Help with building the ultimate mage's tower

[vstorm]

D&D - Help with building the ultimate mage's tower
Hi all,

I am designing the ultimate mage's tower for an adventure and I wanted to solicit ideas for:

1) Traps
2) Constructs
3) Summoned creatures/allies
4) Other neat ideas

The mage who owns the tower will be a 20th level Wizard. I haven't decided if he will be a straight mage, specialist or a combo of PrCs yet.

I am not concerned about construction costs or costs for populating the tower.

I have the basics in mind, which include:

1) Undead
2) Constructs (golems, carytid columns, iron snake)
3) A summoned demon or two in a summoning room (cross the circle and you get it)
4) A lab with lots of things in cages and aquariums (troll, giant squid, rust monster, giant, etc.)
5) Library with lots of books - some with some explosive ruins

I am relatively new to 3.5e having been a long time 2nd edition hold out. Now that I have switched several months ago, I am very glad I did. However, my knowledge is very incomplete right now.

So, if there are spells you would recommend, cool tricks or traps, constructs, etc., I would really appreciate it!

Thanks!

Matt

 

[Synthetik Fish]

Some good ideas to keep in mind with a Mage tower:

A real mage would have protection from teleporting in or out of the tower, as well as scrying.

I'd do (in a lower chamber) an anti-magic area coupled with a couple particularly nasty beasties. Maybe things with high AC and such, as it will be hard for the party to cope with not being able to use magic against it, and not being able to escape (hopefully! for example, they walk in the front door, a huge porticullis drops, and they find themselves in like a couryard with a Gargoyole, Dragon, Elemental, etc.) Undead in anti-magic is fun! If you want to be REALLY nasty, make it something that has damage reduction with something magic

Since no teleporting is allowed, I'd do some very well hidden secret passage ways, for the mage to wreck havoc with. Maybe misc. arrow slits for him to drop a fireball, magic missle, or *Ray of Enfeeblement* through (even if there isn't a door to that paticular room from that part of the massage way, it would just mess with them.)

Plenty of goblins and the like for servants. Unseen servants. Remember, if you're a 20th level mage, why wouldn't you live lavishly?

Hope this helps, let me know if you are looking for anythign in paticular.

 

[DM-Rocco]

I am busy at the moment, but I will think it over for a day or two.

Here is a deadly idea I like to use in wizard towers. You have one central circluar room with four or more hallways connented to it. They don't have door, the area is open. Then you have the wizard, and/or his appreantices, dimension door or teleport into the different hallways and cast spells at the party from afar into the main room. When the party moves down the hall to kill the mages, they teleport or dimension door down another wallway and repeat.

 

[vstorm]

Great ideas!

Thanks for the ideas, guys!

Here is one I thought of...

The mage goes to the bottom of his tower and casts 2-3 passwall spells downard through the stone or in whatever direction is appropriate.

He then casts a couple of disintegrate spells to hollow out an area.

Then he stores his most valuable stuff here...or sets up a lab or something. He can then start the growth of a clone (which gets restarted every so often) in the event he/she gets killed. Could also store extra spell books and the like here.

 

[Synthetik Fish]

What is the goal of the party, what's the ultimate objective? Is this jsut a pillage and plunder thing, or do they have a paticular mission?

 

[vstorm]

The Goal

The goal is pretty straightforward...a straight plunder. I may tie a "retrieve the X from the mage's tower.

I am also playing with the idea of the mage being a lich or baelnorn who is insane. Cheesy, I know, but I want to learn the full capabilities of some of these 3.5e monsters.

 

[Synthetik Fish]

Heh. In that case...

Look to combo up monsters that help each other. Maybe a Fire Elemental, and soemthing that heals by fire (I think mephits can? Don't have my books in front of me.)

Have a room that is a giant pool, no ledges. This will prove to be a challenge to the PC's in 2 ways: A) because more likely than not, they can't breathe under water and B) There are two (2) Huge Water Elementals that are residing in that pool, waiting for intruders

If you want to kill the PC's... that's not hard at all. Do the anti-magic/creature with DR with magic combo I told you, have random arrow slits in rooms with the Lich slying around the secret passage ways launching random fireballs at the party through the slits (and then leaving)...

Reverse Gravity can be fun, too. Especially with creatures that can Spider Climb Just have fun with it...

EDIT: If you have a lich, make sure he is accompanied by evil clerics to heal him =)

 

[Whimsical]

A couple of things: the magic (& epic & alignment) Damage Reduction is Supernatural, therefore would be suppressed in an antimagic field. Second, a by-the-RAW method of warding a site against teleportation is with Hallow/Unhallow spell set to emanate a dimentional lock. It has a duration of a year. The nice thing about this spell is that it can be set to affect everyone except the caster and his friends. The wizard could either hire a cleric to cast it every year, or he could limited wish for it every year. One more thing, "arrow slits" for spellcasting need to be at least one square foot to allow line-of-effects to continue through.

When the tower goes into a defensive mode, one of the effects that should be present is the guards & wards spell. That can really slow down anyone on the offensive. guards & wards should be part of every mage's home defense.

Check out the permanancy spell and see what you can place where. You can set up permanent walls of force, permanent animated objects, or permanent teleportation circles. Permanent animated objects would be a lot easier to make than golems, so there would be more animated objects than golems.

Check out the traps section, there are a lot of magical traps that a caster with Craft Wonderous Items could create around their sanctum.

Just take another look at the spell list that your casters have available. There are a lot of spells that never see use because adventurers never take, but would be just right in a defensive scenario. How about some symbol spells? Permanent illusions that residence can see through because they know it's an illusion. How about programmend illusions that the party will waste resources on?

The intelligent wizard wouldn't completely rely on magical defenses, as someone with an anti-magic field could walk through and be unaffected or unhindered by magical defenses. This is where polymorph any object is your friend. You can load your tower with polymorphed items that un-polymorph when dispelled or suppressed. How about hallways that are actually polymorphed blocks of stone that reform? How about monsters polymorphed into statues? Monsters that would work especially well against opponents with no magic? How about acid, lava, poison, or other nonmagical hazzards polymorphed into something else and kept in strategic locations. Pit traps are easy to avoid with magic, but if you are walking around in an anti-magic field, they come back into play. So, make sure that you throw in some mundane traps and locks along the way to styme the arcane-only infiltrator.

 

[Synthetik Fish]

Check out the permanancy spell and see what you can place where. You can set up permanent walls of force, permanent animated objects, or permanent teleportation circles. Permanent animated objects would be a lot easier to make than golems, so there would me more animated objects than golems.

Think of random (hopefully unaviodible!) teleportation circles that teleport the party to random areas through out the tower, just to dis-orient them. Or even BETTER, make it into a trap-- this being paticularly evil if it was a trap that singled out one particular party member... like one that was at the bottom of a pit-fall trap, or activated as a single-time use when someone did something/touched something.

 

[Whimsical]

One more thing, a mage's tower would be a very appropriate place to find living spells. They can be found in the Eberron book or the MMIII.

I'm still looking for a living heal spell to use as a mount.