Post RHoD - Lord of the Western Elsir Vale - where to begin?

[Cagemarrow]

We just finished the Red Hand of Doom campaign and thoroughly stomped the end villain as well as the Aspect of Tiamat that showed up to avenge him. As a reward my character, as the party diplomat, was granted the title of Lord of the Western Elsir Vale, instead of the 18k gp treasure each of the others got. We are going to continue playing an expanded campaign in the region as it was fleshed out rather well and we all like the area and NPCs in it.

My character, Binder 12 (EBL 14), is now responsible for building a defensible fortress for the citizens of his territory as well as establishing patrols to protect travelers on the dangerous Dwarf road, and the southern pass of the Dawn Way. Both flank the Wyrm Smoke Mountains where the horde of hobgoblins that we stopped came from. I plan to have him repair Verathi Keep where we cleared of hobgoblins early in the campaign as well as building a wall of Livewood around the town of Drellan's Ferry. The fact that my character, with one of his summons, can produce 20 cu ft of permanent plant material every 30 seconds is going to be a huge boon to these plans since plant based construction materials are free (Livewood, Brozewood, Soarwood, Duskwood, Darkwood all play heavily into my plans). He'll still have to pay for labor to get everything built but its going to make his Landlord feat allowance stretch a whole hell of a lot further. His maxed Leadership score helps with the staffing needs as well and his cohort, a bard, recently picked up a Lyr of Building to help augment construction as well, she can't fail the perform checks to keep playing it after the first hour so can enhance construction by 3 days labor from 100 workmen every half hour for as long as she keeps playing. This will probably be limited to 8 hours of playing at a time, and its usable once every week to add to the construction.

I've been thinking about ways to reliably patrol the mountain range and two roads and think I may end up having to build a couple of half sized airships, cutters instead of destroyers, to patrol the ranges and drop troops where danger crops up. Until then patrols of soldiers with airwalk cast on them are going to have to be sufficient.

Identified Tasks/Goals

*rebuild the town of Drellan's Ferry, build a wall around the town.
*rebuild Verathi Keep to base patrols out of
*rebuild the Skull Gorge Bridge
*build a ship yard and construct small airships to patrol the region
*train my followers as craftsman, soldiers, shiphandlers as needed.
*patrol the roads and passes with soldiers sufficient to take out decent sized hobgobin raids and monsters
*once the roads are safe travel to the cities to the west and let the merchants know that the roads are safe again to promote trade


If anyone has any additional suggestions or ideas that I may have missed I'd love to hear them.

[Cagemarrow]

So no one has any ideas about what they'd do if they were suddenly put in charge of a border town to mountains known for being home to Hobgoblin raiders?

I need all the help I can get for ideas of what to prepare for.

[skydragonknight]

Give them bait they cannot ignore and lure them into a trap. I expect them to be mounted, so use caltrops to cut their mounts mobility and pick them off with ranged attacks. Bye bye bandits.

[Cagemarrow]

Ooh, I didn't think about setting up a Honey Pot. Nice.

Any other ideas? What will I need to pay for maintenance on all of this after its setup, salary for guards, road crews, etc?

[Havok4]

Just have your infinite army of genies make valuable plant matter and sell it off. Like black lotus extract or soarwood.

[Cagemarrow]

GM has ruled infinite money from that isn't allowed. I can use it to make stuff we can use, but selling the items is forbidden. So I have to come up with other ways to fund the region. Of course that doesn't stop me from having the best equipped militia ever. Masterwork Bronze wood items for everyone!

[Havok4]

Set up a hospital, use summons with healing abilities and Buer to fund your operation. Another option would be to pay your militia in recreational drugs, food and lodging but that would cause issues.

[Cagemarrow]

Well that could be an option for a while I suppose. A good number of my followers are goblins, due to in story negotiations with Saarvith, who we captured alive. I figure if I can convince them to Atone, through hard work as well as the spell, for their misdeeds perhaps they can work to remove the stereotype their race falls under and eventually have a society that works as well as the Halflings have.

