Look to combo up monsters that help each other. Maybe a Fire Elemental, and soemthing that heals by fire (I think mephits can? Don't have my books in front of me.)QUOTE]
An iron golem heals by fire. A circular room with a permenent wall of fire and an iron golem. The golem has to die to get access to a doorway. could get messy.
Look to combo up monsters that help each other. Maybe a Fire Elemental, and soemthing that heals by fire (I think mephits can? Don't have my books in front of me.)QUOTE]
An iron golem heals by fire. A circular room with a permenent wall of fire and an iron golem. The golem has to die to get access to a doorway. could get messy.
Perhaps you'll want to come up with a theme? A colorful personal history of the mage and how he or she became so powerful might help you in designing the tower. If they specialize in one form of magic, it's likely to be dominant when determing the defenses that wizard would use.
Also, I would look at the functionality of the tower according to the wizard's personal desires. Such a powerful person probably has created their ideal living environment. Their personality and preferences would likely affect the design. Perhaps there are seperate portals for each of his or her friends?
Plus, what would the wizard being doing while living there? Presumably it's more than a warehouse for his stuff. Maybe it's geared towards some very specific things they do all the time, like summoning, reading, torturing slaves?, examining dead bodies?, surfing the astral plane?, magic jarring into different servants?, collecting butterflies?, who knows? Depending on what you choose, the monsters, magic items, and traps, etc. can be all determined.
Lastly, you mentioned this is a 20th level wizard, so they are likely the height of magic in your campaign. How did they get to so powerful? I'm assuming they would have created a whole slew of personal spells along the way. Perhaps they dabbled in magic item creation? Or maybe they bred monsters to create the perfect assassin? thief? or horde creature? What secrets of the universe have they uncovered? Who were there mentors? What important people do they have locked up in their dungeons? Perhaps they have played a key role in history and hold items of particular import? 20 levels is a long way to go. Evil or good, the physical history of their long line of accomplishments will scattered throughout the tower.
The coolest thing I've ever put in a mage's tower was a tesseract.
I've also used mazes with shifting walls. The walls shifted according to a complex algorithm. characters with a high Int. could make checks to figure it out.
How much does it cost to make a magical item that basically makes the magnificent mansion spell permanent? That would be a great place for the wizard to hide out. It would be his "real" sanctum, buried deep within him tower.
I'd have the entrance to his "tower" be some kind of place that you can only teleport into. Such as deep underground, with no entrances of any kind. (He must have had xorn or earth elemental help finding that place.)
It then links to some kind of extradimensional space (or another plane).
Custom magic items, ones like "dimensional lock for everyone but me" would be everywhere. Depending on how much cash the wizard has.
As someone mentioned upthread, guards and wards is your go-to spell for protecting a wizard's tower. It has multiple aspects to consider, so I'll break them down one at a time. Text of the spell copied from www.d20srd.org. It's rearranged in some places to group more easily.
This powerful spell is primarily used to defend your stronghold. The ward protects 200 square feet per caster level. The warded area can be as much as 20 feet high, and shaped as you desire. You can ward several stories of a stronghold by dividing the area among them; you must be somewhere within the area to be warded to cast the spell. The spell creates the following magical effects within the warded area.
Fog
Fog fills all corridors, obscuring all sight, including darkvision, beyond 5 feet. A creature within 5 feet has concealment (attacks have a 20% miss chance). Creatures farther away have total concealment (50% miss chance, and the attacker cannot use sight to locate the target). Saving Throw: None. Spell Resistance: No.
Use fog with area of effect traps, or with creatures that use area of effect spells. The idea is to force any intruders to roll miss chance, while your own minions do not have to worry about the fog.
Webs
Webs fill all stairs from top to bottom. These strands are identical with those created by the web spell, except that they regrow in 10 minutes if they are burned or torn away while the guards and wards spell lasts. Saving Throw: Reflex negates; see text for web. Spell Resistance: No.
Placing traps that hamper movement on the stairs can slow invaders to a crawl when combined with web. Damaging spells that also slow, such as spike stones, are even better. A wizard would have to use limited wish for that, of course, but it may be worth it.
