protection from earthgliding?

[Braininthejar2]

How to protect a high level dungeon from heroes going straight through walls?

With something like a wizard's tower, it would be enough to put some walls of iron around the foundations, and some vines over the walls.

But with a multi level temple carved into the side of a volcano, this is just not feasable. (and something as simple as the rock being terribly hot won't stop any self-respecting heroes.)

So, what other tricks I might employ?

[Coidzor]

Walls of force or layers of riverine that create super obvious channels into traps or dead-ends, I suppose. Or channels full of ice and brown mold interspersed throughout the rock and dirt.

I can't think of anything that would do it by happenstance, though.

[Jack_Simth]

Well, checking The entry (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elemental.htm#earthElemental), we have:

An earth elemental can glide through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other signs of its presence. A move earth spell cast on an area containing a burrowing earth elemental flings the elemental back 30 feet, stunning the creature for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Fortitude save.

That does make it a bit tricky... that said, a coating of any sort on the walls will do, really. Veins of nasty things in the walls (I like Coidzor's brown mold idea), but do keep in mind: You still need some way to navigate. It's likely an oversight, but Earth Elementals don't natively have any way to see when they're using Earth Glide.

[Braininthejar2]

This helps me in floor 1 (fire giants quarters) and 2 (temple proper)

Not so much on floor 3 (natural caves leading down to the inner sanctum - artifact suspended over a pool of lava.

Still, something as simple as metal plates on the floors might do a trick for a lot of it.

[J-H]

Random underground channels of lava.

Territorial earth elementals.

[Braininthejar2]

I was thinking of large (9HD) thoqquas. not really a challenge, but a nice surprise I think.

[Psyren]

You can't earthglide through metal so just say that the walls contain a large concentration of iron ore or similar. ("How much ore?" the players might ask; "Enough to stop earthgliding" you answer.)

[Fizban]

Basic freaking Reinforced Masonry, it's full of iron bars, done, DMG. Already had one guy argue for pages and pages about how broken earthglide is and after we forced him to admit it wasn't anyway I dropped that to seal it. If your temple can't afford to put iron bars up then it's clearly not important enough to deserve actual security.

[Waker]

You can't earthglide through metal so just say that the walls contain a large concentration of iron ore or similar. ("How much ore?" the players might ask; "Enough to stop earthgliding" you answer.)

That would be my go-to answer for many general situations. Magma flows, pockets of poisonous gases, underground rivers, extensive root systems could act as a few deterrents as well. Not to mention other digging creatures who might hear the party via tremorsense.

[Braininthejar2]

How many iron bars would it take to stop a huge earth elemental if it wanted to walk out of the wall?

(just a hypothetical question. For the temple proper, this is sufficient.)

So, for the caves I should go with "earthgliding possible, but dangerous?"

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Various types of crystal are, according to the Expanded Psionics Handbook, a type of metal, so one can't earth glide through obsidian glass. And c'mon, it's a volcano. It should be riddled with pockets of poison gas, lava tubes, veins of iron and other crystalline and metal deposits, boiling underground water and mud, and likely earth and fire elementals that live both in the volcanic earth and in the lava tubes that worm their way through the stone of the volcano. Plus, the earth around volcanoes is usually extremely volatile, since most volcanoes form between tectonic plates, meaning lots of cave-ins and nonmagical equivalents to the move earth and earthquake spells.

Allow the players to earth glide, but write up a chart that you roll on every round. Sometimes, they come up with nothing of note, but others, they are blocked by all sorts of other things, as noted above.

Give them several Knowledge and Lore checks to give them a list of the dangers they can expect to face while passing through the volcano's walls.

[Braininthejar2]

It has to be stable enough to, you know, build the temple on :smallcool:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It has to be stable enough to, you know, build the temple on :smallcool:One word: magic.

To expand, at the very least, permanencied walls of force would keep the base of the temple stable no matter what it's built on.

[edit] You could also build the temple on the back of a Colossal+ earth/fire elemental, similar to God of War I with the temple of Pandora built on Chronos's back. The elemental just happens to be the volcano they're trying to earth glide through.* It can be something they'll need to take down at some point, if only by hitting it with a high CL banishment.




*Note: you cannot earth glide through creatures.

[Waker]

It has to be stable enough to, you know, build the temple on :smallcool:

Sure, it was stable enough to build a temple on. But as MaxiDuRaritry already pointed out, volcanoes don't always stay super stable since they are often located on fault lines. Shifting plates, extreme heat and corrosive gases can eat away rock and leave what used to be a solid structure somewhat more hazardous. So if the party wants to avoid stuff like that, they should only pillage recently constructed temples/dungeons.

[Braininthejar2]

I think I have all the answers I needed.

A related question then (because I don't want to spam multiple threads)

Are there any official 3.5 stats for the evil elemental princes? (Imix, Ogremoch, Olhydra, Yan-C-Bin)?

I have only been able to find Imix (return to the temple of elemental evil) and he was extremely unimpressive for something of his HD.

[Fizban]

How many iron bars would it take to stop a huge earth elemental if it wanted to walk out of the wall?

(just a hypothetical question. For the temple proper, this is sufficient.)

So, for the caves I should go with "earthgliding possible, but dangerous?"
A huge creature is around three times the height of a medium one, a human is maybe two feet wide, so maybe 6 feet? I'd expect them to be much stockier, and I doubt they have much in the way of escape artist. The next question is if they could just break the bars: if the bars are part of the wall, they have to break them out of the wall, so they've got to deal with the whole reinforced masonry section. If the bars are just on the inside of the wall it'll only take one swing per bar in the way, two swings per round.