Sane Fortress Defence in a D&D universe (Pathfinder)

[Naomi Li]

The realities of possible opposition in a D&D universe dramatically changes what is required to actually prevent attacks effectively. Here are a few I have thought of. Please feel free to contest them, add to them, or bring up another angle that must be covered.

One of the largest differences is, you need to defend more than one plane of existence at the same time. If you are on the material or shadow plane and don't have ranged defences (with cover) on the ethereal plane, you're just asking for trouble.

Lead sheeting covered with stone on both sides (at least 6 feet thick, total) for all walls, floors, and ceilings to prevent divinations, burrowers, rust monsters, and incorporeal monsters from flat out ignoring all defences. (Ghost touch doors would be an excellent addition as well)

Siege engines that are magically enchanted heavily enough to punch through any relevant DR, or proper ammo varieties and spells ready to be cast to get through said DR "properly". Short of level-appropriate adventurers, this is one of the few methods of actually taking down/driving off the big threats.

A method of at least detecting teleports to unauthorized areas or, better yet, blocking them off entirely. Any areas they cannot be blocked off from, have sufficient military forces ready to respond to them ASAP to prevent significant damage from being inflicted. (Not much is more devestating than a pair of gates dropping an entire army in the middle of your fortress)

A very nice addition would be sufficient casters to feed the entire populace with "create food and water" so a siege is less effective. Remove disease, mundane healing, and cure wound spells are extremely important, too. Performers to boost morale would be excellent, too.

[icefractal]

Lead sheeting won't do anything against incorporeals, and only blocks some divinations, but it's not a bad idea. Having your important walls be layered (with at least a tiny gap between layers) is definitely useful, as it means that it takes multiple uses of spells like passwall, disintegrate, etc. to get through them.

While probably not a viable method for your entire fortress, you can block most teleportation into a certain area by the beaded-curtain method. Hang strands of beads everywhere, as if the entire room were a beaded curtain. They don't have to be a solid mass, just close enough that even a tiny creature can't fit in without touching one. People who go in normally can just walk through them, but anyone trying to teleport in will fail due to lack of a sufficiently large free space. For added nastiness, make the nearest open space be a trap.

Now this isn't foolproof, as it doesn't stop people from turning incorporeal or super-small before teleporting, but if your enemies don't know the details, they may assume you have a teleport-redirecting effect and stop trying.

[Juntao112]

The fortress is a deathtrap. The actual fortress is in a demiplane created by the Genesis spell.

[Naomi Li]

The walls stopping incorporeals is supposed to be their thickness, as all incorporeal creatures that I am aware of (granted, I haven't actually read through the beastiary extensively) need to keep part of their body touching the outer surface of a wall to pass through it. Thus, any walls thicker than their longest dimension cannot be passed through by them casually.

Anyway, keeping the actual citadel in a demiplane (though it would be created with one of the "create demiplane" spells instead of genesis) could be very useful. Cuts off the risk of all non-plane hopping adversaries, but it also massively restricts the available volume to live in. And it requires massive quantities of diamond to make it permanent or else you have to recast it repeatedly.

The curtain bead option is certainly an interesting possibility I had never even considered. Probably not particularly viable for areas that are actually used for non-travel purposes, though. (Sleeping, maybe. Cooking, absolutely not)

[TuggyNE]

The walls stopping incorporeals is supposed to be their thickness, as all incorporeal creatures that I am aware of (granted, I haven't actually read through the beastiary extensively) need to keep part of their body touching the outer surface of a wall to pass through it. Thus, any walls thicker than their longest dimension cannot be passed through by them casually.

If they're on the same plane, yes. If they're on the ethereal it doesn't matter to them. I'd suggest plane shifting over some materials for walls, or some other technique to block that.

[Naomi Li]

Well, for the ethereal I was thinking more "fortress with cover from all directions and the ability to direct ludicrously huge amounts of firepower at anything that dares to approach"; the ethereal plane in general is a collossal security risk that those on the material and shadow planes should be aware of at all times. (It's kind of amusing how succubi are one of the VERY few demons that can do anything about ethereal creatures)

[Occasional Sage]

Will somebody please cast Summon Tippy? I've mislaid my component pouch.

[Necroticplague]

Well, for the ethereal I was thinking more "fortress with cover from all directions and the ability to direct ludicrously huge amounts of firepower at anything that dares to approach"; the ethereal plane in general is a collossal security risk that those on the material and shadow planes should be aware of at all times. (It's kind of amusing how succubi are one of the VERY few demons that can do anything about ethereal creatures)

A problem being that ethereal creatures are pretty much undetectable and untargetable without some very specific actions, since they're on another plane entirely. Normally, this is counteracted by their inability to interact with other planes similarly, but some creatures can do such things as manifest (ghosts), or blink (phase spiders), which is like 50% manifesting.A ghost with the ghostly grasp feat would actually be one of the bigger concerns.Binding outsiders with See Invisible and wands of Magic Missile could do the trick, at high cost (outsiders with see invisible tend to be fairly strong).Alternatively, one of the layers of your wall could simply be riverine. That would at least keep them out, though without ethereal detection (as the other layers of the wall would interrupt line-of effect for such spells), there's nothing to stop them from just slowly chipping away at it till they can squeeze through. Or if you were ridiulously wealthy, you could bring materials to the ethereal, find where your fortress is going to be on ethereal/material connection, and basically build a second fortress.(Or just a big box on the ethereal so that ethereal creatures cant get near. Which would leave the problem of creatures that can switch between the material and ethereal quickly, such as casters with plane shift, phase spiders, blink dogs (or casters with blink))

[Naomi Li]

I think you misunderstand. There would be a fortress on the ethereal plane where it overlaps with the material (or shadow) plane citadel. That ethereal plane fortress would be the one responsible for safeguarding against all ethereal plane threats. Fight them on equal ground, not where certain ethereal predators have a huge advantage. I think it could be constructed relatively inexpensively, given some mid-level casters. Plane shift starting rock and the casters over, teleport them to the proper place, huge numbers of "wall of stone" cast to provide the cover from all directions, and archers, crossbow wielders, or ballistae that are powerful enough to be serious threats to anything that dares threaten the citadel.

(Also, giving a bunch of outsiders perfect reason to hate you that will live for extremely long periods of time by binding them against their will seems like a horrendously stupid plan that requires an extreme lack of morals and wizard-level doses of arrogance to think is even remotely close to a good idea)

On a sidenote: I am becoming convinced that about 50% of the horrible mortal caused things are the direct result on wizardly experiments and standard practices and that they REALLY need supervision before they unleash ANOTHER self-replicating plague of death machines. Or just annihilate another city. Or convince a council of outsiders that these mortals really need to be taught a lesson.

[Emperor Tippy]

It depends on level, level of security desired, and available resources.

For example, when I want to build a really secure fortress I uses these:


No, you build your entire base out of Aleax Ice Assassin Factotum 11/ Psion 20's that have been true mind switched with blocks of granite (or other building materials) and then stuck together with Sovereign Glue.

