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Vegvisir
2019-07-04, 03:51 PM
I'm going to be running a heist-based game in Eberron and I'm looking for ideas for obstacles. A sliding scale of difficulty vs. the cost and practicality would be important. Everything from a clever peasant with a dog to a fully bonded House Kundarak magical security systems. A Forbiddence might be great, but not everyone would find it practical to defend against teleportation or could afford the 30,000 gp to make it permanent. They might just position chains or gates in a secure room so there's no space to teleport into it.

When providing suggestions it would be really helpful to include:
1. Availability - the minimum level for spell casting or any strange or rare components or designs.
2. Cost - the charges for construction, setup and upkeep.
3. Known vulnerabilities - i.e. Knock vs. Arcane Lock.

The Dragonmarked House Kundarak possesses the Mark of Warding. These spells will obviously be included in their plans
Lesser Mark of Warding - alarm (ritual), arcane lock
Greater Mark of Warding - glyph of warding, Leomund's secret chest, knock

Here are some ideas I've had:
Non-magical, non-trap
* a dog or other animal to sniff out invisible intruders and maybe catch vermin/tiny ones.
* the aforementioned chains/gates to block blind dimension doors
* an easily deformable floor that shows impressions from invisible intruders (i.e. thick shag carpet)
* multiple locks on a door slowing down intruders and possibly requiring multiple knock spells.
* the buddy system to make it harder to compromise both
* pass phrases, tokens or other ID to make impersonation more difficult.
* indirect storage access. A front clerk passes a message to a vault minder who brings things to/from the vault while only opening the space between them a minimum to allow the objects to pass.
* forced delays to entrance that will cause spells or air to run out.
* concealed doors and confusing passages
* hidden arrow slits/murderholes with security forces on the other side
* airtight barriers. This could just be a leather seal on a door or a flooded room that's drained to pass.
* place something far enough that it is out of the range of simple teleports. This could be up a tower, underground or some other large enough zone that's being guarded.
* construction from multiple durable materials, not just stone by itself.
* heavy portcullis or large stone block (metal cased) that falls to block passage. This could also be a trap if triggered onsite rather than by a crew.

Low magic (below lvl 3)
* password security protocols for all wards (arcane lock, forbiddance, glyph of warding, etc.)
* a silent alarm using the alarm spell on a particular drawer that a clerk can surreptitiously open alerting a security force.
* a sentry with detect magic. This might also impose a 10 minute delay to wait for a ritual casting.
* a magic mouth that is an invisible sentry that speaks when it sees/hears something within its trigger parameters within 30 ft. It might also be staged with a lifelike statue to really startle intruders.
* an illusory script message with employee only alerts or warnings. I feel there's some other potential here.
* mage hand or unseen servant used to setup/activate things that you otherwise couldn't, like in a sealed room with only a spyhole. Unseen servant provides more range and options.
* unseen servant could be used to retrieve items from the vault in an indirect storage access situation and the access may only be large enough for the items. Limited to carrying capacity which should be 30lbs.
* misdirect intruders with Nystul's magical aura concealing magic items, hiding magical traps, and making it appear there are magical traps/treasures where there aren't.
* use prestidigitation to mark or color someone like a paint bomb. Usually not your go-to if you need a spell for a glyph, but you might house rule a lighter spell for this. It also may not be visible to the intruder and the glyph could go off undetected so they are marked to be easily located or the mark used to trigger another effect they thought they bypassed. Avoiding house rules, you could use Nystul's magic aura and tag them for 24 hours.
* Another possible house rule for prestidigitation would be to bring back an arcane mark effect to put an indefinite duration mark on objects that can be used to identify and locate them.

Enough of my thoughts. What have you got?

Phhase
2019-07-05, 02:32 AM
There is the spell "Guards and Wards". It's basically an all-in-one security system.

Particle_Man
2019-07-05, 09:08 AM
Maybe read The Evil Overlord’s Handbook for some tips?

http://tribute.thaoh.net/EvilOverLord.html

Vegvisir
2019-07-07, 03:45 PM
Guards & Wards is a decent defensive spell, but it's also 6th lvl. One casting might cost around 360 gp, keeping a 12th level wizard on retainer to cast it daily (or make it permanent perhaps through repeated casting like some other spells) may cost as much as 10,000 gp or more.

