My group (level 16, but with enough magic gear to be about level 18 in power) is going to break into the greatest thieves guild in my world.
If you were in charge of this vault, what would you do for protection?
I figure the whole thing will be a maze of traps. With CL 20 dimensional anchors and teleport traps. What else?
Constructs with a Readied action count as traps? Mirror traps are always good (the ones that create copies of the party)...I would also look into some puzzle groups and work that into the vault. don't let them get away with only using their magic/equipment. Antimagic Zone + Word Puzzles ect. MAke them use their minds and be creative.
The vault will be trapped to forever.
It will also be empty.
Thieves aren't stupid.
Does anyone know of any good 3PP trap books? I remember one from long ago in the 3.X era, but I don't remember if it was any good.
In this case they actually don't need to get treasure. Getting into the vault is good enough. I would actually expect small caches of goods stored temporarily throughout a complex of traps.
Speaking of which, any good thieves lair maps? I should see if 0one has anything for their Great City campaign.
The vault is a giant intelligent item construct that can phase/teleport/planseshift at will. Oh, and it spends most of it's time on a pocket plane that is mostly unaccessable and/or deadly for non-constructs.
The vault will be trapped to forever.
It will also be empty.
Thieves aren't stupid.
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Well, the guild must have something really impressive that they don't want to even touch themselves. Otherwise they wouldn't have a vault that would kill anyone trying to reach it.
How about this for a vault:
The vault is built into a stone bed, with miles of stone on all sides of it. Only a narrow, straight shaft leads straight down for miles. More on the shaft in a moment.
The vault itself is made of magically treated materials, possibly adamantine that was enchanted to be impossible to cut through. Make the walls at least a foot thick, just so if there was a way to cut through it, it would take a long time. Between the vault and the rock is a thin space filled with Green Slime. Also, dispersed randomly around the vault at different distances are areas of anti-magic. The Thieves guild also has lots of land sharks, purple worms, and other dangerous burrowing animals somehow bound the area around the vault.
The shaft is heavily trapped. In fact, the only way to go down the shaft is with the boots of levitation the guild master owns. He doesn't let anyone know, but the boots double as a key of sorts. In fact, he killed the only wizard that knew that secret. However, even if someone were to make it past all the traps, there are several guardians, some sentient and some not, that have orders to kill anyone who isn't the guild master. One guardian should be a CR 20+ outsider.
What about the inside of the vault? Anti-magic interior. Yep. So if someone were to teleport in, they would be stuck.
Wait... you wanted the to be able to break in?
This reminds me of the Lich Phalactry protection thread.
Something that our GM did to us was the "vault" had something that wouldn't let teleport work correctly. If you tried to teleport, you would be moved in a random direction an equal distance you tried to move. And if you ended up in a space inside the "no teleport" zone, it would keep moving you. You took an extra 1d6 damage every time you where moved after the first. At some point he just popped you back to your starting point. We had a blink dog with us, and some other teleport magic items/spells. It was messy.
Also some of the walls could not be moved though with the meld into stone spell. Metal with stone over it. Mix up what the walls are made of, but make them all look the same.
Spray the walls with "magic" so any detect magic spell with just mess with their heads.
Best trap we ran into was a large iron door, had your typical darts/poison/spinning blades, the normal. And once the thief stuck his head around the door after he opened it, a construct smashed him in the head with a brick. It just sat and waited for someone to come by.
Do a search for Grimtooth's Traps. I recall he had some crazy messed up stuff. One I remember best where the fake floor tiles that would cut your foot off when you tripped them. Or you could do optical illusion traps. Not magical, and not really traps. Like creating a pattern with colored tiles, but one or more of the tiles isn't there, its a hole. Would cause you to fall/trip. Sticky floor tiles.
And then there is the pointless trap. Something that takes your players hours to get though, just to be a dead end. "It has huge locks on it, and like 50 traps, it must be an important way to go!"
