Hi, I'm curious if anyone has any ideas how to make a city in the desert have more water? There is also a source of salt water nearby.
I know about create water and Grove of Respite. But that water has a duration that is too limiting. I'm wanting something where the water will be able to be stored for a long time. So are there ways to make it rain? or convert the salt water into fresh water? Or something else?
In Ultimate Campaign, there is a Building called an Endless fountation. I forget it's BP, but basically, if you want it to be there, it's an existing option, so you CAN just say it's there.
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0th level cleric spell purify food and water.
This spell makes spoiled, rotten, diseased, poisonous, or otherwise contaminated food and water pure and suitable for eating and drinking. This spell does not prevent subsequent natural decay or spoilage. Unholy water and similar food and drink of significance is spoiled by purify food and drink, but the spell has no effect on creatures of any type nor upon magic potions. Water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon. One cubic foot of water contains roughly 8 gallons and weighs about 60 pounds.
(emphasis mine).
So bet a couple clerics/oracles to act as a desalination plant and you are good to go.
In another option, in one campaign, I allowed the players to create a 'lesser decanter of endless water' which cost less money to make but only had the small 'trickle' option. Then they just turned it on and hung it over the town cistern.
Thing is I'm a player in this world, and there's a good price for selling water. As such I'm trying to find way of getting water to sell. The temporary water doesn't sell as well as real lasting water would.
I'm wanting something where the water will be able to be stored for a long time.
It seems you need a cistern.
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A government sanctioned alchemy workshop.
The alchemists get to work within the society with perks, instead they use a huge distilling tank to purify seawater constantly via a combination of magic and science.
Plot hook: The distillery gets sabotaged/poisoned and the PC's find themselves on the problem solving/causing side.
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A magic fountain run by a water Weird. An obscured grove of nature atop a hill (Olympus style) where water sprouts, a river connecting this grove to a nearby sea is the lifeblood of nearby locales. The Weird may be aware or unaware of the life it provides for the people or perhaps it is working directly with some local druid or city official.
Plot hook: Something happens to the Weird, has it been killed or kidnapped, did it simply just wander off?
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A huge magic statue of some forgotten king spews an endless stream of clean water, providing for a large society. Many speculate as to the identity of the life giving king from ages past, half followed clues lie everywhere waiting for someone determined enough to tie the ends together.
Plot hook: The grave of the unknown king is unwittingly disturbed in a large scale grave-robbing incident. Hundreds of graves have been disturbed. The PC's must piece together the clues and match them to the right grave to find the right king, and then they must appease the spirit to get the water flowing again.
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The locals dig deep wells to connect to hidden water veins underground. To provide for an every growing society they must venture further out into uninhabited area to gain access to more water veins.
Plot hook: Eventually some abhuman society figures out that the human society is by far the easiest source of water in the area, but cannot make sense of the technique used to gather it. The abhumans begin to raid human settlements with growing ferocity as their own society grows ever numerous.
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A diverse multi-god church full of talented clerics of varied gods provides water for the entire society. The priests take turns to fill a huge underground basin with water which they then distribute to officials and locals as needed.
Plot hook: A jealous priest secretly intends to displace the others and usurp the church for his own faith. He reverse-engineers the water conjuring spells unique to the church and sabotages the water depository.
It's the Third largest city, a very big port town.
But the GM described it saying it was a desert, and there is a desert wasteland from the coast for miles. I did mention that salt water was available. Going and getting icebergs will probably be to long/expensive. I'm wanting something that doesn't cost very much as to make a profit from selling water. Hiring people will probably cost more than they make.
Keep in mind that you don't just need water to drink, you need water mostly to grow food: and a LOT of it. I had a brief stint in africa, and comparing the amount of water even a small villiage needed for agriculture vs what a low level cleric can get with create water had the cleric orders of magnitude from where they needed to be.
You could make a giant mundane water purifier. In simplest form they're easy to do. IRL they're not terribly efficient, but in a magical world with just a little magic help they could be something useful for a large population.
Basically this, though you'll want to make it really big or multiple. Perhaps even create it using permanent walls of force. Regardless, it's a simple low-tech low/no-magic way to desalinate water.
Depending on what levels of magic you have access to...an easy way to work this is decanters of endless water. Or you can open a portal to elemental plane of fire, harvesting the energy to boil salt water and collecting it again where it is pure and clean. Technically, purify Food and Drink (O-level) should remove salt from the water and make it potable, though you would probably need something else to support agriculture.