Yes, every single stone in the floor, wall, and ceiling. Every door, every window, every chair, every light fixture. They are all utterly loyal, utterly indestructible, level 20 Psions that have unlimited PP, all arcane and divine spells as powers known, get to act multiple times per turn, have spot and listen checks higher than god, and get to ignore PR/SR. Oh yes, and they all have permanent telepathic bonds with you.

Oh yes, and don't forget the Permanent Emanation Selective Planar Bubble's that they all have set to dead magic, time locked, demi planes that exclude the Lich (so he is the only one who isn't time locked and can use magic).

[Naomi Li]

So, get an impossibly large number of people that are exceptionally high level, somehow all loyal enough to you to endure a fate worse than death for all eternity without ever losing said loyalty to you, with methods that are probably evil enough for Asmodeus to take notice and get a lot of people out for your blood... is your optimal strategy? It MIGHT have the highest theoretical defences, but the upfront cost would probably bankrupt planets, draw the attention of a lot of powerful entities willing to kill you, and probably driving away most of the people a citadel is supposed to support in the first place. This... doesn't seem like a very good plan to me. (Not to mention likely to get a DM to throw a few books at you)

[Emperor Tippy]

So, get an impossibly large number of people that are exceptionally high level, somehow all loyal enough to you to endure a fate worse than death for all eternity without ever losing said loyalty to you, with methods that are probably evil enough for Asmodeus to take notice and get a lot of people out for your blood... is your optimal strategy? It MIGHT have the highest theoretical defences, but the upfront cost would probably bankrupt planets, draw the attention of a lot of powerful entities willing to kill you, and probably driving away most of the people a citadel is supposed to support in the first place. This... doesn't seem like a very good plan to me. (Not to mention likely to get a DM to throw a few books at you)

You only need one (and you can actually create the one you need so long as you can capture a single Great Wyrm), you can replicate it indefinitely via Ice Assassin.

But yes, that is about what you actually need to make a secure fortress in D&D 3.5.

[Necroticplague]

I think you misunderstand. There would be a fortress on the ethereal plane where it overlaps with the material (or shadow) plane citadel. That ethereal plane fortress would be the one responsible for safeguarding against all ethereal plane threats. Fight them on equal ground, not where certain ethereal predators have a huge advantage. I think it could be constructed relatively inexpensively, given some mid-level casters. Plane shift starting rock and the casters over, teleport them to the proper place, huge numbers of "wall of stone" cast to provide the cover from all directions, and archers, crossbow wielders, or ballistae that are powerful enough to be serious threats to anything that dares threaten the citadel.

(Also, giving a bunch of outsiders perfect reason to hate you that will live for extremely long periods of time by binding them against their will seems like a horrendously stupid plan that requires an extreme lack of morals and wizard-level doses of arrogance to think is even remotely close to a good idea)

On a sidenote: I am becoming convinced that about 50% of the horrible mortal caused things are the direct result on wizardly experiments and standard practices and that they REALLY need supervision before they unleash ANOTHER self-replicating plague of death machines. Or just annihilate another city. Or convince a council of outsiders that these mortals really need to be taught a lesson.

You are right, i did indeed read you wrong. I thought you meant that the defenses on the Material/shadow fortress would attack into the ethereal. When you get it down to brass tacks, we both were saying the solution is to build a second fortress on the ethereal.Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Of course, couldn't we solve all of this by just setting up the fort on a place that isn't linked to the ethereal in the first place, like the plane of negative energy (or it's marginally more hospitable quasi-planes where it intersects with the elemental planes, like ash, dust, or salt [vacuum doesn't sound too hospitable])?

[Naomi Li]

It does indeed avoid the ethereal plane weakness, though the elemental planes also tend to have dangers that would need to be counteracted before anyone mortal could safely live there, and it would probably affect the population over the generations. (See humans becoming kayal in the shadow plane) Also, the average threat level probably increases dramatically in every other plane than the material, and doesn't decrease the maximum threat level much, if at all. (And the outer planes, including the celestial ones, tend to be exceptionally dangerous, though the celestial dangers are at least fairly pleasant)

[Necroticplague]

It does indeed avoid the ethereal plane weakness, though the elemental planes also tend to have dangers that would need to be counteracted before anyone mortal could safely live there, and it would probably affect the population over the generations. (See humans becoming kayal in the shadow plane) Also, the average threat level probably increases dramatically in every other plane than the material, and doesn't decrease the maximum threat level much, if at all. (And the outer planes, including the celestial ones, tend to be exceptionally dangerous, though the celestial dangers are at least fairly pleasant)

If your an undead or a construct, then you suffer exactly 0 of the effects of being positioned on any of the negative energy planes (except that you may be easier to rebuke if undead). In addition, as pointed out in its own description, the lack of life in most parts of the Negative mean that there aren't many enemies to threaten you. The most likely threats are Wraiths, which, being only incorporeal, can be stopped by thick walls.

[Frosty]

You only need one (and you can actually create the one you need so long as you can capture a single Great Wyrm), you can replicate it indefinitely via Ice Assassin.

But yes, that is about what you actually need to make a secure fortress in D&D 3.5.True, but the thread asked for a SANE defense :smallbiggrin:

[WebTiefling]

For defending against less than 17th-level casters, Dimensional Lock will be a friend, though you'll need some serious wealth to get enough of them to cover a large fortress. (use a command word magic item and a peon to constantly go around casting it everywhere in your fortress)

Actually, I think there's a Feat that can make the spell permanent in a way that even if it is dispelled/disjuncted it will come back in 1dx rounds or something like that. I would go with whatever that is.

This will still be open to dispelling, but you're going to have a chance to react once they start spending actions dispelling your Dimensional Locks.

As for food and water, forget trying to have enough clerics to cast the Create Food and Water spell. Repeating trap - every time someone walks over the trap, a pile of food appears on a tray next to them. They pick up the tray and the next person comes along. Etc.

[WebTiefling]

True, but the thread asked for a SANE defense :smallbiggrin:

Descriptions of sanity on here vary greatly!

[Frosty]

As for food and water, forget trying to have enough clerics to cast the Create Food and Water spell. Repeating trap - every time someone walks over the trap, a pile of food appears on a tray next to them. They pick up the tray and the next person comes along. Etc.Replicators? :smallbiggrin:

But seriously, this is why in any game I GM, there *are* no auto-resetting traps. Or if there are, you need to provide it with some energy reserve. Law of Conservation of Energy holds even for magic in my world, and large energy sources are guarded fiercely.

[Emperor Tippy]

True, but the thread asked for a SANE defense :smallbiggrin:

To be a sane defense it must first be a viable defense. :smalltongue:

[Necroticplague]

To be a sane defense it must first be a viable defense. :smalltongue:

But how effective does it have to be to be viable? I'd think a sane defense has to be both feasible and viable, and your method fails the feasibility test astronomically.

