Magical wards of a castle

Shin Okada

Explorer
In the world of D&D, non-magical protections only are not enough to protect people and secrets in an important building such as castle or house of parliament. Intruders and spies may use magical spells and items such as invisibility, scrying, teleporting, etc.

Assuming that is a castle or similar facility of a small city, what kind of magical warding should be typically used?

In such a city, several L7-L10 mages and L7-L12 Clerics would be living. And higher leveled ones may be hired for some special occasions.

Some I can think of are,

Permanenced Alarm spells in some important corridors and off-limit areas.
Hallow or Unhallow (depends on the alignment of the power center) with Invisibility Purge on the entire building.
Modenkainen's Private Sanctum on the council-chamber and/or some meeting rooms (Either Permanenced or used for a certain meeting).
 

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Celebrim

Legend
In the world of D&D, non-magical protections only are not enough to protect people and secrets in an important building such as castle or house of parliament. Intruders and spies may use magical spells and items such as invisibility, scrying, teleporting, etc.

Assuming that is a castle or similar facility of a small city, what kind of magical warding should be typically used?

You are correct.

Defenses against magical activity will be layered. The exact details depend on what you want to use in your campaign.

Non-magical Defenses:
Dogs - Creatures with the scent ability will 'watch' major entrances and be trained to respond to odors with no apparent source.
'Airlocks' - Corridors will regularly be broken by pairs of guarded doors.
Curtains - Curtains either of beads or cloth, sometimes with attached bells, cannot be easily traversed without setting them off. This allows a guard to observe an approaching invisible creature.
Lead Paneled Walls - In most versions of D&D, lead blocks attempts to scry through it. Important meeting rooms will have panels of lead and lead nails affixed to the walls underneath the visible wood or leather paneling.
Blood Mortared Concrete/Bricks - In some versions of D&D, blood or other potent living or once living ingredients block ethereal travel. If this is the case, important areas will be constructed with this defense. Of course, as a DM you are free to invent building materials with magical properties - exotic woods, exotic magical stones, imports from the outer planes gifted to rulers by extraplanar beings, etc.

Standard Magical Defenses
Alarms - Windows or other access points not meant for entry will have permanent alarm spells. These are not likely to be put in corridors, as corridors are meant to be traversed.
Magic Mouths - Magic mouths can give audible alarms when certain conditions are meet, such as shouting, "Foes! Foes in the North Corridor!" whenever someone passes an area with a drawn blade.
Glyph of Protection - Important access points can be secured with passwords which must be used, or powerful spells can be triggered.
Permanent Circles of Protection - Beds, thrones, and other places where a ruler is likely to spend a large amount of time defenseless or exposed will have inscribed circles of protection permanently enchanted around them, to prevent possession, enchantment, or attack by summoned or conjured creatures.
Permanent Dimension Locks - Likewise, bedchambers, garderobes, wardrobes, staterooms and so forth are likely to be enchanted so that you can't teleport in or out of them.

Also, the ones you thought of.

Improved Magical Defenses
Sticking to the SRD, doors and rooms can be enchanted as custom magical items with virtually any effect desired. This however is expensive. I prefer that my societies will develop cheaper alternatives in the form of permanent spells with lower costs in GP/XP. Some ideas:

Improved Magic Mouth: Permanent with a cost in line with continual flame or similar spells, and can be enhanced to include one standard sensory spell, such as 'detect undead' or 'detect invisible creatures' or 'detect illusions' or 'detect shapechangers'. These are used at important choke points such as gate houses, entrances to great halls, and entrances to the rulers chambers.
Improved Arcane Lock: As Arcane Lock but can be given a programmable bypass (opens if you say a password, if you wear or carry a certain device, etc.). There are likely to be panic rooms or safe rooms for the family that only open to those carrying a household crest or similar device.
Ward of Strength: Permanent and increases an objects hardness and hit points. Doors, window glass, and even whole walls are likely to be so treated in the ruler's inner sanctum. The exterior gates are also likely to be so treated.
Anti-Magic Screen: Provides a small transparent, insubstantial surface through which spells cannot be successfully targeted. Useful for placing over windows or arrow loops.
Ward Against Magic: Permanent and provides spell resistance to an object.
Ward Against Fire: Permanent and gives an object or area fire resistance and improved saving throws versus fire based attacks. Particularly common in libraries or studies or anywhere valuable inflammable items are kept.

