Best Wizard tower protections you've seen.


Advice


What are some of the best combinations of protections on a wizard tower have you seen? This can be permanency combinations, traps, general trickery, etc.


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Leaving aside such obvious basics as dimensional barriers, scrying barriers, walls of force, and the like...

Putting the tower on another plane.

A permanent gate with a programmed illusion of the wizard laughing and taunting his foes, then walking through the gate. Needless to say, the destination is (a) not healthy, and (b) not easy to get back from, with (c) lots of unfriendly natives.

A golem under orders to take down a blanket covering a symbol if any intruders enter the room, then attack those incapacitated by the symbol. (The wizard always recites a password when entering the room. This is a blind. The real trigger to the golem is "if anyone enters without having a raven perched on their left shoulder", a raven being the wizard's imp familiar's favored shape).

That old favorite guards and wards. The uses are manifold, and limited only by your imagination (e.g., a built-in suggestion to, oh, walk through a doorway similar to the above portal.) The combinations are very possible.

A mighty and powerful guardian that will attack anyone approaching except those who knock politely, identify themselves, and ask to be admitted.

Illusions making the tower itself appear to be a humble cottage near a frightening tower. The tower itself is a deathtrap dungeon to rival the Tomb of Horrors, but the cottage conceals a portal to wherever the wizard actually lives.

An illusion of a beaded curtain beyond which a room full of great treasure awaits. The doorway is actually filled by a prismatic wall and right above the oubliette.

A screen spell that shows the wizard cavorting in his bathtub with a nymph. If one attempts to teleport into the scene, one will discover the room is actually filled with non-breathable atmosphere, the "showers" are hydroflouric acid, and the teleport trap on the room brings one straight back into it.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Being unfindable


Lead-lined hiding niches to protect one's valuables from prying magical eyes.

Permanent illusions of walls covering pits or of walls covering other walls with levers that bypass traps.

Liberal use of mimics as doors, chests, etc.

Use of constructs as guardians, doormen, etc.

Proof against teleportation wards to keep out teleporting interlopers, or teleportation traps to entrap them in your dungeon.

I don't like to turn wizard towers into vertical Tombs of Horrors, but I do like to keep players off balance in them.

Dark Archive

Mazes, that move, with golems, anti-magic fields, and gates that appear to lead forward and actually reset you to the beginning.

Little evil-doers who scrub away unwelcome guests chalk (or other) marks and replace with combinations of Symbols of (Death, Weakness, Slow, etc.) and/or Explosive Runes.

50/50 mix of reality and illusion so the party eternally has to decide whether to waste resources or whether to risk a surprise round.

Pit traps into anti-magic oubliettes, filled with swarms of _______.

Pit traps whose bottoms happen to be a gates to the beginning of the maze.

All the guards are without helmets so the wizard can spot his trusted guards quickly and easily. All hallways are smooth with no buttresses to hide behind for cover. There are no ventilation/sewer, or other forms of ducts to climb through.


Hidden levers that are incredibly hard to find which appear to disable traps but are actually triggers for other traps, placed purely to shut down anyone clever (and therefore dangerous) enough to spot them.

The entrance to the tower is actually a Gate keyed to the Wizard which takes him to his home; anyone else who steps through instead enters the tower, which is in reality a colossal-sized Mimic.

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