Optimization: building a wizard's tower?

[LordBlades]

I am planning to get a base of operations for my party at some point in the future (roleplay-wise it's going to be 'my wizard tower').

Building the actual structure should be possible by level 9 (wall of stone, wall of iron and fabricate, maybe a move earth scroll for the party druid).

The problem is defending it.
 I can take care of most land-based attackers by placing the structure in an inaccessible place. However, there remains the problem of flying enemies and spellcasters. Most of the PHB spells that you can make permanent on a location are either not very good, or prohibitively expensive.
Also, I thought about suing Planar Binding to create a decent garrison of outsiderrs, but 1 day/caster lvl is a bit short.

So, I'm looking for suggestions: how would you make a location defensible vs. a mid level (I'm thinking CR 8-10 max) monster 'strike team' (in the PCs absence)?

[archangel.arcanis]

Stronghold Builder's Guide has some good stuff for that in there. It is 3.0 but should still be pretty much applicable. Alternative choices include leadership feat and leaving all of the guys you don't want hanging around to defend it. Combine that with Rune Circles from Races of Stone and you have some commoners who can really annoy a dragon.

[jameswilliamogle]

Also, traps, since you're going to use Fabricate anyways.  Lots and lots of mundane traps.  Couple mundane traps with magical traps (for example, enemy falls into a pit, and the only way out of said pit is to go through a couple dozen magical traps.

Symbol of X's can be made permanent; I highly recommend using a few of them in key locations.  There was a spell with an army of unseen servants; use those to walk them around.

Permanent Illusion is awesome: just make the real castle look like a mountain, and the deadliest mountain in the area look like you tower.  

Guards and Wards - although you normally cast it inside a stronghold, go ahead and cast it on the battlefield, too.

Fogs, Clouds, etc.  Great way to mess up PCs er, monsters.  Take advantage of the "rolling" spells, like Cloudkill, which go downhill.

You have a floorplan?

[PhaedrusXY]

Try this.

[X-Codes]

Don't even really need the rune circles (although they do help).  Have you see the Archer Volley rules in Heroes of Battle?

Seriously, take Leadership, make all your first-level followers Human Warriors with Point-Blank Shot and Rapid Shot.  For every 10 followers and 1 leader, your archery volleys will deal 4d8 damage with a reflex save for half every round.  The only problem would be stuff with Evasion, and there's not a lot of that going around.

If you want to get into the rune circle business, make them use-activated rune circles of Guided Shot (20' radius circles), and restrict their usage to those friendly to your tower.  If memory serves, each circle costs 810 gold (405gp/32xp to craft) and will allow your soldiers to take a swift action each round to ignore range penalties on their attacks, maximizing their effectiveness out to 1,100 feet with composite longbows.  Cheap way to boost their damage would be to also create a rune circle of Flame Arrow in the middle, where each unit of 10 soldiers goes and enhances their arrows before running to their respective Guided Shot circles.  That one would cost 6750 for a 10' radius circle, and enhances 50 arrows with each pass.  That will boost the damage output to 4d8 piercing + 4d6 fire with each volley.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

The correct spell turret could probably automate the building process (suspension + wall spell + object reinforcing spell).  It levitates itself up 5', adds a circular wall of stone, reinforces it, sticks on a symbol of sleep, repeat.

[archangel.arcanis]

Ok how does this sound. Take Leadership just to get the men. Make your Cohort a Thrallherd and make his Thrall a Martial. Now Your cohort is in charge of the day to day running of the place he has a head of the guard and a shit ton of guards that are all loyal to you. You could let some of them even have other jobs and make you a profit from menial labor. If food is a concern make sure some of the higher level followers and/or believers are clerics to cast create food and water. Or feed your followers the thralls replacements will show up shortly  .

[snakeman830]

The correct spell turret could probably automate the building process (suspension + wall spell + object reinforcing spell).  It levitates itself up 5', adds a circular wall of stone, reinforces it, sticks on a symbol of sleep, repeat.

Only problem I see is that the reinforcing and suspension spells are almost all Transmutation, and you can only have one spell from each school.  They all also have to be the same level (can be solved with Heighten Spell, though)

Wall of Stone: Conjuration
Symbol of Sleep: Enchantment

what else?

