Temple wards

[Edhelras]

Hi,

any suggestions on how a typical mid-level urban temple (of Selûne) would ward its vault/sacristy containing magic items, gold and religious artworks?
The room is enclosed by 5-ft thick stone walls, but what kinds of (permanent) magic and other physical barriers would be natural to expend (with not-unlimited funds), in order to ward it from burglary?

Also, are there any spells or other effects that the caretaker of a tomb/burial chamber may employ in order to prevent undead from rising from the buried remains inside? Alternatively, is there any way to enchant the statue standing at the entrance, so that undead creatures may not pass beyond it and into the temple proper standing above the burial vault?

Cheers, Ed

[sleepyphoenixx]

Since it's a temple you can reasonably expect it to be hallowed ground.
That takes care of any undead rising there. To protect against thieves you can tie Dispel Magic or Invisibility Purge to the Hallow spell.

If you can afford a little more, Forbiddance prevents teleporting in and damages anyone who is a different alignment (probably CG in this case).
That should take care of most intruders.

If you still want to enchant the statue you can permanency animate object on it, depending on size.
You need CL 8 for a huge statue or CL 16 for a gargantuan one and CL 14 to permanency it.
You could also make it a Stone Golem (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/golem.htm#stoneGolem) but that gets expensive.

[Edhelras]

OK, thanks, a hallowed tomb it must be then. Although I was kinda thinking about a way to actually allow undead to rise, as a kind of freak phenomenon, but to have this statue at the exit prevent them from leaving the tomb (to come as a surprise for the people above.

Is there any chance that the monster Tomb Mote (from Libris Mortis) would be able to rise from - not the dead bodies themselves - but from the kind of "garbage" that could be found in an age-old tomb, partly debris from decayed corpses, partly other "stuff" accumulated in the old tomb - even despite the Hallow spell? I was thinking that the Hallow spell had been cast upon construction, perhaps several hundred years ago, and that never being renewed, it might show some small moments of instability, allowing this tiny Tomb Mote to form...?

Also, would there be any point in lining the Sacristy with lead sheets in the walls? For instance to prevent use of Passwall.

Perhaps I could tie Dimensional Anchor to the Hallowing of the Sacristy, so that it denies anyone able to get in by way of magic the opportunity to leave. So they would be trapped inside the Sacristy, once they got in there. Then I could make the Sacristy air tight, and... just wait... :smalleek:

[drack]

Tomb mote rising is GM power, so you could. is this an evil temple? This changes things. There's also a fun spell in magic of fearun. Hand of... the god that starts with a "T"... Stuns people who don't believe in the god when they walk through a doorway. Both identified believers and gives a combat advantage. :smallwink:

[Edhelras]

"Drack, how do you know all this useFULL stuff?" :smallwink:

That's a nice one, Hand of Selûne then.
However, it's only lasting for 1 hr/CL, and the minimum CL is 7th (it's a Clr lvl 4 spell). So it would have to be cast and re-cast every 6-7 hrs., then. If cast by a lvl 10 Clr it would last 10 hrs., and if he had Extend spell he might cast it for 20 hrs. duration. So the Cleric casting it would have to be quite high-lvl (higher than I had planned for the daily staff of the temple).

Might it perhaps be made Permanent? I have some trouble understanding exactly which spells may be made Permanent, particularly those not mentioned in the PHB. It would be a nice touch to have this spell warding the entrance to the Inner part of the Temple, alternatively the Sacristy itself.
Or, this spell might be used to seal off a part of the Temple during night-time, whereas an ordinary sentry might guard the doorway during the day hours.

[drack]

Making a spell permanent beyond the PHB list is mostly just GM digression. If it's an evil church I suggest ghoul glyph and skull of secrets (same book and spell compendium too I think for a more up to date one.) they're permanent, as is skullwatch. Thematically appropriate wards of spell level 4 and below for an evil church. Otherwise glyphs of warding and the symbol spells are never out of place in a church that has metaphorical demons locked away somewhere. Beyond that Indiana Jones wants to tell you how to use traps.