G&Ws is really just a package deal for arcane lock, magic mouth, and various spells in glyphs of warding with a nice confusion effect at corridors. As House Kundarak has magical abilities with their Dragonmarks that cut the cost of those spells. With a little foresight a 5th level caster might achieve similar results. In some ways G&Ws exacerbates the dangers of password protection, because if an intruder gets the password, they can avoid all the defenses.

The Evil Overlord's handbook might have a few useful tips but
A) bank and shop owners aren't evil overlords, so a lot of it doesn't apply. They still have to deal with customers.
B) Even some of the useful suggestions still need a fantasy implementation. How do you put closed-circuit cameras everywhere in a fantasy on a budget?

Koo Rehtorb
2019-07-07, 04:04 PM
My favourite trap I ever used was a pit of acid, covered by a fake collapsible floor, covered by an illusion of the floor. There were a couple pillars rising up out of the pit presenting stepping stones, that were more sturdy than the fake floor, but would also collapse if someone stood on them with person sized weight. Also there was an invisible golem hiding in a crawlspace in the ceiling programmed to jump down and shove people into the pit if they were standing too close to the edge of it.

druid91
2019-07-07, 04:17 PM
Guards & Wards is a decent defensive spell, but it's also 6th lvl. One casting might cost around 360 gp, keeping a 12th level wizard on retainer to cast it daily (or make it permanent perhaps through repeated casting like some other spells) may cost as much as 10,000 gp or more.

G&Ws is really just a package deal for arcane lock, magic mouth, and various spells in glyphs of warding with a nice confusion effect at corridors. As House Kundarak has magical abilities with their Dragonmarks that cut the cost of those spells. With a little foresight a 5th level caster might achieve similar results. In some ways G&Ws exacerbates the dangers of password protection, because if an intruder gets the password, they can avoid all the defenses.

The Evil Overlord's handbook might have a few useful tips but
A) bank and shop owners aren't evil overlords, so a lot of it doesn't apply. They still have to deal with customers.
B) Even some of the useful suggestions still need a fantasy implementation. How do you put closed-circuit cameras everywhere in a fantasy on a budget?

You pay older people to sit around reading, knitting, etc while keeping an eye out.

Vegvisir
2019-07-09, 04:04 PM
I overlooked Private Sanctum earlier. It's a 4th level spell, but not too costly in terms of making it permanent. Say if Kundarak had an 8th level wizard as part of a security system setup, they'd need to be on the job for the full permanency casting but no longer. So hiring an 8th level caster for a year. Not cheap at all if you charge per spell, but probably something Kundarak would do in-house for their own security.

King of Nowhere
2019-07-09, 08:04 PM
all the guards move in pair. they have bells tied to their clothing, if the bells stop jingling it means something is making magical silence.

there are doors everywhere, and by protocol they must be closed. for extra security, you may have double doors, with a room between that's so small a guard wawing his arm is going to catch any invisible intruder.

though using smoke may be even easier. or a slowly dripping shower covering the whole corridor.

Using chains and other objects to fill up space to prevent teleportation is another good one. I'm afraid it won't stop a caster shapeshifted to a fine form, though. I don't think anything but powerful magic can stop that.



There is the spell "Guards and Wards". It's basically an all-in-one security system.

The spell seems horribly impractical. I never understood how it's supposed to be used.
So you cast it on your own fortress, and then you have to deal with webbed stairs, fogged corridors, and hidden doors. Imagine you cast the spell for the night and then you need to go to the privy :smalleek:

Now, you may keep the spell in reserve and only cast it if you are actually under attack. that's also a bad idea, and not just because it forces you to keep a 6th level spell permanently prepared. webs on the stairs will slow down an enemy, but it will also give them cover. and it will hamper your own soldiers as much as the enemy. more than the enemy, because the enemy can move outside the fortress, and your own troops cannot easily move inside because of the webs and fog.
for that matter, fog is more beneficial to the attacker, because they ccan advance in it and be covered from arrowslits.
As for the arcane locks on every door, that spell does not keep the door from being smashed. which is what a soldier with a weapon would do. Ultimately, it is no more beneficial than a key.
the only actually useful thing it does is hiding a door behind a silent image. but then, you may as well cast silent image and be done with it.

