Showers and Toilets in 3.5

[Naeo]

trying to write up how there's working plumbing, and showers without the technological advancements we have now.

so...It's magic that does it.

i need ideas on HOW the magic does it (my group is filled with detail mongers :P)

Currently i've got:

something to deal with the elemental plane of water ---but this later leads to issues with elementals attacking all of the world for using their plane as a septic tank, which i'd rather avoid.

[Vistella]

an item of create water at will might be a cheap solution

[Cheetah109]

Aqueducts. Let gravity do the work. Could still have magic creating the water that goes into the aqueducts. If they all originate at the same point, then you only need one magic item.

As for waste, it could always go to the nearest lake/ocean. Or some sort of sewage landfill.

[Brendan]

portable hole? plus an item of prestidigitation to keep the smell fruity and bacteria free maybe.
although i doubt you'd want to pay 20,000+ for just a toilet. its kind of scary to imagine that noone can afford a toilet until 8th level.

[Claudius Maximus]

A portal to the elemental plane of water at the top of the city, and a sphere of annihilation at the bottom of the giant anachronistic sewer system below it. Now you just need a series of pipes and aqueducts, and maybe a few powerful guardians.

[Doomboy911]

Aren't there monsters that eat "waste"?

[Kylarra]

trap of create water + trap of prestidigitation to clean it + basic plumbing to send the water somewhere.

[Godskook]

1.Decanter of Endless water provides 30 gallons per 6 seconds. Daily usage per household averages around 70 gallons per day. One decanter can provide enough water to serve the modern demands of 6171 people, and it can do so for less than 2gp per person. The system, security and billing efforts are going to cost more than the per-person cost of the magic item powering magical waterworks.

2.Waste management is neither cheap nor easy. Environmental concerns abound if the blackwater was merely dumped on the material plane. For no other reason than that all that water is *new*. Can we say Waterworld?

2a.If we utilize purification methods, the cleaned black water can probably be safely dumped onto the elemental plane of water. Not sure how to get a permanent gate opened up for us though....Ring gates don't work across planes.

2b.If we don't it *might* be safe to dump to the plane of fire. They'd be less receptive

2c.Dumping the blackwater onto another plane means a net loss of 'stuff' on the material, specifically edible 'stuff'. However, creating food is a *LOT* easier than disposing of blackwater. A travel cloak provides a day's food for 1200gp. A ring of sustenance is 2500gp. We should be able to feed someone *good* food for life on less than 4kgp.

3.Everything else about modern plumbing can be replicated by anyone industrious enough to want to try. I mean, we're only really missing control valves and piping in our set up so far.

[ericgrau]

1. You don't need modern technology or magic to make showers and toilets. The Greeks, Romans and many other societies did it. It fell away in Europe during the dark ages. All you need for water pressure is gravity, for example a lake or other water reservoir at a higher elevation. 2.3 feet = 1 psi. Typical water pressure = 40-60 psi (90-140 ft.) but toilets and showers don't need nearly that much. It would not be unreasonable for the more sophisticated cities to have nonmagical plumbing as well, while the poorer or more backwards towns would not.

2. That said, there are a million spells and magic items to do it. A custom item of unlimited flow of 2 gallons per round should cost 1,000 gp. Or a decanter of endless water could service several houses at 30 gallons per round for 7,000 gp. A shower takes 10 gallons. Flushing takes 2 gallons. A good house costs 5,000 gp, so adding plumbing isn't a huge deal. Well off areas without a higher altitude water source would probably use magic.

2.Waste management is neither cheap nor easy. Environmental concerns abound if the blackwater was merely dumped on the material plane. For no other reason than that all that water is *new*.

Ancient wastewater management was both cheap and easy. You dump it back into the river and your population which is 1,000 times lower than modern day is not enough to make a significant difference. The river dilutes the waste to acceptable levels and plants absorb it from there. Even cities downriver are fine. If you do have a huge population in your setting from a lot of techno-magic then you can probably afford unlimited items of purify food and drink as well. It's the same level as create water.

[Grim Reader]

1. You don't need modern technology or magic to make showers and toilets. The Greeks, Romans and many other societies did it. It fell away in Europe during the dark ages. All you need for water pressure is gravity, for example a lake or other water reservoir at a higher elevation. 2.3 feet = 1 psi. Typical water pressure = 40-60 psi (90-140 ft.) but toilets and showers don't need nearly that much. It would not be unreasonable for the more sophisticated cities to have nonmagical plumbing as well, while the poorer or more backwards towns would not.

+1. Must it be magical? Constant flow toilets and Roman baths would be significantly easier, and not leave cities subject to cholera after a well-aimed dispelling.