Yeah, the useless is kinda a joke about all the random stuff I know. I changed my sig to that recently after making some bad pun involving Troll House cookies being the first popularized chocolate chip cookie recipe in one of my threads. :smalltongue: I'll probably find a new sig quote soon enough.

Edit: Though the hand spell needn't be permanent if they expect an attack or intruders in a given time frame. :smallwink:

[Inferno]

You could always make the Vault door a custom magic item: Door of Selûne with some built-in fist of Selûne.

[Edhelras]

Yeah, uh, I know I have a problem with constructing encounters/sites, I tend to be too preoccupied with adhering to the rules. I could take more liberties as a DM I guess. Still, I do feel a need to have things "make sense" from the player perspective as well, as in "how could this come to be?"

The point here is that it's a good church that has (recently) been taken over by the bad guys, but in which I'd like there to be some remains of the old church in place. That the bad guys haven't been able to uncover all the secrets yet.

So, any surviving defenses set up by the Selunites have to be of long duration and strong enough to deter the bad guys - but then I still need to find a way to enable the PCs to bypass them.
It will be mostly by way of Search checks, I think, the bad guys aren't high enough lvl to have True Seeing, and no high-lvl searchers.

[Another_Poet]

After making the heavily warded Sacristy, if I was the Cardinal of Selûne I would strongly consider simply putting the valuable items in a Bag of Holding and then putting said bag somewhere else in the temple.

With a small faux treasure collection worth a couple thousand gold, plus a bunch of potions, in the sacristy.

[drack]

I recall reading somewhere (I think it was DMG under the part about art as treasure) that wall carvings can help to hide a secret door. +4 or something on DC of the check, with potential for it to be higher with finer detail and such which is a GM call. That may help if the evil guys have lower search checks then the party. After all if they've had it for a while they could all have taken 20 on search checks. That or you can have the classic password activated door, or one that requires a long ritual to open.

Also what kind of evil guys (outsides, undeads, orcs, human thugs, human magi, ect), and is the temple designed to resist them specifically?

[Lightlawbliss]

First rule of the DM: Make sure everyone has fun
Second rule: the NPC defending his house gets traps at a massive discount.
Third rule: permanency is less broken then persist.

[drack]

Yup, permenency isn't a dm fait thing, it's a "Mr/Mrs. GM, may I persist _______" and you decide based on if it seems broken and choose an appropriate cost. It's not "This happened, though you have no idea how." :smalltongue:

[Edhelras]

I recall reading somewhere (I think it was DMG under the part about art as treasure) that wall carvings can help to hide a secret door. +4 or something on DC of the check, with potential for it to be higher with finer detail and such which is a GM call. That may help if the evil guys have lower search checks then the party. After all if they've had it for a while they could all have taken 20 on search checks. That or you can have the classic password activated door, or one that requires a long ritual to open.

Also what kind of evil guys (outsides, undeads, orcs, human thugs, human magi, ect), and is the temple designed to resist them specifically?

Yes, I'm already using that - the Sacristy is accessed via a secret door hidden in the elaborate mural paitings in the main chapel. I haven't worked it all out, but was thinking that this particular part of the mural (which is describing aspects of Selûne) could include references to the Travel or Navigation domain/portfolio of Selûne, and kind of provide a hint or mystery for PCs with Knowledge:religion or Bardic knowledge, to aid them in discovering it. So, a riddle for the PCs who bother to solve it or use their skills.

The evil guys are really random - a low-level necromancer who just needed a base of operations, and got access to this temple when the original clerics died from a mysterious disease. I haven't gotten around to all that either, but I had this thought to custom-make a Tomb Mote that was spawned by the debris from deceased, mighty clerics - and tainted by some powerful good-aligned lycanthrope interred there. So I thought I could get away with (purely as a back-story) that the bite of this particular strain of Tomb Motes not only was disease-causing, it also caused a variety of madness in sufferers, disabling them from employing their healing magics, and prompting them into biting their fellow clerics and thus spread the disease. Leaving an empty, unguarded temple for the necromancer to use.

