geezerjoe
First Post
In an old ADnD campaign I played in I ran a transmuter specialist. He spent a lot of time researching new spells, one of which was "Harden" or something like that.
What the spell did was increase the toughness of the material the spell was cast upon. In 3E terms this would increase the Hardness of the material AND the hp's of the material without increasing the physical properties of the material. Multiple applications would be required to substantially increase the hardness of the materials and this would prevent a single dispel from ruining the effect unless you were to set the duration as instantaneous in which case dispel wouldn't effect it (0f course that would heighten the level of the spell).
So, you could go a route like above. Create a spell that would be introduced into your campaign world (with possible ramifications of course) that may help. Similarly, you could create a spell that would protect the vault itself from intrusion from "diggers" ... possibly requiring a rather high Will Save to continue digging/burrowing where they want ... failure meaning they dig in a different direction around the protected area or stand still.
Just because you're the DM doesn't mean your NPCs wouldn't create the type of spells that they would be interested in creating. Without these types of utilitarian spells every vault or tomb becomes a "You must be this level to enter" type of thing rather than "You must have this kind of knowledge to enter" type of thing.
Hope that helps a little more.
Joe2Old
What the spell did was increase the toughness of the material the spell was cast upon. In 3E terms this would increase the Hardness of the material AND the hp's of the material without increasing the physical properties of the material. Multiple applications would be required to substantially increase the hardness of the materials and this would prevent a single dispel from ruining the effect unless you were to set the duration as instantaneous in which case dispel wouldn't effect it (0f course that would heighten the level of the spell).
So, you could go a route like above. Create a spell that would be introduced into your campaign world (with possible ramifications of course) that may help. Similarly, you could create a spell that would protect the vault itself from intrusion from "diggers" ... possibly requiring a rather high Will Save to continue digging/burrowing where they want ... failure meaning they dig in a different direction around the protected area or stand still.
Just because you're the DM doesn't mean your NPCs wouldn't create the type of spells that they would be interested in creating. Without these types of utilitarian spells every vault or tomb becomes a "You must be this level to enter" type of thing rather than "You must have this kind of knowledge to enter" type of thing.
Hope that helps a little more.
Joe2Old
