[3.5] How would you take down this?

[the clumsy bard]

In my current campaign one of our players is building the below cathedral. (we are in epic level party average is about 22)

The question I have is if you were an equivalent level player or CR monster what or how would you get through defenses like the below?


Entire cathedral:
- Hallowed
- Dimensional locked (except front courtyard)
- Ability to plane shift to Mt. Celestia and back 2x/week

Outer walls:
- Magically treated to be transparent


Common Areas

Front courtyard:
- Invisibility purge
- Brazier of aura revealing (evil)
- Brazier of aura revealing (undead)
- Brazier of bright bursts -- fireworks version of pyrotechnics spell
- Greater platform of jaunting -- allows teleport without error
- Two fountains fed by small water elementals

Main cathedral:
- "Stained glass" windows are transparent walls with persistent images of stained glass
- Basins of holy water
- Entrances to the four towers guarded by guardian statues -- sound alarm unless password is spoken

Altar of the Trinity:
- Operator gain the benefits of the following spells:
- resounding voice
- eagle's splendor
- detect evil
- detect undead
- see invisibility
- Can turn the floor of the main cathedral above the Arena invisible and amplify sounds into and out of the Arena
- Levitates -- mithral chains are backup
- Can scry on any location within the cathedral, even rooms normally immune to scrying
- Can speak with anyone within the cathedral, as per sending
- Can dimension door to anywhere in the cathedral
- Can raise and lower any magic effects in the cathedral
- Controls the cathedral's plane shifting ability

- Anyone non-good creature approaching within 10 feet sets off 5 greater glyphs of warding:
1. deals 10d8 points of damage
2. undeath to death
3. banishment
4. greater dispel magic, targeted at intruder
5. planar ally -- summons astral deva
- Anyone of any alignment approaching within 10 feet must speak a password or set off a mental alarm in the minds of the 3 high priests and the dragon guardian
- To use the altar requires one of three discs (currently held by the three high priests) and the command of a mental password

Cemetery:
- Consecrated ground

Arena of Kord:
- Pillar of stabilizing -- casts stabilize (i.e. mass cure of 1 hp) if anyone drops below 0 hp
- Torches of daylight -- cast daylight when command word is spoken

Basement -- stables:
- Calm animals always in effect


Towers of Light, Justice, and Strength

First floor -- dining hall:
- Table of safe meals -- poisoned food or drink glows

First floor -- kitchen:
- Decanter of endless water

Entrance to second floor:
- Greater glyph of warding -- greater command ("Leave")
- Triggered when someone walks through doorway
- Bypassed by wearing the robes of the appropriate order or speaking a password

Entrance to third floor:
- Permanent symbol of sleep
- Triggered when someone walks through doorway
- Bypassed by speaking a password

Third floor -- meeting room:
- Hall of speech -- everyone in the room affected by tongues
- Inscriptions of privacy -- glow when being scryed

Third floor -- high priest's room:
- Greater scrying pool
- Inscriptions of privacy -- glow when being scryed

Basement -- armories:
- Contain magical weapons and armor used by the rank-and-file


Tower of Meeting

First floor -- library:
- Chamber of fire quenching -- all magical and non-magical flames doused
- Lit by continual flames

First floor -- offices:
- Inscriptions of privacy -- glow when being scryed

Second floor -- smithy:
- Magically sound proofed
- Magical and non-magical fires cannot pass beyond the room
- Magically vented

Basement -- meeting room:
- Hall of speech -- everyone in the room affected by tongues
- Inscriptions of vacancy -- room immune to scrying


Basement -- Dwarven Complex

Entrance:
- Concealed door detectable only by dwarven stonecunning

Forge:
- Magically sound proofed
- Magical and non-magical fires cannot pass beyond the room
- Magically vented

[jmelesky]

Ability to plane shift to Mt. Celestia and back 2x/week

Two general approaches come to mind. I haven't bothered to stat them out, but they're both feasible approaches.

First, make the inhabitants of Mt Celestia mad at them. A little bit of subversion goes a long way, and if they end up fighting, everyone's on even ground.