Max_Killjoy
2019-07-09, 08:32 PM
The spell seems horribly impractical. I never understood how it's supposed to be used.
So you cast it on your own fortress, and then you have to deal with webbed stairs, fogged corridors, and hidden doors. Imagine you cast the spell for the night and then you need to go to the privy :smalleek:

Now, you may keep the spell in reserve and only cast it if you are actually under attack. that's also a bad idea, and not just because it forces you to keep a 6th level spell permanently prepared. webs on the stairs will slow down an enemy, but it will also give them cover. and it will hamper your own soldiers as much as the enemy. more than the enemy, because the enemy can move outside the fortress, and your own troops cannot easily move inside because of the webs and fog.
for that matter, fog is more beneficial to the attacker, because they ccan advance in it and be covered from arrowslits.
As for the arcane locks on every door, that spell does not keep the door from being smashed. which is what a soldier with a weapon would do. Ultimately, it is no more beneficial than a key.
the only actually useful thing it does is hiding a door behind a silent image. but then, you may as well cast silent image and be done with it.


It's not a practical spell, it's a spell for NPC BBEG wizards in their lonely run-down keeps or whatever. Purely a D&D-style ambiance thing.

Grek
2019-07-10, 01:31 AM
A key thing to keep in mind is that you aren't looking for deadly traps or unbeatable defenses, you're looking to bring the risk of theft down until the point where the marginal amortized copper spent on anti-theft measures stops decreasing your expected losses by more than one copper in turn.

If you spend 3gp per month to reduce the risk of having 300gp stolen from 1% per month to 0.1% per month, you're losing money.

To thwart invisibility and most forms of teleportation, hang streamers throughout your hallways such that they need to be pushed aside for even tiny creatures to pass. This will reveal invisible (or even just sneaky) people as they pass and prevent teleportation entirely since they would have to intersect a ribbon. This will shunt them, wounded, into the nearest open space in most cases, so you can leave cages in alcoves for them to be shunted into if you like.

To thwart teleportation into vaults, periodically alter the layout of each vault using mobile walls and furnishings while moving prior arrangements into locked rooms which do not open from the inside. Doing so will divert most teleportation attempts into the fake vaults - if the location that someone teleports to is altered enough, the teleport will damage the targets and shunt them to the nearest similar area. Which you've prepared in advance to trap them.

To avoid burrowing, layer each passage with bricks with two holes running through them and fill half of the hollows with wooden rods. To avoid incorporeal opponents, the only practical method is to make the walls at least 11' thick (before the bricks) to ensure that medium sized incorporeal beings can't pass through (16' for large). If undead are a concern, include one ounce vials of holy water in the bricks holes.

If you have the budget for traps, use it to make traps which are extremely obvious and impossible to disarm. You don't actually want people to set them off - you want them to look at it and decide the treasure isn't worth dying for. Anything that draws blood is a plus, as it helps bloodhounds (or scrying) track thieves even if they escape. Remember that your guards and customers need a way in, though, so making the security too deadly is impractical.

To avoid impersonation, use password or combination based identity verification. To avoid telepathy, use key or token based identity verification. If both simultaneously are a concern, a Sending will allow you to send a confirmation code to the correct owner, who must then reply back using the Sending. If the subversion of a valid account owner is a concern (via blackmail or compulsion), a comprehensive request form (which inquiries into the purpose of the withdrawal with an eye to irregular payments) filled out under view of Detect Magic and with a duress password can catch most of the problems.

Vegvisir
2019-07-18, 06:33 PM
A key thing to keep in mind is that you aren't looking for deadly traps or unbeatable defenses, you're looking to bring the risk of theft down until the point where the marginal amortized copper spent on anti-theft measures stops decreasing your expected losses by more than one copper in turn.

I definitely agree that the cost to benefit ratio is of great importance.


Remember that your guards and customers need a way in, though, so making the security too deadly is impractical.

Definitely another good thing to keep in mind. If it takes an hour for an employee to fulfill a simple request, that's an hour of wages lost and gets added to ultimate cost. Plus, if a security measure is onerous enough that the employees might routinely circumvent it, then it's no security protocol at all. Only the ones that get used are worth anything. If the complicated lock is too much trouble to open and close, the workers might just leave it open during business hours.

Some of my thoughts on various threats and the techniques against them:
Invisible. Streamers to detect invisibility is an interesting idea. It's a trade off between general visibility and detecting the invisible. If you put up enough streamers to detect tiny creatures, you're reducing general visibility quite a bit.

