Best spells and magic items for running and building a base of operations

[JaronK]

So, in my current campaign I find myself converting an old asylum into a combined orphanage and school... and as an Archivist I've got a lot of magic at my disposal.  I've also got the Landlord feat with 250kgp to spend.  So... what spells and items are best for this?

So far, I've got Unseen Crafter (day/level, creates a craftsman that builds things for you) and Wall of Stone/Iron (provides free stone and Iron) as my primary building sources.    Divine Insight and Guidance of the Avatar provide skill bonuses for buying things.  Stone Metamorphosis lets me turn my rock into Slipstone and Rock Gourds and other special rock.  Improved Arcane Lock lets me secure the place quite safely while still letting minions handle the doors in general.

As for magic items, a custom magic item of Scholar's Touch allows students to read books instantly... great for their studies!  A Pool of Scrying helps our party find enemies, and an Everful Larder means feeding people isn't an issue.  But what else am I missing?

One important trick: having a portal that leads from the base to an Enveloping Pit I keep on me, so the party can adventure and get back quick.

JaronK

[SorO_Lost]

Bump your Portal location to something out of a Stargate fanfic.
Load a reinforced hallway with a dozen enchanted ballasts(?) so instead of merely serving as a quick escape, your pit doubles up as a laser cannon.

You can use Planar Bubble on a couple crafted-off-plane constructs to give the entire base the Fast Time trait, setting it up for 24/7 coverage can be left to a Cohort if you have one.

Something I do recommend is spamming Wall of Stone/Iron on the Ethereal Plane. It'll prevent ghosts and would be Astral Projections (since the cord is always in the astral plane) from entering which as a semi-free bonus is kind of nice. You can use Force effects on the Material Plane to anchor it into position in case anyone gets the smart idea to push it away.

[Prime32]

Hallow is useful, both for protection and for carrier effects like tongues.

The Dungeon Lord^Dung PrC is very useful for janitors, librarians and the like. I had a thread on optimising libraries, but I can't find it...

[Sohala]

Here you go Prime.

[Miranius]

Fabricate is of course a spell you can`t miss, plus there is an obscure spell out there that lets you do ANY kind of skill check as a standard action (read: you do a creaft-check for larger batches for the amount of one weeks work. so one week of output in about 4 seconds.)
There are multiple spells that can create helpers, among them in terms of usefulness/costs: planar binding (the dumber the creature the cheaper to hire), servant horde, beget bogun, minor servitor, animate object,....
Plus, you can use any of the above to create wealth to hire actual workers

[JaronK]

Sadly, Fabricate is REALLY hard for an Archivist to get.  But Unseen Crafter serves my needs on downtime days... I can cast it a bunch of times, along with a bunch of Extended Unseen Crafters, and the job gets done nicely.  And since I'm a Tainted Sorcerer with a Taint score of 15, my crafters all get a +15 to crafting anything... which isn't bad.

But what's this obscure spell you speak of?  Craft checks instantly would certainly be nice.

JaronK

[ketaro]

Sadly, Fabricate is REALLY hard for an Archivist to get.  But Unseen Crafter serves my needs on downtime days... I can cast it a bunch of times, along with a bunch of Extended Unseen Crafters, and the job gets done nicely.  And since I'm a Tainted Sorcerer with a Taint score of 15, my crafters all get a +15 to crafting anything... which isn't bad.

But what's this obscure spell you speak of?  Craft checks instantly would certainly be nice.

JaronK

Buy a scroll of it and use the scroll to supply the casting of the spell in making an item that can cast it either at will or many times a day?

[linklord231]

Let's see, according to The Spell Book, Fabricate is part of the Artifice, Dwarf, Greed, and Trade domains. 

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Genesis > Psi Genesis

There's a Psi PrC that's better though,
turning your Psicrystal into the demiplane.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20031219a

[awaken_D_M_golem]

How does that Flying Castle that's your Item Familiar work?


1*1*2000+extend , custom item of Unseen Servant
= 1200 of those suckers plodding around doing stuff.