I mean, its D&D, magic is how you're gonna power your water purifier. In this case, a Solar Still is very, very doable. If you want to rapidly evaporate the water, you can either devote a large open space to your still (shouldn't be hard on the outskirts of a desert town. Hell, the population would follow the water, once it was established. Even a large settlement will have people relocating to your prime real estate with easy water access), or use a boiler. You can RAW enchant a sword with the Flaming property or buy a Blazing Robe-- permanent fire that doesn't require fuel is already a thing. And if it wasn't, a few druids can still create lots of biomass for burning with Plant Growth.
So what spell allows my to open a portal to a different plane?
So what spell allows my to open a portal to a different plane?
Gate, although it's very difficult to make that last long enough to be a long-term solution. You're probably better off, in fact, binding a fire elemental.
So what spell allows my to open a portal to a different plane?
Yeah, that part is kind of made of handwavium. It is possible to open a gate, but no way of making it permanent beyond the DM allowing it.
You could get close by creating a Greater Demiplane and making a portal go to the plane of fire, which is permanent. But the annoying restriction is that you are only allowed 1 portal per demiplane, so you cannot have it go from material plane to demiplane to elemental plane of fire. If you GM is willing to make an exception (and this sounds like a home game) you should be able to make a permanent demiplane with a gate to the EPoF and a gate to the material plane and then place all you distillation equipment in the demiplane.
Edit: Place all the hot part of your distillation equipment in the demiplane, obviously the cooling tower and liquid recovery portions of the equipment shouldn't be in a hot place.
So what spell allows my to open a portal to a different plane?Yeah, that part is kind of made of handwavium.
That sounds unnecessarily difficult. A simulacrum of a fire elemental would do everything you wanted, permanently, for a lot less effort, time, and money.
So what spell allows my to open a portal to a different plane?Yeah, that part is kind of made of handwavium.That sounds unnecessarily difficult. A simulacrum of a fire elemental would do everything you wanted, permanently, for a lot less effort, time, and money.
I mean, that could be a way to go about it, though I prefer an actual bound elemental personally. And even then I think the demiplane to the elemental plane of fire is still way more cool. But that's just me. Plus, we don't know how much heat a fire elemental generates, but I would estimate that the plane of fire generates significantly more. Even if you just have a small hole tapped into it.*
I just think the demiplane idea is more cool....or in this case hot.
*Conjecture
I mean, that could be a way to go about it, though I prefer an actual bound elemental personally.So what spell allows my to open a portal to a different plane?Yeah, that part is kind of made of handwavium.That sounds unnecessarily difficult. A simulacrum of a fire elemental would do everything you wanted, permanently, for a lot less effort, time, and money.
Time-limited. Planar binding lasts only one day per level. Simulacra are forever.
I mean, that could be a way to go about it, though I prefer an actual bound elemental personally.So what spell allows my to open a portal to a different plane?Yeah, that part is kind of made of handwavium.That sounds unnecessarily difficult. A simulacrum of a fire elemental would do everything you wanted, permanently, for a lot less effort, time, and money.
Time-limited. Planar binding lasts only one day per level. Simulacra are forever.
I really hate the spell Simulacrum
If you're already opening planar gates, why not just open one to the plane of water and cut out the middleman?
I really hate the spell Simulacrum
It is really easy to cheese, but I think this use is reasonable enough.
I really hate the spell SimulacrumIt is really easy to cheese, but I think this use is reasonable enough.
I agree that this specific usage would be alright.
As far as why not open a portal to the plane of water...that's a fair point. Except it doesn't use fire which is awesome.
Also, I have no idea if the water from the elemental plane of water is potable or not. I feel like it might be patches of salt and fresh water, I really have no idea. If the water isn't potable then they're back at square one since they have an ocean adjacent. Access to water isn't necessarily a problem, is making the water drinkable.
I really hate the spell SimulacrumIt is really easy to cheese, but I think this use is reasonable enough.I agree that this specific usage would be alright.
As far as why not open a portal to the plane of water...that's a fair point. Except it doesn't use fire which is awesome.
Also, I have no idea if the water from the elemental plane of water is potable or not. I feel like it might be patches of salt and fresh water, I really have no idea. If the water isn't potable then they're back at square one since they have an ocean adjacent. Access to water isn't necessarily a problem, is making the water drinkable.
I imagine anyone who can cast gate knows where the freshwater part of the elemental plane is.
No need for magic.
There are a large variety of desalinization processes that could be used. I'm no expert (or engineer) but one of the simplest methods is likely via solar 'power'. Basically evaporate the water off (from your salt water supply - something the sun does naturally), then condense and collect the water. The hard part according to the Wikipedia article I read is probably getting the solar energy concentrated on a small area to cause the natural process to speed up sufficiently for any large scale use.
