Mad Mage's tower

[Titanium Dragon]

Okay, so the party so far has travelled deep through the untamed jungles of the continents, crossed the deep chasms of the broken lands, gone up through the temple of a forgotten god worshipped by things which were never meant to be, and scaled the Cliffs of Insanity to reach the tower of Alkahest the Mad, an insane mage who discovered the universal solvent, a step in the alchemical process to make the philospher's stone.

Now, this has been kind of building up to this point, but I'm rather drawing a blank. I've got some ideas for alchemical and various other puzzles in his hundred-year abandoned tower, but I'm looking for some other fun stuff I can throw at the PCs. The tower has 13 floors, and the party consists of two level 5 characters, a level 5 wizard and a level 2 rogue/3 fighter. My goal is to make a set of interesting but generally not combat-oriented encounters, as many of their encounters so far have taken the form of combat. I also am looking for cool valuable things they could potentially pry off the walls/pull out of the floor/ect. (they don't believe in leaving anything that isn't nailed down behind if it is valuable).

So, thoughts for interesting things I can put in the tower?

[CASTLEMIKE]

Consider having a permanent gate to the Infinite Stairway in one of the rooms or a cave or standing stones located near the tower. Lots of planar adventure material since it goes to all worlds and all planes eventually.

Consider making the Mad Mage a CG ghost who cannot rest until he finds his successor from among the PCs or one of his descendants or one of his former apprentice's descendants whcih gives you a lot of options.

Secret rooms and closets: Private laboratory, personal library (of course after a century most of it is ruined but some valuables still remain), treasure map or two real or faked, emergency gettaway pack and contents (Maybe a secret tunnel to a nearby cave).

4 foot by 6 foot Scrying painting (Glorified personal portrait of the Mad Mage) usable 1/week over his desk in his secret private library. (It can have a corny catch phrase command ".............").

[Yami]

Odd cursed items, like the Lodestone and the slippers of announcement (10 penalty to hide.) You could also

I'd suggest a good chaos beast for an encounter, but your party seems a bit low for it, specially since you were asking for non combat help. Might I also suggest one way portal doors? The idea behind this is that the party doesn't know the layout of the place since doors don't lead out the same way they left in. Great for a mad mage's lair.

Hmmm... what else... Ah! You could introduce one of my favorite magical items, the headbasket of intellect!

Basically a meditation basket for a viper that your party can use as a circlet of intellect. If they don't mind walking about with a basket on thier head.

Along those lines any magical item outside of it's usual slots would be good. ring of protection? More like boots of protection!

[Talic]

Okay, so the party so far has travelled deep through the untamed jungles of the continents, crossed the deep chasms of the broken lands, gone up through the temple of a forgotten god worshipped by things which were never meant to be, and scaled the Cliffs of Insanity to reach the tower of Alkahest the Mad, an insane mage who discovered the universal solvent, a step in the alchemical process to make the philospher's stone.

Now, this has been kind of building up to this point, but I'm rather drawing a blank. I've got some ideas for alchemical and various other puzzles in his hundred-year abandoned tower, but I'm looking for some other fun stuff I can throw at the PCs. The tower has 13 floors, and the party consists of two level 5 characters, a level 5 wizard and a level 2 rogue/3 fighter. My goal is to make a set of interesting but generally not combat-oriented encounters, as many of their encounters so far have taken the form of combat. I also am looking for cool valuable things they could potentially pry off the walls/pull out of the floor/ect. (they don't believe in leaving anything that isn't nailed down behind if it is valuable).

So, thoughts for interesting things I can put in the tower?

I like using some of the following:

Illusion powered room levitates everyone. Door is visible on other side, but only mentally imagining yourself moving gets you across (DC 20 int check). For the idiots in the group, smart guy can get across and pull by rope. However, what should be there for the illusion? Why, it's drawn from the 1st person to enter's mind... A previous memorable location in the campaign.

