Pimp my Tower

[Arcane-surge]

Well, not my tower actually, but my players' tower. I'm thinking about having a game where the characters have inherited a tower, eventually using it as a base of operations as well as the location of some site based adventures. Formerly owned by a cabal of mages and psions, it's pretty tricked out for magical research, which means that things like structural integrity, privacy, and protection from intrusion are all important.

Money is basically no object, though I do realize that the PCs will inevitably reach the point where they can take the tower apart and sell it for spare parts. I'd like to stave that off for as long as possible without being a giant douche about it (eventually, the tower as a whole will likely become more valuable than the tower in pieces).

Things I would like it to include:
Restricted or selective teleportation
Ideally, the tower's defenses couldn't be breached by a simple dimension door, but it might also be nifty to have a few areas that permit instantaneous movement to other areas, rather than just blanketing the area in Dimensional Anchor spells (which can't even be made permanent. Though the notion of it being for research gives me a bit of leeway as far as magical effects, I don't just want to cockblock people).

Impervious to Divination
Well, as impervious as it gets at any rate. I mean, extensive use of Contact Other Plane can find out all sorts of things, but keeping out more common types of magic, such as Scrying and Clairvoyance would be nice. It'd make sense that the cabal would want to keep others from looking in on just what they were getting up to, not to mention stopping Scry and Die.

Non-tunnelable
If you can't go over it and can't go under it, well, you go through it. There are tons of spells that will oblige. I was thinking layered permanent walls of force around Obdurium or something, but if anyone has better ideas, I'm open to them.

Locked doors
I don't want to get all Doom and force people to need the red key to open the red door, but it'd be nice for the tower to be able to hold some secrets. Maybe some kind of lock that opens to a command word.

Other ideas
Given that I thought of this yesterday, there are probably dozens of aspects to this that I haven't thought about. Feel free to suggest things that might be neat. The basic idea is that this not become some kind of railroad extravaganza, and that these sorts of things can be accomplished within the rules, rather than simply using plot power.

[PhaedrusXY]

Forbiddance
Guards and Wards
Screen

I'm sure you can figure out a way to make those permanent or be automatically recast every day.

I was in a game once where the mage had a tower in a demiplane, which had invisible portals on the prime at two points through which you could enter the plane. The demiplane was dead magic, except for the tower itself, and it also had some other weird traits like no real land masses. There were just floating rocks that you had to jump/fly between (with no magic). There weren't very many intruders.

[telehax]

Do you have the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook? It's like required reading.
Secondly: Rune Circles in Races of Stone, because it's good rules for making custom magic items for them.
Thirdly, Spell Turrets are interesting, but that's better for the players to make for themselves.

Okay, firstly you want to make the players not only want to keep the tower, but also want to return to it regularly. If the players are low level enough, make it a good place to rest at the end of the day. A room of lesser vigor isn't really all that broken, at higher levels some of the beds of restoration might work as well.

I think it might do to make the tower have inherent plothooks or questhooks inside; Also, don't be afraid of homebrew, you're the DM and if it makes the tower that much more fun then go for it. Idea: The tower is some sort of tower-of-babel-esque thing, and it's taller than it looks because part of it is underground by some epic act of some god. It takes magic to bring it back up and that's what the mages were trying to do, thus there's a conversion circle which strips magic items of their powers and uses the magic to fuel the raising of the tower. The goldcost is stored and everytime a logarithmic milestone is reached a new level of the tower rises up of the ground. Eg: 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, and 16000gp.
Each new level has magic loot inside, and certain magic items (read: depends on your say) might resonate extra well with the circle and add some unique powers to the tower. For example, a set of anklets of translocation might grant the ability 3/day for someone inside the tower to teleport 10ft as a swift action with the proper trigger words. This adds nice minor abilities to the tower. Magic Armor might increase the hardness of the tower too. Scatter minor artifacts across the lands which resonate super-awesome well and unlock cool and awesome abilities.
As for teleportation, if the party isn't high enough for magic teleportation to be cheap, consider having a "teleport" circle at the tower, a place which is linked overwhelmingly to teleportation magic. Any teleportation effect whose target location is the tower will be rerouted to a specific spot in the tower. Then have rune-circle glyph seals in so that the PCs can place magic traps in the room. Thus, anyone other than them who enters the room will be hit by a multitude of spells, somewhat solving the problem of defending against intruders. In addition, the strength of the teleport circle allows you to spend a low-level conj(teleportation) spell to power it and teleport to other similar circles across the land.

[Dragonamedrake]

What was that movie where the Tower moved to a new location every morning. The hero had this boomerang dagger thingy of death. Was an old old movie but this got me to thinking of that... half the movie involved him just trying to locate and get into that tower before the damn thing moved.

Might be off topic but a tower like that could be fun in a game lol.

[RelentlessImp]

.
Impervious to Divination
Well, as impervious as it gets at any rate. I mean, extensive use of Contact Other Plane can find out all sorts of things, but keeping out more common types of magic, such as Scrying and Clairvoyance would be nice. It'd make sense that the cabal would want to keep others from looking in on just what they were getting up to, not to mention stopping Scry and Die.

Permanent non-detection effect over the whole area with a tricked out DC - presumably, if the tower used to belong to a cabal, they either A: had access to Circle Magic, or B: had access to 20th level casters. Basically, by the time anything's able to pierce the nondetection they're able to defend themselves against scry-and-die tactics. (A tower counts as "One object touched", right? ) That way nobody can scry in but they can scry out.

[reddir]

What was that movie where the Tower moved to a new location every morning. The hero had this boomerang dagger thingy of death. Was an old old movie but this got me to thinking of that... half the movie involved him just trying to locate and get into that tower before the damn thing moved.

