I'm running a Kingmaker campaign that is currently in kingdom building mode between books 2 and 3. For this session, the party will consist of 2 7th level PC's and 3 5th level PC's with NPC gear. I posted this over in the Golarion general forum, but didn't get any responses. Thought I'd see what readers of the Kingmaker board might have to say.
For various reasons, my PCs have decided that it would be a good idea to start establishing diplomatic relations with the neighbors of their neighbors, starting with, of all places, Galt. And while there, they want to purchase a moveable type press and hire a master printer to operate it when they bring it home.
Of course, this being paranoid Galt, diplomacy is unlikely to go well, and Galt will flatly refuse to allow export of a press. They then learn of a master printer who has run afoul of the current regime. He's being held in a nearby jail and will face the final blade in the morning. If they can spring him from jail and escape the country, he can set up a press back home.
I've got the Paizo Prison flip-mat so I'll use that. There will definitely be 1 or more Grey Gardeners from the Inner Sea NPC codex as the master jailers. My question for you is what sort of defenses and alarms and such should the prison have?
One thing I dislike about fantasy settings is that there sometimes seems to be a "real world" that is much like ours, and a "hero world" where powerful PC's, creatures, and spells exist. These world's tend not to interact much, so, for example, all those powerful spells and magic items are rarely used by the rulers to, say, help with guarding prisoners.
Picture a typical jail in a psuedo renaissance setting. It would have strong stone walls, metal bars on the cell doors, armed guards to keep the prisoners in and those who might try to free them out. None of that would present any difficulty for a mid level PC. So what fantasy elements should a jail have to make it more secure? I don't want to take up more than a few hours of table time, so I don't want the place to be impossible to spring somebody out of, but Galt has been doing this for 40 years and ought to be prepared for most basic adventurer tricks.
If they can get away with the guy, either by bypassing defenses and escaping undetected or by fighting their way out after being discovered, I'll resolve their escape with chase cards, giving positive or negative modifiers depending on the success or failure of their stealth mission.
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Is there anything like Dimensional Anchor that either last a longer time, or covers a wider area than one person? That seems like exactly what you want in order to stop a bunch of the easiest "magic in, magic out" rescue tricks but it would be totally infeasible to have enough high level casters to keep throwing it on every prisoner ever ten minutes.
Could you set up something with Contingency - Dimensional Anchor this prisoner if anyone other than a guard enters the cell - or is that only range "self"?
I feel like I asked more questions than I answered, but those are the first things that popped into my head.
While it may not be what you are looking for, I personally favor as little magic as I can generally get away with.
Given you are dealing with potentially 4th level spells like dimension door. I do have a few recommendations. Based upon the level of the party I would recommend any significant anti-magic tactics (just for cost). I would avoid interior knowledge about the building and I would place the building so that it had a decent amount of clearance to anything else (I'll say 500 feet). While they still would be able to teleport in, it would be a blind teleport. They will probably not go straight to the prisoner's cell and would hopefully give the guards time to react or respond.
The distance between the prison and other buildings puts it at the limit of long range divination spells. That way they can't hide in too many buildings while they use spells like clairvoyance on the prison. If there is over 700 feet of distance between other buildings and the prison, it would put it out of complete range for normal long range spells of this level.
It is also reasonable that they have an appropriate guard response. If someone is smashing the doors of the prison down they should be on their way to respond and engage the PCs if too much time is taken.
Guards also should be ready for escapes by using the citizen's of the area against the party. Galt is a nation of fear and paranoia. If random people see the party walking around, they likely will sell them out to the Grey Gardeners if asked to ensure that their head is not next on the chopping block. If there are brave people helping the party, they party will want to excessive caution to ensure they don't get those helpful people killed.
There are a few spells I can see being cast post escape. In scouting roads and paths see invisibility makes sense for it's long duration and relatively low level. When used to scout any invisible groups, they would show up as a red flag, even more obvious if they just ran through the town in the first place. Based upon the prisoner, they probably don't have the ability to keep a spotter with this constantly active, but it would be useful in the minutes or hour following an escape. Scrying would be an incredibly useful spell but it requires a much higher level spell slot. Even if they have access to a caster of appropriate level, it might take a few hours or a day for the gardeners to get the spell cast. However they will likely have a piece of the prisoner (hair, nail) for scrying to ensure that it is successful on the first attempt. It doesn't pin point the location of the prisoner/party, but it could help them in locating approximately where prisoners have escaped to.
How much of each defense depends on what your PCs are capable of. If they have clairvoience, the anti-teleporation stuff above wasn't set up to stop teleporting in and out as much as to make it harder for the players to end this section in a handful of minutes.
Well, lets try a cheap security measure for starters - Arcane Mark. It's permanent. It costs nothing in material components. It's easy to do because it's a cantrip! Why is it so good?
You make the mark invisible. If it gets hit with a Detect Magic - it glows and becomes visible - a clear sign to any guard that someone is doing some preliminary recon divinations on the prison. You can cast a Detect Magic through a Scry sensor (5% chance of success/level) but even that should still light up an invisible Arcane Mark.
So, you riddle your dungeon/prison with these things. If one lights up - trouble might be on it's way! A sure fire alert for the guards that something is amiss (or about to be). And it's pretty much a freebie given that it's a cantrip.
I'll typically have my smarter NPC's have a ring or something similarly innocuous Arcane Marked in such a way that if it glows, only they are likely to see it. Serves as an alert that someone is pinging them with a Detect Magic (and it's time to be on your guard).