Building an Orc Wizard's Tower (looking for suggestions)

[SaintRidley]

Hey all. So I'm running a game where the PCs are running around checking out the towers of long-dead wizards. Long-dead epic wizards. They're 3rd level verging on 4th. They've already narrowly managed to succeed at getting into and surviving their first tower (they fortunately avoided the Meteor Swarm trap and hit up on the Acid Arrow trap instead before quickly figuring out the trick to avoiding the traps on the door entirely). Yes, it's highly and arbitrarily lethal. Yes, my players are all on board for that.

So it looks like their next destination is to try and find another tower, this one belonging to a long-dead epic Orc wizard who was a transmuter. This is where I need help. I want to throw a variety of interesting transmutation and thematically Orcish effects at them. If at least one PC does not change species at least once, I'll be disappointed in my tower design but pleased with the ingenuity.

Worth noting that the wizard in question is long dead and the defenses will be the defenses left over.

So far what I've got for basic ideas are as follows:

1. Orc statues that come to life on the ground level and protect the tower.
2. Floorstones with symbols on them that will re-assign the PC's race on a failed Con save when stepped upon.
3. Secret rooms accessible only by very small passageways (either make the passage bigger or the PCs smaller)
4. Flesh to Stone traps.
5. Standard pressure plate type puzzles.

What else do you think would work for this tower?

[MrStabby]

Hmm. Maybe have a rule like conservation of hardness. Flesh to stone is a thing but every-time flesh gets turned to stone stone gets turned to flesh?

Also gibbering mouthers. They are just awesome. Depending on your party makeup they can sometimes be pretty touch as well.

Living floors. You can tell "a wizard did it" when the floor tries to eat you.

Mimics. Make the loot mimics. Armour is a big mimic (once you put it on you realise your mistake). Gems are tiny mimics (think how tough animate objects is as a spell when used on tiny objects. Now think you just pocketed some of these).

Another mimic. At the bottom of a pool. When a player goes in the water it transforms to acid, the mimic grabs them and tries to drown them at the bottom.

Having mentioned animate objects - glyphs of warding animate objects in the room. And swap player gender.

[Finback]

I don't have much to add, other than that since reading this comic below, I can't see Orc Wizard in any other context.. ;)

https://forums.thedreamsanctuary.com/uploads/default/original/2X/c/cc48540d95906ea2322e377dcbede4170ce3364f.png

[Lonely Tylenol]

It goes without saying, but Guards and Wards and Forbiddance both have permanency clauses and are specifically designed for the defense of a stronghold.

Also, liberal use of Glyph of Warding.

It's not strictly wizardly, but it would be very Orcish to hit the party with the poor man's Polymorph Any Object: a trap that kills a party member (with, say, Disintegrate or a similar-looking effect without actually obliterating the body, or just an overkill-style non-magical trap, like a collapsing roof) that then Reincarnates the player into something else. Not, strictly speaking, a polymorph, but certainly an interesting way to change someone. :smalltongue:

[Dr. Cliché]

A few ideas:

- From the outside, have the tower look like it was constructed from wood, and not very well at that (the inside isn't visible, but the supports are damaged and it sways unsettlingly in the wind).

- As soon as they get inside (which may be larger), they find that each level of the tower appears to have been constructed from something entirely different (stone, metal, ice, flesh etc.).

- Have them fight enemies that have been polymorphed into other creatures (so, the players effectively have to fight them twice - first their animal form and then whatever their actual form is).

- Have them fight enemies that have had one or more other transmutation spells cast on them (Enhance Ability, Barkskin, Regenerate etc.).

- They may be attacked at any time by animated objects.


The issue, I think, will be in making it 'orcish'.

[VoxRationis]

The entire thing is super-rickety, being of orcish construction. May or may not collapse after the final boss is killed. May tilt over if enough people go to the same side of the building on the upper floors. All walls can be bulldozed through by a decent fighter, at the risk of destabilizing the building.

[Dr. Cliché]

The entire thing is super-rickety, being of orcish construction. May or may not collapse after the final boss is killed.

My thought is that the orc would use magic to stabilise the construction (so it looks and feels rickety, but is actually quite hard to bring down). However, once the final boss is killed, those spells start to fail causing the tower to lose what integrity it had. The players will have to run back down as the tower falls apart around them.

Makes me think of this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYKnOATlnuA

[EvilAnagram]

I feel like an orc transmute would have a pretty grim style. Maybe the tower is made out of gigantic skulls he enlarged for the purpose.

[MrStabby]

I feel like an orc transmute would have a pretty grim style. Maybe the tower is made out of gigantic skulls he enlarged for the purpose.

Another use for stone to flesh? Make a stone tower then turn it into a flesh tower.