Teleportation. I might be more lenient on the interpretation of a space "occupied by an object or creature" such that light streamers may not prevent it. If you teleport into a field of tall grass, I wouldn't have it fail because grass stalks were in the way. This is my *BAMF* ruling. If a breeze (such as the gases being displaced by you appearing from a point) would push the object out of the way, you're fine. Anything substantial and rigid would work though, but those kinds of objects do create a barrier to general use and visibility. Rearranging objects could have a use, but may seem like an annoying and useless task to those assigned to do it.

Burrowing. I'd agree that reinforcing soil and stone would be a good way to deter this. Wood would be a cheap reinforcement, but iron might be better. That could be rods threaded through or plates bolted to surfaces. Each case would have to use the most durable materials they could, since a burrower could always try to smash through the reinforcement that they couldn't burrow through.

Incorporeal. Thick walls might deter incorporeal intruders, but I think they'd have to be thicker than 11'. A specter or a wraith with the incorporeal trait can move through an object as if it were difficult terrain and they have a fly speed (50' or 60' respectively). To keep them out definitively, the walls would have to be 30' thick.

Impersonation.

To avoid impersonation, use password or combination based identity verification. To avoid telepathy, use key or token based identity verification. If both simultaneously are a concern, a Sending will allow you to send a confirmation code to the correct owner, who must then reply back using the Sending. If the subversion of a valid account owner is a concern (via blackmail or compulsion), a comprehensive request form (which inquiries into the purpose of the withdrawal with an eye to irregular payments) filled out under view of Detect Magic and with a duress password can catch most of the problems.
Passwords, privileged knowledge, or shibboleths (distinguishing customs or traditions) could definitely be useful to weed out imposters. The problem with passwords are the same ones that the modern world has. Your security may only be as strong as the people who are employing it. The comprehensive request form might work, but it might also be something that lazy workers might do their best to avoid. It depends on how seriously the workers take the security. There's some good opportunity there for conflicts to run if passwords, account verification and other methods are being used for a team of intruders to setup elaborate confidence schemes to try to get the knowledge to subvert them.

Something I'm including for high security Kundarak facilities:
House Kundarak has been noted to use something called a "manticore lock".

There’s a Manticore bust by the door. You need to place your hand on the bust and speak the keyword; it check both biometrics (say, Kundarak dwarf) and the phrase. If you fail to meet either condition it triggers the glyph of warding. Meanwhile, the door has four mundane locks, an arcane lock, and an alarm. A magic mouth could demand the password. An emplaced illusion could appear, threatening intruders with consequences.
In my own version of this I'd also add a mechanical trap in the manticore bust that would act like a bear trap so the manticore's mouth would close on someone holding the handle if the locks aren't bypassed correctly. The glyph would usually include something debilitating but not destructive to the building, like a 9d8 sleep spell. The magic mouth would also act as an invisible sentry since it can see and hear within 30'. The programmed response could make it look like the manticore is speaking to add an extra creep factor.

Kundarak also employs Iron Defenders, which are constructs of iron shaped like a dog that are special homunculi designed to fight. They lack the blindsight that a guardian like an animated suit of armor might have, but they make up for that with some innate intelligence, a better Perception, and speed.

I'm also planning on having a deadfall of a 12' iron-reinforced stone block that is manually operated in a guardhouse above the vault. There is a heavy lever that can be pulled to drop the stone and seal the vault. It would take quite a bit of man-power to lift the stone with chains and pulleys operated by a windlass in the guardhouse. Since it's so difficult to lift this measure it usually isn't put in place except in the event of a general alarm, in which cae the vault can be sealed and secured.

Grek
2019-07-18, 07:36 PM
Incorporeal. Thick walls might deter incorporeal intruders, but I think they'd have to be thicker than 11'. A specter or a wraith with the incorporeal trait can move through an object as if it were difficult terrain and they have a fly speed (50' or 60' respectively). To keep them out definitively, the walls would have to be 30' thick. For 3.5, this definitely works:

"An incorporeal creature can enter or pass through solid objects, but must remain adjacent to the object’s exterior, and so cannot pass entirely through an object whose space is larger than its own."

Does 5e use different rules or something? It wouldn't surprise me if it did.

Vegvisir
2019-07-22, 07:34 PM
Here's a snippet from the Specter in 5e for an example of the incorporeal trait.

Incorporeal Movement: The specter can move through other creatures and Objects as if they were difficult terrain. It takes 5 (1d10) force damage if it ends its turn inside an object.