Might be off topic but a tower like that could be fun in a game lol.

Krull was the movie. Each morning, when the sun touched a specific dome of the tower, it teleported to a new location.

[Nunkuruji]

There are some wards listed in Draconomicon that may be worth looking up

[Genesis]

Some thoughts-

Protection from Divination
A.- Mordekainen's Private Sanctum protects against all scrying from outside, can be made permanent, has a decent area. Not a bad choice, for a 5th level spell.

B.- Screen Allows you to fool incoming scry attempts with no save, and replace whatever you like. Harder to get over a long time, but has a 24 hour duration, if memory serves.

C.- Hide the Path Prevents Find the Path from working at all, and forces a CL check on all divinations of 6th or lower. Not perfect, but works well. MASSIVE area, too.

D.- Don't underestimate lead lining. A stronghold space can be lined with lead pretty cheap, all things considered, and is a no-save protection for a lot of spells- and it's immune to Dispel Magic, too. Good to use in combination with the other spells.

Immunity to Planar Invasion

The bread and butter of this is Forbiddance. Huge area, permanent duration, no save protection against incoming planeshifters. The extra effects are nice, but not the key draw of the spell- it has a flaw, though, in that it blocks all incoming shifts, good or bad. Okay on the Prime, but not so good for Genesis, etc. Which is where Zone of Respite comes in handy. Also blocks incoming, low level spell, but does NOT block already existing portals, allowing you to build a front door, secure it and forget about unwanted teleporters. You'll need to build it into a custom item, though- shouldn't be too expensive either way.

Immunity to Tunneling

Impossible as far as I know. Somewhere, something has the patience to dismantle your walls, and making them out of force and obidurium will bankrupt you or your suspension of disbelief so fast your head will spin. BUT- how about layering massive volumes of packed earth with iron walls? A tenth as cheap, and almost as good. Prevents Disintegrate unless the caster has more time than sense, and Passwall and its ilk can't get through anything as hard as iron.

Locked Doors
LOTS of options here, so I'm just going to give you some spells.
In no particular order:
Improved Arcane Lock
Arcane Seal (Magic of Eberron)
Sign of Sealing (+Greater)
Portal Alarm (+Greater)
Alarm, Greater

Mundane ways to forbid entry-
Really big doors. Knock only affects a small(er) area, and you can build a much bigger door for relatively cheap rates Plus, makes the strength DC much higher to force them open. AND it's much more interesting to have a 30-by-60 foot door, anyway, don't you think?
Locks. And antimagic. Amazing locks are very cheap for the price, and can take a while if you have multiple locks on one door, and the intruders can't use their favorite intrusion spells.

In summary these options can give you a pretty damn secure tower- not immune, and not impervious, but remember the key point of physical security- anyone can get in with enough time, and these options are the best I know of with years of keeping an eye out. If someone wastes ten disintegrate spells just getting through the barrier of earth, they've wasted thousands of GP, relative to the 250 it took to put up the earth wall for you. Or they have to do it very slowly, which gives the players time to wake up and knock back.

Hope this helps!

[telehax]

If the PCs are low level enough you can just "lock" a door with a wall of force.

[Bozwevial]

Just an off-hand idea, but you could theoretically have, say, magically maintained masses of magma (yes, I realize the alliteration was terrible of me, but it's not my fault underground molten rock isn't called lava) spaced randomly beneath the fortress. When your would-be tunnel maker runs into the second or third pocket, they'll start to reconsider the wisdom of tunnelling in.

[PhaedrusXY]

Just an off-hand idea, but you could theoretically have, say, magically maintained masses of magma (yes, I realize the alliteration was terrible of me, but it's not my fault underground molten rock isn't called lava) spaced randomly beneath the fortress. When your would-be tunnel maker runs into the second or third pocket, they'll start to reconsider the wisdom of tunnelling in.

Reminds me of my sig on one of the boards...

"One thing I learned in 2nd edition: Don't ever Disintegrate a wall before making sure it's not holding back 10,000 tons of lava."

 I forgot who that quote was from...

[jojolagger]

Stronghold builders guide has some good stuff.
I personally would make the tower self aware, and loyal to the characters for some reason. Something like this. Haunt shift trick should work, But there must be something better.
Have it run Divert Teleport, Greater Anticipate Teleport, and any other spell you want to set up.

[PhaedrusXY]

Stronghold builders guide has some good stuff.
I personally would make the tower self aware, and loyal to the characters for some reason. Something like this. Haunt shift trick should work, But there must be something better.
Have it run Divert Teleport, Greater Anticipate Teleport, and any other spell you want to set up.

Make that "castle" a flying airship (that's a thrallherd), and you have my character in Death of an Artist.

[Lycanthromancer]

Have more than just pockets of magma; acid lakes, gaseous poisons, areas of (essentially) liquid nitrogen.

You don't want fire resistance and/or immunity to bypass your little surprises.

Also, word-activated explosive runes and symbols of pain/fear/death/etc, all of which only affect creatures not named by the activator. These should be in a rune motif that runs around the stronghold; on the floor tiles, on tiles in a strip around the walls, and on every door in the place. For style, make every rune the same (and, for preference, aesthetically pleasing), and have them glow a different color depending on which rune is activated. Whoever wears the key (as a pendant, wristband, or brooch) has control of what happens where, and can activate runes in different areas of the stronghold (which should include the undersides of the flagstones beneath the place, for extra security).

And don't forget contingent animate objects and lots of 'decorative' suits of armor, as well as weapons and taxidermied animals mounted on the walls.