[Frosty]

At the very least, it fails the "does GM throw books at you" test :smallwink:

[Grod_The_Giant]

Maybe we should break things down a bit more. What are the best defenses for a fortress made by:

A local warlord with access to 5th level casters and an (approximately) hundred thousand gold budget?
A duke with access to 10th level casters and a quarter-million gold budget?
A king with access to 15th level casters and a million-gold budget?
A 20th level lich with an effectively infinite budget due to WBL shennanigans?


Disregarding epic-level characters and epic spellcasting altogether, due to the general borked-ness of those rules.

[Emperor Tippy]

The problem with defending a location in D&D is that the list of potential vulnerabilities is absurdly long.

Flight, teleportation, mind control; these are just some of the obvious first order vulnerabilities.

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The other problem is that the primary real life usage of a fortress was to take and hold land. An army needed to capture or siege a fortress because simply bypassing one left a force in being behind the attacker that could counter attack or harass supply lines. Small groups or raiding parties could bypass a fortress but armies couldn't. These aren't problems that exist in D&D, an army can just bypass a fortress and be no worse off than if they had removed it.

This means that the general usage of a fortress in D&D is to secure a critical object. This means that the bigger threat isn't armies but small groups of highly capable special operators (adventurers or the PC party, for example). For one, it is way to easy to evacuate most items or people with even a few minutes notice.

[Naomi Li]

I'm unsure why you believe that a castle can be safely bypassed by an army in D&D. Unless they have no supply lines to be cut, leaving armed defenders behind them is a terrible idea. Besides, it provides an excellent base of operations for harrasment forces to make use of. The citadel itself doesn't have an exceptionally large field of fire, but that influence does allow for much safer attack parties. (Having a place to retreat to where the enemy will get shot to pieces is very nice)

Anyway, in the scenario I was thinking of, the purpose of the defense is specifically to keep the populace safe from harm. (So if it's a fortress instead of a citadel, it will need to handle a massive influx of relatively untrained combatants that would be draining resources faster than usual) And the defense doesn't have to be even close to impenetrable: merely so aggravatingly difficult that most threats won't bother with it. (Helps if you don't enrage anyone)

[Frosty]

Well, it's mostly Teleportation effects that mitigate the need for supply lines I suppose. Which is why I also heavily restrict Teleportation effects in my games :smallbiggrin:

[Emperor Tippy]

I'm unsure why you believe that a castle can be safely bypassed by an army in D&D. Unless they have no supply lines to be cut, leaving armed defenders behind them is a terrible idea. Besides, it provides an excellent base of operations for harrasment forces to make use of. The citadel itself doesn't have an exceptionally large field of fire, but that influence does allow for much safer attack parties. (Having a place to retreat to where the enemy will get shot to pieces is very nice)

Teleportation negates supply lines and allows entire armies to be moved around with no regard for distance or terrain. This means that you enemies can pretty much always attack you, they are always at your "back".


Anyway, in the scenario I was thinking of, the purpose of the defense is specifically to keep the populace safe from harm. (So if it's a fortress instead of a citadel, it will need to handle a massive influx of relatively untrained combatants that would be draining resources faster than usual) And the defense doesn't have to be even close to impenetrable: merely so aggravatingly difficult that most threats won't bother with it. (Helps if you don't enrage anyone)

How large a population?

And the weakness isn't the supply situation (D&D is filled with ways to negate that need), it's that you are letting in large numbers of unknown or barely known individuals. Any or every one can be a knowing or unknowing plant.

[Korahir]

The problem with defending a location in D&D is that the list of potential vulnerabilities is absurdly long.

Flight, teleportation, mind control; these are just some of the obvious first order vulnerabilities.

---
The other problem is that the primary real life usage of a fortress was to take and hold land. An army needed to capture or siege a fortress because simply bypassing one left a force in being behind the attacker that could counter attack or harass supply lines. Small groups or raiding parties could bypass a fortress but armies couldn't. These aren't problems that exist in D&D, an army can just bypass a fortress and be no worse off than if they had removed it.



I'm not following here. If every army can bypass fortresses in D&D (assuming selfsufficient teleportating armies) wouldn't these armies aspire an edge over the enemy and therefor find a way to teleport fortresses (or defensive buildings in general) with them therefor reevaluating the fortresses? The point is: The army with the fortress still has an edge over the army without the fortress as magical ressources have to be spent to overcome even a measly stone wall.

[Emperor Tippy]

I'm not following here. If every army can bypass fortresses in D&D (assuming selfsufficient teleportating armies) wouldn't these armies aspire an edge over the enemy and therefor find a way to teleport fortresses (or defensive buildings in general) with them therefor reevaluating the fortresses? The point is: The army with the fortress still has an edge over the army without the fortress as magical ressources have to be spent to overcome even a measly stone wall.

Making a teleporting fortress is quite expensive and runs into the problem that an attacking army can throw up a Weirdstone or two and shut down teleportation in a 6 mile+ radius. That tends to put a distinct limit on how close the teleporting fortress can come.

As for regular stone walls, Shapechange -> Beholder -> Disintegrate. Or just bring a few dozen Simulacrum's of Beholders with you, those are also great construction workers.

The thing is, large armies of low level creatures tend to suck in D&D. They simply don't tend to be real threats.

If they bunch up then things like Cloudkill will drop hundreds in a round (even Fireball becomes a real issue). If they separate to stay safe from AoE effects then they open themselves up to defeat in detail.

A Simulacrum of a Pit Fiend has at will Greater Teleport and at will Fireball along with its Fear aura, DR, and immunities. An army divided into small groups will rapidly find its self whittled down by just one of those. And its even worse if it is effected by a scroll of Arcane Thesis, Invisible, Easy Meta: Persist, Persistent Fiendish Quickening (which means for 24 hours its greater teleport SLA is quickened).

D&D is a universe where the masses are an irrelevance. The small handful of powerful forces are what matter in warfare, and building a fortress to keep out that small handful is nigh impossible.

[Korahir]

I agree with everything you say, tippy. I still feel that these armies, which are nothing but a handful of strong individuals, would designate some of their members to "defend". In my mind these defenders may be walking craft contingencies ;) So the fortress would actually be some selective antimagic fields. Of course the term fortress is debatable.

[Naomi Li]

So... you think an army that anybody would actually USE against high level opponents (at LEAST fourth level combatants, including multitudes of casters) would all die without much effort to a 10 hit dice pit fiend (with appropriately downgraded spell-like abilities, decreased feats, etc) that cannot heal or be healed? I think you vastly underestimate the power of the swarm, especially if they mostly use ranged attacks.

[Emperor Tippy]

So... you think an army that anybody would actually USE against high level opponents (at LEAST fourth level combatants, including multitudes of casters) would all die without much effort to a 10 hit dice pit fiend (with appropriately downgraded spell-like abilities, decreased feats, etc) that cannot heal or be healed? I think you vastly underestimate the power of the swarm, especially if they mostly use ranged attacks.

