help with my Banite fortress please

[d12]

My PCs will soon be assaulting a Banite fortress. The fortress serves to protect a portal that is very important to the church’s plans. So far, no one outside the church even knows the fortress exists but the PCs will stumble across the knowledge soon enough. The fortress’s greatest two defenses are secrecy and its remoteness. Its other defenses include:

The fortress is covered by an illusion that makes it look old, burned out, abandoned, and in ruin.
The forest around the fortress is filled with Beasts of Bane – mostly hellhounds and beholders but a smattering of other creatures as well.
2 invisible skymages on invisible nightmares go on patrol regularly.
15th level blackguard
17th level wizard
17th level cleric
a small number of elite fighter fire giants
a faux-dracolich (actually a dragon skeleton covered in illusions and protective spells)
a small number of elite Zhent fighters

What other defenses should the keep have? The Banites are more concerned about a small party of adventurers infiltrating than an army attacking. What spells and defensive effects do the Banites have in place? They are especially concerned about preventing scrying, teleporting, moving ethereally or incorporeally, etc…… This is a very well-funded group so they may have access to guardian creatures that Banites don’t normally associate with.

 

[clark411]

For starters..

More concerned with infiltrating adventurers = Cursed Items sprinkled around the place.

Cursed Items + Alarm spells = Good ambush material.


Also.. if they're worried about infilitration through magical means, they should look into getting one of the more powerful of their order to plop Forbiddance spells down on their more sensitive areas. You leave the trapped areas, rooms with summoning circles n nasties accessible by teleportation of course. =)

Finally, the Stronghold Builders Guide has some seriously expensive wondrous architecture that forbids scrying into rooms. Sigils of Privacy or something to that effect. Other types glow brightly across the walls when divination magic is focused on the area.. at least that lets the Banites switch their topic of conversation to things like... how nice the Cursed Items with Alarm Spells on them are in the only area they have yet to get Forbiddance up... preferably that 15 x 15 ft room made with adamantine walls and no doors.

 

[Darkness]

Make liberal use of unhallow.

And a good spell to fix to the unhallowed site might be daylight on everyone not sharing your faith.

 

[d12]

BTW -I'm fairly new to high-level DMing so suggest something even if it seems obvious.

 

[Micar Sin]

as far as keeping the riff-raff away, I would say they would set up traps in the forest surrounding the "ruins" to wear intruders down. If the party is of the type that likes to camp after expending even a single spell, have the evil ranger/assasins prowling the forest herd dire animals into their camps. This makes for a nice encounter without visible sentient involvement if done correctly, and denies the party rest... I'm sure I'll post more,but I'm at work.. soooo

 

[Storminator]

Glyphs of Warding, Greater Glyphs of Warding, Forbiddance, Symbol, and Unhallow. A Greater Glyph can hold a Harm spell.

All of these will greatly enhance the Banite's power, and simultaneously weaken the PCs. Forbiddance is especially nasty, as the Will save sorts the fighter types out of the group.

If you use the Book of Vile Darkness there are lots of excellent choices. One of my favorites (I play a priest of Bane) is Powerleech, where you suck down an ability of one of the faithful, and bump your own. Nothing like a +17 enhancement to your Wisdom before you cast the Forbiddance.

Cast Unhallow, and use one of the Scry defense spells from Book of Eldritch Might as the tie in spell. On top of that area, cast a Forbiddance. Leave a small area that is within the Unhallow, but outside the Forbiddance. Cast your Word of Recall there. Then you have an area that can't be scried, and except for one small area, can't be teleported into. It's your safe zone.

PS

 

[ashockney]

Using Find the Path and being higher than 17th level with Greater Dispelling gets you around all of the above, and it sounds like your party qualifies on both counts.

Don't overlook otherwise mundane traps (ie, acid dropped from ceilings, falling walls, false doors). Really magical traps that involve things like Reverse Gravity, Maze, and Symbols are welcome.

Powerful guardians such as golems, undead, and outerplanar demons/devils have a great deal of immunities and the ability to keep an eye on the ethereal plane. Both critical to protecting a stronghold from potenially high level suitors.

