than it is on the outside (more likely if you’re a Great Old One warlock than if you’re a neighborhood crime boss). You’ll have to contend with the fact that other buildings block line of sight, denying you early warning of enemies’ approach. That’s not such a problem if you’re occupying someplace like the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, with a wide-open plaza on two sides and a big watchtower to look down from, but it’s a big problem… well, almost anywhere else in Florence. And while having a smaller footprint means it’s easier to protect against attacks from above, simply by putting up a roof, having lots of rooftops close together means you have to watch out for footpads scampering across them. Population density is a mixed blessing. If your response to intrusion is of the loud or messy sort, that’s something you can’t let spill out into the street. Keep it behind closed doors; don’t invite further attention. Also, you can’t employ dullwitted guards. Your sentries must be cognizant of the everyday behavior patterns of townsfolk in the streets outside and able to spot anyone acting out of the ordinary. They’ll have to know and be able to recognize your neighbors so that they can identify people who aren’t your neighbors. On the plus side, an abundance of eyes on the street has its own deterrent effect, and depending on your activities—and your connections—you may even be able to exploit the presence of law enforcement authorities, siccing the local militia on your foes. You can also hide guards among the townsfolk, allowing them to observe from the street, not just from the windows or parapets of your building. Or you can buy a building across the street, or rent space in one, and place guards there. Most important, lots of people means a large hiring pool for spies—and a greater likelihood that they won’t be identified as such. In a town or city large enough for everyone not to know everyone else, one can easily go about in comfortable anonymity, especially if one’s occupation is beneath others’ notice. Another advantage to urban density is that when you need to escape, your pursuers will have a hard time chasing you through the streets. You, on the other hand, may not need to run through the streets at all to get far away from your pursuers. Connect your cellar to a network of underground service tunnels or catacombs, made necessary by the presence of a large, concentrated population,
and if your lair is overrun, you can escape into a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. COASTAL Defending a coastal lair is two problems in one: defending against land incursions and defending against sea incursions. The land side of the problem isn’t difficult: Defend the same way you would in whatever terrain the coastal land belongs to. The sea side is more complex. In the defender’s favor, sight lines over water are wide open; from a high vantage point, you can see for miles, giving you plenty of time to get into position. These circumstances favor the defender to such a degree that until the invention of cannons, and ships large and steady enough to carry them, naval siege was rare and impractical. To invade a position from water, you had to get your boats close enough that soldiers could wade the rest of the way to shore and fight hand to hand, which was generally a bad bet. In addition, aside from remote military watchtowers built specifically for early warning, coastal fortifications weren’t usually built right up against open ocean. They were built in harbors: landforms that offered protection not only against storm winds and rough waves but also naval assault. In addition to building strongpoints from which enemy ships could be showered with projectiles on their way in, a fortification on a small harbor could take advantage of the geography to extend a defensive chain, or boom, across the mouth of the harbor. Raised and lowered on a winch, such a chain could be drawn taut, and any ship trying to sail into the harbor would run up against it and… just… stop. Finally, one of the chief advantages of defense is knowing your terrain, and in coastal defense, that means knowing the locations of hazards—rocks that could stave in a ship’s hull, hidden shallows that could cause a ship to get stuck or capsize, and so forth. Without good intelligence on how to avoid such hazards, invaders would have to offset the risk by advancing slowly and carefully, blunting the momentum of their attack. So far, so good. However, these factors mean only that it’s easy to defend against a conventional pre-gunpowder naval attack under normal conditions. You might have no trouble repelling a full-size caravel loaded with a couple