1) Unless you are futzing around with the numbers a Metropolis has 124 wizards of all levels, of which only 28 can cast spells above 1st level. Per the RAW armies aren't made up of large numbers of even moderate level PC's. Honestly, the best way to get a decent army in RAW is to have your whole army bitten by a were of one stripe or another (Bears and Tigers work well).

2) A Simulacrum of a Pit Fiend takes a hit to skills, feats, and HD but it still keeps all of its Ex, Su, and SLA abilities along with its ability scores (-2 points total). That includes Regeneration, which means that it can heal.

3) Said imitation Pit Fiend could decimate an army of level 5 wizards or level 6 Sorcerers (or really any army of the same level). It gets to throw Fireballs from 1,120 feet away; outside of the range of all but an Enlarged Long range spell from a 6th level caster. And it gets quickened teleport every round, DR 15/ Good and Silver, Regeneration 5, immunity to fire and poison, and a fly speed.

So yes, I would be willing to bet money that said Pit Fiend could defeat a virtually limitless army of ECL 4-6 PC's that don't get to pool their WBL for super items.

Especially when max range on a Composite Longbow is 1,100 feet (otherwise known as 20 feet less than the Imitation can throw fireballs from).

[Naomi Li]

1) Those numbers are setting specific and depend highly on where you're actually playing. (Why anyone would actually send out first level ANYTHINGs is rather odd, given that they have essentially no experience and can die really easily)

2) You sure? That seems like an exceptionally large oversight that really should have been addressed. "The duplicate creature is partially real and formed from ice or snow. It appears to be the same as the original, but it has only half of the real creature's levels or HD (and the appropriate hit points, feats, skill ranks, and special abilities for a creature of that level or HD)" That last clause seems to cover exactly that gamebreaker.

3) Heavy crossbows, longbows with range enhancement, and siege engines. And the spellcasters were mostly for buffing, healing, and battlefield control. Debuff and damage spells don't tend to be all that effective against more powerful enemies, I would think.

[Demonic_Spoon]

You only need one (and you can actually create the one you need so long as you can capture a single Great Wyrm)

Care to elaborate on this please?

[Emperor Tippy]

1) Those numbers are setting specific and depend highly on where you're actually playing. (Why anyone would actually send out first level ANYTHINGs is rather odd, given that they have essentially no experience and can die really easily)
Not really, those numbers are what the DMG gives. First level anything is sent out because they are the vast majority of the worlds population.

Less than 10% of the population has any PC levels. Of the 10% (being very generous) that does have any PC levels, 90% don't make it to level 5. One percent of the entire worlds population has 5 or more levels in a PC class.

One in a thousand is about the number of people with more than 5 levels in a PC class. As in the current US would have 300,000 such individuals total. Your nation of a hundred thousand people will have maybe (and being generous) 300 people with PC classes of level 5+


2) You sure? That seems like an exceptionally large oversight that really should have been addressed. "The duplicate creature is partially real and formed from ice or snow. It appears to be the same as the original, but it has only half of the real creature's levels or HD (and the appropriate hit points, feats, skill ranks, and special abilities for a creature of that level or HD)" That last clause seems to cover exactly that gamebreaker.
A Dragon or human with PC levels gets reduced, a Pit Fiend has no special abilities dependent upon HD (well except for saving throw DC's) and thus they aren't lost.


3) Heavy crossbows, longbows with range enhancement, and siege engines.
Max range against a target that is only hit on a natural 20, reduces damage by 15 points (enough to ignore everything but the 1 in 400 natural 20/natural 20, and even then only if the damage roll is above average), gets to teleport every round, and can go invisible at will.

Good luck with that.


And the spellcasters were mostly for buffing, healing, and battlefield control. Debuff and damage spells don't tend to be all that effective against more powerful enemies, I would think.
There aren't really any large scale buffs, healing, or battlefield control; especially not of 3rd level or lower. Honestly, the most useful spell that a level 5 wizard has in regards to an army is Lesser Telepathic Bond cast with a Lesser Rod of Extend and with CL amped up a bit to keep the officers in constant real time contact.

----
Vanilla humans make really crappy D&D armies. Constructs, Planar Binding demons and outsiders, Simulacrums and Ice Assassins, Undead, Were-X, those are how you make decent armies in D&D.

A level 16 wizard (of which a Metropolis can have 4) with a Thought Bottle and a supply of Pit Fiend blood can produce a dozen of those Imitation Pit Fiends for less than 12,000 GP worth of Rubies and for 500 XP (thanks to the Thought Bottle). And do so in less than 2 weeks.

A wizard with Lesser Planar Binding (9th level, 10th for a Sorcerer) can bind Small Air Elemental's as scouts and messengers (what with their 100 ft. perfect fly speed) with no real chance of failure if they are remotely careful. Or a Hound Archon, which has at will Greater Teleport for its self. Or Lantern Archon's (which also make great messengers). Or Succubus's, with their at will Detect Thoughts, Greater Teleport, change shape, and social abilities they make great spies and infiltrators. Or Imp's (once per week free Commune).

Regular Planar Binding (level 11) gets you Invisible Stalker's (great scouts and assassins), Astral Deva's, Trumpet Archons (which cast as 14th level Clerics), Avoral's (True Seeing, healing, dimension door, and some other stuff), Greater Barghest (at will Invisible Sphere), Couatl (casts as a 9th level Sorcerer, at will Detect Thoughts, Invisibility, and Plane Shift, at will Etheral Jaunt, 60 ft. fly speed, able to change into any small or medium humanoid shape, great spies and scouts), Glabrezu (continuous True Seeing and greater teleport), Bone Devil's (at will Wall of Ice and Greater Teleport), Ghaele (casts as a 14th level cleric and has a number of useful at will SLA's), Leonal (at will Fireball and Wall of Force).

Those are just the MM monsters. Monsters that can be bound to do little things like obey every order given to them by whomever currently holds the position of "General of the Army of XYZ Land" for a hundred (or a thousand) years. As that isn't an open ended task its just fine. And no XP or valuable material components are really needed.

---


For the same reason, in poor D&D nations you are likely to see everyone who signs up be bitten by a Werebear or Weretiger (makes them lawful good or true neutral) and is then hit with a Psychic Reformation power to max Control Shape and get skill focus (control shape). With their 7-9 HD (both Were forms add 6 HD) that is 9 ranks and Skill Focus is another +3 with a masterwork tool for another +2, and the Wisdom bonus for +1, or a +15 on the check.

It's one the easiest ways to mass produce a very deadly army in D&D. What's even worse is that these people breed, the next generation will be natural lycanthropes.


Care to elaborate on this please?

You can make multiple Simulacrum's or Ice Assassins of a single creature. All you need is a drop of blood for each one (or a hair or whatever). Technically you can also make Simulacrum's and Ice Assassins of Simulacrum's and Ice Assassins.

