Well, Acid Rain could be full out "Oh shit, it is RAINING ACID on us", rather than "ho hum, our hair is green now".
As for the PrC option for the Platinum Pole, I think that duplicating a
Synchronicity spell on you inside cities created by your poles would be nice.
Still, I'll think about everything; I was originally thinking that at two of the supernatural options would be
populace and
shops.
Populace generates crowds of crude simulacra of people; they would be visible versions of an Invisible Servant spell. You could pick a "district" for the pole, which would then divide up the crowds into functions. There's a city building PDF on the Wizard's website, which I was going to pillage for population distributions. It would take maybe 10 lbs of metal for each "person", they'd all effectively have one HD, and you'd define the "personality" for the entire city as if they were psicrystals.
Shops literally convert gold to and from non-magical items and services. So you could designate a building as an "inn", and have it generate meals if you gave it the necessary amount of money, which would be converted (in a very inefficient manner) into ebbs for the city.
How would these interact? Well, if you assign a "person" to a particular building, they'd take on aspects based off that building.
So, in other words, you assign a group of "people" to an "inn", they'd basically act like "the innkeeper and his/her family", who would supply some entertainment and such.
I was actually thinking of using
this for the populace, requiring 10 lbs per spell level to generate each one.
Of course, "people" made inside the city couldn't be used outside it, and are quite weak, but, hey, if you want to set up a town on the fly, this is an excellent way.
You know, I might go with this, with basically the same rules for how many can be controlled as with the Swamp's ability to control undead.