In my campaign, these sorts of spells and others are ubiquitous in any building that has been around more than a century or so.

Actually, beyond that, in my campaign any building that has been inhabited for a century or so tends to spontaneously create or attract one or more household spirits, which adds an additional line of defense - in some cases a quite powerful one depending on the age, stature, and heritage of the building. To say nothing of the brownie that lives in the attic, a really powerful house hold spirit can use spells like bless, protection from evil, sanctuary and heroism to actively protect whomever it sees as the legitimate owner of the house, as well as actively use spells like hold portal or animate object on itself and if necessary even manifest and verbally warn its owners. So even a humble wooden cottage, if it has been continually occupied and maintained and loved by the same family of peasant farmers for 4 centuries, can become something of a fortress.
 
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ksbsnowowl

Explorer
Physical:
Hardening spell from SpC for doors/walls

Security system:
Alarm - Duh. Make it permanent.
Skull Watch - SpC spell that reacts when creatures enter its watched area. In theory can detect invisible intruders.
Watchware - Spell from Unapproachable East that alerts the caster if the ensorcelled item is touched. Permanent until discharged, but it is expensive.

Magical/Warding:
Forbiddance - This spell is great for restricting access to one alignment, and blocks teleport, etc. Use CL shenanigans (Circle Magic, etc) to make this permanent spell hard to dispel.
Weirdstone - This item from Player's Guide to Faerun is extremely expensive (200k or more) but blocks nearly all interplanar travel within 6 miles (I think someone can still teleport out to somewhere beyond the 6-miles radius, but that's it).

Magic denial:
Energy Transformation Field - If the occupants don't care about using magic themselves, this SpC spell causes all magic activated within it to eat up that magical power, and instead cause some other linked spell to be cast by the field when enough spell levels have been absorbed. Prevents the casting of spells, activating of magic items, etc (continuous magical effects, like a magic sword, still function).
 

Shin Okada

Explorer
Other than Forbiddance, is there any practical way to protect an entire castle (or some large part of it) from Teleportation or similar assault tactics?

Using Forbiddace on, say, the throne room of a castle may be problematic as it harms even non-hostile people. Typically, the residents and the visitors of a certain castle are composed of people of various alignment. Using password version may be impractical, too. Because the king must tell the password to all the visitors. And soon the password will be known by everyone.
 

Celebrim

Legend
Other than Forbiddance, is there any practical way to protect an entire castle (or some large part of it) from Teleportation or similar assault tactics?

Dimensional lock protects a 40' diameter space for 1 day/level(!!). Surprisingly, it doesn't have a permanency cost, but presumably anyone that could cast dimensional lock and had Craft Wondrous Item could make rooms that could not be teleported into. If you wanted to house rule a permanency cost, that would seem reasonable to me.

Forbiddance is not terribly practical except guarding religious institutions where you can be reasonably sure everyone is on the same page. For that, it's unbelievably good.

Password areas are really only practical if you want an area that never has visitors, such as a panic room or inner sanctum or reliquary that only the royal family may enter. Otherwise, obviously you are right, a password is not terribly secure if it has to be spoken publically and shared with visitors.

Going by the SRD, there are simply not many practical defensive spells. I believe that this is because the game is geared toward having the players invade areas rather than having the players protect them. What valuable defensive spells that the core rules do have, tends to be focused on 'camping' securely and not securing a permanent residence.
 
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ksbsnowowl

Explorer
Other than Forbiddance, is there any practical way to protect an entire castle (or some large part of it) from Teleportation or similar assault tactics?
Define "practical." The aforementioned Weirdstone does exactly that, but does cost 250,000 gp (PGtF, p 124ff.) Expensive, but doable for a kingdom, certainly (aside from the CL 20 requisite to make it...)