[Demonic_Spoon]

You can make multiple Simulacrum's or Ice Assassins of a single creature. All you need is a drop of blood for each one (or a hair or whatever). Technically you can also make Simulacrum's and Ice Assassins of Simulacrum's and Ice Assassins.

How do you get a factotum 11/psion 20 from a great wyrm was what I meant.

[Emperor Tippy]

How do you get a factotum 11/psion 20 from a great wyrm was what I meant.

Oh, 31 Thought Bottles and Death+Resurrection. First Mindrape to ensure that the Great Wyrm wants to come back.

Use the Thought Bottles to regain XP, which lets you repick your HD. It's essentially trading dragon HD for Psion/Factotum HD.

Or you just use Wish to create a Scroll of Ice Assassin of a Great Wyrm Red Dragon with 20 levels of Psion and 11 levels of Factotum. That works to.

[Naomi Li]

The DMG gives a default, yes, but every single setting alters it dramatically. All of the evidence that I have seen from the Golarion campaign books indicates that higher levels are far more common than the numbers you gave. And as for the lack of PC levels? That's what proper training is for (and retraining, in many cases), and then you give them as-close-to-real combat conditions and plenty of studying to get their levels above "useless in combat against any real threats".

A dragon or human advances by levels and thus you have easy ways to figure out how strong it is at various class/HD levels. A pit fiend dropped to 10 HD would need some extreme DM work, but its abilities SHOULD be dropped dramatically to make it HD and CR appropriate.

You're fielding a much smaller group of higher level characters. The major damage dealers using +1 holy fiendbane weapons, or +1 fiendbane weapons given a holy alignment (or even silver ammunition with holy align weapon cast, either masterwork or with magic weapon cast upon it), against pit fiends is kind of to be expected. (And they aren't adventurers, so wealth by level has absolutely no bearing on this; they're equipped however well the country can afford/is willing to equip its army.)

I said nothing of "large scale". There are plenty of small scale and personal buffs that are immensely useful. Here are the 1st through 3rd level oracle and sorcerer spells I found notable after some brief skimming. The summon monster (and nature's ally) spells, all hp recovery spells, stabilize, bless, possibly entropic shield, protection from evil, enlarge/reduce person, gravity bow, lesser animate dead, longshot, align weapon, cat's grace, communal protection from evil, resist energy, tactical acumen, animate dead, magic circle against evil, prayer, protection from energy, communal resist energy, heroism

What is a "thought bottle" and where would I find information about it? (And, given the context of experience point costs, I am guessing it is a 3.5 item/feat/spell and thus only available in Pathfinder with explicit GM permission)

[Emperor Tippy]

The DMG gives a default, yes, but every single setting alters it dramatically. All of the evidence that I have seen from the Golarion campaign books indicates that higher levels are far more common than the numbers you gave. And as for the lack of PC levels? That's what proper training is for (and retraining, in many cases), and then you give them as-close-to-real combat conditions and plenty of studying to get their levels up to above "useless in combat against any real threats".
Level 5 Fighter is "I win Gold in every single real life fighting related Olympic event".

Level 5 is peak real world human, absolute best of the best. 90% of those who go adventuring die before they reach this point.

If you want an army of superhumans then use things like Werebears to bite them all. Or you use the various magical methods of amping up your army. Like an auto reset trap of Arcane Thesis, Invisible, Co-Operative, Easy Meta: Persist, Extend, Persisted Iron Body (9th level spell) in a portable hole along with trap's of persistent extended fly, persistent extended Transformation, persistent extended Delay Death, persistent extended Favor of the Martyr, persistent extended Monstrous Regeneration, persistent extended greater ironguard, persistent extended Greater Blink, and extended Mind Blank; all at CL 20. You run a level 1 warrior through that and all of the sudden he can throw down with even higher level monsters.

Line them up and place a Teleportation Circle at the end of the trap hallway and you can drop a whole army of these super human warriors pretty much anywhere you want on the same plane.


A dragon or human advances by levels and thus you have easy ways to figure out how strong it is at various class/HD levels. A pit fiend dropped to 10 HD would need some extreme DM work, but its abilities SHOULD be dropped dramatically to make it HD and CR appropriate.
Except that isn't the way that the rules work.


You're fielding a much smaller group of higher level characters. The major damage dealers using +1 holy fiendbane weapons, or +1 fiendbane weapons given a holy alignment, against pit fiends is kind of to be expected. (And they aren't adventurers, so wealth by level has absolutely no bearing on this; they're equipped however well the country can afford/is willing to equip its army.)
You do realize that a level 20 Adventurer tends to be carrying around enough wealth at any given time to buy a small nation, right?

If you taxed every citizen 10 GP per year then you would need 76,000 citizens to equip just one individual to level 20 WBL levels.

And even when faced with things like that, the Pit Fiends just greater teleport away and go somewhere else in the army to do the same thing.

Or wait, have you dropped the idea of an army and instead gone to a small group of high level adventurer's (or similar)? In that case, you have agreed with my position and concede that large armies of low level and low magic armies are nigh worthless.


I said nothing of "large scale". There are plenty of small scale and personal buffs that are immensely useful. Here are the 1st through 3rd level oracle and sorcerer spells I found notable after some brief skimming. The summon monster (and nature's ally) spells, all hp recovery spells, stabilize, bless, possibly entropic shield, protection from evil, enlarge/reduce person, gravity bow, lesser animate dead, longshot, align weapon, cat's grace, communal protection from evil, resist energy, tactical acumen, animate dead, magic circle against evil, prayer, protection from energy, communal resist energy, heroism
None of them are relevant on a strategic (or even really a tactical) scale. The durations are too short, as are the number of people affected.


What is a "thought bottle" and where would I find information about it? (And, given the context of experience point costs, I am guessing it is a 3.5 item/feat/spell and thus only available in Pathfinder with explicit GM permission)

Complete Arcane.

[Frosty]

Most DMs won't allow exp abuse tricks anyways, but all the "Clone" style spells are the real problem, and I tend to ban those too.

And yeah, certain high CR enemies make armies completely worthless. It's sad, but true.

[Crustypeanut]

We are talking about purely Pathfinder, Tippy.

And.. by the Mass Combat Rules (One would consider we'd be using that if we're using armies), a CR20 creature would, in the sense of fighting armies, be equivilent of a CR 12 Army. That is an army made up of either:

100 Level 12 Characters
2000 Level 4 Characters

Granted, some special abilities may make things stronger than their CR would state, but that is up to the GM. Obviously, a pit fiend would have numerous abilities that would allow it to be far more dangerous than a 2000-strong army of level 12 characters, but the sense is that, by the Mass Combat Rules, they would have a chance, even if you played it out normally that they wouldn't.

Also, in Pathfinder, there are no such statements that 90% of people don't have PC levels, and 90% of those aren't past level 5 - some worlds may say so, others might not.

