or spell like Lich-loved so that you don’t have to worry about being eaten when you restock the rooms. Then, when heroes come to bust up your tea-party your “Hive” breaks open and destroys the heroes, and perhaps the nearest city as well despite the number of turning attempts or Command Undead spells they might have.

For your intelligent undead, which are most likely incorporeal, you’ll have deep stone floors and walls so that have space to pop in and out as needed, and even 5’ deep walls for “ghost doors” usable by incorporeal guys. (This takes advantage of the fact that incorporeal creatures can only move 5' through objects).

If your DM is using the optional rules on how masses of undead creates ambient Turn Resistance, then you can abuse the Haunting Presence rules by taking a large number of low-HD skeles and turning them into para-ghosts that mass the area, putting enough necromantic mojo into the air to clot the holy artery of any cheeky bastard with Turning (even you, unfortunately).

That’s about it. Add in a few summoning rooms and a hospital ward to inflict dudes which ghoul fever and/or harvest liquid pain, and you are the Martha Stewart of the necromantic world.

[dgnslyr]

[QUOTE=Lostfang;8554473]Make sure to give your castle a burrow speed!

You are awesome beyond belief for bringing up that pic. Make sure you have some way of dealing with tentacles that clog up the engine room, and be sure to check any unusually thick rock strata...

[Lucianus]

I am very happy to have found this thread :) I am sure you will soon be happy I found it too. Since childhood I have designed castles as a pastime, and the discovery of a "Stronghold Builders Guide" at a local used book sale is what started me into DnD. First off, when designing a castle, you need to know what it is for. Is it mainly a home? Mainly a military outpost to protect something specific like a road or region? Mainly a show of force on the boarder of a rival Kingdom? Once you have that, choose a terrain type to build on (Hills, forest, open plains, etc...) and local weather (Temperate, arid, rain forest, etc...) The DMG lists different terrains and weathers. Having a river nearby is nice for water/protection on one side, while building on top of a cliff makes it very hard to attack that particular wall. Think about how many of these different defensive features maybe nearby.

Once you have the main purpose and local terrain, it gets more fun :) Choose a time period. Medieval age castles are designed to defend against infantry and feature high walls, round towers and wide moats. This is your typical DnD castle. If you want to get fancy (Like me) a Renaissance age castle (Often called a Trace Italianne classically or Star Fort in modern times) is for you. These are hard to design, hard to build and nigh imposable to attack with sword-and-shield. They are designed to defend against gunpowder cannon and musket fire and feature a low silhouette, forward defensive structures and lots of little hiding spots and loopholes for rifleman/archers to fire from. An army not equipped with cannon would be very hard pressed to take a Star Fort! If you choose this style, read some Wiki articles on star forts (or trace italianne, if you can read French) before you start designing it, there is a TONNE of info on the subject, just be ready to follow a few dozen links to figure out what all the features are. This is the style of stronghold most of my characters usually end up building.

All strongholds feature three basic constructions, defense/offense, residential and maintenance. First we will go over residential;

Bed chambers (Bedrooms) where bloody HUGE historically because that is where the important people slept, ate when not entertaining guests, did their reading/writing and pretty much everything else. (Dining halls where for banquets and parties.) Everyone needs a place to sleep. Soldiers barracks, house servants quarters(slaves or otherwise), dignitaries chambers(Castle Wizard, Head Butler, Chief of the Guard, etc...), you and the rest of your party, etc. Depending on their importance, ones chamber could have a simple straw mattress and wicker chair shared with ten other people to a four post bed with all matching furniture for yourself. Residential rooms are usually grouped together and either high up in the keep or on the other side of the castle from the smelly places like smiths, stables and the like. Privies (Bathrooms) are usually nearby and either empty right out the curtain wall (called garderobes) or into an inside pit on the bottom level (called Ewwww!). These where usually emptied weekly by pail and shovel by someone who REALLY ticked off the man/woman in charge!

Maintenance includes smiths for armor/weapon upkeep, kitchens and banquet halls, storage for food/spare weapons/scrolls and wands, docks if near water, magic/alchemical labs, dungeons (I mean actual prison type dungeons!), stables, etc. Anything that is needed to keep the stronghold functioning logistically.

This brings us to the defense/offense. Walls, towers, a central keep and the like. Too many possible combination's to list here! So I'll keep it to the basics. Tall walls are better than thick walls if you can only afford one or the other (unless you are building a Trace Italianne, then the opposite is true), a tall central keep with all the residential rooms is usually surrounded by a curtain wall with the maintenance rooms built into/beside it and towers along the perimeter, a second, lower curtain wall can be built if you got the coin to add another layer of defense (Some Northern European cities had four or five layers of curtain walls). Beyond that, build walls to match the local landscape. Cheap out on walls built on a fifty foot cliff or over-watching a river/ocean and spend what's saved on walls facing a more likely attack route. Ballista's/scorpio's need line of sight/effect, so put them on towers and ramparts. Catapults/onagers/trebuchets can be placed behind the walls and fire over them, usually with hand signal guidance from someone on the rampart. (To adjust fire onto moving groups of soldiers or far away targets.) Rooms built into the upper levels of a wall can have small loopholes cut into them to allow riflemen/archers to fire out from inside the wall, allowing the whole wall to be a threat, not just the top of it. (Called the banquet traditionally)

I could go on for days about this! But alas, I will let you do your research and come up with your own plan. There is a nice digital version of the "Stronghold Builders Guide" at the link below and I highly recommend you check it out.
http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/...g-a-stronghold
Hope I helped! Happy building you lucky dog!!

[herrhauptmann]

Here's the floor plans for a 'modern' fort. Could start from there, go nuts.
http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans.php
Basement---http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans/basement.php
First -------http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans/1st_floor.php
1st Drill hall-http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans/1st_drillcourt.php
Second ----http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans/2nd_floor.php
Third-------http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans/3rd_floor.php
3rd drill hall-http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans/3rd_drillcourt.php
Fourth------http://www.sfarmory.com/floorplans/4th_floor.php

Click on rooms for pictures of the interior