My players have 2 kobold NPC's that are friendly to helping. The party owns a house, and wants the kobold's to build a basement, and then a warren like escape tunnel under the house.
The Kobold's said warrens are usually built by the whole tribe, so it will take some time, but they are willing. One even mention perhaps they should capture some badgers.
So anyway as a new GM I wanna roll with this, and allow them to start slowly building out their design, but am slow to just hand wave all the build times.
Is this even a reasonable task? and assuming burrowing animals could be harnessed via the party's pack master druid, how can that affect the build times.
I invite your thoughts on this situation, and what you would see as "realistic" times to work with. and any other thoughts.
Thanks! u guys make being a new gm a LOT less stressful.
Can the Druid summon an Earth Elemental? If so, that will make it easy.
It took months for 30 men to dig the tunnel for The Great Escape (300' of 2x2 tunnel.) The biggest problem is disposing of the dirt. Every 3-4' of 2'x2' tunnel is about a ton of dirt.
No elemental guy is more into taming pets, and capturing things. kinda a low magic world. Dealing with the dirt will be an issue, as they do not want to alert the neighbors. I would like this to be a time consuming process for them, a add a room as we go sort of thing.
So far I have in mind, they are going to need to get some badgers..or other burrowing creatures. While the kobold pair are exceptional representatives of their species, and are perfectly capable of smashing a hole in the floor, and even designing really good tunnels and traps.
They are going to get tired of digging fast..
But should be able to (with the druids help) supervise a few burrowing critters.
Looking at dire badgers, they can burrow at a speed of 10, but again as u say, the dirt has to go somewhere..I am hesitant to just throw a bag of holding at them..low magic world and all.
Knowing my group, they will find a creative solution to moving the dirt out, and I have a plot hook that I can spin off from a "go to this area to find badgers" involving a were badger.
By the end of that I would expect the players to have at least a couple of badgers, and maybe even a were badger npc ally.
So I guess I just need at this point, to figure out what kind of time scale a couple of trained badgers, could dig out a 10x10 room.
One of the party has the stone shape spell ability as well.
Knowing 30 humans, took many months helps keep it in perspective, however they did not have kobolds and badgers :)
Those thirty guys also had 200 disposing of the dirt, and had to stop digging several times while the excess was disposed of.
Actually, most likely the dirt disposal will determine how long it takes to dig out the rooms. The badgers will be able to dig faster than the kobolds can scoop and transport the dirt.
Beware the kobold clan that raises bulettes.
Also looking into the spells Expeditious excavation, and Move Earth. as possible tools.
but still all that dirt to deal with...with out the town guards seeing.
best I can come up with is a bag at a time, to a wagon then out side of town to dump.
Gelatinous cubes don't "eat" dirt do they? nah if they did how would they move around with out dissolving the ground. Party does have one trapped in a room a few days away, why? "in case we need it latter"
So ill have to figure out how to transport it, maybe a stone shaped box.
but I digress. Any dirt eating critters exist? (from the material plane only).
So bag of holding wins for dirt removal. was hesitant to introduce them, as I have seen some serious meta gamey use from them...but what the hey. nothing anymore ridiculous than using kobolds and badgers to build a underground lair.
will still take many trips, and should slow the build time down considerably. Right now I am thinking 1 type I bag can hold 30 cubic feet of "items" so that's 30 cu feet of dirt, each trip.
A badger should be able to burrow 10feet per round, I assume that's not cubic feet, and not under druid influence. (as was said above) that will take longer to bag the lose dirt than for them to dig it, but I am trying to focus on dig times, rather than combine those times.
How many cubic feet can a badger move in one day?
I am letting the players draw a map of what they want to build, each square on the map is 5x5 and 10 feet high, seems each 5x5x10 "square" on the map should be 250 cubic feet of dirt.
So whatever final math I end up with on, how much dirt they can move in a full day, every 250ft will equal another square on the map they draw.
at 1 bag a day, that would mean it would take 8 days per square. For a 6 square by 6 square room, would take 288 days to dig out, with 1 badger.
This math sound wrong to anyone? may be totally off on the cubic feet a day a badger can move, I think 2 npcs, should be able to load 1 bag a day easy. I do wonder though, how many they could fill in a day.
Dirt removal: Prestidigitation? "Clean" 1' of material w/every casting and can be spammed all day. Wouldn't that do it?
Another idea might be to dig an extra trench to sluice out dirt and use create water to move it along; perhaps also a mage hand with a paddle. The water would evaporate after 24 hours and the washed away dirt could be either left at the end of the sluice or dealt with the next day.