[Naomi Li]

We have differing opinions of what makes an army it seems. They would not be 1st level warrior conscripts given basic training and equipment and sent out to die. That's highly unethical and ineffective. And yes, fifth level characters are generally far above our world capabilities... thing is, the D&D universe explicitly has different capabilities as far as physics and people are concerned. People CAN keep getting better beyond what is possible here, and they don't need to be part of some "special few" to do it. They just need a lot of training and effort, which can be made much easier with a longer lifespan. (Staves of reincarnate, resurrection, and restoration, anyone?)

Anyway, 10 gp/year seems like a rather low estimate assuming the civilization is even remotely competent and make sure that there is high employment and people receive the training they need to do well. Even at first level, +0 from ability skill, +1 skill rank, +3 from it being a class skill, +5 crafter's fortune, +3 skill focus, +2 masterwork tools and taking ten gives a crafting result of 24. That's 12 gp/week even without any productivity modifiers and less than 100 gp invested in that individual for training. If they tithe their income to the military that's 62.4 gp per adult per year in gp. Get them to level up a bit, start including magical items to boost competence checks, and those numbers can rise quite a bit. Magical equipment costs about half of the base price + 10 gp/2000 gp base price assuming magical abilities and crafting capabilities aren't kept artifically low. Outfitting several hundred soldiers with (sub-level 20 adventurer, but good quality) magical equipment seems rather reasonable. Adventurers would be nice to have as well, of course, but they aren't soldiers and generally can't be trusted to focus most of their efforts on protecting a city.

Anyway, there's no reason non-humanoids couldn't be recruited into the army, too. Dragons are probably right out as potential candidates, but might help out occasionally. Mindless undead animals are easy cannon fodder to make. (And a horde of bloody skeleten (insert combat capable herd animal here) seems like an exceptionally amusing and practical method of boosting combat capabilities)

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Reality check:

1) Assume that 10% of the population has PC levels. 10% of that have achieved 5th level. 10% of that have achieved 10th level. 10% of that have achieved 15th level. 10% of that have achieved 20th level.
DnD countries are the equivalent of classical age city-states to late dark ages nations. So a really large nation equivalent to the real-life Roman Empire would have around seventy million inhabitants. That's seven million people with class levels at all, seven hundred thousand people of 5th level or more, seventy thousand people of 10th level or more, seven thousand people of 15th level or more and seven hundred people of 20th level or more.

2) Yes, a metropolis the size of pre-medieval Rome has a million inhabitants. Even a city the size of Uruk at 3000 BC would have sixty thousand. Cities are large, with people packed in like sardines in a can. This is not a new development.



Fortress Defense:

1) A fortress will always be Hallowed or Unhallowed, on account of the spell costing about as much as nonmagical equipment for a single knight and lasting a year. Nobody within the fortress is susceptible to any kind of ongoing control or influence so you can't get in that way, and summoned creatures cannot get in. In addition the effect confers a permanent Dimensional Anchor, preventing any sort of extradimensional intrusions sort of Wish or Miracle, as well as the openings of Gates within the fortress.

2) The walls as well as foundations of the fortress are multiple layers of stone and iron from the appropriate "Wall" spells, further improved with hardening spells to a hardness of 20. The outer wall is 100 layers of 1 inch each, ensuring that even wizards with access to Disintegrate, PaO, Passwall, or highly destructive magic will be incapable of drilling through without expending large amounts of magic. In addition, a total thickness of 100 inches ensures that incorporeal creatures of large size or smaller are incapable of going through the walls. Last but not least, the walls are lead-lined.

3) The castle doesn't have windows, walls or doors. Getting in and out and between rooms is accomplished via permanent teleportation circle traps. Unfortunately for any intruders, due to the castle's Hallow/Unhallow effect, the circles will only work for someone keyed to ignore the accompanying Dimensional Anchor effect. In addition, intruders will not know which circle leads where even if they do manage to appropriate a key or even where the really hard to find circles are so they will get hopelessly lost. Not to mention a decent percentage of the circles will be actual traps leading to a room where a 100-ton ceiling falls on your head as soon as you appear, dealing 200d6 damage, no save. That trap will be magical so people with starmante and stuff don't ignore the damage or destroy the trap and the ceiling will be sufficiently thick to crush incorporeal creatures. Not to mention Evocation will be suppressed in the room, so no Emergency Force Spheres, Celerities or Wings of Cover to avoid it.

4) The rooms will only be 5 ft tall so anyone inside will simply not have adequate space to polymorph/shapechange into large or larger creatures and anyone already having such forms will need to abandon them to get in.


The above is S.O.P. in fortress defense against spellcasters. It doesn't actually make the fortress impenetrable but it can, relatively cheaply, make it quite costly for them to get in and still accomplish their goal. Especially if you use the Pathfinder rules for Polymorph spells so that wizards can't simply get any supernatural or extraordinary ability they want through them.






PS:
Mr Pit Fiend Simulacrum is useless. A simulacrum has only one-half of the real creature’s levels or Hit Dice (and the appropriate hit points, feats, skill ranks, and special abilities for a creature of that level or HD). Since Pit Fiends of half HD do no exist, there are no hit points, feats, skill ranks and special abilities that are appropriate. By RAW, the spell fails.
Now, if you made a Simulacrum of a Great Wurm red dragon it would work - assuming you had a caster level of 40. What you'd get would be the abilities appropriate to a 20-HD red dragon instead, thus a Young Adult.

[Lanaya]

Teleportation negates supply lines and allows entire armies to be moved around with no regard for distance or terrain. This means that you enemies can pretty much always attack you, they are always at your "back".

Teleporting an entire army would require an unfeasible number of reasonably high level spells or the aid of a teleportation circle, and if you have level 17+ wizards at your beck and call you don't need an army anyway.

[Naomi Li]

4000 gp (or 5000 gp, if you can't get a partial caster to apply the dimensional lock) for a widened hallow spell would cover a radius of 80 feet. That's certainly a decent size, but not something that can be casually used to cover an entire fortress. Hopefully a magic item of some sort could be made that works more efficiently. (Of course, if you can't, then 21,830 gp could be spent on a staff that uses up a 7th level slot every day to recharge and can create a new hallowed area every ten days, or possibly 11 if the 24 hour casting time interferes with the recharging time)

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Teleporting an entire army via teleportation circle is dangerous. You could maybe teleport 10-15 people per round without your army totally losing its cohesion so you'd need several hours to get through. And if the enemy found you and double-parked a platoon of troops on your arrival point, or even a single Wall of Fire, you'd be toast. Or a 5-foot cube of light fabric and cotton so there's a physical object blocking your arrival point and foiling the teleportation.

Teleporting supplies for an entire army is more feasible via teleportation circle but not via simple teleport spells. An army of 30.000 needs 60 tons of supplies per day, without even counting water. That's a lot.