Setting up a hospital's not a bad idea either. Not sure how they'll handle my character going out adventuring again though, guess I'll have to recruit some clerics or healers.

[Havok4]

Exactly, you just need to do the healing yourself to get things started up and later you could have clerics, healers and dragon shamans as hired help to keep everyday hospital running and you would help out yourself in times of great need, like plagues.

[Cagemarrow]

Well I've been reading the stronghold builder's guide and apparently the Lyre of Building is much more useful then I thought. According to it, if my bard can play it for 2 hours per week construction costs for labor are free. Since I can provide materials for wooden construction for free my Landlord Allowance is going to be stretched to ridiculous levels.

Time may be an issue, according to my calculations if my bard can play for 8 hours a week it will take 16.8 weeks to build a 20 ft Livewood wall, 10 ft thick at the base 5 at the top, around the 3600ft length of wall needed to protect the town of Drellan's Ferry. Verathi Keep should be fully repaired within 8 hours.

Maybe I should spend some of my treasure on another Lyre. . . I've already decided to purchase a Decanter of Endless Water and a Spade of Plant Growth 1/day for the town. I'm hoping that frequent watering of the Livewood wall as well as the plant growth spell will allow the timbers to grow together to make the overall wall all one piece. Like taking a recently felled sapling, and splicing a cutting from a different kind of tree to the cut trunk of the sapling to grow a new tree of the kind of the cutting. Apple orchards and grape producers do this all the time.

[Cagemarrow]

I guess one downside to all this is going to be the fact that items are going to be vulnerable to Dispels, albeit at a DC of 31.

Maybe I better buy the supplies for my airship after all.

[Cagemarrow]

I didn't think this deserved a new thread, so I hope people don't mind me casting Raise Dead on this one. My stint as GM is getting close to being finished as the party is approximately 2 sessions away from completing the Expedition to the Demonweb Pits and everyone's agreed that they want to continue playing their current characters rather than starting a new game. Yay! That means I'll get to continue playing my Binder Jacob Turner, Lord of the Western Vale, again. In game time it's been four months since he was given a title and winter should be coming to an end fairly soon. The rest of the party has been Planes jumping trying to stop Lolth so Jacob has had a lot of time to build up material supplies and rebuild as much of the town as possible.

Anyway I've discovered Google Sketchup and have begun working on converting the map of Drellan's Ferry to 3d. I very surprised at how easy it is to use and may end up doing a full build of the city with the changes. I'm thinking of building up the western bank with a wall to wrap around the buildings and the lake, it would cut through the forest area a bit.

The current image of this city is after about 3 hours of work in Sketchup, most of which was me trying to figure out how to work the interface and tools which are vastly different from Maya, which I learned in school close to 10 years ago now. Man I'm getting old. I would highly recommend the program if anyone is interested in doing something similar with other maps or dungeons. It's free and there are lots of video tutorials and help forums if you have any questions getting started. This image started out as a projection  of the map from Wizard's site on a thin rectangle on which I traced out the shapes of the buildings and terrain loosely and the used the Push/Pull tool to pull them up from the surface, which retains the projected texture on the outer face. There's still a lot of cleanup I need to do but this gives me a much better idea of the town and it's layout than just the plain map did.

[Havok4]

Put the file up when you are finished, that would be a great aid if I ever have to run RHoD again.

[Cagemarrow]

Now the DM's talking about having the rest of the party return from their Plane Jumping adventures, I ran them through the Expedition to the Demonweb Pits while our DM was deployed, 100+ years after they left. As Jacob will have gained his 5th level in Knight of the Sacred Seal and become an untyped outsider he's thinking about having him be immortal in the classic sense of not being able to die of old age.

Anyone have any ideas on how this could change his plans for the town? I have to admit I had only really been planning on a few months of downtime to get things rebuilt and the region's safety established. I'm not sure where to begin with years of time available to build and develop a working government, army, and trade federation. Especially since the DM has hinted that things haven't gone as well as Jacob had hoped, and his ability to provide for his people may end up being taken for granted rather then used as an emergency ability.