Second, prepare the ground while the cathedral is planeshifted away. Unhallow it, make some large anitmagic shells, whatever. Heck, even make a large planar portal of some sort which shifts the cathedral to the plane of your choice when it returns. Either wait until the occupants are happy to shift back without looking, or use some abjuration to hijack their scry attempts and make it look normal and peaceful.

Frontal assaults, after all, are very gauche. Truly diabolical minds will arrange the world to their liking before any fights break out.

EDIT: Alternately (or additionally), get some inside men onto the construction team. Put in a backdoor in some of the nastier enchantments (no scrying, unless you know the password; glyphs work on all non-good creatures, but are fooled by the easily-reproducible style of robe that initiates wear, etc). The PCs should figure it out eventually, prior to the completion of the structure. At that point, of course, all of the enchantments will be suspect, so they'll have to go back to the beginning and start over (giving your BBEG even more prep time, plus intimate knowledge of the existing plans).

[NichG]

For the very gauche frontal assault, I'd put a number of Energy Transformation Fields on large movable platforms, like siege engines. They'd each be keyed to turn spell energy they absorb into Disintegrates. I'd use Leadership and at that CR, possibly Epic Leadership to get an army of Lv1 mages to feed spells into the ETFs, producing several Disintegrates a round, basically just chewing through the walls of the structure.

You have a lot of internal defenses but nothing that really protects the walls from outright destruction. The plan would mostly involve getting you off the Prime Material - if you flee to Celestia, I can hunker down and secure the area you've fled to make it hard for you to return.

If I really need to destroy the fort on the Celestia side, then it requires more subtlety. If I could smuggle in some sort of bomb it might do it. Perhaps smuggle in a book with a bunch of Glyphs on one page of it, so when someone finally reads it, metaphorically 'boom'. Probably stuff with dominate person so that I could have the staff start converting others, and essentially take over the building from the inside. If the Hallow on the place includes protection from evil, it shuts down that plan though. I'd have to switch to Programmed Amnesia of people I can capture and release when they're outside of the fort, to create sleeper agents.

It'd be risky and expensive, but if I smuggled in a bunch of scrolls of Disjunction the same way, once I got enough of the staff under my control I could use them as throwaway bombers to strip off the spells on the structure, making it more amenable to standard teleport-in-and-fire tactics.

If I'm a really disturbing villain, I could be a cancer mage or something and sneak in via infecting the civilians in the fortress with my personal disease. Your braziers would detect it on people I'd guess, so that might be defeated easily.

[DarkestKnight]

first of all, you might want to use Gate instead of Plane shift. plane shift moves your somewhere between 5 and 500 miles from your target. if you are using the plane shift spell as written (with miss chance) i would do nothing other than wait for you to plane shift 500 miles off the mountain. Gate brings you directly to whatever location you desire. I realize plane shift might have been selected for fluffing an ability that was wanted, but IMO Gate is more suitable.

Plane hopping aside, i would likely train a squad of bulletes/dire badgers/badgers or other things that can burrow and leave a tunnel and sap the foundation out of the cathedral. there are no external defenses, so they won't know whats going on below them.

Quick question: are you asking this because you want to improve the design, or because you want to wreck it?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If you're a villain bent on their destruction, just be ready for when the cathedral goes to Mt. Celestia. Have multiple scrolls of Move Earth, Transmute Rock to Mud, Transmute Mud to Rock, Stone Shape, Disintegrate, etc. along with a Decanter of Endless Water. Create a giant pit where the cathedral would reappear, as deep as possible. Cast Stone Shape to create a reservoir nearby with a canal leading to the pit, and use the Decanter to fill it up. When the cathedral reappears it immediately falls into the pit; use Disintegrate or Stone Shape or more mundane means to empty the reservoir into the pit, and use Move Earth to collapse the mouth of the pit onto the cathedral. The ruins of the cathedral are now flooded with mud, cast Transmute Mud to Rock. Use Move Earth and Stone Shape to erase any trace of its existence.

[Tvtyrant]

I would fly the Spelljammer above it and then shoot it with seeking Sphere's of Annihilation until it is gone.

[the clumsy bard]

In response to Darkestknight

I am a villain and if it came down to it yes I might (unlikely) have to if they decide to turn on me. We are mixed bag of nuts party. It is actually a very strange dynamic.