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Worst case scenerio, I suppose you could have a strong flying skeleton ordered to carry it up.

Ghoul glyph seems logical. 

[ninjarabbit]

You also might want to have a familiar or improved familiar keeping an eye on the place too. While the familiar might not be able to do much directly but you will have an extra set of loyal eyes there. Imps are always a good choice since they have invisibility at will and alternate form.

Animating a bunch of zombies and skeletons is another option, maybe have a trap room or two full of them is nice even if you aren't controlling them.

[Nunkuruji]

Lead Lining is also your friend

[wotmaniac]

darkenbeasts.  lots of them.  and imprint "necrotic cyst" on all of them.  world domination ensues.
requires 1 feat, 1 5th-level spell, and 1 2nd-level spell.  (plus the follow-up higher level spells needed to really do the damage)

[Mixster]

Take leadership, have your cohort be a thrallherd, with a thrallherd thrall with a thrallherd thrall, down to you have a million 1st level thralls standing in the castle, then give each of them a stone and tell them to throw it on any target they can see... Since the odds of one of them rolling 20-20-20 Nothing will come within sight range of your tower unless you want it to.

Cheesy? Yes.
Allowed by a DM? No.

Weirds as hell? Hell Yeah!

[PhaedrusXY]

Did someone say Thrallherd? Also, why limit yourself to something immobile for your Fortress of Doom!!!?

[Echoes]

Well, it's not really possible to create a completely impregnable tower, but you can make a tower that is close enough. This assumes that you have an arbitrarily large amount of gold available, and that you are probably using the restoration XP loop. You can do without the XP loop, but this is not a cheap setup in terms of XP (lots of permanency and a wish).

First, you'll want to pick a suitably isolated spot. The top of a mountain should keep out anything that can't fly (and we'll deal with that below), so lets go there. Ideally, you want the top of the tower to be 20 feet wide, so plan for that.

First, construct the outer shell of the tower using wall of stone.  Inside this, create a shell of permanent walls of force, layering them along the bottom as well. In between the outer and inner shells, place a layer of lead sheeting to block scrying, and line this layer with permanent alarms set to go off if anyone should breach the outer wall. On the outer wall, space auto-resetting traps of antimagic field so that the entire tower is surrounded by an antimagic field and conceal them as best you can. At the top of the tower, create a permanent prismatic sphere, and place an antimagic field traps on all four sides of the top of the tower, so that the prismatic sphere is completely encapsulated in an antimagic field. Inside, use a wish to emulate a forbiddance, filling the tower up to the prismatic sphere. Finally, place an auto-resetting trap of feather fall set to target you when you fall through the prismatic sphere inside the sphere.

That should cover the basics, and it's all Core too. Do this as a Red Wizard if you can, so you can Heighten the prismatic sphere to 20th level and ramp the CL for everything as high as you can.

[snakeman830]

What?  Nobody has linked to The Box yet?

[carnivore]

he did say this should be possible for a 9th lvl character to do?

not just a TO exercise .... but one that he would like to get allowed into a game right?

 

[Echoes]

he did say this should be possible for a 9th lvl character to do?

not just a TO exercise .... but one that he would like to get allowed into a game right?

 

Well, my example is doable by 11th level (or less, if you start with a scroll of planar binding and make the CL check) via an efreeti using wish to emulate everything except prismatic sphere, which you can replace with a prismatic wall and get the same effect. The CLs and DCs will be much lower, of course, but that can't really be helped.

As for being allowed, if the DM doesn't allow the restoration XP loop, the efreeti method still works unless he also bans that. If that happens, you're left with a mundane tower (which is easy) and basic defenses of the "a powerful wizard lives here, don't mess with it or he will come and ruin your day" sort, which aren't really a big threat when your enemies are also powerful wizards.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Spell turrets let you coat your tower in dangerous runes.  They're relatively cheap, too.

[PhaedrusXY]

What?  Nobody has linked to The Box yet?

See my post above. Also, I think that proves it's playable.