In the AD&D DM's Guide it says that kobolds can mine "very soft rock" at a rate of 80' per 8 hour workday. It goes on to say that "earth excavation" which is defined as a "ditch, 100' in length, 10' deep and 20' wide" takes a crew of 3-4 men six weeks to construct. On the other hand, UC states an "Escape Route", defined as a "Tunnel leading to a hidden exit from a building" of 6-12 squares requires 16 days worth of work.
What does this tell me? It says that it should take between 1 and 16 days for the kobold/badger/druid team to generate the initial tunnel or potentially 6 weeks to make that space really impressive.
Or you could just wing it.
Can the Druid summon an Earth Elemental? If so, that will make it easy.
It took months for 30 men to dig the tunnel for The Great Escape (300' of 2x2 tunnel.) The biggest problem is disposing of the dirt. Every 3-4' of 2'x2' tunnel is about a ton of dirt.
I can't speak as to the math of having kobolds dig something out, but as to the comparison made above: I'm fairly certain the guys in the Great Escape had their timetable increased pretty wildly by it having to be in secret, not to mention having to steal or make their own makeshift tools as they went. If you're just constructing something, then everything is sped up by an order of magnitude, not even accounting for magic or kobold tunneling.
Even if you're concerned about keeping the escape tunnel secret, just don't let people freely explore the construction site and tell them you're still digging the basement. This should keep things at a more reasonable rate of construction.
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Can the Druid summon an Earth Elemental? If so, that will make it easy.
It took months for 30 men to dig the tunnel for The Great Escape (300' of 2x2 tunnel.) The biggest problem is disposing of the dirt. Every 3-4' of 2'x2' tunnel is about a ton of dirt.
I can't speak as to the math of having kobolds dig something out, but as to the comparison made above: I'm fairly certain the guys in the Great Escape had their timetable increased pretty wildly by it having to be in secret, not to mention having to steal or make their own makeshift tools as they went. If you're just constructing something, then everything is sped up by an order of magnitude, not even accounting for magic or kobold tunneling.
Even if you're concerned about keeping the escape tunnel secret, just don't let people freely explore the construction site and tell them you're still digging the basement. This should keep things at a more reasonable rate of construction.
If you had read the thread, the Kobolds are trying to keep the escape tunnels secret.
Given the size of a badger, it should be able to dig up a 10x10x10 cube of dirt in a day, but that is 1000 cubic feet of dirt, so it will take them 34 trips just using the bag of holding to remove the dirt.
As a more real example, I, an out of shape and overweight guy, working not real diligently dug and moved about 12 cubic feet of dirt in about 6 hours. (Wish I had had a trained badger.)
Can you imagine how depressing it would be to shovel dirt into a bag of holding?
Also looking into the spells Expeditious excavation, and Move Earth. as possible tools.
but still all that dirt to deal with...with out the town guards seeing.
best I can come up with is a bag at a time, to a wagon then out side of town to dump.Gelatinous cubes don't "eat" dirt do they? nah if they did how would they move around with out dissolving the ground. Party does have one trapped in a room a few days away, why? "in case we need it latter"
So ill have to figure out how to transport it, maybe a stone shaped box.
but I digress. Any dirt eating critters exist? (from the material plane only).
What do martians call earthlings? Dirt eating farmers!
From "The Martian Way".But seriously, there isn't a war going on like WW2. Some NPCs with a cart will take that free dirt and sell it where the soil is poor or eroding. You will run into a lot of rocks, and towns building levees will be buying rocks. With the barter system, some farmers will be paying in hay and whatever they can harvest. Some fruit and crops would go to waste otherwise.
Given the size of a badger, it should be able to dig up a 10x10x10 cube of dirt in a day, but that is 1000 cubic feet of dirt, so it will take them 34 trips just using the bag of holding to remove the dirt.
As a more real example, I, an out of shape and overweight guy, working not real diligently dug and moved about 12 cubic feet of dirt in about 6 hours. (Wish I had had a trained badger.)
Can you imagine how depressing it would be to shovel dirt into a bag of holding?
10x10x10 sounds much more realistic, for badger movement (I was watching some you tube vids of badgers digging, wow they move a lot of dirt fast and easy.
Yes they need to keep it secret, can't even have it known they are building a basement. They are renting the house :) should have some decent plot hooks spin off the tunnel system, as they find a existing tunnel from the local baron, and I had thought perhaps exit their tunnel near a graveyard that is currently the stalking grounds of a local necromancer.