dozen foot soldiers, but what about a band of saboteurs, slipping in quietly by rowboat? At night? Under fog? Having appropriate detection and response measures in place for small incursions under poor visibility conditions is essential. And that’s in the real world. In a fantasy world, you have an additional threat to contend with: creatures native to the sea, such as sahuagin and merrows. They’ll laugh at a defensive chain the way you’d laugh at a length of string at ankle level, and what would be a hidden hazard to a ship’s crew is just a landmark to them. Surface combat is a two-dimensional affair, but the underwater world is three-dimensional. Dealing with swimming creatures is much like dealing with flying creatures: Any linear barrier you put in place, they can go over or under at will. The only answer to them is a combination of early detection and swift, aggressive response. If you’re a plodding, landbound humanoid, that almost certainly means depending at least in part on magic. Concealment is always beneficial, but in a coastal lair, that has to be balanced against the probable reason why you built a coastal lair in the first place: the need to travel by sea. How do you hide, camouflage, or disguise your comings and goings? Now those wide-open sight lines are working against you—but fog works in your favor, as does the ability to dive. In other words, when you’re trying to keep anyone from knowing you’re there or learning what you’re up to, all the former pluses of coastal lair defense become minuses, and all the minuses become pluses—if you can take advantage of them. FOREST Historically, authority has claimed open land, while forests have been the home of resisters and the marginalized. There’s a reason why Robin Hood, upon being outlawed, sought refuge with his band of followers in Sherwood Forest. Trees and foliage impede visibility, as do the mists that gather in moist, shaded air. Uneven, overgrown terrain impedes mobility, channeling those passing through onto narrow beaten paths. Sounds are at once muffled, drowned out by birdsong, and reflected unpredictably off countless surfaces. However, in fantasy settings, forests are home to well-established societies of their own—most notably elves and their fey cousins, but also lycanthropes,
goblinoids, and smaller tribes of orcs and gnolls. Tropical and subtropical forests harbor grungs, lizardfolk, and serpentfolk. Among these peoples, the order is reversed: They claim dominion over the forests where they dwell, and their outcasts must seek refuge on the outside. A conventional fighting force of any size is at a significant disadvantage in a forested area; the larger and older the forest, the greater the disadvantage. Forests are the domain of ambushers, guerrillas, hidden scouts, and small units of special forces. Because of this, the guardians of forest societies defend their homes using strategies and tactics more commonly associated with irregulars. Make no mistake, however: They’re still as highly trained and organized as any regular army. A staple strategy in forest fighting is to block paths with abatis (felled trees laid facing the opponent, with their limbs sharpened to points) or fences of intertwined (“pleached” or “plashed”) branches, halting invaders’ progress. Hidden defenders then appear suddenly from behind surrounding trees and let loose a volley of arrows and thrown weapons. When the enemy collects its wits and begins to fight back, the defenders melt away into the woods, presenting another dilemma: whether or not to break formation in order to pursue. Frustratingly for the would-be attackers, this stunt can be pulled again farther down the road, and then again, and again, and there simply isn’t any good way to respond. Not only is it effective at reducing the enemy’s strength, it’s also murder on morale. This kind of deep environmental defense is necessary, because forests tend not to be rich in accessible building materials other than wood. Potential invasions need to be detected, deterred, and responded to decisively long before they reach the location of the assets being protected. Otherwise, the last stand will be short and sad—especially if the invaders burn their way in. Far better to force them to give up and go home while they’re still far from their objective. Even in an ordinary forest, for those who don’t know the terrain, it’s easy to lose one’s sense of direction. Elves and fey, however, have associations with magic, which can add extra levels of disorientation by distorting time and distance and producing terrifying noises to frighten invaders—as well as provide early warning of incursions, shape the landscape to present obstacles, lure
invaders off task with enticing charms, and turn the beasts, birds, and even trees of the forest into sentries. DESERT The No. 1 challenge of establishing a desert lair is the No. 1 challenge of desert life in general: access to water. All desert settlements, regardless of size, are built next to or around a dependable water source, and the scarcity of arable land in arid terrain means that food is often grown inside, rather than outside, a fortification’s walls. Another challenge is that desert landscapes generally offer few terrain obstacles other than shifting sands. Rivers are few and usually easy to cross; there are no forests to obstruct visibility or channel enemy movements. Unless you can find a nice plateau to build on in a desert that’s more rock than sand, or a major watercourse to set up alongside, you have to anticipate that an attack could come from any direction. Partly for this reason, citadels with hexagonal and octagonal outer walls appeared in Southwest Asia two centuries before they became common in Europe: More obtuse angles mean fewer blind spots. Because desert spaces are so wide open, the more mobile side has a significant advantage—which means a key element of desert lair defense, which elsewhere might be more of