Tower of Death

[limejuicepowder]

Inspired by Samurai Jack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0E939VUtFo) (skip to 1:56), I'd like to make a similar encounter using the following guild lines (that is, archers in a tower striking incoming foes from great distance and aim).

- I'd like the archers to be legit character(s) of one form or another, in the ECL 6-10 range.

- Ability to handle many different modes of attack - invisibility is the most obvious and probably the most important, but any other modes would be good too (ethereal, burrowing, moving cover, etc). I know the level constraint is going to seriously hamper this, as well as the need for this.

- No more than 3 archers.

A rough estimation of CR would be good too.

[Chilingsworth]

Well, invisible and ethereal targets can be seen by giving them a scout's headband (out of MIC) charges/day that can be spent on varrious effects, including a minute of trueseeing.

As for hitting ethereal targets, you could give them a force bow (also from MIC) a weapon property applied to ranged weapons. It turns their projectiles into force bolts. It's a +2 bonus, though (so a weapon would be +3 effective, minimum). Not sure if a 6-10th level npc could afford both.

[ArcturusV]

Never go magical where mundane can serve. Or at least double up Magical with Mundane backups is usually my policy. Setting the archer's tower in the middle of snow, or swampy flooded ground, or even just really long, uncut grasses can give your Archer Triplets an innate way to minimize the bonuses of invisibility without resorting to items you may or may not want to be looted.

Burrowing is slightly harder to deal with. Though if you do use flooded, swampy ground, burrowing may not really be an option for approaching the Archer Tower. Digging through that stuff is not only unpleasant, but liable to have you buried in mud and water at any given moment.

Cover is too dependent on feats/magic really. Again, difficult terrain can help make lugging a wall around something of an annoying prospect. Probably the simplest method I could think of would be to give them some special arrows to use for Cover Cracking in a limited supply. Enemies try to build a shield wall and roll up behind it to the tower? They fire off one of their siege breaker flaming burst arrows to blow up the cover with a volley or two.

Of course the terrain stuff can all be bypassed in various ways, if the party is prepared for it and thinks it through, easily enough. But I don't really see anything that wrong with that being the case. If they want to scout something out, regroup, plan, etc. More power to them. It makes the challenge that much more memorable.

[limejuicepowder]

Thanks for the replies, this is good stuff. As far as levels go it looks like cragtop archer is perfect. It would be nice to have the archers be identical, but it'd be a lot more comprehensive if they aren't. I'm thinking of making the base levels different so they can stack different buffs, than taking a dip in to cragtop archer for some longrange goodness. Necropolitan for lifesense seems good as well.

[Silva Stormrage]

Hm its a bit out of the level range but might be good for a boss. Soulbow gains an attack called phase arrow at 8th level. This arrow can be launched at anyone they know is within range. The arrow then phases through walls and obstacles till it reaches their enemy, if the enemy gets within the tower it would be very annoying. Or the boss could launch attacks at enemies through the wall without being visible.

[Tr011]

#310 has the Targeteer Fighter ACF, it's really really useful for NPCs in that situation in that it gives several options for archers.
Serren from BoED is a material (costing 4k IIRC) that applies Ghost Touch to your weapons. So it would help against ethereal to just have the archers have some arrows of those (costing 80gp per arrow or something).
For cover: There are lots of ways to destroy cover, i.e. burning it with fire arrows or destroying it with explosive arrows or boulders.
For burrowing: Maybe some random traps in the ground.