Hello all!
Looking for some spell suggestions to help fortify our party's Homebase.
Last session with my group we ended up getting some valuable Plot McGuffins and cash loot that we'd like to store at our home base, and said items need protecting.
As the party spellcaster (Level 10 heavily focused Illusionist wizard, Mythic 1), the task as fallen to me, and our Rogue9/Bard1/Mythic1 to trap up and make safe our home.
I have unlimited access to every spell 3rd and lower, most of the 4th level spells, and restricted amounts of what I can do with 5th. Safe to assume I own any illusion or Shadow spells of any level, plus Permanency, & Lesser Planar Binding.
The home in question is a two story house on the outer edge of a Lakeside town, nothing particularly note worth about the house or landscape. We have a maid (Former rescuee) who looks after things- and although she's been incredibly trust worthy in my opinion, the party seems to have reservations about telling her everything, so she is to have limited access/knowledge on trappings.
We normally don't have access to the house for days on end- even with teleport. So spells that require refreshing might be an issue, but we'll take then into consideration anyway.
Advice Please, and thank you in advance!
Who or what, if anything or anyone, are you concerned about coming after you or the 'loot'? If it is no one specific then I'd keep the traps and spells more minimal and as non-magical as possible (especially since recasting things sounds like it might be an issue). No use lighting up the place like a christmas tree and having anyone wandering by wondering what is so warded? If you have some specific rivals or foes after you or the McGuffins then knowing more about them and their abilities and resources would help with more specific advice. What are the McGuffins (a book, a sword, piece of jewelry, a large statue, the 'golden child')?
Do you have Extend?
Otherwise a well locked and mundanely trapped secret door to a secret room, lead line and locked chest buried within the room. Walls to the room of thick worked stone to resist using spells against the wall and to detect/see within the room.
Even if she doesn't know about the traps I'd give the maid some specific set of instructions on what to do if someone does come calling while you are out ... i.e. "go to so and so for help" or "run to a local caster and give him this package" (which contains sufficient coin to cast, as an example, a Sending spell to you.
Kayerloth wrote: Who or what, if anything or anyone... Who/What? Don't know, something with Mythic Tiers. As after slaying a tier 1 dragon and gaining said McGuffin, and becaming mythic, "We felt something watching us." Which is rather heavy handed in this DMs case. Since then we've been assaulted by a group of Oriental themed Warriors and then a group of OgreMage/Oni Assassins, and our DM is know for using other-worldly-horrors. So we are expecting to escalate, but don't know into what.
Secondly we have a minor rival who is a ghost (or something?) that possesses people. A body jumper. Perhaps even to just protect stuff from this guy screwing things up.
McGuffins: One is some semi-holy sword, and one is a small Seal which can not be teleported or placed in extra-dimensional spaces. The seal came with some "Anti-Scrying box" which we keep it in.
NonMcguffins: Gold. We now have lots of coins of various money, enough for say... a Dragon to sleep on, and this DM has been know to hit our stashes before with Common thieves, because of storing all our loot in one spot. Well common UMD thieves, but we are also worried about "whatever else" is coming.
Extend?: Moderate Metamaigc Rod of Extend, yes.
Non-magical protections will probably carry you a lot further than magic. For example, step #1 is to have everything in a lead-lined space. Leading sheeting is relatively cheap, and quite thoroughly blocks all sorts of divination.
Second, what you mostly want is WARNING and DELAY if someone tries to break in and steal your McGuffins. You won't be able to adequately ward your home base versus CR-appropriate foes. You might be able to set up something that WARNS you if someone tries, and enough traps and tricks to DELAY the invaders until your party can arrive.
Third, misdirection can work wonders. For example, make several non-magical duplicates of each item, and cast Misdirection and Nondetection on each. Thieves will have NO WAY to know whether or not the got the real McGuffin. If you make them struggle to find a well-protected seeming-McGuffin they will probably stop looking once they find it.
Finally, no matter how clever you are, if your GM wants bad guys to steal your toys then they will. There's nothing you can do about this, besides keep said items on your person 24x7, and even that's not foolproof.
Unfortunately a lot of long-duration or permanent protection-type spells only come at higher levels, or are very class-specific. One of the earliest is probably Hallow, which is a long-acting Magic Circle Against Evil with one bonus spell effect. And that's Cleric level 5.
I suppose you could use something like Explosive Runes, but that's as likely to destroy what you're trying to protect as anything else. Sepia Snake Signal could also be an option, if you can create something that looks like an intruder should read it. Improve Trap could be used to make a mundane trap harder to find or disarm. You could also use one of the lower-level "symbol" spells to set nasty magical traps.
Beyond this I can't see too many options beyond the mundane for a 10th level party.
Do you have any allies or someone in town who might help if alerted to problems by your Maid? Any favors you could call in for example. I tend to agree with the other posters, your magical options especially to cover you for potentially several days when you are not around are few, even with access to both Permanency and Extend.
Permanency Alarm - need to remain within a mile (or less) to get a mental ping. Even more limited range if the audible alert is chosen. But it could alert the Maid who could then get help.
Secret Chest has the duration to be potentially useful to you but doesn't really help with 'fortifying the homebase'
Might be able to do something interesting with Shrink Item but it only works on mundane items (which the Sword McGuffin isn't I'm thinking) ... but depending on your DM a huge pile of gold or a smaller pile within a locked mundane chest may constitute a single item (much the way a fire and its fuel are a single item). A shrunken cloth-like item is much easier to hide mundanely I expect than a huge mound of coinage. Shrink Item's 1 day/level duration makes it much more useful than many of the 1 hour/level spells for someone who's out and about rather than playing guardian. Might be amusing to place the "cloth-like Shrink Item" as a hanging 'anti-invisibility' curtain in a doorway in plain sight to all :)
Permanency Invisibility on a mundane trap might both slow the foes down thinking its a magical trap and or make said trap harder to detect in the first place. The 'sudden' appearance of the trap (or other object) caused by the intruders messing around might in turn trigger a Magic Mouth to do its thing aka an 'Alarm"' spell with more duration (without the cost of Permanency). But again doesn't help much except perhaps to alert the Maid to intruders perhaps.
Unfamiliar with Mythic for the most part, so unsure what if anything your Mythic 1 tier could do for you but others might if you could relate what it does.
Mirage Arcana falls into the same issue as many other spells. The duration limits its usefulness to someone unable to be around to refresh it. Persistent Image gets around the duration issue but you'd have to figure out how to use it to set up an unwanted intruder and not kill off the maid or other innocent guest/visitor in the process since this is an active home residence not some dank remote dungeon (unless you left off some details about personal issues :p).
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