Can't believe I forgot this one. But we had a adventure once where we had to swim in a small pit that was under a statue that was holding in place an item we needed. At the bottom there was a brass plate that had an inscription, and some switches and things that needed to be moved in a specific pattern to get something to open. The "water" turned out to be some kind of weak jelly cube that slowly ate me. ow. And once the correct combo was given, the item was set free. Once we removed the item, I got sprayed with oil, and set on fire. Oh not fun for me.
Not an actually tough trap, but one I remember from the old Silver Princess module that I always liked.
You are searching a long abandoned palace. You head down a long corridor. In the middle it opens up into a 30' wide pit of oil. Another chute opens up and drops a stick of wood into the oil. Had the palace been still active, the torch would have been lit.
Great for that oh no moment with low level groups.
One guardian should be a CR 20+ outsider.
Sadly, my group eats CR 20+ outsiders for breakfast.
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If you didn't mind doing some conversion work, you could always have a Living Vault at the center of the trapped areas. Might have to tone it down a bit, though.
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Seriously, though, assuming the guild fences the majority of its ill-gotten gains, what's keeping them from storing the vast majority of their wealth in a bank of some sort? Would make it much more difficult to steal.
If you wanted to be extravagant you could even say it's an extraplanar bank of some sort. Run by efreeti or whatever other race you think would fit.
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I don't know who came up with the idea that a thieves guild needed a vault in their hideout, but it has never made logical sense to me. Like it was pointed out before, more of the goods would be fenced out, the gold from the sales would be dispersed to the different members who earned it, and they would be responsible for their own gold. The head of the guild could have a few items that he liked to keep for himself, but mostly on their person or in their personal quarters. A thieves guild should never be so large that they need their own private bank in their own guild house. They might have a small safe to hold money while it is waiting to be paid out, but not a vault full of riches.
What would make sense is if they had a few banks under their secret control. These banks could be used to far more valuable items, but mostly to hold the vast illegitimate wealth.
We are talking about a fantasy game though, so there could be a reason for a vault.
You could stick with my original suggestion, but to be honest that was mostly a joke. Unless the guild was as wealthy as a small nation they wouldn't be able to afford to be able to put that together.
A smart guild wouldn't go overboard with protection. Simple is better, and misdirection would be the bulk of the defenses.
The vault itself needs to be a magical item. It would be warded against just about everything. Teleportation would be impossible, as would simply cutting or breaking it open. There would be several locks on it, with a mix of mechanical and magical locks. Not all of the locks would be visible, and some would rely on magnets or mage hand. Also, a few of the locks (I would have one obvious, one well hidden and one invisible) are actually dummys or decoys. There could even be a few dummy keys the guild master has with the real keys. These dummies would trigger a trap, or the next feature of the vault.
The vault is actually only in the guild house during a very narrow time period about once a month. The time it is in the guild house would be up to the head of the guild, and would be set when they visit the vault each month. A good guild master would randomize the time, and let a few false times be leaked just to see who would try and break into the vault.
Where would the vault be when it isn't at the guild house? Another plane of existence, deep in a mountain, the bottom of the ocean. Who knows. A smart guild master would ask the crafter of the vault to keep that a secret from even him, and then kill him once the vault is finished. Oh, and the vault is warded against divination.
So we have a vault that would only be in the guild house for a short time (though you could have it that if the door is open it wont teleport away,) with locks of all kinds, and some of the locks trigger the teleport.
I am sure I missed something and the vault has some fault that can be taken advantage of. A vault like that though would be more of a challenge for your party then some uber trapped maze the vault is a part of. They would have to contend with the guild first, and even then they would have some puzzle solving.
Indeed.
Any vault in a thieves guild is merely going to be a honeytrap for suckers. The thieves would not be interested in storing wealth there, as who would want to hold onto stolen goods for an extended period of time!?
At best they would have small amounts onhand to pay for items (fencing) or to settle debts/offer perrt loans. The individual wealth of the members would be scattered out (like in real life) to avoid the authorities being able to capture it all (or even notice the stuff in the first place).
If the party is that big and that uber they have also probably moved past the need to collect cash off the thieves guild and should probably be off conquering whole nations. :)
They are actually just finding the place with the strongest connection to the domain of Trickery. So if it is all a ruse and diversion with no actual treasure, that actually works out pretty well.