On a house rule front, I've seen DM's mention on-line that they made a rule so that teleportation couldn't cross solid iron. So they'd have a solid, unbroken ring of iron built into the foundation of the outer wall of the castle, thus no one could teleport in or out. Makes as much sense as the 'demons can't cross iron or salt' rule in the Supernatural (TV show) universe.

Also, the sidebar on page 139 of Power of Faerun describes a magical accident that resulted in an effect much like that of a Weirdstone. Maybe something similar happened, and the location was later turned into a fortress because of the properties therein.
 

GMMichael

Guide of Modos
Makes as much sense as the 'demons can't cross iron or salt' rule in the Supernatural (TV show) universe.
Which is to say, it makes no sense at all?

I'm with [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]: dogs are a good non-magical defense. So are lots and lots of guards - who are probably still cheaper than making permanent magic items.

Maybe cover your floors with high-static-cling fairy dust? Then your burglar could fly over the stuff and it would still be attracted to him.

Teleportation becomes much less attractive when you put guards or booby traps on the plane of teleportation.

Finally, one word briefly mentioned above: anti-magic.
 

Other than Forbiddance, is there any practical way to protect an entire castle (or some large part of it) from Teleportation or similar assault tactics?

Anticipate Teleport and it's greater version delay the arrival of those teleporting and can alert you of their arrival.

Automatically resetting traps of daylight would act like security lights. (I tried to build these in my current game and they are ridiculously expensive though.)

The spell Guards and Wards is designed to counter and confuse invaders and spies.

If you're facing an army of specific creatures, like a marauding orc horde, you could use Antipathy to keep them out of your keep.

Traps that will allow you to summon monsters or call an outsider would work as a great deterrent. Would you want to break into the throne room if it summoned an Astral Deva.

Is there anyway to awaken a castle?
 
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Celebrim

Legend
Is there anyway to awaken a castle?

With enough gold and XP, you can do just about anything. More to the point, a DM can do anything. Part of Castle Ravenloft is for example animated.

And it wouldn't be too hard to rules lawyer that. If you can manage caster level 32 when casting Animate Object, then you can animate a Colossal object. In the core rules, I'm pretty sure there is no maximum size on colossal, as it is the largest size category and encompasses the entire upper end of the spectrum. So once you can animate Colossal Objects, it can be argued you pretty much can animate anything. And animate object can be made permanent, on in theory you could animate a castle.

Your suggestions seem geared around, "How do high level characters defend themselves from attacks by low level characters." Guards and Wards for example arguably would make it harder for the 1st level fighters guarding a castle to actually defend it. If you were a commando assault team, you'd actually consider casting the spell on the castle you were attacking in order to screw with the defenders. Antipathy requires a 15th level caster, who has any number of ways to kill 1 HD orcs by the hundreds.

The more difficult and interesting question is, "How do ordinary characters realistically defend themselves from attacks by groups of high level characters and spellcasters in particular?" To put the question more precisely, for a range of normal levels say 1st through 9th, how do the denizens of a normal D&D world defend themselves against the spells available to characters of their same or slightly higher level?

If for example a mere 3rd level caster can become invisible, what could 3rd level characters do to realistically defend themselves against invisible spies or attackers at a cost that is not much greater in the long run than the cost of becoming invisible? If a mere 5th level caster can cast fireball, what do characters of 5th level or less realistically do to defend themselves against such a potent attack spell? If a caster of merely 3rd level can cast various mind effecting and illusion spells that allow him to perpetrate scams regarding the wealth of items, how does a merchant of 3rd level or less defend himself against such disruptions to his livelihood? If a mere 5th level caster can fly, what good is a wall for keeping things out? And so on and so forth.

Most D&D games I think ignore these questions, and the RAW are I think no help, since they consistently making viable defensive strategies cost vastly more than the equivalent offensive strategy.
 
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Oryan77

Adventurer
The Stronghold Builders Guide book has a ton of magical enhancements for buildings from around page 39-70. There are a ton of magical walls listed in the book along with a boatload of magical abilities that can be added to structures.

I only recently learned about this stuff since I rarely look in that book. I was surprised to see how much thought has already been put into the defense of buildings.
 

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