What would you do if you had his abilities? What dangers should he watch out for?

[Gavinfoxx]

You don't ACTUALLY need to pay for labor to get things built. Really.

First, let me point you to the 'stuff creation' / stuff changing spells.  You already have the plant is permanent Major Creation; kudos for not needing a Simulacrum of a Djinn to do it!  You probably know most of these, but here is all of them that I can find

Wall of Iron
Wall of Stone
Greater Stone Metamorphosis
Ironwood
Transmute Rock to Mud
Transmute Mud to Rock
Transmute Metal to Wood
Transmute Stone to Sand
Transmute Sand to Glass
Soften Earth and Stone
Invisible Spell (the feat, on a rod, make invisible whatever)

Look at these labor-doing-for-free spells:
Move Earth
Unseen Servant
Unseen Crafter (This is a BIG ONE)
Shape Metal
Metal Melt (use for welding by melting small items on two big ones)
Stone Shape
Fabricate (This is a BIG ONE)
Greater Stone Shape
Nature's Rampart
Magecraft
Planar Ally
Planar Binding
Lyre of Building (an item not a spell, of course. And remember you can take 10!)

Remember, SBG is NOT the end all of prices on stuff! For example, there are DMG prices too:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#cityBuildings
And Cityscape has prices as well (villa/manor costs 2d8*1000gp)

Also figure out WHICH of these methods the DM likes for making emplacements (like that can go on a ship or sit in the middle of town) that auto cast a spell:



1.) Eternal Wands, from Magic Item Compendium. They have a little bit of an extra surcharge on them from the DMG formula, but gives 2/day casting of spells levels 1-3.

2.) Magical traps using the DMG rules for recharge and stuff. Note that if you want precedent for magical traps that are beneficial, look at the Boon traps in Dungeonscape

3.) Drow House Insignia sorts of items, explained in the book Races of Faerun, pg 175. Basically use the DMG rules, but this gives a specific form, 1/day limitation, and certain spell levels, I think 1-3.

4.) Minor Schema, from the book Magic of Eberron (A way to cast spells lvl 1-6, once a day, I believe)

5.) Generic wondrous items that cast spells, per the DMG rules for custom magic items

6.) Spell Turrets, from Dungeon Master's Guide II

7.) Spell clocks, from here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a&dcmp=ILC-RSSDND

Also figure out the DM's ruling on combining magic items per DMG, with the weirdness on how the order in which you combnine items makes a difference for some reason (this could matter).

Some of the cheaper ways to get large airships aloft (aside from soarwood) would probably be the Suspension spell from EDIT: SHINING SOUTH.  Once you get it aloft with that, it's MUCH cheaper to add mobility via the SBG options.  Also you could use a decanter of endless water + riverine container with riverine nozzle + some way of creating an eternal wall of flame in the container to create a massive amount of superheated thrust, which you could put on the end of a rudder.

Also Decanters of Endless Water work GREAT for high powered (like wayyy higher than gravity power) waterwheels -- but the wheel is going to have to be really big, ideally.  Or a repeating trap of Blockade with a freaking HUGE 'waterwheel' can do a lot of horsepower (a properly made 60 foot wheel with 3 blockade blocks on it at any one time will have as much power as a V6 at 3000 rpm. If you like I can give you my aim conversation with an engineer about that).  But if you have a repeating trap of Unseen Crafter, and you maybe research a custom skill for the same thing but for professions (Unseen Worker, perhaps?), you can basically get your output in 'simple crafting, work, and labor' to be damn near infinite.  Build a bunch of tools, build a wall / ditch / major construction in a day, etc.  Anything DC 11 or so in profession or craft... and you can take 10 on those, and a LOT of things are low DC.  As for you? All the SHORT DURATION skill spells work juuuust fiinnnee with Fabricate.