One-way gates, disguised as doors. Walk through one way, you go through. Walk through the other, you go to a different floor.

Traps that use the energy of the the tower to power themselves. When removed, it's found that casting any 3rd level spell into them will also power them, casting the spell within.

Trap that uses Mass-motion pebbles. The faster they move, the heavier they get. Original trap is a centrifuge type device that snares people's arms and begins spinning. However, they could have a variety of uses for those with imagination.

[bosssmiley]

Alkahest the Mad, an insane mage who discovered the universal solvent, a step in the alchemical process to make the philospher's stone.

Semi-OT question. This universal solvent; what did he keep it in? :smallwink:

[Belkarseviltwin]

Semi-OT question. This universal solvent; what did he keep it in? :smallwink:

A Tenser's Floating Disk. The players shouldn't drink the pools of liquid they find in the tiers of Floating Disks lining one room!

[shadow_archmagi]

A room full of animated furniture they have to negotiate with to find their way further...
A handful of oozees...

A room full of potions.. all kinds of potions... Make sure most of them are unlabeled. Put a big stone door in the way, and make sure there is a labeled potion of disintegrate. See if one of them drinks it, and if so, have them promptly disintegrate.

[RoboticSheeple]

A singing candelabra, clock, and teapot.

[Randel]

A large animated cauldron that is constantly making up oddball potions, the mad alchemist had created it to help him make stuff but with him dead it started working by itself but doesn't know how to make anything useful without someone to direct it. A diplomacy check from someone who can make potions gets it to work for you, if not it may try grabbing people to use as ingredients.


Several 'traps' that help help the mage out in his everyday activities. A room that teleports away clothing, washes and heals you, then teleports on pajamas (leaving the party to have to find the laundry room to get their armor and stuff). A room full of music boxes, talking books or some kind of puzzle room... maybe even something that asks riddles or plays games just to keep the mad alchemist entertained.

A room where any lead objects turn to gold, but they turn back into lead when they leave the room.

Several rugs, paintings, floor tile arrangements, act as minor schemas (scrolls that can be used repeatedly but once per day) some walls have the schema carved into them and when the spell is cast it opens up to reveal another room.

Portable doors that you have to pick up from a stack, place onto the wall at which point they become the doors to lead into that room. They can be removed as well (the alchemist could never decide on the layout of the room so he often rearranged furniture, doors and windows.) There are also keys that when placed in locks opens into a specific room no matter which door it opens.

Locks that have no keyhole, you have to use 'knock' to unlock it every time so it can't be picked with thieves tools.

A room full three feet deep with caltrops, another full of marbles. (or if you are feeling crazy, have a bag of holding full of these, see what kind of crazy stuff happens)

A living spell of Create Food and Water in the kitchen. A permanent wall of fire in the basement and a permanent wall of ice in the attic.

[Triaxx]

13 levels of fun in an abandoned tower? What ever could happen? Remember that if the tower is abandoned, the front door should have degraded away, or been smashed in and have become the nest of a nasty. An ogre, a family of blackbears. Third or fourth levels could be home to some flying critter or another. A flock of Dire Bats, or some Harpies. Nothing too strong.

For non-combat difficulties, the ever-popular slide puzzle. You have to apply damage to the sides of the cubes to move them, so the wizard can poke it with his staff, the rogue can smack it with something else. Put together a solution, and then number the pieces, but not in the usual upper-left to lower-right. Try it backwards, or start in the upper right, and go down then back to the top.

You could try a modified 'Eyes', 'Ears', 'Voice' challenge. Basically, the Rogue is blind, the wizard can see, but can't speak. The wizard has to lead the Rogue through, but can't speak to warn of dangers, like spikes, or level dropping pits. Put a suitably powerful reward for suffering through that aggravation.