[Berenger]

trying to write up how there's working plumbing, and showers without the technological advancements we have now.

I don't know about the technology level of your campaign world, but just to be sure, you are aware that thermae, water closets, running water in private households and plumbing can be done with ancient roman technology, aren't you?

Edit: Argh, too slow.

[TheGeckoKing]

How about loads of pipes that lead to a pit with a trapped Ooze Paraelemental that eats the sewage.
Prestidigitation Spell Clocks that go off every 5 seconds set to clean the toilets.
Just my 2p.

[Gamer Girl]

For water:
1.Prestidigitation can clean a lot. You can have all sorts of very cheep prestidigitation magic items.

2.Mini Gates. Gates only about one inch around. And get some nice clean water from the elemental plane of water.

3.Teleport water. It's easy enough to teleport water where it's needed. A spellcaster with a couple servants could fill up a water tank once a day. Even faster/easier if they have a bag(barrel) of holding. This makes a good job for a summoned creature also..plenty of them can teleport at will.

4.Polymorph any object. You can make dirt to water no problem. Once a week an archmage can make 100's of cubic feet of water.

5.Clerics can create water all the time, and would again have plenty of such water creation items.

Dump
1.Black puddings are the classic here

2.Teleport, again. Simply teleport it anywhere else.

3.Gate day. Once in a while, open a gate to anywhere.

4.Polymorph the waste into anything else.

5.Prestidigitation can clean a lot. You can have all sorts of very cheep prestidigitation magic items.

[Godskook]

Ancient wastewater management was both cheap and easy. You dump it back into the river and your population which is 1,000 times lower than modern day is not enough to make a significant difference. The river dilutes the waste to acceptable levels and plants absorb it from there. Even cities downriver are fine. If you do have a huge population in your setting from a lot of techno-magic then you can probably afford unlimited items of purify food and drink as well. It's the same level as create water.

1.That post was written on the assumption that he's running this mostly on magic items, and among the chief concerns is handling the 5 gallons per second per 6k people in 'new' water that'd be appearing literally out of thin air in such a system.

2.There's no pre-made magic items that handle 'disposal' as well as the decanter handles generation that I can think of, and gating it out was the one method I could think of that had a reasonable RAI.

3.I was ignoring prestidigitation/purify food+drink cause using either for this kind thing seems outside their RAI, and a stretch of their RAW. If the OP is ok with them, that still leaves us with both of the environmental problems I mentioned(too much water and a net loss of resources).

[Naeo]

I forgot about the Romans and such having these...need to lay off the eggnog i guess while working on details.

that makes it a whole lot easier to explain.

[awa]

Otyughs and varies oozes in the sewer can handle all the waste

[mootoall]

Isn't there a quasi-elemental plane of sewage?

[boomwolf]

Otyughs and varies oozes in the sewer can handle all the waste

Most "good" races would not use a sewer system based on these guys. its predictable that from time to time some of them get out of the sewer to eat people.

Evil cities might consider it an affordable price.

[Admiral Squish]

Otyughs and varies oozes in the sewer can handle all the waste

I think eberron mentioned trained Gelatinous Cubes in the canals of Giant cities.

[awa]

Otyughs are neutral aligned and speak common i see no reason they would wreck the good deal they have living in the sewer by eating people. im sure you could find some way to keep a gelatinous cube in the sewer as well

[mootoall]

Ah, just checked, and I think a plane-shift trap to the quasi-elemental plane of oozes might do it. Also, the high cost of such a thing would explain why only the wealthy might have it!

[Ormur]

Yes, large advanced cities could very well have nonmagical plumbing but if magic is plentiful planting a decanter of endless water up on a nearby hill might be cheaper than building an aquaduct to the nearest mountain spring.

I ran into some trouble when building my stronghold since it was on a plain. This forum helped me to design a cheap magical pump, using mage hand as a basis, pumping water to a tank on top of the stronghold. I threw in pipes of purify water and prestidigitation to heat and clean the water. The rest is just plumbing. I used copper for the pipes even though lead and clay would have been more common.

[mootoall]

Yes, large advanced cities could very well have nonmagical plumbing but if magic is plentiful planting a decanter of endless water up on a nearby hill might be cheaper than building an aquaduct to the nearest mountain spring.

I ran into some trouble when building my stronghold since it was on a plain. This forum helped me to design a cheap magical pump, using mage hand as a basis, pumping water to a tank on top of the stronghold. I threw in pipes of purify water and prestidigitation to heat and clean the water. The rest is just plumbing. I used copper for the pipes even though lead and clay would have been more common.

Oh, right, you could just have traps of Purify Water and never have to worry again!