[Emperor Tippy]

Reality check:

1) Assume that 10% of the population has PC levels. 10% of that have achieved 5th level. 10% of that have achieved 10th level. 10% of that have achieved 15th level. 10% of that have achieved 20th level.
DnD countries are the equivalent of classical age city-states to late dark ages nations. So a really large nation equivalent to the real-life Roman Empire would have around seventy million inhabitants. That's seven million people with class levels at all, seven hundred thousand people of 5th level or more, seventy thousand people of 10th level or more, seven thousand people of 15th level or more and seven hundred people of 20th level or more.

2) Yes, a metropolis the size of pre-medieval Rome has a million inhabitants. Even a city the size of Uruk at 3000 BC would have sixty thousand. Cities are large, with people packed in like sardines in a can. This is not a new development.
And the Roman Empire was one of the largest, most powerful, and most unified empires in all of human history. And out of that entire empire it could get seventy thousand individuals total of 10th level, the vast majority of which are non casters.

So yes, if you have something on par with the Roman Empire then fielding an elite legion of 10th level individuals is something that you can manage and sustain. If you aren't such an empire, then well you aren't fielding such an army.


Fortress Defense:

1) A fortress will always be Hallowed or Unhallowed, on account of the spell costing about as much as nonmagical equipment for a single knight and lasting a year. Nobody within the fortress is susceptible to any kind of ongoing control or influence so you can't get in that way, and summoned creatures cannot get in. In addition the effect confers a permanent Dimensional Anchor, preventing any sort of extradimensional intrusions sort of Wish or Miracle, as well as the openings of Gates within the fortress.
Hallowed and Unhallowed both enjoy no special protection against Dispel Magic and are quite expensive. And a Pit Fiend gets Greater Dispel Magic at CL 18 as an at will ability. So unless the casters CL is amped to 38+, the Hallow is going to fall in a few rounds.

Charm Person+ Hypnotism bypasses Protection From Evil.

No one said anything about Summoned creatures.

And Dimensional Anchor is SR: Yes and has a will save. A Pit Fiend has SR: 32 and can make another attempt every single round to teleport in or out. Along with a good will save.


2) The walls as well as foundations of the fortress are multiple layers of stone and iron from the appropriate "Wall" spells, further improved with hardening spells to a hardness of 20. The outer wall is 100 layers of 1 inch each, ensuring that even wizards with access to Disintegrate, PaO, Passwall, or highly destructive magic will be incapable of drilling through without expending large amounts of magic. In addition, a total thickness of 100 inches ensures that incorporeal creatures of large size or smaller are incapable of going through the walls. Last but not least, the walls are lead-lined.
Unless the walls are a solid box (including the ceiling), an incorporeal creature can just hang out inside the outer edge of the wall and follow it up and over.

A Wand of Energy Substitution: Acid Maximized Fireball should blast through the whole wall without running out.

Although with the Pit Fiend it would take a decent chunk of time as you need slightly more than average damage for a Fireball to do any damage (42 vs. an average of 35 to do a minimum of 1 point of damage). 1 Inch thick Iron has 30 HP. Figure 40% of Fireballs deal an average of 1 point of damage (I think that is conservative) and it will take 7.5 minutes per inch to blast through the wall, or 12.5 hours of bombardment to punch through the entire 100 inch wall (actually less as that number assumed all Iron which has twice the HP of worked stone). Call it 10 hours to blast through such a wall.

Or a single Beholder Simulacrum can be through in (using your interpretation as each wall requiring a separate Disintegrate) 10 minutes.


3) The castle doesn't have windows, walls or doors. Getting in and out and between rooms is accomplished via permanent teleportation circle traps. Unfortunately for any intruders, due to the castle's Hallow/Unhallow effect, the circles will only work for someone keyed to ignore the accompanying Dimensional Anchor effect. In addition, intruders will not know which circle leads where even if they do manage to appropriate a key or even where the really hard to find circles are so they will get hopelessly lost. Not to mention a decent percentage of the circles will be actual traps leading to a room where a 100-ton ceiling falls on your head as soon as you appear, dealing 200d6 damage, no save. That trap will be magical so people with starmante and stuff don't ignore the damage or destroy the trap and the ceiling will be sufficiently thick to crush incorporeal creatures. Not to mention Evocation will be suppressed in the room, so no Emergency Force Spheres, Celerities or Wings of Cover to avoid it.
1) Quite expensive.

2) You can't target Hallow like that.
"You may designate whether the effect applies to all creatures, creatures who share your faith or alignment, or creatures who adhere to another faith or alignment."

So the best you can hope for is that you never want anyone inside your Fortress who believes in a different god or has a different alignment. Really less than ideal security.

3) This is a dungeon and not a usable Fortress. Either the safe route is widely known (and thus easy to compromise) or it is known only to a small handful and the Fortress is worthless for everyone else.


4) The rooms will only be 5 ft tall so anyone inside will simply not have adequate space to polymorph/shapechange into large or larger creatures and anyone already having such forms will need to abandon them to get in.
So no one in your nation is 6 ft. tall, good to know. You do realize that average male Height in the US is more than five feet. Hell, technically the shortest human male possible without flaws in D&D is 5 ft. even, and that is a 1% chance.


The above is S.O.P. in fortress defense against spellcasters. It doesn't actually make the fortress impenetrable but it can, relatively cheaply, make it quite costly for them to get in and still accomplish their goal. Especially if you use the Pathfinder rules for Polymorph spells so that wizards can't simply get any supernatural or extraordinary ability they want through them.
"Relatively Cheaply".

Your fortress costs 5,000 GP per year per 40 ft. radius (being generous and assuming that walls and floors get punched through) just for the Hallow. One of those wouldn't cover my childhood home, much less something like the Tower of London.

Each Teleportation Circle costs you a minimum of 1,000 GP plus the cost of Permanency (4,500 XP in this case), so hopefully you are using one of the methods to mitigate that.

You are better off buying a Weirdstone than you are the Hallow. It's only 40 times the absolute minimum Hallow price and is far superior.

Hell, Forbiddance is better than Hallow in pretty much every way.



PS:
Mr Pit Fiend Simulacrum is useless. A simulacrum has only one-half of the real creature’s levels or Hit Dice (and the appropriate hit points, feats, skill ranks, and special abilities for a creature of that level or HD). Since Pit Fiends of half HD do no exist, there are no hit points, feats, skill ranks and special abilities that are appropriate. By RAW, the spell fails.
Now, if you made a Simulacrum of a Great Wurm red dragon it would work - assuming you had a caster level of 40. What you'd get would be the abilities appropriate to a 20-HD red dragon instead, thus a Young Adult.
No, per RAW it has all of its normal special abilities and half HP, HD, skill points, and feats.

A Pit Fiend can be permanently level drained down to 9 HD and it still has all of its special abilities.


Teleporting an entire army would require an unfeasible number of reasonably high level spells or the aid of a teleportation circle, and if you have level 17+ wizards at your beck and call you don't need an army anyway.

