Talk:Dungeonomicon (3.5e Sourcebook)/Constructanomicon

Teleport and 40'
Does this mean that one can at most travel around 30 kilometers via teleport at a time? (Due to the planet's curved nature.) That's certainly handy to stop wizards from teleporting halfway across the world--though I suppose they could do it in multiple jumps. That said, this might not apply on Discworld. --Ghostwheel 09:26, September 18, 2010 (UTC)


 * Assuming a curvature roughly equal to the earth's, possibly. It really depends on what "a straight line" means when looked at on a large scale. Do you treat it as a Cartesian straight line that happens to be on an object or do you use a curved geometry like the surface of a sphere where straight lines only appear so due to current dimensionality (since it happens instantaneously, we ignore planetary movement in both cases, which is good since that's silly to try to include). You can argue it either way really, depending on what type of game you want to come out of it. - TarkisFlux 16:34, September 18, 2010 (UTC)

Dungeons! Because!
The author claims there are no reasons for dungeons. That is wrong. There are totally fine reasons for them. Surpringly the author has wrote down some of them himself, but it did not seemed to change his mind.

1) It is important to notice that there ARE underground construtions for defence purpose on earth. Bunkers. Not build in ancient time. But now. And they are defintely a good idea for defence.

2) Against ground troops a underground bunker sucks. Against flying troups they are a much better idea than castles for example. In ancient earth history there are no flying troups. In d&d there are and always has been. Dragons. Perhaps fighting a dragon makes more fun if he cannot set one fire your family because they are underground out of his reach. At least for the moment. And if he crushes the entrance. You can dig them out later.

3) If weapons are getting so destructive that any defence will be crushed when the enemy knows where you are then he better should not know this. Beeing undergroud helps. We have this weapons power now and this power also exists in D&D in form of magic and monsters. It did not exists in history of earth. So we have bunkers now we have dungeons in D&D but we did not have them in history of earth.

5) In some cases one is building bunkers not to keep seced that one is there but to keep secred what one is doing there... A necromancer who wants to build up an undead army has good reasons to do so underground. Not to spoil the surprise and so..

6) Some creatures does suffer from sunlight, or have advantages fighting in the dark, or on restricted space, etc. Vampire has a real motivation for building dungeons

7) For some creature it is EASIER than building houses. Sounds strange. But take beholders. They can build a wall But just disintegrating their home into the ground is much easier for them. For beholders dungeon building is NOT expensive but at will

8)Really boring reasons Kanalisations of an old cities. caves. Mines, storage rooms for water etc

9)Any obscure magical reasons one might think of

Magically foiling diviners?
I must admit, this section struck me as very weird. It makes no mention at all of the really good protective spells against scry and die tactics if that's your concern. And really sung the praises of some spells that seem pretty poor at providing real protection.

Example Dimensional Lock: This is a spell that takes a level 15 character to cast, it only lasts for caster level in days before it needs to be recast, it's an emanation so he effect is stopped by walls requiring you to recast the spell over every room you want protected, and while it's in place the edges of the spell (the walls) glow an emerald green, which I would think any competent scryer is going to notice before teleporting his friends in. Then again, with the caster's bedroom safe the scryer could just teleport himself and friends to the hallway outside the bedroom door, silently cast knock on the door, and round two, he and his friends are in your bedroom making a right mess of all you hold near and dear.

Why wasn't the eminently more practical Forbiddance mentioned? It's level 6 so you only need a level 11 caster to perform it, yes it has a hefty gold piece cost to it but it's also permanent so it only needs to be cast once. It effects a massive area, 60' cubes one per caster level, so a level 11 caster can protect a square 180' on a side to a height of 60' and still have a couple extra cubes to play with, oh and it's shapeable. So you can leave publicly accessible areas out of the Forbiddance while still protecting the important bits. Plus it does damage to people who have an ideological bent different from your own. Yes it offers a saving throw and spell resistance, but only against the damage the spell can do, the planar travel restrictions are automatic. Oh, and you can set it up with a password so the people you like, who don't have the good sense to share your moral philosophy can still come and go without taking damage. Even the password won't let them teleport in the area though so your protection against telegank cheesery is still secure. One final bonus, the Forbiddance is invisible so it's much harder for a scryer to tell that entering the warded area on foot or by spell is a bad idea.

Mention was also made of ways to mess with scrying itself, through deceptive spells like Mirage Arcana and the debatable Screen spell. But no mention was made of a spell of greater utility to a stronghold owner, Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum. While the illusion spells mentioned may fool a scryer into seeing something other than what's really there Private Sanctum automatically prevents a scryer from perceiving anything in the spell area, no save. It also prevents more mundane forms of eavesdropping from outside the spell area while not inhibiting passage into or out of the spell area. I forgot to mention that it effects a very large area, a 30' cube per caster level, that's shapeable and while it only lasts a day your wizard friend can make it permanent at level 13+.

Either spell really ruins a scry and killer's day, in combination they are a pretty monstrous combo that forces any would-be attackers to only teleport into an area outside whatever fabulous defenses you have put in place.

Just my thoughts. Tunganation 21:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)