On the other hand a "flesh tower" sounds like something from a DM more used to running FATAL games.

[EvilAnagram]

Another use for stone to flesh? Make a stone tower then turn it into a flesh tower.

On the other hand a "flesh tower" sounds like something from a DM more used to running FATAL games.

Maybe flesh to stone? The building materials are all the petrified corpses of, let's say, an elven city.

[BW022]

Alternatives...

There are no wards as they have already been bypassed, removed, looted, etc. However...

* A massive group of orcs live in the area and their leader has claimed the tower. PCs need to overcome or negotiate with the orcs.
* Tower is in a lake island and the water level has risen, flooding several of the lower tower levels. Players need to obtain means to deal with going underwater and deal with say aquatic creatures investing the lake.
* The tower is completely abandoned, ruined, but a nearby treant knows that (whatever the PCs are looking for) was taken from the tower by an evil hag. PCs need to find and deal with the hag.
* The tower is in ruins and empty, but is the middle of a mud-flats controlled by a wyvern or green dragon. It can easily see PCs from a long distance and terrain, water, mud, etc. make going slow. Players need to sneak in.
* The tower is in a snowy mountain pass. Adventure is to get there. Snow, storms, avalanched, yeti, winter wolves, etc.
* The tower has been 'refurbished' and is now the secret base for a group of wererats posing as a group of traveling performing group. They happily allow the PCs to recover the item and then secretly follow them and try murdering them to get the item.
* The tower controls a key river crossing in the mountains and is now occupied by a clan of dwarves -- and built-up and fixed. A rival clan of dwarves also are claiming at war with them and is currently laying siege to it. PCs must determine the cause of the war (say a missing clan leaders son having stolen the other clan's prized holy hammer) and it and return it. Of course... this may mean negotiations and discussions, or sneaking, to get in and out. Maybe one of the clan leader's men is a traitor.
* The tower appears as ruins but in the basement is a door which can't be opened without a password. Players have to hunt down the wizard's apprentices -- down a long line of wizards -- in order to find the password.
* The tower is infested by insane numbers of insects (permanent swarm type thing), yet shows signs of someone having gone in and out recently. PCs need to track the trail outside and find a group of kobolds who have a special insect repellant. In return for 25 cows (which the PCs must go to town, buy and bring through wolf-infested woods) they'll give the PCs vials of dire skunk musk.

If you have different towers, not all need to be intact or full of wizardy-type wards, traps, and fantastic magic. Mundane things of what happened to the tower can themselves be interesting.

[MrStabby]

Maybe flesh to stone? The building materials are all the petrified corpses of, let's say, an elven city.

Oh wow. I like this.

I think this may underpin my next BBEG if i may steal it. There is such an understated tragedy in an architecture made from people. Imagine a city of people force marched into a plain and forced to hold hands to make a network of limbs. Then being petrified to make the structure.

Another line is forced to climb on the stone shoulders of their family, friends and neighbours linking arms forever. A conquest, not for wealth or revenge but for the living building materials for a huge tower.

When the scenery itself reflects the character of the bad guy I think you have a winner. Each face in the wall having their own history.

[SaintRidley]

Definitely some great suggestions so far. Keep them coming. I probably won't use all of them (some don't really work for the wizard as established in the backstory to the setting since this orc was a hero who failed to avert apocalypse - though I can see some ideas working for the necromancer's tower, since the necromancer was the apocalypse).

One thing I will definitely adapt is the negotiating with the orcs thing. He common language among my PCs is Orc, and one PC is half-orc. Planning for the tower to be shrunken and hiding in the bag of a hill giant, and having to alert the orcs to the fact that the tower of the guy who united the tribes is missing and aiding in the recover effort. Might be able to do some neat things from your suggestions from that base.

Editing to add: yeah, multiple towers. One for every school of magic and one for a generalist, all abandoned when their wizards died 2000 years earlier (or, in the necromancer's case, became a demolish and slaughtered the gods by killing them). The illusionist's tower will be at the center of a gigantic labyrinth, and I'm working out more details on the other towers as the PCs start catching whiff of the ways the major plot items intersect and diverge.

[Mith]

Oh wow. I like this.

I think this may underpin my next BBEG if i may steal it. There is such an understated tragedy in an architecture made from people. Imagine a city of people force marched into a plain and forced to hold hands to make a network of limbs. Then being petrified to make the structure.

Another line is forced to climb on the stone shoulders of their family, friends and neighbours linking arms forever. A conquest, not for wealth or revenge but for the living building materials for a huge tower.

When the scenery itself reflects the character of the bad guy I think you have a winner. Each face in the wall having their own history.

I thank you for this inspiration.