Also, Major Creation of all plant based materials = infinite money as long as you can export.  Remember you can export extremely valuable plant based poisons, including ethical poisons like drow poison (it's anesthetic! honest! see? labeled as anesthetic for surgical use, with warnings and instructions on use!) plant based alchemical goods, all those wooods are crazy valuable (serren! densewood! darkwood! bronzewood! livewood! duskwood!), and you have infinite useful plant based items like lacquer, deisel, rubber, resin, glue, paper, cardboard, cumin, silphium, coffee, saffron, tobacco, pepper, chilies, paprika, cacao, anise, poppy, marijuana, etc. Expect scry and die from pissed off trade barons though.

Also, for training followers? Research a version of Magecraft that is touch based, to put in a repeating trap (there's one in Pathfinder if your DM likes that).  Then research a version that works on professions.  Bam, as long as they have the tools in hand (to serve as foci for the traps), they can competently do any crafting or profession that day.  Plus with the repeating traps of Unseen Crafter (and a researched version, Unseen Worker), anyone can do any amount of boring grunt work too.

Other good spells to put in repeating traps on a big boulevard:
Endure Elements
Prestidigitation
Create Food and Water
Purify Food and Drink
Good Hope
Make Whole
Lesser Restoration
Panacea
Low Light Vision
Superior Darkvision
Mount

Bam, everyone is happy, has as much tasty food as they could ever need, no one needs to sleep ever, no one needs shelter, all their equipment is fixed, they are free from disease, they have as many magical horses to haul them or whatever they want or to do labor as they want, they can see in the dark to work because they don't need to sleep ever.  With all the infinite wealth and infinite 'free work', instant utopia.

Craft Spell Turrets & heavily templated Effigies to defend it, or get the druid to summon and release (into the hands of an animal trainer) animal companions for training, and you don't have to worry about defense either.

Create something to rival Sharn!

[ShadowViper]

Holy shit dude, awesome post! 

[Cagemarrow]

Create something to rival Sharn.

Definitely my plan. But for now I'll keep it rather modest. Here's my initial rebuild plan, this was from when I thought I had 100 years of downtime coming.

White are merchant buildings, dark brown residential, grey are the municipal buildings (Guard posts, City hall, Library, school, and hospital), tan churches, light brown guild/craft halls. Blue circles are wells/fountains. The towers on the island are the arcane school, don't want inexperienced casters practicing too close to the flammable town. I plan to leave the northern part of the inlet open as a public park with the woods. The surrounding countryside is going to be farmland and I have already made an object of once per day Plant Growth, may up it to at will, to be used by a trusted lieutenant to make sure they stay productive. I plan to put in more docks south of the inlet entrance and may put in a barge building yard to promote shipping along the river.

GM has ruled that I can't use the Major Creation to create unlimited party/personal funds, but can be used to add improvements to the town. He's also ruled that I can't have any Artificer cohorts or followers. No Trap Smith spell list for making items either unless I go out and find one to provide spells for me. I would love to have 3rd level Walls of Stone and Fabricate items.

Love the ideas and I had some of that in mind already. The eldritch engine idea is definitely appealing. Set it up to drive a mill and set my followers and towns folk to building pretty much anything would they could export. The Iron wood spell isn't necessary as one of the created wood types acts like it anyway, Duskwood. Just wish the town was on an ocean, could easily turn it into an oceanic powerhouse if it was.

Doesn't look like I'm going to have as much downtime to make the city as the DM initially suggested. He has decided not to skip ahead so I'll have to build it as we game. Good thing one of my summons is a 5th level cleric, for lesser restoration, so I won't have to sleep at least. In addition many of them can cast Continual Flame as a (Sp) ability so free safe lighting for the entire city. As a wood based city fire may be a concern. I can also blanket the entire city in Consecrated Ground and bind useful spells to them, would have to be renewed each year. Could make it into an annual celebration of sorts.