A level 11 Warlock can create a scroll of Teleportation Circle.

[Naomi Li]

Tippy, this is Pathfinder, not 3.5. There ARE no experience point costs. They were either entirely removed or replaced with material component costs. There's no losing levels, either.

And by RAW, the Pit Fiend's special abilities would be decreased to whatever point the GM thinks is a proper amount for its HD. As such, it is going to vary widely depending on who it is, since there is no RAW answer as to what those abilities should be. I rather doubt many GMs would actually think that "all SLAs of a 20th level pit fiend" would be appropriate.

(Anyway, Hallow has an instantaneous duration. How can you dispel that?)

[The Glyphstone]

It appears to be the same as the original, but it has only half of the real creature's levels or HD (and the appropriate hit points, feats, skill ranks, and special abilities for a creature of that level or HD).

But what is appropriate for a pseudo-Pit Fiend of 10HD? That is not stated, making it a GM call. We are thus left with two precedents, either that of removing the use of Simulacrum entirely due to incomplete/GM-dependent RAW clauses integral to the spell (as is often done with Epic magic), or assuming the most-favorable GM interpretation (as is done in TO for ambiguous or fuzzy wordings).



Incidentally, since this is Pathfinder, things like Weirdstones shouldn't be taken into account either as they are 3.5 material. Yes, they are almost flawlessly compatible, but despite the common train of thought, Pathfinder is legitimately its own game and not just a 3.5 expansion pack - there are many GMs and players who don't run 3.P, viably considered a separate 'game' on its own from both 3.5 and Pathfinder pure.

[Emperor Tippy]

(Anyway, Hallow has an instantaneous duration. How can you dispel that?)

You would be right, I thought it had a year duration like Forbiddance,

[Belial_the_Leveler]

1) Dimensional Anchor doesn't allow a save, only SR. If this is 3.5 and not Pathfinder, you'll be using boosting effects like True Casting before adding it to the Hallow effect. The 10th level caster of the Hallow will be adding an effectively CL 27 for terms of SR anchor to it. In Pathfinder it can't be easily boosted but casters can't easily get Pit Fiends either.

2) Fun fact: sonic and acid damage don't get exceptions for hardness in Pathfinder and all energy damage is halved vs objects. Objects may have specific weaknesses depending on material though. In 3.5 I'd have made the wall layers thicker instead. Magically treated iron has 60 hp per inch of thickness so even an incantatrix will find it hard to breach a 3-inch wall with one blow.

3) You are assuming you can avoid the XP loss for Simulacrums but not the teleportation circle traps? Especially since a teleportation circle trap is a magic item and there are legitimate ways for eschewing its XP costs in 3.5. As for Pathfinder, it has a GP cost instead.

4) Protection from X specifically protects against Charms and Compulsions. Charm Person is even given as an example in the Pathfinder vesion.

5) Yes, I am proposing the outer castle to be a solid cube. It's the only physical defense against incorporeal creatures. A physical gate could be built if you don't like teleportation circle traps but it will also have to be 10+ feet thick, like a really large, really thick vault door rather than a medieval-looking gate.

6) If you like windows, make an item of Screen 1/day and cloak the castle. You can then dictate portions of the walls to be invisible. Hell, you could dictate the entire castle to be invisible and hidden. Of course, that would cost a whole lot.

[asnys]

It depends on level, level of security desired, and available resources.

For example, when I want to build a really secure fortress I uses these:

Sorry, this may be a stupid question, but wouldn't the permanent planar bubbles also effect the ice assassins and keep all but one of them from actually doing?

[Emperor Tippy]

Sorry, this may be a stupid question, but wouldn't the permanent planar bubbles also effect the ice assassins and keep all but one of them from actually doing?

They can turn them on and off as free actions (and they are actually all Selective to the wizard who's tower it is). They aren't always on and different blocks have different home demiplanes so while some might be dead magic (enough to cover the whole fortress is necessary), others have other planar traits.

[asnys]

They can turn them on and off as free actions (and they are actually all Selective to the wizard who's tower it is). They aren't always on and different blocks have different home demiplanes so while some might be dead magic (enough to cover the whole fortress is necessary), others have other planar traits.

But that means that, when the tower is in lockdown, only Mr. Lich and a relatively small number of godbricks can act, right? The time-locked effect keeps all but the emanating godbricks from doing anything. If the emanating godbrick drops the emanation, all the other godbricks get initiative counts, but then the emanator has to either restart the bubble (before any other godbrick can act) or leave it down until its next round (giving the intruders a round to do stuff).

I'm just wondering if the idea is to leave the planar bubble effect up when facing intruders, or if it would be better to drop it and bring thousands of everything-casters to bear simultaneously on whoever foolishly entered your domicile. Either way, it's a really cool trick, and thanks for taking the time to explain. :smallsmile:

[Emperor Tippy]

But that means that, when the tower is in lockdown, only Mr. Lich and a relatively small number of godbricks can act, right? The time-locked effect keeps all but the emanating godbricks from doing anything. If the emanating godbrick drops the emanation, all the other godbricks get initiative counts, but then the emanator has to either restart the bubble (before any other godbrick can act) or leave it down until its next round (giving the intruders a round to do stuff).

I'm just wondering if the idea is to leave the planar bubble effect up when facing intruders, or if it would be better to drop it and bring thousands of everything-casters to bear simultaneously on whoever foolishly entered your domicile. Either way, it's a really cool trick, and thanks for taking the time to explain. :smallsmile:

Depends on the enemy and situation, and no even the emanating bricks are kept from doing anything except turning their emanation on or off. The only creature not affected is the Wizard himself.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

1) If the supposed godbrick casts Timeless Body on itself, wouldn't it stop being affected by the Planar Bubbles, or any other ongoing effects?

2) Since Ice Assassins don't have experience to spend, how did they cast Mind Switch in the first place?

3) A brick is not a living creature thus it isn't a suitable target for Mind Switch. Even if it were it would be immune to mental effects on account of not having a mind and stuff.

4) At 20.000 gp and 5.000 xp per brick, your fortress is going to cost a whole freaking lot.

5) I am fairly sure Ice Assassin doesn't actually say that the Ice Assassin gets spells or psionic powers so you are stretching things. It gets all of the original's skills, abilities, and memories. If you interpret the "abilities" part to refer to special abilities and class abilities, the DM can agree with you... and give you an Ice Assassin with the abilities of a Factotum 11/Psion 20 and the mental ability scores of a feebleminded lemming so it can't actually use them. If you interpret is as "ability scores" then you won't be getting the class abilities. And in any case Ice Assassin doesn't say how many HP the duplicate gets as hit points aren't a skill, ability or memory. So the DM can give you a duplicate with -1 hit points that is permanently unconscious and call it a day.



In short, don't try to exploit poorly-worded stuff. Because it's the DM's job to interpret what those poorly-worded stuff mean and you won't like his interpretation.