Dungeon: Government Research Facility

[Garrick Williams]

I'm building a dungeon that's a large arcane research facility headed by a patriarch that can remotely control many aspects of the building. There's a large emphasis on magical devices, constructs, and linguistics.

I'm brainstorming ideas for floors and departments. Maybe you can think of some? I must admit I'm coming onto an idea where a large section of the facility is dedicated to obstacle courses that test new spells and magical traps.

[The Shining Fool]

For some combat, but keeping the linguistics and constructs themes, you could early on have a series of construct "mooks" the party must fight, each with a single word or series of letters inscribed on them. The words (or letters), when put in the right order, spell out a riddle.

Later on, the party can fight a much more difficult construct. Something they *can* beat, but which will be very very hard. However, if you have the answer to the riddle from the earlier constructs, you can turn the difficult construct "off." I would describe the later construct as a larger/more powerful version of the earlier ones, and maybe have another hint in the room - like an inscription saying "I answer to my children's call" over the door or something.

[Scythia]

Bio-research lab. You can have all manner of mutant versions of otherwise ordinary monsters. Maybe elemental goblins? A chimera like creature made from a bear with a troll head and arms, as well as giant bat wings grafted on? How about intelligent oozes? You could put all kinds of things in there.

Spectral analysis facility. With painstaking research into shadows and other darkness based creatures (some of which are still contained on-site), the secrets of sentient and animate darkness were unlocked. Perhaps they've built better shadow creatures, or perhaps... they're applied the lessons to create animate, sentient (and highly malevolent) light creatures.

Edit: I used the bio lab in one of my games. Among the designer creatures there, I had an ooze that was engineered to serve as living armor. Basically, it wrapped the protectee like a second skin, providing a natural armor bonus. There's alot of interesting non-combat possibilities in there, like symbiotic creatures, or unusual pets.

[Trekkie90909]

Rewatch/Replay the Resident Evil series - plenty of inspiration for weird mutant monsters and trap rooms. If you don't like zombies, just replace them with some other theme. As far as the linguistics stuff goes, that could be partly to decipher new spells (if you have a lot of spell casters and think they'd be interested), or ways to disable traps (if they don't have a good trapper), to communication with various NPCs (random fun), for a more combat heavy session stuff regarding the different creatures they're fighting, or for a detective theme clues as to the head honcho's real identity/location/motives.

[Friend of the Dork]

I'm making something like this myself, a secret base owned by an evil secret network with close ties to an imperial government. They have access to lots of magic, golems, biomagical engineering,and even nanogolems (think nanotech).

The compound is protected by a semi-permanent wall of force, protection from teleportation (Forbiddance? Cant remember which spells), magic turrets that shoots like Ring of the Ram, human and hobgoblin guards, Cannon Golems(yes they are in PF), triggered alarm systems, modified humans (shadow or shade template) and of course weird monsters as the results of experiments. Throw in a couple of Guard dogs and traps with Invisibilty Purge.

Party is 10th level with lots of magic - 2 wizards, 1 magus and a Rogue.

I'm also looking for ways to secure the place against high level spellcasters.

[Necromancer]

SCP's got you covered: Link to the first series hub

Seriously, just read some entries and note how different threats are contained and what precautions used. There's over two thousand scenarios (within series one through an unfinished three) and you're bound to walk away with something useful.

[DominusMegadeus]

I second the idea to cruise SCP for ideas. Containment protocol for Pathfinder monsters must be hellish.

"In the case of a shadow outbreak, Class-D personnel are advised to assist one another with self-termination."