For the most part I am actually looking to help said player. I couldn't in good conscious do anything based on said information as it was given to me to help the other player.

I have a better knowledge of spells and what not. I am just based on what I have told her trying to get a better grasp of other minds on how they would go about tackling something like this so I dont miss anything.

Great ideas so far, please keep them coming!

[gbprime]

Burrowing.

A bad guy with a Truly Horrid Umber Hulk (or a number of regular ones) can move through the place with impunity. And if they can undermine the altar and run off with it, then the inhabitants cannot shift to Celestia nor can they get anyplace inside the cathedral except by using the stairs, doors, and hallways... while the bad guys can tunnel everyplace and not leave a usable passage behind them.

The umber hulk that undermines the altar just has to endure 10d8 damage and then pulp an astral deva with the help of his allies. After that, you just run off with the thing.

And burrowing in leaves the option of making a wide underground space just outside the Dimensionally Locked area for additional bad guys to greater t-port into...

Isolate the inhabitants and destroy them.

[Coidzor]

Cause a massive pilgrimage that fills the area with too many people for the defenders to defend themselves properly.

Have mindraped sleeper agents. Or, hell, have all of them be mindraped into being sleeper agents that retain their good alignment and a team of bards(created by hunting down living bards and create dread warrioring them if necessary) armed with alphorns to provide several flavors of dragonfire inspiration and debuffs to everyone in the area of the right side when the event goes down.

That'll be a nice distraction for the non-epic minions of whoever you're trolling, and might even cause the bigwigs to come out so that they're not hiding underneath all of their wards.

Alternatively, discuss with the DM how sturdily constructed their buildings are and how many additional tons it would take to cause them problems, such that they'd have to go to Celestia, and figure out what you can do to mess with their site before they planeshift back.

Or just set up an altar to Nerull or something within eyesight of their cathedral and start having humanoid sacrifices there every hour on the hour until they decide to come out and play.

[CTrees]

+1 for sapping. You're epic level. You should be able to figure out how to destroy the ground under the cathedral. Buildings don't react well to falling damage.

Wait for them to shift to Celestia. Trap/destroy the area where they'd return. If they don't come back because it's unsafe... They've effectively banished themselves to a different plane, and are no longer your problem.

Go after their followers. Bluff, at epic levels, should be able to convince most of their followers that the cathedral is a false church, some evil conspiracy, heretical, whatever.

Oversized disjunction/AMF/spheres of annihilation.

Another +1 to setting up a trap for their return trip, pushing the entire cathedral somewhere else. Let's say... the plane of fire.

Have fliers drop heavy things on it. Like golems. A lot.

Divert a river onto it.

[DarkestKnight]

Another thing that has occurred to me is that you can always use Apocalypse from the sky, using circle magic and metamagics. un modified, it does 10d6 to everything, creatures and more importantly objects, in it's radius. its described as a spell that destroys entire landscapes, flattens mountains, removes forests for a reason.

using described manner, assuming you use circle magic to augment your caster level to 40, and use it to apply widen, maximise, and any other metamagic you feel is necessary, you would have a radius of oh...approximately 800 miles. everything in it would take so many points of damage, and you would likely create a smoldering crater visible from orbit. keep in mind that is radius, not diameter.

[erikun]

The first thing I note is that anyone with True Seeing can see right into the courtyard and main cathedral without any problem. This, apparently, also includes the Altar of the Trinity. This means anyone in these areas can be targetted by attacks and spells that have a range from beyond the walls. An Arcane Archer putting Antimagic Field on an arrow can fire it into the Altar, completely removing the cathedral's ability to Plane Shift and the main communication network. Someone would be free to cast Dominate Person, perhaps at an extended range, on the head priest at the Altar, and while it won't do anything as long as they are still inside (Hallow grants the Protection from Evil effect) getting them outside gets access to the head priest.

More mundane methods of entry can work as well. You could simply claim to be a traveller, having been away for a long time, and ask for the current password. Undetectable Alignment gets past everything based on alignment, including those non-good traps. Protection from Good (or any other alignment) protects from both the Symbols, granting you immunity to both Command and Sleep. You should have no trouble wandering around the place with a few weak spells and some good Bluff checks.

