Best ways to create buildings with magic?


Advice


Wizards like having their fortresses. What's the best way to make them with magic so you don't have to pay a middle man and don't have to wait a lifetime?

Fabricate, Wall of Stone and Stone Shape are the classic building spells, but is there anything else? There's a few problems with them that need workarounds too. Fabricate needs raw material, and Wall of Stone "must merge with and be solidly supported by existing stone".

Seems to me the best way to work around Wall of Stone is Transmute Mud to Rock. Dig a large (several yards across) hole (Expeditious Excavation, Unseen Servant, hire some laborers for a silver a day) then a smaller hole within that, fill the smaller hole with mud (may need to add some basic wooden boards as a mold) and cast that. Then cast Wall of Stone to make a real foundation filling the larger hole. From there keep casting Wall of Stone till you have a shell, then do the detail work with Stone Shape and Fabricate.

How can we improve on this?


I like to use 2 parallel walls of stone with just enough space between for a nice lead layer. Outer facings with wall of iron are a nice touch.

Or, if you like subteranean structures, disintegrate can do the rough work for tunneling into bedrock, or a mountain side. Then finish/ customize with walls of stone etc.. like you would for a standard structure.


There's create demiplane or mage's magnificent mansion if you want your place built right now.

Also, many adventurers will get a fortress by finding one and killing everything inside.

If you want to build one specifically then a lyre of building is going to make your work a lot easier.


Yeah, but that's boring. Also higher spell level: All the spells mentioned in the OP are 5th level or lower, so you can start as early as 9th level. Magnificent Mansion is 7th and Create Demiplane gets even higher.


Sure, but a lyre of building at least is easy enough to make.

Edit: My 3rd level wizard could do it right now if there was enough in the party fund, which there may be if we survive the current fight.


Marvelous pigments are often overlooked. Certainly, you could only create a 10x10x10 structure if you were just using one pot to create a structure, but you could encase a wall or large amount of wall surface in lead or create a gate of bone, brass, or glass (especially good if you aren't a caster).

It's a good way to get a starting foundation or other anchor of stone for your wall of stone spells and being able to cover 1,000 cubic feet of wall with lead (and that's a 1-foot thick block, probably way more if you go down to the typical thin layer most applications use for protection) is pretty handy. 4,000 gp a pot may seem a lot, but being able to do that in 10 minutes (assuming you can access the areas you're painting that fast) is pretty handy.

It's no fabricate or lyre of building but I think it is worth mentioning, especially for non-casters.


Overlooked how Marvelous Pigments can actually make something a mundane but non-valuable material. That's really nifty.

As for Lyre of Building, it really only wins over spells when dealing with large areas or things you have no spells for. Unskilled laborers are pretty slow.


Oh, is there any way to remove waste beyond a Sphere of Annihilation? All the ways I can think of are simply moving it to somewhere else.


In the works of fiction, it is usually done via Wish. 50K is a bargain for a fortress.

In game: go with Create Demiplane. You can have anything you can imagine, including elaborately designed flying castles and Gardens of Eden.


deuxhero wrote:
Oh, is there any way to remove waste beyond a Sphere of Annihilation? All the ways I can think of are simply moving it to somewhere else.

Bag of Devouring, Disintegration, a pet otyugh, composting ...


Depends on what you want to make the fortress out of. If stone is good enough, find a location where you can quarry for stone. Preferably somewhere you can use as a foundation. Dig any sub levels you want with Shape Stone, making sure you "cut" the stone into 20 lb blocks so Unseen Servant can move the blocks to where you want them. Just stack the blocks near the location you want to cast another Stone Shape to turn them into walls and supports for your above ground structure. If you find any ore you can try to fabricate it into metal bars and stone blocks or whatever.

Also Wall of Stone can be used to hurry up the construction process on the surface. Wall of Iron can also be used but at 50gp per casting I'd be slightly hesitant to use it.

Fabricate is best used to add organic matter to the completed structure. Wood paneling, carpets, furniture, and the like can easily be added if you're wizard knows how to work the materials (aka has appropriate crafting skills).

If you are planning on an entirely underground lair, Stone Shape works out better than Disintegrate. Disintegrate only does a 10' cube at a time, while Stone Shape does a 10+1 per level with the minor detail of needing to move the stone which can be accomplished with Unseen Servant or just grunt work. Bag of Holding or Portable Hole speeds up this process significantly.

For any construction your wizard will want either Engineering or Architecture skill so the building won't collapse. Good luck!


Re: waste removal:

Go swimming in it, then prestidigitate yourself clean. Repeat until waste-free.


Meirril wrote:
If you are planning on an entirely underground lair, Stone Shape works out better than Disintegrate. Disintegrate only does a 10' cube at a time, while Stone Shape does a 10+1 per level with the minor detail of needing to move the stone which can be accomplished with Unseen Servant or just grunt work. Bag of Holding or Portable Hole speeds up this process significantly.

Just a minor note for clarity purposes, there's a difference between a 10-foot cube and 10 cubic feet. For instance, a 5th-level caster using stone shape could mold 15 cubic feet of stone (10 + CL), so about 3 feet across, 5 feet high, and 1 foot deep. It wouldn't be until 15th level (25 cu. ft.) that he could go one feet deep in a 5 ft. x 5 ft. corridor. The 10-foot cube of disintegrate would be 1000 cubic feet, or 10 x 10 x 10.

Stone shape certainly allows more control and shaping and sculpting of the stone, however, allowing the creation of columns or stone doors, etc. while working.


@blahpers
That seems super inefficient.

Putting the waste in water and casting Purify Food and Water would make pure water (at least pure enough for drinking). Problem is the spell only purifies a very tiny amount of water (It only does a cubic foot of material a level. A gallon of water is just under 7.5 cubic feet.) and you still have a bunch of water. Blue Dragons have the ability to destroy it, but there's no spell equivalent. Enhance Water does more, though still slow, and while you can sell the result (or at least get someone to take it away without paying them) you need to keep where your ale comes from a carefully guarded secret.

@Meirril

As a 9th+ level wizard you don't actually need craft. It's not a trained only skill and your int bonus will be over +5, so you can do all but "complex" (DC20) items without the skill. Throw in Crafter's Fortune and you can do those fine too. Add Heroism and some way of getting Guidance and you hit DC25. Do need Knowledge (Engineering), but that's easy to do when you had your second intelligence boost a level ago and it's around when you upgrade your headband from +2 to +4.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Small math correction again, that gallon/cubic goot comparison is backwards, a cubic foot of water is 7.48 US gallons.


Oh, then it works fine in a self-resetting trap if you can find some way to remote the water afterwards.


On destroying material: material components are destroyed when a spell is cast. The spell silt sphere has a material component of a smooth stone, no size specified. OK, it's a bit silly, but it should work.


I don't know of any way to make that automatic though. I will have to remember that Scrying is good for draining water though.

I seem to have found a solution though, Taverns of the Inner Sea implicitly (Neutralize Poison ends drunkenness) reintroduces the "alcohol is poison" thing from 3.5. Turning water into booze (there's at least 3 separate spells to do it now. None specify alcohol content, but Tears to Wine is the best option purely because it's on the Wizard list.) then purifying it should destroy the alcohol, leaving only water which then has a percent converted to booze which is then destroyed.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Best ways to create buildings with magic? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice