Stronghold Spells

Many spells can assist in the construction or protection of a stronghold. To be useful, such spells must have a long-lasting effect, be triggered by some kind of contingency, or be made permanent.

Tips on how best to use these spells in your stronghold are provided below. The “Casting” entry gives the price in gold pieces to have the spell cast for you and, in parentheses, the lowest-level wizard, sorcerer, and bard who can do so. In some cases, this listing includes variant casters of other classes. All costs include the full price of any material components, plus 10% of the cost of any focus component. The Player’s Handbook contains full descriptions of these spells.

If the spell can be made permanent via the permanency spell, the “Permanent” listing gives the minimum additional cost in gold pieces (and the minimum level of caster required) to do so. Add this to the cost of casting the spell (assuming you don’t cast it yourself ) to find the final cost.

Permanency or Magic Item?

Two methods exist for creating a magical effect that lasts indefinitely: casting permanency or building the effect into a continuous or use-activated magic item. Each technique has advantages and disadvantages.

Permanency: The biggest advantage of the permanency spell is speed. Just cast the spell, follow it with permanency, and you’re done. Permanency ’s XP cost makes it expensive to hire an NPC to cast it, but if you can do the work yourself, your only cost is the XP and 2 rounds of your time.

Permanency ’s biggest disadvantage is that it only works on spells listed in the spell description for permanency. With the exception of wall of force, which is immune to dispelling, one successful dispel magic wipes out your permanent spell as if it was never there.

Magic Item: The biggest advantages of a magic item are its flexibility and its resistance to dispel magic. When you’re creating a magic item that uses a spell effect, you don’t have to follow the text of the relevant spell exactly. A cube of force, for example, has the wall of force spell as a prerequisite, but it works differently (look at how the cube responds to disintegrate). Dispel magic ends a permanent spell for good, but it only suppresses a magic item for 1d4 rounds.

It takes the relevant item creation feat and time (1 day per 1,000 gp) to make a magic item. If the item you’re creating has a spell prerequisite with a material component, you’ll need to buy that component 100 times to make the item. While it’s easy to figure out the cost of a spell made permanent, calculating the cost of a new magic item is a tricky business. Use the guidelines in Chapter 8 of the DUNGEON MASTER’s Guide, but remember that the cost suggested there should be the beginning of the item-pricing process, not the end. For instance, if your magic item is more flexible than the spell that acts as a prerequisite, you’ll want to charge more.

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