a static affair, is being able to reposition your defenders smoothly and rapidly, both around your lair and inside it. (Historically, light cavalry—specifically, mounted archers on swift riding horses—proved to be a powerful asset in desert defense, defeated only by longer-range crossbows and heavier cavalry.) The converse of this fact is that if the defenders are routed, unless they can outrun their attackers, fleeing is pointless: There won’t be any safe place they can get to before they’re run down and annihilated. Consequently, they’re more likely to fight to the bitter end. Wood is scarce in desert areas, but where there’s water, there’s clay soil that can be used to make adobe brick for walls and tiles for flooring and roofing. Depending on the type of desert, stone may also be abundant enough to build fortification walls out of, but other buildings will still generally be made out of brick. Walls are built extra thick, not just for durability but also as insulation
from extreme desert temperatures, which can be as cold at night as they are hot during the day. SWAMP Building a lair in a swamp has both significant pros and significant cons. Swampland being among the most difficult of difficult terrains, the location itself is a substantial deterrent: Would-be invaders will be so slowed in their approach that even a small defensive force can inflict significant losses upon them, and retreating is every bit as difficult as advancing. Also, food is abundant, unlike in arctic and desert terrain. On the other hand, if you’re not native to the area, you’ll probably dislike the humidity (which among other things means you can’t store that abundant food for very long), not to mention the disease-carrying insect life. You may also find it hard to recruit a large guard force if you’re not enlisting swamp folk. The “castle in a swamp” gag from Monty Python and the Holy Grail notwithstanding, not only is it feasible to build a fortification in a swamp, marsh castles were numerous throughout the Middle Ages, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. The trick to constructing a swamp lair is to either build it on an already existing island or dredge together a sufficiently large motte to build on; to drive deep foundation piles for support; and not to build too heavy or too high. Workable stone generally isn’t abundant in swampy areas, and transporting it from elsewhere would be a nightmare, but brick is easy to make from clay-rich swamp soil—if you have the means to dry it out, which is a big if. If not, you’ll most likely be building with wood, with a palisade wall making up the outer envelope of your construction. Humans who settle in marshlands (or are hiding out there) and who have access to a variety of materials will build stone foundations on wooden piles, with brick on top of that and wood the rest of the way up, but peoples native to swamps, such as lizardfolk and bullywugs, will generally use only wood. MOUNTAIN
There are mountains, and there are mountains. Mount Marcy, the highest mountain in New York’s Adirondacks, rises to a height of 5,344 feet, which just barely qualifies it as a medium-size mountain. Meanwhile, Estes Park, Colorado, the nearest incorporated town to Rocky Mountain National Park, sits at 7,522 feet—more than two thousand feet higher than the peak of Mount Marcy—and every mountain trail in the park begins at an even higher elevation. The twenty- five highest mountains in the Colorado Rockies all reach above 14,000 feet. Yet these alps are dwarfed by Earth’s highest peak, Mount Everest, which rises to a staggering 29,032 feet—meaning the upper two-thirds of it are hostile to human existence. When ascending a low mountain—one that rises less than 5,000 feet above sea level—all you need to concern yourself with is finding a safe path up. On medium-size mountains, however, you begin to confront the effects of high altitude, specifically lower atmospheric pressure and less oxygen in the air. The difference is significant enough that humans native to the upper end of this range, from 8,000 to 10,000 feet, have had to adapt physiologically to supply themselves with enough oxygen to survive, becoming more squat and heavyset, with enlarged chest cavities and shorter limbs. (Who’d have thought it—there’s actually a good reason for dwarves to look like that.) High mountain elevations are in another league altogether. If you’re on the march, you’ll tire faster: A day’s travel below 10,000 feet is 8 hours, but between 10,000 and 13,000 feet, it’s 6 hours; between 13,000 and 16,000 feet, it’s 4 hours. (The Dungeon Master’s Guide makes a nod to this fact in chapter 5, “High Altitude,” treating all travel days at elevations between 10,000 and 20,000 feet as 4-hour days.) In addition to thin air, hazards include intense solar rays, extreme cold, deep snow, fast-changing weather, reduced visibility from storms and blizzards when the wind is strong and thick fog when it’s not, and avalanches and rockslides. Push yourself too hard, sweat too heavily, and you court not merely exhaustion but also hypothermia and frostbite. Spending too long at these very high altitudes can even induce personality disorders. And yet it is possible to adapt, by spending a few weeks around 10,000 feet and making regular treks to higher elevations and back.
