Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
Nope, the distinctive feature of the true arch is its shape, not how it's held together. Shape earth would make construction of a corbeled arch somewhat easier, but it's basically math to figure out a true arch (side point: the 'find weakness' spell would probably let you build a true arch by trial and error, because stress points should show up as weaknesses).
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I'm looking at
this image on Wikipedia. The difference is entirely in the shape of the stones—the image on the left has wedge-shaped stones, including the familiar wedge-shaped keystone, whereas the image on the right has a roughly rectangular stone where its keystone should be, which is held in place mainly by mortar. I don't know the details, but I'm pretty sure mortar isn't as strong as the original rock. If you could magically fuse the elements of the right image together, though, now you have something that should be equivalent to a naturally-occurring arch, which I think are as strong as masonry arches with wedge-shaped components.