Check out Monte Cook's Book of Eldritch Might for some ideas like "Teleport Redirect".

Finally, especially against a high level group, always maintain the numbers advantage. You should outnumber your opponents three or four to one if you want to stand a chance.

 

[Argus Decimus Mokira]

Hey

Magic of Faerun has a feew Bane flavored versions of the Symbol spell that work well for defense. Also keep in mind that Banites would be highly organized for multiple situations, with well defined tactics. These aren't a bunch of Cyricists that are gonna scream bloody murder and charge. Perimeter forces should retreat, leading the PCs into ambushes and traps. Crappier thugs will "aid another" with BBEG to lay the unhuly smite down on the PCs. Frontline combat guys will know when magic users are gonna cast big spells and get the hell out of Dodge before a flamestrike comes down on them. etc etc

Thanks
-Matt

 

[Graf]

One comment I wanted to make before specific examples. Sometimes a dungeon that makes sense is cooler than a dungeon that's a deathtrap. If people here (at EnWorld) start going your dungeon will quite possibly be the most dangerous place for miles, which is OK but if it's just a base set up by Banites you could lose some verisimiltude if it's tricked out like a paranoid wizard's 200 year pet project.

There was a good raid-the-remote-Zhent-fort-filled-with-gates adventure in a recent Dungeon. When I say good I mean that I played in it and as a player it seemed like it worked well, had a temple room, some tricky stuff, generally pretty good. The level's (2-4 or so) but you could easily take the maps and the set up and tweek.

It sounds like you have a building they built somewhere to protect some immovable asset (the portal). The portal must be pretty important to have all those people around it. So it's basically an armed garrison. From what you've mentioned I don't think you need to add much more than you already have.

If possible try to think about the personality or attitude of the person the Banites picked to set up the place. What are they concerned about, nearby bandits? adventurers? soemthing coming out of the portal?
What is the layout of the land around the fort? At their (the banites') power level teleport spells are common, so some kind of Diminsional Barrier is a good idea.

Since you have fire giants mixed in some sort of tension between them and the rest of the camp might be a good idea.

Not familiar with the details of the Sky mage PrC but if it's like most arcane PrCs you probably want to give them something that makes them better at spotting things. True Seeing maybe?

Alarm spells are a good idea. An improved version of the Alarm spell showed up in a recent adventure (I think it was one of the free dire kobold adventures), basically it could go off if anyone within 500 feet passes into the area with a token (or a mark on their body).

With access to ninth level divine and arcane spells they have a lot of options, glasssteel is good, so are teleport circles and programmed illusions (does that spell still exist?).
For example, someone walks to the end of a corridor toward a door, then a clear glass plate slides down on either side of them, and the 'room' seems to fill with green gas. The group can see a hazy outline of their colapsed friend within the room.
What actually happened: Someone walked to a teleport portal and has moved elsewhere in the keep. When the portal activated so did the illusion, which showed the glass pates and the gas.
For a particularly potent (and expensive) set of effects you could have the glass plates be glass steel and the posion gas be real. The illusion allows something (probably undead or immune to gas) to come through the teleport portal and lurk in the glass room undetected. If/when the group breaks through the glass wall they have to deal with the creature, and the gas.
Alternatively the creature could be a doppleganger who replaces the party member. If the group dithers for a round or two the doppleganger could strip off some of the character's equipement and replace them without being detected.
(Dopplegangers a bit weak for your level but plasms might also be a good choice).

 

[d12]

Wow, great comments all - thanks. I do have MoF and theBoVD, so I will check both of those suggestions out.

Graf, I've taken to heart your coment about a dungeon that makes sense. The banites have a lot of resouces at thier disposal but they've only been occupying this fortress for two months - before that it was the home of a rather stupid green dragon and before that it was the home of a very powerful hermit-wizard who became lost while traveling via the portal (that he made). The dungeon will reflect all of these things - there will be a wizard's library and rooms that have been left undisturbed since his tenure as owner (because they are guarded by very powerful traps), there will be a small dragon's horde, and the wizard familiar may even still be around to help would-be heroes.

Keep those ideas coming!