I'm going to look into those other building options as well. Sound a lot cheaper than the stronghold versions and should be just as easy to build with my Lyre of building. Should probably invest in more of those as well. 13k for a 68k stronghold per week is a very good bargain. Get a couple more and the speed of construction goes up considerably, as well as the defensive abilities of the town during a siege, Gates immune to damage are hard to knock down. I think I'll also invest in a Bottle of Endless sand. With the lyre it could be used to create more glass than we'll ever need, and I could put in a beach for the kids on the lake.

Maybe I really should look into preventing that scry and die thing after all. Any handbooks for that? How many ranks in Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering and Craft: Carpentry do you think I should invest in? What would be the DCs stuff like this is going to take to get created initially?

[Gavinfoxx]

Remember that there are A LOT of skill spells and powers and prayers and stuff that are relevant:

Loresong
Divine Insight
Wieldskill
Guidance
Guidance of the Avatar
Precognition
Magecraft
Skillful Moment

and so on. This is *especially* relevant if you are using repeat use traps or schema or wondrous devices or spell clocks of Fabricate.  Remember, Masterwork is DC 20, Dwarvencraft is DC 22, and you can take 10 on craft checks; houses are probably all DC 10, MAYBE DC 15.  Hardly anything is likely to be DC 20 on up.  You really, really, REALLY want to get an infinite repeating trap of Unseen Crafter ASAP, and have your folk with the most RANKS use it.  However, the fabricate device is definitely going to be far, far more versatile -- you can use LOTS of short duration spells on that, and you can't do that on Unseen Crafter, and these many unseen crafter things can work together on big big projects!  You also want that Touch Magecraft / the one that lets people not have to farm for free food asap, as well as the one that lets people not have to sleep. The idea is to get as much productivity out of everyone as fast as possible!  Also don't be afraid to use summoned creatures to do certain types of work as well! A repeating trap of a mid level (4 to last 8 hours at least) of Mount is INSANELY useful.  Horses are great for labor and work and hauling things, especially magical horses that you don't have to worry about feeding or working to death!

Also, part of the reason for Ironwood? I'm fairly sure that of the magical woods, the Ironwood spell is the best way to prevent them from burning. And you can presumably cast Ironwood on a magic wood, or do the alchemy stuff on a magic wood, or use the Hardening spell, and it would help somehow..

As for a cohort? Get a Wizard who uses as many of this stuff as possible:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7274
and consider this as an idea farm as well:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19870786/Mechonomicon
Note that the Mechonomicon thing HAS CONSTRUCTS THAT CAN CRAFT!  I would consider Girallon Effigies with enough templates to get them all the move speeds (swim/burrow/fly/etc).  Something that strong with the ability to do all sorts of movement has to be helpful somehow, even if it is just loosening up dirt with burrow and then moving dirt with a bunch of shovels.
Make sure that Wizard definitely has Magecraft and lots of other craft skills, knowledge skills, and relevant profession skills trained (or at least Jack of All Trades), AND as many of these spells KNOWN as possible!  That's almost as good as an Artificer!  Also get a Cloistered Cleric with appropriate domains (there are QUITE a few that are good for crafting!), and maybe replacing the Knowledge domain with hand picked divination Wizard spells (for Magecraft and stuff like that)?

Also consider a FACTOTUM ALLY with your Leadership!

FYI, I edited my post with all the advice, there were some issues in it.

[Cagemarrow]

Now I'm really wishing I had planned to go into anima Mage. Do you know if artificers can qualify for it? I'm not sure if second level infusions qualify as second level spells for prc requirements.

It's too bad craft construct has so many prerequisites. I'd love a few homunculi for crafting as well.

Or maybe I'll go for the Chameleon prc, already have able learner and most the required skills. Only need one more level of Binder and I'll have Summon monster XI, then the next 6 levels could be in Chameleon which would give me a CL of 12 for all arcane spells, 16 if I take practiced spellcaster, a floating feat, and a moveable stat adjustment. Hmm. . .and with Extra Spell I can add all the spells to my spell book, as well as have something else to sell/export.

[Gavinfoxx]

Send me an email or an IM and I'll send you the big long chat I had with the engineer.