Short read: Look into Desalinization on the Web.
I was thinking solar still (pot in hole in sun, plastic wrap over hole, water on plastic wrap, water into pot) but that probably wouldn't work in the desert.
I imagine anyone who can cast gate knows where the freshwater part of the elemental plane is.
I think the problem is that it isn't static. The whole thing ebbs and flows, meaning the areas of fresh and salt water move around, though I'm not sure.
I think the problem is that it isn't static. The whole thing ebbs and flows, meaning the areas of fresh and salt water move around, though I'm not sure.I imagine anyone who can cast gate knows where the freshwater part of the elemental plane is.
Possibly, but at this level of minutia it's up to the DM. I don't think the elemental plane is statted out to that degree in Pathfinder.
"the purest water from the elemental plane" is a fairly common trope. I'd imagine you can find a spot that's more or less static as far as water quality.
Though the bigger concern would be for things to come out with the water.
Perhaps just get the decanter and be done with it.
Why is the decanter of endless water not good enough? Its cheap at 9,000gp, and gives you up to 30 gallons a round of fresh water. Plenty enough to put into a holding tank and sell waterskins of it all day long.
Why is the decanter of endless water not good enough? Its cheap at 9,000gp, and gives you up to 30 gallons a round of fresh water. Plenty enough to put into a holding tank and sell waterskins of it all day long.
Any amount of water you can put into a waterskin is not enough to shift the needle in a farming community, esp. one in the desert. Typical irrigation farming takes 4000 gallons per acre per day.
Doing the math, a decanter can produce 300 gallons per minute, or 18000 gallons per hour, so one decanter could irrigate roughly 100 acres, which is a small village, not even a square mile of land. At a one-person-per-acre standard (not bad for sandy soil -- actually, that's pretty good even for really good soil), that's 100 people, each of which would be expected to chip in 90 gp for their share of the decanter, about three years wages for a typical farm laborer.
Why is the decanter of endless water not good enough? Its cheap at 9,000gp, and gives you up to 30 gallons a round of fresh water. Plenty enough to put into a holding tank and sell waterskins of it all day long.Any amount of water you can put into a waterskin is not enough to shift the needle in a farming community, esp. one in the desert. Typical irrigation farming takes 4000 gallons per acre per day.
Doing the math, a decanter can produce 300 gallons per minute, or 18000 gallons per hour, so one decanter could irrigate roughly 100 acres, which is a small village, not even a square mile of land. At a one-person-per-acre standard (not bad for sandy soil -- actually, that's pretty good even for really good soil), that's 100 people, each of which would be expected to chip in 90 gp for their share of the decanter, about three years wages for a typical farm laborer.
He said he is looking to sell water to people. I assumed we were talking on the "waterskins" level and not "merchants of the desert farmers" level. If you are looking for that level of sales, just buy one decanter, sell that to a farmer, buy 5 more decanters, sell that water to other famers, and so on. Its not like 9,000gp is super expensive.
Decanter is seeming like the best option.
Somehow, buying a 9,000gp decanter seems a lot easier than mind controlling a purple worm to dig tunnels, then grinding out some giant lenses and hiring people to regularly clean out the tunnels.
I'm not eliminating exotic or magical means, I just don't want to have to spend a month or more porting icebergs. So unless I can teleport them safely it wont help much. I have access to lv7 wizard spells and lv5 cleric spells.
They ship their water in from the sounds of it. They needed a port for this ocean and it surrounded by desert and there's not a potable water source around. So they port all their water in. That's why selling it is profitable.
Well, create demiplane lesser filled with water. Bring bags of holding in with you. You and up to 7 more people can come in. So thats 8 bags of holding if you each only bring one. Eject everyone when you're done. Each type 4 bag of holding is 1870 gallons. But they also cost 10,000gp. Instead, you could buy a decanter of endless water for 9,000gp and have 432,000 gallons a day.
Then you have150 days to get a new water chip
I like this reference
Why is the decanter of endless water not good enough? Its cheap at 9,000gp, and gives you up to 30 gallons a round of fresh water. Plenty enough to put into a holding tank and sell waterskins of it all day long.
I thought the goal was to supply a sustainable community on its own, not to just profiteer off of water. Honestly, trying to break into whomever else's profit seems like it would be met with attempted assassinations, etc.
The goal is to profiteer off of water. We've already gone through the city to have a permit to sell. Currently it's just limited temporary water, but if we could get larger permanent volumes of water then we can sell more and at a higher price. But this is a side-story to our main plot, so that's why I can't really use any option that takes a lot of time.