Not if a person, using True Seeing so they could tell what they were doing, applied a non-magical disguise to the simulacra. With a skill-boosting item, and hiring a specialist, you could probably get a +30 on the disguise roll. How many wizards put significant ranks in Spot?STARP_President said:I thought about simulacra. That's an illusion spell. Wouldn't true seeing see through it?
Sounds like a good adventure. Other forms of attack might be more reasonable in terms of "chances for success," but don't work as well as an adventure setup. And without an adventure setup, the game is pretty boring.My current idea is that the evil mages do have sleeper agents - a number of them, including one aboard the PCs' ship. Just before the ship arrives, the evil mages' sleeper agents de-activate the dimensional locks in the castle, the mages teleport in and grab the Queen's husband and baby daughter. The Queen's crown, orb and scepter are magical artifacts that hold the key to the kingdom. The person who wears the crown controls the island's movement and so forth. You have to be good to wear it without suffering negative levels, but the wizards don't know that. They threaten to kill the Queen's family unless she co-operates by doing exactly as the cabal says. Now the Queen isn't stupid, and she's a powerful mage, and not likely to take this lying down. I figure, however, she decides to pick her moment carefully and so does nothing.
Enter the PCs. Their ship arrives and to get them onto the island, the Queen, being directed by her captors, invites the senior crew to dinner. This includes the PCs, including one who is a wizard who escaped from the cabal years ago and now works against them. While the PCs are away, our sleeper agent sneaks off the ship and onto the island.
The PCs will be able to tell something's wrong but not know what. While they're in the castle, the cabal places it in 'lockdown' mode - dimensional locks, walls of force, arcane locks and so on - nothing gets in or out. The PCs are now prisoners in the castle. The cabal wants the PC wizard to return to the fold, and lock the others up so he'll co-operate. Meanwhile, the sleeper NPC shows up, saying he is to be the new puppet ruler of the island. The Queen knows what will happen if he wears the crown, and by putting it on his head the new 'King' goes insane and gains negative levels. This doesn't concern the cabal, so long as he does as he's told.
The PCs therefore, have work to do. To save the day they have to take on each of the cabal, or defeat them some other way. They have to locate and secure the Prince and Princess so the cabal has no bargaining power. One of them has to resist coercion into rejoining the cabal, the others have to escape from their forcecage cell with an antimagic field around it. I also like the idea of the NPC 'king' actually starting to feel guilty about betraying them - the crown has made his mind go gooey but he still feels responsible. He offers to let them out if they take him back - they're unlikely to do this but it's good character stuff. I figure he could be the redeemed bad guy who gets killed by the cabal before the end of the adventure.
What do people think?
Fixed your... typo.Ankh-Morpork Guard said:1. Step onto the island, planting flag in ground.
2. ???
3. Rule.
Yes, yes, same thing in the end.Darkness said:Fixed your... typo.
Craer said:It won't be easy, but here's how you take a floating island. First, you get a large battery of catapults that can fire a payload onto the island itself from their position. Then, you get Troll in a Jar. Troll in a Jar is exactly what it sounds like, except the cans are full of liquid Trolls. The Trolls are fired en masse onto the island, where the jars break open and the trolls rapidly regenerate from piles of troll goo into pissed off trolls, who totally flip out and kill anyone that drops a spoon. After about a day of constant trolljar attack, strafe the island with acid-admixtured Meteor Swarms. That should mop up any remaining opposition, and any remaining trolls from the first wave of attack.
All that's left is to stride in like a king and claim your burning, troll-spattered wreckage.
Hire a bunch of rogues to run in before a significant invasion (make a deal with a neighboring powerful [and evil] thieves guild?) with scrolls of Mordenkeinen's Disjunction - timing the disjunction to coincide with the beginning of a mundane invasion should leave many spellcasters tempoararily powerless, and has a decent chance of obliterating any magical defenses already in place.MerakSpielman said:Remember to bombard the place with Silenced pebbles, too. It's a real pain being a spellcaster when there are globes of silence scattered everywhere.
STARP_President said:My campaign has a magical island that floats around the place. It's populace consists entirely of magic-users (arcane only, plus a few clerics of the goddess of magic.). There is also an organisation of evil mages which is devoted to, among other things, world domination. Now, my question is - how do they take over the island with a handful of people(it can't be too many cos the PCs have to fight them)? Bear in mind the island's queen is a 20+ level Wizard and EVERYONE on the island is magically active. They can't charm or dominate the queen because there's too many people who can see through it or dispel it - ditto for killing or capturing her and replacing her in some fashion. How could they do it logically? My only thought is that they actually coerce her in some way - they aren't using magic to control events at all - though the baddies are all wizards (or sorcerers or warlocks or whatever) they are controlling the Queen, and events, simply though tried-and-tested blackmail, extortion and other mundane methods.
Suggestions, comments?