The Gaming Den

How much would it affect the game if Mordenkainan's Magnificent Mansion were allowed to be made permanent?

I'm imagining that the mansion exists even when the spell is not active, and perhaps there is a permanant portal to it somewhere. Sort of like Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum.

They can still cast the spell to access it remotely. The party would use it as a base of operations of a sort, a place to store loot and magic items, perhaps add a few features of their own to it.

Any potential pitfall or exploit I'm overlooking?

EDIT: What about someone entering an extradimensional space like this or other spells (i.e. rope trick) via planeshift or gate?

Rather than fussing with making it permanent, I would rather just make a permanent magic item. The mansion always exists, and the actual item is the door way--a wood slat door that rolls up, a welcome mat, a jar of ink, something like that.

There was something like this in Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue. just have any building anywhere have an item that has a door, or a ring or something that allows entry to it. maybe the ONLY way in is with the ring and only those touching it or the wearer can get in.

what is the point of having the mansion always in one place? like Leomunds Secure Shelter, and all the others, you want to be able to MOVE the Mansion with you so you can enter it from anywhere, and then return to where you were. if you just want to leave the Mansion somewhere, then you don't need the Mansion at all, just a building and a door.

it would probably be better to have a stationary building, and a door to get to it and some way to return to where you entered the "mansion", sort of like Howl's Moving Castle. thus you have a local door that takes you outside the real "mansion" and then doors to other places, and one specific door, that takes you back to where you were when you entered it to get to the "mansion".

need to leave a dungeon for more supplies. jsut step into the "mansion", rest up, gather what you need, and then return to where you were in the dungeon. heck you can even stop by the local town beore returning to the dungeon, and with a well placed scrying spell or device, you can be sure the path is clear to go from the "mansion" back to where you were in the dungeon. easy way to offload treasure, or transport criminals, or escort that damsel in distress without having to walk her all the way back home.

might need to bump this new "mansion" up a level or two if you think that being able to return home to camp in a dungeon is too powerful for your current edition's caster level to get the MMM spell.

AD&D MMM is 7th level, which you get at level 14. and my version combines a gate type spell, or teleport without error, plus a few other things, so i would bump it up to 8th level spell at least for its added power.

@Prak, having the mansion itself always exist would cause the problem of lack of foodstuffs, since the banquet included with the spell exists BECAUSE you cast the spell. having the Mansion always exist, means it would need some other way to always have the food available. i doubt the Unseen Servant variants in the Mansion would be able to go shopping for more food if the Mansion were permanent. so it would have to be staffed by real people, or for a lich BBEG, he wouldn't need the food at all, and having it permanent wouldnt be much of a problem if it has no food.

We did something like this in one of my games. When you first learned the spell, you could (at your option) write up a custom floorplan for your implementation spell; every casting subsequently takes you to "your" mansion, which had continuity between castings.

Spending a bit of experience let you continually enhance the Mansion - I was able to add Alchemy labs, a forge, etc, with mundane components that refreshed every 24 hours. Heroes Feast only refreshed once a week, but there was normal food available all the time.

One other thing we liked was allowing Arcane Mark to link items to your Mansion; I added a Vault to my Mansion, and tagging things like Bags of Holding or Hewards Handy Haversack allowed me to access those storage spaces via the Vault room (the Haversack accessed through a chest, bags of Holding become cabinets, my Portable Hole became a room in the vault) which let us have an in character way of cataloguing and organizing inventory without dumping everything on the floor.

It let us handwave a lot of the bullshit that doesn't matter once you're at that level but maintain a thin veneer of in-world explanation for it.

I created a covered wagon/carriage thing for my "Red Mage" (Final Fantasy type, not FR Thay). It's doorway led to a permanent castle in it's own demi-plane with custom time passage (slow), so I could do research, practice my swording, store my stuff... etc. The carriage was just so my Chocobo and I could travel around and see the world.

So I think having a continuous magic item that worked as a component would be nifty. A small door trinket that, once the spell is cast, enlarges and opens to your castle. Or just give the trinket an x/day limit so the caster doesn't need to keep it memorized.

Just don't give the mansion/castle portals to the world at large.

Although, my DM hates when my wizard (not the red mage... that was years ago) pulls his magical housing out every night. (Because it provides secure shelter ) So I've been railroaded with it before. =/

Ferret wrote:We did something like this in one of my games. When you first learned the spell, you could (at your option) write up a custom floorplan for your implementation spell; every casting subsequently takes you to "your" mansion, which had continuity between castings.

How would you handle casting MMM from an item? If you have a wand, does it treat it as being cast by the person holding it, or the person who made it?

codeGlaze wrote:I created a covered wagon/carriage thing for my "Red Mage" (Final Fantasy type, not FR Thay). It's doorway led to a permanent castle in it's own demi-plane with custom time passage (slow), so I could do research, practice my swording, store my stuff... etc. The carriage was just so my Chocobo and I could travel around and see the world.

I was working towards doing something like this with my last wizard. It occurs me that it's another emblem of the problem with Wizard/Fighter dynamics. My wizard bought a wagon and set up a food truck business, and was keeping up with the rest of the party in effectiveness (when I didn't misread spells...) despite not getting much return from his side business. People are incensed by the fact that spellcasters can just do silly fun stuff and not sacrifice any real power, while sworders have to be completely devoted to swording.

There generally isn't a lot of difference between having a secure base you can teleport to and having an extradimensional safehouse. And teleportation comes online before Magnificent Mansion. It's just a bit of a shift on the scale of accessibility for your enemies.

Knights of the Dinner Table has featured a 'hat of opulent lodging'. It apparently works a little like a 'bag of holding', but connects to a spacious abode. They've used it extensively to sneak into various places (ie, someone wears the hat and then everyone hops out when they get to their destination).

We call it "George's Key". It's a key, stick it into any vertical surface of something larger than yourself and open a door to your pad. More expensive keys equal better digs of course. Normally you find basic townhouse level keys around level 5-6.

Players love this shit, I'm not exactly sure why but they do. They get into contests about who's room looks cooler and crap like that. They'll argue about the drapes, etc.

It can be abused sure, but I really recommend this, it's damned fun

RobG wrote:They'll argue about the drapes, etc.

"My imaginary drapes are way cooler than your imaginary drapes."
I fucking love it.

RobG wrote:We call it "George's Key". It's a key, stick it into any vertical surface of something larger than yourself and open a door to your pad. More expensive keys equal better digs of course. Normally you find basic townhouse level keys around level 5-6.

Players love this shit, I'm not exactly sure why but they do. They get into contests about who's room looks cooler and crap like that. They'll argue about the drapes, etc.

It can be abused sure, but I really recommend this, it's damned fun

That sounds awesome. At a certain point, everyone in the party get's a magical key that opens to the same mansion, and can only exit at the same location it was entered.

When they first use it, they'll work together to design a floor plan, with their own personal quarters Ect.

As they level up they can add new features, like the banquet working like a heroes feast, a portal nexus (never to the same plane as they entered from though), alchemy lab, library, ect.

When you buy a new key it conjures up etherial workmen that expand your house. They can install water slides or nacho cheese fountains or whatever.

I wish I still had the layout for the Eberron game I had this in. The teenage Sorceress had posters of famous Bards in her room. The Necromancer had undead servants.. I think there was a model train that went everywhere..

We had a rule where it took some time to use the key so it wasn't an instant getaway but basically there was a general agreement not to abuse it. It worked great.