[Urpriest]

For disposing of material, the Bag of Devouring is a classic method. Sure, it's an Artifact, but all that means is the DM decides how common they are...if you're the DM, no worries.

[ericgrau]

1.That post was written on the assumption that he's running this mostly on magic items, and among the chief concerns is handling the 5 gallons per second per 6k people in 'new' water that'd be appearing literally out of thin air in such a system.

2.There's no pre-made magic items that handle 'disposal' as well as the decanter handles generation that I can think of, and gating it out was the one method I could think of that had a reasonable RAI.

3.I was ignoring prestidigitation/purify food+drink cause using either for this kind thing seems outside their RAI, and a stretch of their RAW. If the OP is ok with them, that still leaves us with both of the environmental problems I mentioned(too much water and a net loss of resources).

The world's oceans hold about 16.5 billion trillion gallons. Even billions of people creating thousands of gallons a year can't make a dent. Most historical or fantasy worlds have less people. Similar reasoning could be used for waste elimination. In the short run (readily available nutrients) livestock waste and decaying plant matter trump human waste by a large factor. In the long run (nutrients that must be converted) nutrients are quite literally as common as air, rock and dirt and likewise as endless as water.

[mootoall]

1.That post was written on the assumption that he's running this mostly on magic items, and among the chief concerns is handling the 5 gallons per second per 6k people in 'new' water that'd be appearing literally out of thin air in such a system.

When there's literally an endless plane of water, I don't think that the "new" water is going to very significant ...

[Apophis775]

1. You don't need modern technology or magic to make showers and toilets. The Greeks, Romans and many other societies did it. It fell away in Europe during the dark ages. All you need for water pressure is gravity, for example a lake or other water reservoir at a higher elevation. 2.3 feet = 1 psi. Typical water pressure = 40-60 psi (90-140 ft.) but toilets and showers don't need nearly that much. It would not be unreasonable for the more sophisticated cities to have nonmagical plumbing as well, while the poorer or more backwards towns would not.

2. That said, there are a million spells and magic items to do it. A custom item of unlimited flow of 2 gallons per round should cost 1,000 gp. Or a decanter of endless water could service several houses at 30 gallons per round for 7,000 gp. A shower takes 10 gallons. Flushing takes 2 gallons. A good house costs 5,000 gp, so adding plumbing isn't a huge deal. Well off areas without a higher altitude water source would probably use magic.


Ancient wastewater management was both cheap and easy. You dump it back into the river and your population which is 1,000 times lower than modern day is not enough to make a significant difference. The river dilutes the waste to acceptable levels and plants absorb it from there. Even cities downriver are fine. If you do have a huge population in your setting from a lot of techno-magic then you can probably afford unlimited items of purify food and drink as well. It's the same level as create water.

If I remember, didn't one of the roman emperors have a boat that not only had plumbing, but running warm and cold water?

I'm sure in a world of magic someones thought of something. That, or dig a hole and make an outhouse.

[aboyd]

1.Decanter of Endless water provides 30 gallons per 6 seconds. Daily usage per household averages around 70 gallons per day. One decanter can provide enough water to serve the modern demands of 6171 people, and it can do so for less than 2gp per person.

That's good. If you were to create a "pool of Create Water" that had both Create Water & Prestidigitation as continuous spells, you could do this for 2000 gp total, and it would cover 411 homes. However, I'm not thinking of using Prestidigitation to clean the water after it absorbs the waste. Instead I'm thinking that it's used to perfume the water or absorb the smell, so that homes don't stink like outhouses. I would have no problem shunting the wastewater out to a stream/river, as that kind of volume wouldn't adversely affect much.

It doesn't seem like this would be out of reach, although it does remind me of modern-day small, poor towns where people display their TVs in their home windows, as a matter of pride & achievement. I'd imagine this would be the kind of thing that a small town would be particularly proud of -- they'd team up to buy a communal magic item, and then probably have some non-disgusting way to show it off. For example, perhaps each town would have their water enchanted to have a unique scent, each town imagining that their waste water was superior to any other town that reproduced their idea. But that's just fluff. I'm not sure what would really happen in such a fictional situation, but it does seem that sanitary waste management is pretty cheap, even if it's magical.

[FelixG]

Decanter of endless water and use the remaining refuse as fertilizer in the fields after it is washed off, don't want to be polluting rivers and lakes after all!

Like wise you could have a create water trap tied to a flushing mechanism that drops into a Bag of Devouring.

it can hold 30 CUBIC FEET of waste and has a 5% chance every hour of devouring it all and dumping everything into non space/ another plane so I think that would work for most of a town or city, especially if you have items of these at the bottom of sewers

[jpreem]

Sounds like cool new SPLAT-book.
I wonder what the new classes and Prc-s would be. Something Mario themed?