[drack]

Well traps involving holy water may do good then. Perhaps a little puddle on a floor here, a pit trap that drops the party into holy water for flavor (allowing them to, if they notice it's not water, and have flasks, to nab some), and you might want to look into those necromantic wards too since a caster higher enough level to perform necromancy could easily set them to alarm him and give him the edge in combat. :smallbiggrin:

[Edhelras]

Thanks for the good advice!

Actually, the BBEG is (currently, I have to work more on the encounters to determine) not high enough level to perform his own creations of undead without the use of scrolls (and CL checks). And he's not the ulterior bad guy either. This particular guys is at the moment a wannabe necromancer, most interested in simply studying and experimenting with the dead, not yet fully mastering how to raise them as undead.

...I'm sure his victims appreciate this, being dead is bad enough, being un-dead even worse...

[drack]

Well ghoul glyph is a level 2 spell, so if he's level 3... :smallwink:

[Edhelras]

Actually, that's a great idea. I looked it up (Ghoul glyph) now, and it would be very well suited to keep the BBEG's goons (which except from his undead (scroll-raised) minions are mostly low-level humanoids) from entering the final showdown area where most of the treasures are.

Moreover, this particular spellcaster is fond of casting Ghoul touch using his Spectral hand, so there is already this ghoulish motive...

[drack]

Glad I could help. Dispel ward is also fun. :smalltongue: (level 1 dispel magic that only wards on ward spells.)

[Slipperychicken]

If there's a 9th level or higher Cleric there, he would probably have cast Sacred Item (Clr 5), or its evil equivalent, on every targetable object there, including carpets, seat cushions, and doorknobs. It's permanent, free to cast, and deals a bunch of damage to evil outsiders, undead, and shapechangers who touch the item.

[Spuddles]

lead line the room to prevent most divinations from seeing into it

make sure to do that to a couple false treasure rooms, too

something to block incorporeal movement would be ideal

having something guard the treasure would also be nice, like a golem, mummy, or dragon.

Selune is a goddess of protection, so it wouldnt be out there to have a lot of protections.

The floor in front of the treasure actually being a prismatic wall over a pit with gelatinous cubes in it would be hilarious.

[Lightlawbliss]

...
The floor in front of the treasure actually being a prismatic wall over a pit with gelatinous cubes in it would be hilarious.

(makes notes for future use)

don't forget to put an illusion over it. for that matter, make the entire floor and walls a ton of illusions and use various utility spells so detect magic isn't a big fat "tell me where the bad stuff is" spell.

[drack]

No illusion, a glyph of warding nearby with a mass suggestion to make them believe the prismatic wall/floor is an illusion. :smallwink:

[Lightlawbliss]

No illusion, a glyph of warding nearby with a mass suggestion to make them believe the prismatic wall/floor is an illusion. :smallwink:

personally, I would cover the floor in illusions and have the glyph with mass sugestion. However, I would have the suggestion be to "charge at the treasure and start counting it". That sounds reasonable to me (plenty of adventures would do that anyway).

[drack]

To each their own. I was assuming all high level spells (3+) were scrolls due to the low level nature of the encounter. :smallsmile:

[Slipperychicken]

personally, I would cover the floor in illusions and have the glyph with mass sugestion. However, I would have the suggestion be to "charge at the treasure and start counting it". That sounds reasonable to me (plenty of adventures would do that anyway).

Having the command be something like "Check for traps" would give you at least a minute or so.

[drack]

Yeah, but a necromancer with lots o' goons has been sending blokes through here, o they'll have trampled the floor and set off most of the non-treasure-room traps. :smallsmile:

[Lightlawbliss]

Yeah, but a necromancer with lots o' goons has been sending blokes through here, o they'll have trampled the floor and set off most of the non-treasure-room traps. :smallsmile:

That depends on how the trap is triggered and the type of trap. There could be things or areas they just avoid.

[drack]

Yup there'll always be a few for adventurers. But the floor won't be covered.