D&D 5E 5 Essential Encounters in a Wizard's Tower

[TheSword]

- A powerful bound creature. With useful knowledge about the tower but who wants to make a deal... Or if you want to put a spin on it, have the entity trap the PCs and offer to let them out in exchange for a service.

- Animated objects in place of normal household objects that are friendly and helpful until a trigger causes them to go crazy.

- A foolish apprentice who in the absence of their mentor messed with something that messed them up - turned into a chicken (melicampe) or fused into the wall etc.

- A vault of dangerous magic that the wizard has been keeping safe from unwary hands - cursed items, dangerous spell tomes, intelligent items etc.

- A magic door that poses a riddle to enter but It’s been so long it can’t remember the actual answer. So tries to bluff that the party have got it wrong even when it’s right.

 

[Iry]

I absolutely agree there has to be some kind of giant puzzle room. Illusions and traps, but also moving blocks and navigating rooms with strange gravity. The room can guard or treasure, or simply be a giant "No Tresspassing" room designed to keep idiots from reaching the higher levels. Also, some kind of economic structure on the first floors. For example.

Floor 1: Shop with a servant or apprentice who sells basic potions, and grumbles about having to sell to those miserable devils now that the tower has shifted.
Floor 2: The potion brewing room, complete with lots of animated objects working to brew potions and flying around cleaning things.
Floor 3: The giant puzzle/trap room, to keep those pesky devils and other intruders from going higher.
Floor 4: The teleportation circle, and gateway to an extradimensional space where the really dangerous experiments are performed (possible bound devil).
Floor 5: The wizards actual study and bedchamber. He's snoring loudly.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Just use the tower of Ishcabeble. with extra Caesar slaad.

 

[Quartz]

It's hard to beat the old favourite of the Iron Golem + Fireball trap. Unless you make the trap a Pit Fiend and invisible Iron Golem. Glyphs of Warding should be everywhere. In an active tower, the glyphs should be hidden behind tapestries, underneath carpets, and so on. But those tapestries can come down with a tug and those carpets can be rolled up - and they burn easily too...

 

[TheSword]

It's hard to beat the old favourite of the Iron Golem + Fireball trap. Unless you make the trap a Pit Fiend and invisible Iron Golem. Glyphs of Warding should be everywhere. In an active tower, the glyphs should be hidden behind tapestries, underneath carpets, and so on. But those tapestries can come down with a tug and those carpets can be rolled up - and they burn easily too...

For level 11, I’d go with symbols. Far punchier.

 

[Quartz]

For level 11, I’d go with symbols. Far punchier.

Start with Glyphs and see how you get on. You can always upgrade to Symbols on the fly.

 

[aco175]

I had a wizard tower with a devil trapped in a pentagram for hundreds of years. The master died and it was stuck. There was some good roleplay with this and always the possibility of combat. The Warcraft movie with the fight in the tower with the clay golem and portals opening up all around was good. Iron defender constructs have great HP and heal with fire, so placing them in a fire trap room will work.

 

[TheSword]

I had a wizard tower with a devil trapped in a pentagram for hundreds of years. The master died and it was stuck. There was some good roleplay with this and always the possibility of combat. The Warcraft movie with the fight in the tower with the clay golem and portals opening up all around was good. Iron defender constructs have great HP and heal with fire, so placing them in a fire trap room will work.

Just make sure the traps aren’t set to burn their own house/library/soft furnishings down.

 

[TheSword]

How about a doorway in the tower that actually reverses the flow of time for the PCs so that they start to travel backwards, perhaps twice as fast as normal time. The shock causes them to fall unconscious for a few days so they wake just as the city has been dragged into hell.

They see people walking backwards, regurgitating food, and springing back to life. The city literally rebuilds itself before their eyes. They realize Elturel is just being attacked and will eventually pop back into the material world. Unfortunately the uniqueness of their surrounding means they can’t really do anything to stop this. They can’t communicate with anyone because everything is backwards for anyone who hasn’t passed through the door. No one can ever cook them food again, or pour them a pint. They can’t heal anyone because the wound occurs before the healing and the wound would just spring open again to their perspective. They can’t even save people from an attack because the attackers flee away backwards out of site before they can be attacked.

It could really freak them out for a bit until they realize the only thing they can do is pass back through the door. At which point they fall back unconscious and wake back up after the city was taken as time springs back into place.

Perhaps the wizard never came back through and is living his life backwards. Leaving clues for what is to come.

 

[Reynard]

Lots of great ideas. Thanks everyone.

I think I am going to have the wizard have summoned a guardian to keep his stuff safe in Avernus, so I need a good anti-Devil creature.

Also, I think it is Deck of Many Things time. I do it once in every campaign I run, just because I like the chaos it imparts. At this critical juncture in the Avernus campaign it might just cause real havoc.

I like the idea of the place being populated by what at first appear to be animated object but turn out to be "domesticated" mimics -- ones that, at this point, are very, very hungry.