In a campaign I am currently involved, I have a Wizard who at some point down the road, will be building a Fortress/School as the head of an Arcane Order.
So, this place will double as a home-base for most of the adventuring party. Question is, I'd like to build a vault to store excess items, supplies, etc. Security is an issue, as it's a fairly high-magic setting. So far I have a Clay Golem built to help ward the area, but that can only go so far.
So, working with maybe 25,000 gold, and the resources of a 12th level wizard, how would some of you go about this? What kind of creative vaults or security ideas do you have?
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Not the best when it comes to knowing what a Wizard is capable of. However! My area of expertise is as a Rogue, so I can tell you what I'd be looking for as a thief.
1) Wards and Alarm spells as well as mundane alarms
2) Traps, traps, traps. You know what? Make this #1.
3) Hired guards - There are plenty of loyal ones out there.
4) Magical constructs as you've already mentioned.
5) I'd have to say other magical spells - Antimagic? Darkness, Fog?
6) Lots of light
7) Hire me to help point out discrepancies then pay me lots of gold to stay quiet. If not, I will find a way... -satisfied grin-
That's all the ideas I have for now. If I think of anything else, I'll let you know. Hope my ideas help a bit.
You'll want to put a layer of some special substance between the inner and outer walls/floors/ceilings/doors so as to avoid ethereal thieves. Precisely what that substance should be might vary from edition to edition. (I seem to remember something about gorgon's blood from 1e, or was that 2e?)
Maybe a layer of lead too, to avoid spell-based scanning.
If you're good friends with a Cleric or similar divine spellcaster, there are some good divine spells, some of which could either be made permanent (Permanency) or given a duration of one year (Hallow?). Anti-teleport/-astral travel spells (Forbiddance?). How about anti-Dispel Magic or the like. True Seeing or Invisibility Purge or Zone of Revelation.
Spells which trigger a Summon Monster spell.
I second the idea of a thin layer of lead, but one idea I always had is to make an area of essentially safe-deposit boxes, and then have them so that there's about...oh, 4 sets of shelves. One against each wall and two sets of shelves that roll out of the center of the vault when it's open. But when it isn't open, there isn't more than maybe an inch or two leeway. This makes it pretty much impossible to teleport in unless you're so small it doesn't matter anyway.
Also, taking an idea from an Adventure Path, make the vault have like, oh...12 keyholes? Make certain that they're all high DC, but it doesn't matter if they all use the same key. This makes it so they require about 12 Knock spells to open the vault. And all of this is mundane, so you can always add traps/enchantments, as this shouldn't cost too much, overall.
Maybe build an intelligent construct librarian/vault-keeper who assists and can command the golem? (Heck, make it a mindless undead and craft an intelligent magic item that wants to protect the vault and give him a cloned body of yours!)
Hope the ideas help. *shrugs*
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You could also try to go with the idea of creating a large extra- or non- dimensional space. A 10' x 10' Vault of Holding would be somewhere to start. You could scale up the type 4 bag of holding to 1000 cubic feet (10'x10'x10') for somewhere in the realm of 40 - 50,000gp (40 if you straight multiply, but the 4 types don't have a regular pattern like that). You may start off with a 5' cube vault (the cubic footage is less than a type 3) or maybe a 5' x 10' x 10' mini - storage (500 cubic ft). You would probably also add in a premium price for making it out of adamantine or something similar instead of a leather sack.
You could fashion said Vault as the shape of a doorway or some other portal type creation that could be carried with you. Depending what you put into it, you could even make it the entrance 3' x 3' x 1" thick and shrink item it to keep it in your pocket.
Portable Holes by default hold 282.6 cubic feet of stuff in their 3' radius cylinder. You could try scaling the size up (increasing the diameter from 6' to 12' increases the volume to 1130.4 cubic feet) and still having a vault you can take with you.
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In a campaign I am currently involved, I have a Wizard who at some point down the road, will be building a Fortress/School as the head of an Arcane Order.
So, this place will double as a home-base for most of the adventuring party. Question is, I'd like to build a vault to store excess items, supplies, etc. Security is an issue, as it's a fairly high-magic setting. So far I have a Clay Golem built to help ward the area, but that can only go so far.
So, working with maybe 25,000 gold, and the resources of a 12th level wizard, how would some of you go about this? What kind of creative vaults or security ideas do you have?
Magic does not function in the Vault: THey teleport in - but they dont teleport out - six day later you crack open the vault and find a hungry dude.
Great ideas! Thank you guys for the help! Definitely looking at a layer of lead to counter scrying, and I really like the idea of drawers being out so there is no space someone could teleport into. Definitely jotting this stuff down.
One idea I am heavily leaning on is to have the vault itself be completely separate from the rest of the stronghold, and require teleporting in. As in, the room itself is another 100' or so deeper in the ground with no door of any kind, save where you actually teleport into. The trick is having enough air in there so that I don't telelport in and suffocate. My Clay Golem gaurd would be suited just fine in an airless chamber, I would think.
As a secondary precaution, and this is going to weigh heavily on the DM, but I was considering having some kind of illusiory magic set in the vault so that the room constantly looks like some place else. That way, if someone were to scry on it, they would see the illusion and possibly mess up any teleport attempt. I don't know if telelport spells can be countered in such a way, but I figure it's worth looking into. Of course I'd need a fail-safe for my own teleporting...