Defence Scenarios

[Mayhem]

5 Paladins with really high CHA, good reputations and the Leadership Feat?

Fill in the rest of the party needs from their cohorts.

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Or.

To take on the hoardes: A halfing warlock with high dex, a mithril breastplate, a force-shield (and the proficiency to use it) , the battle-caster fest (+2 AC in every round you cast a spell), shielded caster feat (cast spells without an AoO if you have a shield) and Eldritch cone.

OR A flying high-dex rogue with Weapon finnesse, great-cleave and a spiked spiked chain that allows attacks on adjacent and reach squares. Hover over the centre of the massed ranks and you should be able to reach a 5x5 area of squares. Get some form of improved invis to get you a sneak attack on all 25 rank-and file opponents. Good against fliers too, and hopefully evasion will keep him relatively safe from incoming spells.

A spellcaster with some form of earthmoving spell would seem to be a good investment, too. You could seal up most (or all) of the staircases.

That said - defending a static castle against a high CR mage with any imagination is next to impossible. The walls mean very little. Characters that are spread out over the castle would be unable to support each other and thus would be prone to being picked off. Congregating in one place makes you prone to area effect spells or having the place brought down around your ears. Everyone will need some means of moving about magically.

I think, therefore, my prefered plan yould be to fill the biggest buildings with summoned stone, try to give everyone ethereality, stay hidden literally inside walls and conduct a guerilla campaign against anyone gaining entry. Make sure the artefact is indetectable by magical means so that it has to be physically searched for, and concentrate on killing off the burrowers and any ethereal critters, and anyone that shows earth-moving ability.

Some ability to know whats going on all over the castle would help...

[ThinkTank]

Seems that the real challange comes from dealing with the caster and his group of toughs seeing as they have maximum mobility. You'd just need somthing to keep the hoards back until you'd finished them off to break the army.

With area 54 being the only open towertop, it makes sense to use that as a spotting post, even if it is going to get targeted alot.

If it could be considered that the party casters had 24 hours, and already had spells prepared for the start of that 24 hours, that leaves 4, 8 hour slots with the 4th being your final spells for the battle.

Using a 10th level [wizard 5th / Runesmith 3rd / Geometer 2nd] with the arcane manipulation feat, and a circlet of mages, I calculate with 24 hours and enough gem dust (a damn lot) I could lay down alot of long duration spells that would each last at least 3/4 hours into the battle.

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16 glyphs of warding, 1 of which is a dispell magic and 6 of which are glitterdust and 2 of which are summon monster (from another PC). The rest are sonic damage blasts.

8 for each towertop area, set on the wooden floor. Summon monsters for 50 and 51, sonic blast for the rest. A blast glyph on the tower below 49 before its sealed in with stone shape. A dispell magic glyph in the entranceway by 18 and finaly 1 glitterdust glyph slapbang in the center of each stretch of walltop save the center one.

Cast hidden ward on all of them (24 hour duration) so detect magic will have a problem seeing them.

The sonic damage bypasses hardness, so it could at a pinch blast the towers wooden floors to splinters. Soak said floors in oil and leave a shatterable container of alchemical fire in the room below, and program the glyph to only go off if anybody but the characters is in the room, without the characters being there. Bam, each tower is an instant deathtrap the moment it gets overrun.

Glitterdust ones on the walls should light up invisable sneaks, and blind ladder partys.

And the summons for the final redoubt, as you dont really want that catching fire.

The dispell magic, works with some other spells and has no hidden ward on it, for reasons obvious later.

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8 glyphs of Spell Loss, 1 on each rooftop save the open towertop of 54. Once triped they last for just under 2 hours and suck out spells or spellslots of any caster within 60ft of them. They suppress spell-likes aswell, so all good fun.

Again, hidden ward on all of em

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Stick a Refusal on the artifact area and one to cover most of the final redoubt. Seeing as at that level of PC, you could cover 45, 5ft squares with it, shouldnt be a problem. It does unauthorised casters and spell-like ability users, will save to enter gets harder the higher level spells they have. Shunts out teleports as well

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11 Signs of Sealing, 1 on each portcullis, one on 18's door, one on he redoubt door, and finaly 1 on each ground floor tower door.

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20 create traps, so CR 1 traps, on each and every damn door in the areas ajoining the 3 courtyards on the ground floor. Save the redoubt.

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4 evacuation runes on each of the PCs, to teleport them to room 53 as a swift action should things get really hairy. (less if I can narrow it down to less PCs)

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finaly, 9 rope tricks, one for each towertop so you can draw as many mooks as possible into the tower before leaping into the rope trick and setting of the deathtrap.

1 rope trick full of really really heavy stone blocks above and inside the entrance to 18. Either way, if they trip the glyph, or dispell the glyph, they are still gonna get crushed and block off that doorway with a big pile of rock.




So as the connecting towers are impassable, it will funnel mooks into the courtyards, which once inside they cant get out off. Fire off summons, magic walls and area blasts and you'll have a shooting gallery. Soild Fog and summoned Ice Paraelementals for one, Water Elementals and a Wall of Water for nother and Wall of Fire with Smoke Paraelementals for the last was my favoret. With the PCs final load out you could screen off 54 with a dispelling screen sphere and set a few others up to hinder.

[ThinkTank]

I'm also toying with the idea of using an Artificer and creating some low level automata or golems, but it seems a bit expensive.

Or mebbe using the Shadowsworn Class from the Book of Roguish Luck along with the Master of Shrouds PrC. As you could summon a lot of shadows in a short space of time, and each mook they killed would rise as a shadow perminantly you could literaly have a small army of shadows by the end of the first few waves. Incoporeal aswell, so they could access any part of the area.

Mind you, I'd need some feat or item to extend the summoning time and an area effect spell for strength drain to speed things up.

[ThinkTank]

New Map, the floating tower.

The walls are magicaly transparant iron painted over, bits left unpainted are the windows

25 is accessed from 21 by a well of levitation.

Thoughts?

[Brokenbone]

My thought is you are crazy TT.

This thread is pretty fun anyhow.

[ThinkTank]

My thought is you are crazy TT.

Mhm, wait till I start discussing the offence version of this thread.

In anycase, the first thing I'd note is that its of the ground by a fair distance, so thats a big plus against the mooks, seeing as they would need some means of getting up there. Second that its heavyly sealed up walls wise, limiting points of entry without magic.

So its vs. flying, flying ships & flying creatures thats gonna be the mainstay.

Although that also means that heavy duty antimagic could send the entire place down like a burning spitfire.

[Brokenbone]

Offense would be unleashing two rust monsters on it, heheh. Anyhow, like I said, enjoyable thread.

I will just watch how the Force Mage of the Broken would defend it. Or a bunch of dwarves making a shield wall. Etc.

[ThinkTank]

oh noes!, summoned rust monsters with fly cast on em. That would be horrific.

Would need something to stop them boring a hole straight into the rooms.