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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    RedWizardGuy

    Join Date
    Oct 2013

    Default Re: Ways to keep low level adventurers out of your dungeon while minimizing damage

    Quote Originally Posted by Elkad View Post
    "It's the magic road - built by some ancient being - it heads towards the mountain range, and just when it starts to get too steep for wagons, you are on the other side! It's great!"
    Quote Originally Posted by ExLibrisMortis View Post
    I really like this. It's got that pragmatic look at epic magic that--to me--is part of the most realistic high-magic settings. Ancient, mysterious, provokes deep questions about the nature of the universe, helps me get cabbages to the market.
    Yup. Setup properly, the group could know about from L1, and yet possibly never wonder what it was hiding. It's just "the magic road".
    Throw in other fantastic stuff that doesn't have a purpose (the river that runs uphill - which now has no purpose, but used to lead to a long-lost city) and you reduce the odds of them questioning that specific one greatly.
    Only if they think to dig into the mystery (or if you drop a clue) will they discover it's hiding something.

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Pixie in the Playground
     
    WhiteWizardGirl

    Join Date
    May 2018

    Default Re: Ways to keep low level adventurers out of your dungeon while minimizing damage

    Thank you for all the ideas.

    That magic road and epic illusion ideas look very enticing and makes for nice story element. I will have to make note of that.

    But I was looking for a mechanical way of doing this. The only way I came up with was to use a series of permanent Symbols of Persuasion, and I was wondering whether there was anything better. The Phase Door idea Jack_Smith brought up is exactly the sort of solution that looks simple and requires very little effort. As for the plane travel is banned problem, I was more thinking of things like Plane Shift and Gate, where you physically move to another plane, rather than things that make use of the ethereal plane in a limited fashion. That should be fine.

    As for the question of "Why are there level 30 NPCs in a game where the players are level 12 or below":

    It is not a game session. It is from watching an anime (Overlord, to be specific).

    The world in this anime basically uses plagiarized 3.5e rules. The protagonist is an evil lich necromancer whose level has been estimated to be somewhere in the 30-70 region. He has similarly powerful minions and a big tomb fortress. They are stuck in a world where the most powerful native can cast level 6 spells, and being able to cast level 5 divine spells makes you a nation's secret weapon.

    Often I get the thought "the protagonist is doing things this particularly way because he is an evil lich necromancer, not because this is the most efficient way of doing things for an epic wizard". In this particular instance it is "How can he keep the adventurers from looting his tomb fortress" (and which is not "use your undead and fiendish minions to kill them").

    I apologize for the lack of context in the first post.

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Jack_Simth's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2006

    Default Re: Ways to keep low level adventurers out of your dungeon while minimizing damage

    Quote Originally Posted by Sword Magess View Post
    Thank you for all the ideas.

    That magic road and epic illusion ideas look very enticing and makes for nice story element. I will have to make note of that.

    But I was looking for a mechanical way of doing this. The only way I came up with was to use a series of permanent Symbols of Persuasion, and I was wondering whether there was anything better. The Phase Door idea Jack_Smith brought up is exactly the sort of solution that looks simple and requires very little effort. As for the plane travel is banned problem, I was more thinking of things like Plane Shift and Gate, where you physically move to another plane, rather than things that make use of the ethereal plane in a limited fashion. That should be fine.
    I'm glad to help.

    Side note: I'm actually in a game inspired by the same anime....
    Last edited by Jack_Simth; 2018-09-06 at 09:39 PM.
    Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Planetar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Perth, West Australia
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Ways to keep low level adventurers out of your dungeon while minimizing damage

    Quote Originally Posted by Bronk View Post
    Sounds similar to the Dragonlance Towers of High Sorcery... People who weren't powerful enough could never make it down the street to the tower, or something like that.
    They were indeed the Towers of High Sorcery, but different towers' surrounding groves had different effects. The one at Palanthas was a fear-blaster: basically you couldn't get there unless your name was Raistlin/Fistandantilus. Even kender couldn't get in. The one at Wayreth, where Raistlin completed the Test, phased around, i.e. you couldn't actually find the tower unless it (or the mages within it) wanted to be found. Other towers had groves that induced forgetfulness, or forced a person's emotions to increase beyond the point of control, or just made a person fall asleep.

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    In a castle under the sea
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Ways to keep low level adventurers out of your dungeon while minimizing damage

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    They were indeed the Towers of High Sorcery, but different towers' surrounding groves had different effects. The one at Palanthas was a fear-blaster: basically you couldn't get there unless your name was Raistlin/Fistandantilus. Even kender couldn't get in. The one at Wayreth, where Raistlin completed the Test, phased around, i.e. you couldn't actually find the tower unless it (or the mages within it) wanted to be found. Other towers had groves that induced forgetfulness, or forced a person's emotions to increase beyond the point of control, or just made a person fall asleep.
    Did that last one need to send out apprentices every week or two to take sleeping intruders to the nearest town? If not, it sounds like the sheer number of napping people lying around would be more of a liability than just letting people in.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
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