I think this will give them an edge with dirt disposal too, as there are often fresh mounds of dirt around the graveyard. along with scattering it and taking a few bags with them when they leave town..perhaps they will have incentive to acquire a wagon (would help in 3-4 adventures from now when they raid a lair, for that matter so would the bag of holding.)
When confronted with what will you do with all this dirt, My party didn't even blink....We start from the other end, way out there in the woods, and scatter the dirt out the back end.
That option seems viable, and would allow the badgers to do more dirt removal, (10x10x10 a day +1day to push that dirt out, so 2 days for every 2 squares of the map) and remove the need for a "bag at a time"...though could speed up construction more than I would like, if they get a lot of badgers...
I do not want "poof your lair is built". I would like to see 1 "room" added between each adventure, but don't want to "nerf reality" just to suit my time scale..not a habit a GM should get into easily imo.
I appreciate everyone helpin me to work through this mental excavation.
Freeloaders, as people who take anything for free are often called, never ask where it comes from. They often operate at night to avoid annoying questions. The guards who work at night often only stop them to grab some of the best stones to repair the castle basement. This "Stone Tax" is totally off the books.
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"kinda a low magic world", but bags of holding just happen to be available to use? all-righty then...
Suggestion: Don't hand feed your players. Much of the fun of RPGs is having the players overcome the challenges. If it is reasonable for the challenge to be difficult, let it be difficult.
A few other things to consider. Once all this dirt had been dug out, time should be spent shoring up the earth or there would be a collapse. Another possible concern is ground water and run-off from rain.
Well, its low magic as in magic items are often added to the world as needed. since we are all newbies, rather than say walk into town and order from the "player book"..but yes I really don't want to just hand them a magic bag..however, if at some point the story or the world does call for one, its something I could add in small doses, like they just earned the right to shop in the noble district, perhaps a shop keeper could be hawking 1 small bag, and be explaining its merits, if they buy or not is up to them. I wont just give it as loot.
I plan for both cave in, and a flooding as part of the experience, perhaps they shore it up better after a cave in, perhaps the make an underground pond to access water. or whatever they come up with, but yes the dirt will cave in on some areas (d6 roll to decide which lol) and I expect if they dig anywhere in direction of the river, they will get some flooding. or perhaps the whole thing falls in on them, alerting the powers that be, that something is not legit at their house.
So I am removing the bag as an option (30+ trips a day is not an option) would mean I either hand wave the npcs did all the work, or I have to have 30+ chances a day they get "spotted". and instead I will let the animal taming druid, that tames every single animal he sees, put some badgers to work digging it out the back side. I will give them a plot hook with the weird necro guy from the graveyard who already is in their favor even though they haven't met him yet. He could help disperse the dirt, be a plot hook for future things, or spoil the operation depending how he is approached.
The sid meiers in me loves the idea of selling the dirt to road crews, but my players need small gold sinks at this point. not more income.
The NPC "Freeloaders" will sell to the road crews. The PCs won't want to deal directly with the road crews.
You can use the downtime rules as a guide. 16 days for a vault, 16 days for vault to secret room, 16 days for secret room to escape route. 48 days
If you had read the thread, the Kobolds are trying to keep the escape tunnels secret.
Well, if you had read my whole post, you'd see I acknowledged that might be a possibility. Since then, oldcat's mentioned that the entire project is a secret, but that hadn't come up at the time, so no snark was necessary, thanks.
It's all good, appreciate hearing thoughts from multiple angles anyway. not like this is not adaptable as I go. Thank you both for helping me work this out.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/r-z/ring- gates
Need a pair of these.
If the tunnels didn't collapse, smugglers and monsters would start using them.
Monsters sure, could have some creatures come exploring, or burrowing into it. In this location I think smugglers are not likely, and what would they be doing? its a small town, and a small tunnel, with some small chambers for storage and such.
So far, I just sent them on another adventure, with a were badger and his dire badger friend, and a small family of reg badgers. If they help the were badger they will have a ally who will build the structure for them, if they kill him, they will probably tame his badgers. though will lose the dire badger to its rage over death of his friend tarn.
Honestly I hope they save the guy, I can hand them graph paper. have them design their lair, then just hand wave the npc building it a bit more each day. presumably with skill, and with miner kobold assistance. should be no sweat.
And I have enough of an idea now of timing to make it work, which ever way they go.
Thank you, all for your thoughts. My players are going to "dig having a secret lair"