Abandoned Mage's Tower Ideas

[LeshLush]

The PC's in my campaign have discovered the abandoned tower of an ancient mage and are about to bust in and go dungeon crawling. Before I start designing the dungeon, I thought I'd ask the playground for ideas to see you guys can come up with anything that strikes my fancy. Thoughts?

[Yogibear41]

Alot probably depends on the type of mage that it was, but for some quick Ideas, I will dust of the memory of the backstory of a character I wanted to play that never happened :(

Was going to play an incarnate consturct awakend by his master just before his death but I digress, some Ideas I had for his mages tower were on the first floor he would have magically enchanted suits of armor say 6, 3 on each side of the wall that would come to life and serve as guards and say attack strangers to the tower or people who didn't know the "secret command password" or something like that. I also had the idea that even if said suits of armor were defeated they were basically empty and the suits would fall to pieces for a time but eventually they would pull themselves back together and depending on how quickly you wanted it to happen continue fighting or simply reset themselves back on their original pedestals.

For some noncombat related things I would definently have a large library probably with at least 1 floor of the tower dedicated to it if not more. I also had the idea that in my characters tower their would be a level dedicated to herbalism/alchemical creation where their would be many different types of plants growing in various stone trays/troughs, where the tower these kinds of piping systems that would come through windows that collected rainfall/dew and then come in as to water the plants automatically without having to care for them explicitly in addition to them being positioned just so that they would get an ample amount of sunlight if the specific plant needed it. As well as say as work bench with some alchemical beakers and mortar and pestle type things, maybe even some books detailing said things lying around close by too.

If the tower has been abandoned for a long time the plants could potentially still be there with this system in place, they could even have grown way too much as no one is their to harvest/trim them back.

Hope this gave you some ideas :smallsmile:

[Alienist]

Gurps had the idea of powerstones, effectively mana batteries for casting. They have to be 1 meter apart in order to recharge, and they recharge faster inhigh mana areas than low mana areas.

So it makes perfect sense in gurps for a mage who has discovered a patch of high mana to want to put all his powerstones in there, and he has to protect them of course, so now he needs a tower ... (etc)

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In D&D wizards need a constant influx of material components of all sorts, so they need to optimally place themselves as close as they can get to a market or major trade route. The wizards tower in the wilderness doesn't make sense in D&D.

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Now an ancient tower in the wilderness ... who is to say that magic has always been the same? Couldn't it change and evolve over time?

[ArcturusV]

Well, like most things, it all depends on Purpose. Which in part depends on the original owner.

If the original owner was someone into more scholarly pursuits (and sharing that knowledge) the "Tower" might be more akin to a Manor, large enough with guest quarters, libraries, experimentation rooms. Place should be open, inviting, easy to find your way through.

Loners will have much smaller places obviously, in harder to reach locations.

But ideally, and this is the thing I often find people miss when they create locations... is that the owner should be able to do everything they normally would do in that location. If this is a place where your mage was holed up for decades at a time, you need things like larders, kitchens, resting quarters, probably hygiene concerns addressed. A way for them to get this whether it's Magic or natural methods (Thus need delivery access for example). If they are doing research you need appropriate research spaces obviously. And one thing that's often forgotten... recreation. You would go INSANE if all you had was room, food, and work. No matter how satisfying the work actually is. For mages this could be... anything. A place where they conjure up outsiders for conversation and fun. Teleportation room where they frequently leave/arrive from their favorite haunts. A place to play Kick the Ouphe, whatever.