The cathedral needs a way to dispose of waste, and that can be used as an enterance - even if it dumps into another plane. If it somehow doesn't, then the entire place can be flooded with Cloudkill or something similar to kill off anyone not on the second or third floor.


If you want to assult the place, then Undectectable Alignment + Protection from Good (possibly in the form of the Magic Circle variety) grants you basic immunity to nearly all the magical protections throughout the place. Granting poison immunity with Cloudkill will help weed down the defenders, and as I mentioned earlier, anyone trying to get to the Altar can be sniped and cast at from the outside. It may just be simplier to use seige weaponry to deal with the second and third floors, rather than trying to storm them with troops.

[the clumsy bard]

True Seeing
Divination
Level: Clr 5, Drd 7, Knowledge 5, Sor/Wiz 6
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: 1 min./level
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)

You confer on the subject the ability to see all things as they actually are. The subject sees through normal and magical darkness, notices secret doors hidden by magic, sees the exact locations of creatures or objects under blur or displacement effects, sees invisible creatures or objects normally, sees through illusions, and sees the true form of polymorphed, changed, or transmuted things. Further, the subject can focus its vision to see into the Ethereal Plane (but not into extradimensional spaces). The range of true seeing conferred is 120 feet.

True seeing, however, does not penetrate solid objects. It in no way confers X-ray vision or its equivalent. It does not negate concealment, including that caused by fog and the like. True seeing does not help the viewer see through mundane disguises, spot creatures who are simply hiding, or notice secret doors hidden by mundane means. In addition, the spell effects cannot be further enhanced with known magic, so one cannot use true seeing through a crystal ball or in conjunction with clairaudience/clairvoyance.
Material Component

An ointment for the eyes that costs 250 gp and is made from mushroom powder, saffron, and fat.

[Coidzor]

Another option, get/be a druid or several druids of at least 9th level. Cast blizzard, cast it several times. If the buildings don't collapse under several tons of snow on top of them, cast heat snap, all of the snow melts and floods the cathedral.

That should at least get rid of their minions and leave them understaffed to notice things if it doesn't just destroy the cathedral by undermining its foundations and the force of all that water at work.

Though if it's somehow fiated enough that it resists all of that, well, no more clean underwear.

[erikun]

The range of true seeing conferred is 120 feet.
Good point, I'd forgotten that.

Still, you're epic level; I'm sure you can devise an "Extended True Seeing" that extends to the range of sight. Or, for that matter, just sit on the walls. The spell only needs to extent past the stained glass "windows" to be fully effective, and the Invisibility Purge is only for inside the courtyard, not the top of the walls.

[vikingofdoom]

Gate in a solar, with the command "Destroy the church at [location] starting with the Altar of the Trinity and without letting anyone know of your cause." The solar is a good-aligned outsider, and doesn't set of any of the defenses (except the alarm on the statues), and probably won't provoke suspicion in the guardians of the temple. This will cost the caller 1000 xp and either 2,200 gold or 11,000 gold for the services.

[gbprime]

Good point, I'd forgotten that.

Still, you're epic level; I'm sure you can devise an "Extended True Seeing" that extends to the range of sight. Or, for that matter, just sit on the walls. The spell only needs to extent past the stained glass "windows" to be fully effective, and the Invisibility Purge is only for inside the courtyard, not the top of the walls.

No, True Seeing will enable you to see the transparent walls as NON-transparent walls, won't it?

Very much like the Invisible Obscuring Mist gambit.

[Toliudar]

You also have an interesting paradox - a place that is dimension locked shouldn't, in theory, be ABLE to plane shift.

I'm also curious as to how much of the surrounding ground disappears with you when you plane shift. There are, after all, basements listed.

But yes, the easiest means of destroying it would seem to be with a horde of angels.

[Havelock]

Martial adept with torc of antimagic field or whatever the name is, walk right in, ancient mountain hammer. Bye bye altar.

[Aspenor]

Since you are epic, cast Gate from your demi-plane to get line of effect, then turn the entire cathedral into a pair of dirty socks with epic magic.

Better yet, cast Gate from a second demiplane where you have astrally projected yourself, then do the above. Epic level characters scoff at this sort of thing.