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Apr 16, 2012 -- 11:21AM, dbay wrote:

Unless there's a better spell for this that I'm missing (we're playing core-only Pathfinder, but with access to all of regular non-core D&D that doesn't conflict with Pathfinder's rules, because that's what we're familiar with), Stone Shape seems the way to go. The thing is, our cleric can only cast 2-3 of these a day, effecting only 15cubic feet per casting (30 cubic feet is something like a cube 3 feet across) which would take forever to get anywhere.
But here's the trick I want to run past you guys (I feel I'm missing something that would prevent it from working): instead of trying to create whole blocks with stone shape, a better plan might be to use it to cut a grid into existing stone. So, 30 cubic feet is something like 72 sections of 10 feet x 1 foot x half an inch (maybe? I'm used to metric and my math is rusty). That can use to hack a grid into a fairly flat chunk of bedrock:
______
 | | | | | etc.

By transforming that much effected rock into slightly thinner and taller rock. Another few castings along the bottom will seperate them entirely from the ground. The fourteen 10x10x1 slabs that this creates can be greased (for favourable conditions) then hauled out by 3-4 summoned mounts. Once they're assembled into the general shape of the building, more stone shapes can be used to connect them.
But then I realized that this has potentially gamebreaking applications in non-construction (you can just slash out huge, long, thin scratches in any amount of stone) which is why I think I'm missing a rule.

If I understand you correctly, you're planning to make slabs of stone by using stone shape to "cut" out half-inch gaps around them, and the slabs that you'll be making are intended to be 10 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 1 foot thick.

Assuming that the you're cutting from an open side of the bedrock (giving you one "free" cut to begin with), you'll need to fully separate each slab by making a cut that separates its largest side from an adjacent slab (like the cut that separates one slice of bread from the next potential slice on the loaf), plus four cuts around its edges to separate it from the surrounding stone; in practice, these may be made for mutiple slabs at once with a single casting, but overall, each slab has a certain amount of surface area that needs to be cut to fully separate it so that it can be removed, and that amount has to be accounted for one way or another.

Effectively, that means you need to cover the entire surface area of each slab in order to cut it away from all the stone around it (minus one side on the first slab that you get by beginning your work from an open side, and minus one side on every subsequent slab because it shares a side with the one before it).

Now, each slab is 10 ft. x 10 ft. x 1 ft., so it needs to be entirely cut away along one 10 ft. x 10 ft. side (a 100 ft. surface area), plus four 10 ft. x 1 ft. sides (another 40 feet of surface area).  The cuts have to cover that surface area of 140 ft., and since you're using half inch cuts (divide the area by 24), you're expending almost 6 cubic feet of stone shape's affected volume to cut out each slab.  So unless I'm missing something in your explanation of what you're attempting, the 30 feet from two castings of stone shape will cut you 5 slabs.

Apr 17, 2012 -- 6:29PM, dbay wrote:

Anybody know what the cheapest way to magically feed 12 people indefinitely is? I'm aware that Everlasting Rations from MiC is dirt cheap compared to the Ring of Sustenance, but can I get something larger scale? Our sorcerer wanted me to ask, as he's comparing feeding them with  magic to importing to some sort of self-suffiecient hydroponic setup.

The field provisions box (from the Miniatures Handbook or Magic Item Compendium) is what you want for the cheapest option.

Apr 18, 2012 -- 1:11PM, Krusk wrote:

You actually don't need to cut the entire surface area. You can leave little pegs or connections holding the shape together. Like when you buy an unbuilt model kit and it comes with a sheet of punch out pieces you connect. 

Save some space by having 1 inch spaces with 1 inch studs. After shaping it, have the hobgoblins smash the 1inch studs and carry stones free. 

This method could seriously increase the milage per casting of the spell. And since casting takes under a min you've got the rest of the day to kill.

It's okay as a general idea, but in practice any connections that are easy enough to break won't individually save much space and if you use a lot of them, there'll be a commensurately large amount of work involved in breaking them all, especially when your work team will be slowing chipping away at stone (hardness 8) with regular weapons.

Neither can you use connectors over the entire surface area joining two slabs, because the narrowness of the gap (and the remains of outer connectors) will make it too hard to get to the inner ones.  And that's not even counting the fact that some of the edges of the slabs are similarly at the bottom of a hole in the ground (since the slabs are being shaped out of the bedrock) making them equally unreachable until after the slabs have been moved out of the stone.