Confusion
Where there are choices in direction—such as a corridor intersection or side passage—a minor confusion-type effect functions so as to make it 50% probable that intruders believe they are going in the opposite direction from the one they actually chose. This is an enchantment, mind-affecting effect. Saving Throw: None. Spell Resistance: Yes.
Lost Doors
One door per caster level is covered by a silent image to appear as if it were a plain wall. Saving Throw: Will disbelief (if interacted with). Spell Resistance: No.
Arcane Locks
All doors in the warded area are arcane locked. Saving Throw: None. Spell Resistance: No.
Each of these effects tend to delay anyone coming in, which can help with bringing reinforcement, or simply allowing time for the master of the tower to cast buff spells. An alarm spell at the entrance is highly recommended.
In addition, you can place your choice of one of the following five magical effects.
1. Dancing lights in four corridors. You can designate a simple program that causes the lights to repeat as long as the guards and wards spell lasts. Saving Throw: None. Spell Resistance: No.
3. A stinking cloud in two places. The vapors appear in the places you designate; they return within 10 minutes if dispersed by wind while the guards and wards spell lasts. Saving Throw: Fortitude negates; see text for stinking cloud. Spell Resistance: No.
I haven't found this to be very useful. Maybe in combination with a cloudkill spell for quick Con damage.
5. A suggestion in one place. You select an area of up to 5 feet square, and any creature who enters or passes through the area receives the suggestion mentally. Saving Throw: Will negates. Spell Resistance: Yes.
This is the true winner, in my opinion. I've used this before with such simple suggestions as "Open the nearest door" or "Step forward ten feet", where these actions set off a trap. For best effect, make the traps area of effect, so anyone nearby is damaged. As long as none of the suggestions are the same, the "obviously dangerous" escape clause won't help anyone coming in.
But that's just one spell. There's almost no limit to what a wizard can prepare, given enough time and an evil mind. For example, to pick one thing from Nightfang Spire (spoiler):
A trapdoor that drops people outside the tower, causing them to take falling damage. If the party spellcaster doesn't have line of sight, no feather fall can help.
A few more examples off the top of my head:
Hide minions in rope trick spells to provide unexpected reinforcements. If the rope is pulled up, only those with see invisibility on will be able to notice it.
Have one room filled with acid so that when the door is opened, it washes out. Not incredibly damaging (except for the one in front), but shocking. For extra complication, put a weakened wall nearby that will release something when the acid hits it.
Every object in the tower should be animated to attack intruders. That'll make them waste time destroying everything, and remember that any spell used to blow up your table is one spell that won't be used against you.
In whatever final room the intruders will meet the master of the tower, place a wall of force halfway across the room. If they're prepped to unload spells immediately, some of them may be wasted against the wall, or burned to bypass the wall.
As someone else said, make things that are safe only with magic present. One of my favorites here is to use pebbles that are polymorphed into pillars, so that in an antimagic zone, the ceiling falls in.
On any poison traps, make sure to use poisons that damage mental ability scores. This will impact any spellcasters that fail.
The whole idea of a tower is to slow any invaders and to wear them down by attrition. It should always seem more complex and dangerous to continue onward than to turn around and retreat.
There was some annoying 3.0 adventure... something with a spire and a vampire (Gulthias I think) that had these great pits that when you fell through em would cause you to fall down a slide, then end up outside the tower, and plummet like 100 feet to the ground. Then the trapdoor would spring shut again.
They never really ended up killing anyone considering the level the players were at when they hit them, but man did they become annoying. Especially when you had to wait for someway for the player to get back into the tower and to wherever the party was at (made doubly annoying by the fact that the only entrance in was at the top of the tower, making PCs with no flight ability have to wait for their companions to come get em.
Dunno how this would neccesarily play at higher levels though.
I had a diagram from an old Dragan mag. that made it easier. I also spent a lot of time preparing and visualizing. Once the game started it went well until the party split up, then it got increasingly difficult to keep track of everything, especially when the illusions and confusion spells started flying around.
FYI, I did a bit of searching through old issues and found these references for tessaracts.
The tesseract is described in dragon in the following issues:
1) Dragon #17 on page 20 - good article on how the work
2) Dragon #38 on page 14 - a much better article on how the work
3) Dragon #83 on page 37 - This is a dungeon built around the idea of a tessaract. It is Roger Moore's excellent "Baba Yaga's Hut".