Not third party - but there was an article in PZO9040 (Serpent's Skull #4 - Vaults of Madness) called Dungeon Deathtraps. Has some fun was to set-up two part traps.
Firstly. The PC's are 16th level. They have reached pretty much the top tier of any sentient beings ability. they are approaching the status shared by myhtical figures. The idea that a thieves guild exists that could challenge them is a pretty laughable thought. I will presume there is a good reason something like this exists though, and I leave it to you to justify it.
After all, by 16th level; they are pretty much ready to start punching out dragons and cavorting with upper echelon demonic forces. I don't even keep games alive long enough to reach that level.
That said, If I were designing traps for a vault....
* traps should work often enough to justify building. The first way to make a character stumble into a trap is to deny their ability to find them. Place traps wher no one thinks to do a search. No perception check = no found traps. I like at the bottom of ladders, at the bottom of other traps, 10 feet before a menacing looking object etc... I've found that as soon as the party rogue looks for a trap (or heavens forbid takes 20) he generally finds it.
* Traps should be deadly. OR really should have a seriously unwelcome effect. a little challenge rating appropriate damage is trivial, and all it does is blow a little time for the cleric. Serious damage or an effect that really stumps them is the order of the day.
* traps need to be gotten around by the makers. sadly, the traps have to be able to be bypassed for the owners to get in or out. The information or tricks used need to be relatively secure or else the bard will get it and then it get's bypassed.
Some Ideas:
Dwarven Castling Vault. A cube like dungeon composed of 8 rooms, stacked 2x2x2 each room is about 30 feet across. Every 6 hours the Cube teleports randomly between a dozen or so secret locations. It has no actual doors, it has to be teleported to, which can only be done by someone who has memorised the interior of a specific room, and can initiate a teleport the appropriate distance and actually knows which location the vault is in at the time of teleport. It may take hours to calculate with some obscure mathematical formulae for instance. This doens't even account for any traps you wish to place In the vault itself.
An Ice cavern deep into the earth. a 5 mile long tunnel leads there, and light is pretty much extinguished the whole way. Traps liter the tunnel, but a shoeless man who know what to look for can feel small grooves in the floor signalling traps ahead. The cavern itself is littered with some dangerous level undead, benefiting from it's immunity to cold and it's blind sight.
The vault itself is a collosal animated object. One that can, if need be, simply flee the PC's.
The vault is located in the sub levels of a mountain top monastery, and is flooded. Numerous traps before the basement are designed to dump PC's off the side of the mountain (possibly through an antimagic field)
a Pit trap, which drops into a well of many worlds
a pit trap, that is more easilly detected and avoided. a secret door in the floor of that trap leads to a permanent magnificent mansion (and the vault)
The vault's contents are affected by some sort of long term or permanent polymorph effect, while dummy treasure sits nearby.
The vault is only accessable by bridge over...oh i don't know....an acid pit i guess. The bridge is an animated object.
The final chamber before the vault has 300 doors. all trapped (even the right one). These magical traps are resetting, and if triggered, summon nasty level appropriate critters. More to the point, unless the cistern underneath the room is full, any attempt to open a door triggers the trap, bypassed or not.
Batts
You know, this thieves vault could actually be the vault of a bank. Or the guild vault could be a museum. Filled with portraits and lists of all the famous jobs that have been done and by who. Items they don't want the rest of the world to have. Things like that I would expect to be there.
Have you thought about making a moving wall maze? Cutting out the map and fixing pins into it so that you can spin parts of it. If everything is round, would make it easier. You could have large outer areas that move, and then maybe 3 more inner areas that rotate on their own, but also orbit each other. I remember having a code wheil for some game that worked like that.
So the party could map it out, and it would never be totally correct. Even with magic map making items, they still only work on a "I've been here, and this is what I saw" kind of map. And there is a spell that lets you kill something and it gives you a map to its goodies, that map would only be accurate until the walls changed again.