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How would a wizard protect their research lab or artifact vault? (feddit.uk)

submitted 22 hours ago by smeg@feddit.uk to c/rpg@ttrpg.network

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Generic high-fantasy setting (d&d 5e if you want to use specific spells), what security or defences would mages use to secure the place where they keep all their magical stuff? I'm thinking decoys, reinforced and hidden location, guards (hired or summoned), locks (both magical and mundane), booby traps, and spells to discourage or confuse passing snoopers.

Also it's going to vary depending on the resources of the wizard and of the players. Is this an independent student wizard protecting their studies that a low-level party could reasonably break into, or is it the king's secure vault of confiscated magical horrors that's a final boss for the campaign?

I'm looking for ideas for fun obstacles, and critically that the players can't just sidestep with a single low-level spell!

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[–] Darkonion@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

The access to the wizard's vault is an escape room themed after the wizard's life that the players learn of through advertising flyers.

The players will have to decipher clues placed in and outside the room, or interview NPCs, to determine useful facts about the wizard to solve the puzzles (names / # of siblings, favourite pet, first love, best friend's sister's name, etc.) - vary complexity / difficulty of research as needed. The wizard doesn't care if they get in the vault; the wizard wants fame, entertainment, or are appeasing a deal with some entity.

Some puzzles may have lethal/deadly penalties - but really fun ones, like having to reach into a hole for a key, object, or to pick a lock, and it exchanges that limb for that of a fire elemental with no inherent protection from fire given to the rest of the body (temporary or permanent as level dictates); a failed puzzle guess results in a suggestion that elf blood will definitely open this lock (it doesn't, but that must mean you need more, right?); or, just a bunch of dead bats that get dumped on them that later get animated from the dead or spider swarms explode from the corpses after 3 rounds (ghast bat swarm?).

Rooms that fill with water/lava/acid/rum/spikes are always fun. A book just filled with exploding runes in a variety of languages or that is in code and needs to be decoded first before they explode, each explosion larger than the last (book is always unharmed). Intermittent anti-magic zones (spells on even rounds only, temporarily for certain puzzles, spells create random effect of same level from an opposition school, etc.). They repeatedly find clues that point towards a need to kiss (escalate vigor and technique each time, require a certain number of spectators be rounded up, etc.) a statue in the town square, which has no apparent effect.

He re-stocks the vault often by hiring successful invaders for fun adventures that never require morally suspect behaviour of any sort.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 3 hours ago

This could be a full-on one-shot