Tower shopping! For the wizard who has everything...

[DrunkonDuty]

Oh, I didn't realise this was a question for an actual campaign. I thought it was more of a rhetorical sort of thing just to get some ideas flowing.

Mmmmmm. So no extra-dimensions, not close to innocents who may suffer from collateral damage, but some mod-cons. I take it teleport and such work. So mod cons are never far away.

Obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate. If you can build the tower one place then move it: do so. Failing that build several towers using mundane labour and build another using your magic. The down side being that, unless your Wizard has any knowledge of engineering it may fall down in the first strong gust of wind. And designing one that looks nice to boot, that's a whole nutha skill set.

Anyway, the real tower/dungeon/manor house should be hidden. There's invisibility. There's permanent fog spells, maze spells and confusion spells. Repulsion is a great one too. Kigmatzomat's ideas for giving yourself an aresenal of mundane objects to use is great.

I'd go with under the sea. Damned hard to get to without magic, leaving you the option of dispelling any water breathing magic people use. Truly, suffocation works in DnD. 3 rds to dead, regardless of hp. Make sure you and your staff always have potions of water breathing and try and maintain a stock of wondrous items of free movement.

Let us know what you decide, I'm curious to see what you go with.

PS: style over substance!!

 

[rgard]

You could build the tower on the moon. My magic user did this in 1e. IIRC (it's been 25 years real time and I don't have the character sheet handy), the mu had to research a teleport spell with a longer range...did a 2 light second range as opposed to a 186,000 mile range, wore a necklace of adaptation, ring of warmth and took a 're-fresh air' (researched cleric spell) enchanted box with him. Cast a boatload of move earth and wall of iron spells and after a couple of trips eventually got it built.

Never got sieged in that one.

That said, the demiplane option would be too cool to pass up in 3e.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Slife]

Stronghold builder's guidebook + the moon + mordenkaiden's magnificent mansion. That is to say, have a stronghold with a section buried underneath the surface on the dark side of the moon concealing the portal to your main stronghold. You can make your stronghold airtight and have a permanent supply of fresh air. Make your lair out of stone, since you should have wall of stone and therefore can get the walls for free. If you have the book, add in some spell turrets from the DMG 2 for defenses (as an epic wizard, you can certainly afford to make them with nineth level spells, which will give you a defense equivalent to three or four 20th level sorcerers. ) Have a bard servant who can play a lyre of building to protect it (buildings get complete immunity to damage when a lyre of building is playing! Joy!). The moon-based area should get the crawling and burrowing movement enhancements, so it can be moved around the moon's interior. Make it impervious to scrying to boot.

The permanent magnificent mansion that constitutes the majority of your living space can include the rest of the stuff you need in your massive fortress, along with your lab, library, scrying chamber, and various other necessities.

Not floating, just ridiculously far away.

 

[DarkKestral]

I also suggest the portal workers to site then remove portal idea. Keeps you in control, but doesn't require as much effort to be obscure. Also highly recommend the 'build multiples' option. Don't necessarily need to go the whole hog, but enough that you'll at least have a tower everyone thinks you live at (just use a couple of permanent persistent images of you being irascible and irritated and coming out to complain and make the images do so only when it's something that would normally be irritated with.)

Ok, as far as levitating goes: you don't need a whole bunch of gp to get the levitating effect; just use immovable rods in the foundation and have them support around 7500 lbs each, so that you've got some overhead, for a total cost of 5000gp per 7500 lbs. Combine with a Lyre of Building and Wall spells, and you'll not have much in the way of gp costs, except for protective measures. Next up: Forbiddance spells. Go the whole hog and cover the entire place, plus much of the region around it. Major gp cost, but it's worth it. Now permanency some obscuring mists and blanket the entire next few miles around. After that, research a version of reverse gravity that lets you set the direction, then permanency it and build a maze using the gravity spells and the mist to keep aerial visitors from being able to find the place and figure out where they are.

After that, the illusions... use some to lead people astray; I'd go for some permanent persistant images and some dancing lights types of effect to make the area seem foreboding and scary, and like there's some unnatural influences. Bonus points if you set this up in a dark wood and convince any neutral-to-good humanoid locals to scare visitors away, but in such a way that it keeps the torch-n'-pitchfork tendencies of other locals down. Make your attackers' fears their own enemy.

Next up, permanent walls of force surrounding the entire tower, and magical traps and alarm spells in the entrances to your tower. Furthermore, back them up with mundane ones and perhaps triggerable GDMs or even anti-magic fields to provide some problems for more magical attackers.

 

[Slife]

In addition, use extensive illusions, but have an invisible guards and wards spell placed upon the tower. It will only restrict sight to those jerks with true seeing or see invisibility.

 

[jmucchiello]

A dummy residence is absolutely brilliant. However no one will fall for the shack being this mage's place of residence.

The idea behind the shack is you don't tell anyone about it. Every street urchin the world over knows Gig the Great lives in an 80 foot castle near Bog Swamp. You live in a shack on another continent.

In fact if no one will believe you live in a shack, then a shack is perfect. No one will come looking for you there.

 

[balterkn]

You obviously need a ziggurat, pyramid, or other structure which "helps you focus magical energies".

The benefit is that you also get to build the dungeon in this as part of the design.

 

[EvilMountainDew]

As far as labor is concerned, you had best summon some earth elementals to build it for you. You don't bricks when the whole thing is etched from a single block of granite from the elemental plane of ... granite.

A tower is definitely the way to go. It's the obvious choice for a lot of reasons. Mainly, compensation.

You could build it above the castle of your main enemy (floating). That way, if you get captured or killed you could just have it land on their house. They'd probably hate that.

Otherwise, you should be able to put up enough permanent Wall of Forces to eliminate some angles of aerial attack. Or, you could have latent Prismatic Walls in place. Have them inert until you feel the threat of an aerial attack and then trigger them all to start up (a host of wands or scrolls that you trigger simultaneously, casting them all in the correct place).

Guards are a good idea, too.

So are alarms.

 

[Sigurd]

Sounds like what you really need are simulcra of the whole party to go off and get obviously blown to bits. After that, setup new identities with either a hat of disguise or genuinely changed features. At least go to a place where you are less well known.


You'll get found if people scry for you but if they think you're dead they may not think to.


Sigurd

Maybe you should build a secret vault of your own with some control and some longevity.


Or like Disaster Area in Douglas Adams _Restaurant at the End of The Universe_ spend a year or two dead, just till things quiet down.

 

[jmucchiello]

You'll get found if people scry for you but if they think you're dead they may not think to.

A proper Epic Wizard has Mind Blank running all the time.