Chess-playing Ogre Wizard is fun. He inhabited the tower as a plain Ogre, but found himself smart and accidentally casting magic. Now he plays chess for a key on his belt. Make him suitably stronger than the party, so he's a challenge, in case they decide to just chop on through. Use bluff/sense motive checks to decide who's winning.

[Yami]

A room full of animated furniture they have to negotiate with to find their way further...
A handful of oozees...

A room full of potions.. all kinds of potions... Make sure most of them are unlabeled. Put a big stone door in the way, and make sure there is a labeled potion of disintegrate. See if one of them drinks it, and if so, have them promptly disintegrate.

Oh my... That reminds me of how my current DM tried doing potions. Had an alchemists lab in a wizard's lair, so when it came time to roll for contents he ditched the usual potions table, declaring it too divine heavy. We ended up with a spider climb, which was fine, but then things got wierd... real wierd.

So, bit of advice? Never drink the potion of Tenser's floating disk. Not unless you have the swallow whole feature or some 5000 gold stashed away for a ressurect.

[Titanium Dragon]

Thanks to everyone who helped me out; when I'm done building the tower, I'm going to post the whole thing here so you can see what you have wrought. After the game I'll also post a summary of how it went. Mmm, they'll never know what hit them...

[Talic]

Keep in mind, Opening a door need not be done with thieve's picks. Depending on the lock, the following tools can be used:

Crowbar (door jamb, pop simple locked latch free from slot)

Acid, hacksaw (used on the thin exposed part of a dead bolt to cut or eat through it. Time consuming, and breaks a lock for goods)

Greatclub (Disable DOOR-vice)

Awl and hammer (for inward opening doors, pop the door off its hinges).

Hand Drill (to access hidden mechanism)

As noted, a lack of a keyhole does not prevent disabling a lock.

[random11]

This will work if you are familiar with the player's style of playing:

it is a very strange room. A tall ceiling with the other door right on the top (unreachable by any regular means).
When the characters enter the room, an identical copy of them is walking from the other door, upside down from the ceiling.
The identical group will insist THEY are the real ones, and that it is THEM who need to go to the other unreachable door (the ones the players entered from).

The fun part, is that you will role play the "clones" in a similar style to the originals.

No need to fight, almost impossible anyway since you will only reach each other if you raise your hands and jump.
It is possible to use the clone group to get to the destination (and also help them on the way), but be open to any other original way.

[Dragonstar]

Picture a hallway with about a dozen doors, staggered on either side. Stepping through a doorway into the 5x5 room instantly teleports the player to another randomly-determined 5x5 room with a door. The player opens it and finds themselves further down the hallway from his companions. Repeat. Lovingly referred to as the Scooby-Doo doors, my players still talk about it 2 years after I threw them into a random dungeon. :smallbiggrin:

Another take on Random's idea that I never had time to impliment: The PCs walk into a room that's completely lined by mirrors. When the last one enters the door slams shut (no handle and a mirror on the back), and the room begins to spin. When the room stops and the PCs are just recovering from the dizziness, their reflections step out of the mirror. There are now NO reflections of anyone at all... and they must battle their counterparts. Take the time to write up equivalent yet opposite PCs - move their alignments directly across the respective axis (LG to CE, N, stays the same, etc...), change the race (elf to drow, dwarf to duergar, halfling to kobold, etc...) but leave the class and equipment relatively similar (unless aligment would force a change to something). When one party is defeated, the rest walk out the re-opened door...

Note that this can mean some interesting things for the party - perhaps none of the "good guys" win, and they all get new characters to play. Does a defeated character's reflection suddenly disappear and his body is only seen lying in the mirror? Perhaps the party survives, except for the NG Rogue who was "replaced" by the NE Rogue - and the reflection was so similar that nobody could tell the difference? It leaves a lot of options wide open...

[AKA_Bait]

I like the idea of a Flesh to Stone + Big rolling boulder trap. One guy is turned into a statue and the party gets to decide if it just runs and leaves him there to be crushed or tries to run carrying a big heavy statue.