Past 18,000 feet, forget it. There’s no way for a human being to acclimate to this altitude. At these heights, you’re courting death with every step. For these reasons, a monster—most likely one that can fly—might choose to establish a lair above 10,000 feet, but except for aarakocra and goliaths, humanoids won’t. Even medium-size mountains are so inhospitable that only smugglers, bandits, and rebels seek refuge there. The environment is a more dangerous enemy than whoever’s after you. That being said, orcs won’t care about the dangers, and more war-weary ones might think highly of the idea of settling where other folk won’t come and hassle them. Regardless of elevation, if you’re choosing to make your redoubt in the mountains—and you’re not a natural predator native to that milieu—you need to control the supply routes and trailheads that lead to it, as well as anyplace along the way where enemies might make camp. If you employ defenders, choose highly mobile, lightly armored scouts and skirmishers, armed with melee weapons, ranged weapons, and ranged spells or area-effect abilities; they’ll also need proficiency in Survival to recognize changing weather. Guards accustomed to harsh and capricious mountain conditions will take fighting in them for granted, giving them an edge over attackers who are unused to it. Run multiple reconnaissance and security patrols, and make them as large as you can manage. Stage raids to capture foes or their gear, lay traps, and wear them down. Pursuit through mountains is seldom feasible, so there’s no good reason to fight to the death, especially since you almost certainly know the terrain better than your attackers. In a mountain lair, rather than concentrate your forces in your lair proper, it’s often wiser to establish observation posts and other defensive positions at different elevations along the way. Mind you, while this is the smart strategy, it’s also hard. Building and maintaining these posts demands a lot of resources, and they run out quickly, but you still need to keep them stocked with enough food, water, timber, and so forth to sustain themselves, because you never know whether the weather will cooperate when you need more. Your sentries will need hot, hearty meals, and they’d have their hands full and then some trying to both defend and forage at high altitude, so food and water will often have to be supplied from villages below. (By far, the best way to transport such supplies is
by mule. They’re strong, sure-footed, and indefatigable, although they balk at deep snow, and mountain trails can get buried if they’re not cleared regularly. Mules’ altitude tolerance, like that of humans, tops out around 10,000 feet.) Stone is an abundant resource in the mountains; so is wood, as long as you’re below the timberline. Alternatively, rather than build a lair on a mountain, you can build your lair into a mountain, starting from an already existing cave and digging corridors, multilevel galleries and halls, passageways to observation posts and concealed battlements, storerooms, and other useful chambers. You can seal the entrance off easily with as large a stone as you or your minions are capable of moving. However, this sort of construction requires a colossal amount of labor, not to mention deep knowledge of mining. At the technology level of most D&D settings, dwarves and kobolds are probably the only humanoids that wouldn’t consider this cost to outweigh the benefits. Other folks are better off using a natural cave as is. All mountain terrain, except gentle ascents on well-maintained trails, is difficult terrain. Also, the distance between any two points in the mountains is about 10 percent greater than what your map suggests it ought to be—and that’s if you stick to the trails. ARCTIC Arctic terrain is a brutal place not just to try to assault a lair but to establish one in the first place. Since trees don’t grow in the tundra, let alone in polar ice, there’s no wood to build with; stone is often buried beneath permafrost, which is an iffy foundation for building anything large upon because of frost heave. The most widely available building materials are ice and peat. If you can get wood shipped up from a warmer location, you can mitigate the frost heave problem somewhat by building on piles driven deep into the ground, as you might in a swamp—but you’ll be driving them down through ground that’s frozen solid most or all of the time. The amount of work involved, for a building of any scale, is mind-boggling. And if it gets too warm and the permafrost melts, those pilings may start to rot. When you’re building on frozen ground, you need that ground to stay frozen.
Chances are, then, that if you’re establishing an arctic lair, you’re not building, you’re burrowing—most likely, into a glacier. Either that, or you’re operating on a very small scale. No fifty-warrior guard force for you, unless you’re all frost giants. The number of followers you can attract is limited as well by how much food is available for you and them. Arctic-dwelling peoples are traditionally nomadic: They go where the game goes. However, if you’re already adapted to the cold and have some means of building shelter and feeding yourself and your hangers-on, you do have a lot of factors working in your favor defensively. As in desert, swamp, and mountain terrain, the environment is the enemy of travelers, and your enemy’s enemy is your friend. Noise carries farther in cold air, as temperature inversions keep sound waves from propagating off into the sky, where no one can hear them, and bounce them back toward the ground; this phenomenon allows you to hear someone coming from thousands of yards off. While creatures that have evolved to live in arctic conditions frequently enjoy natural camouflage in the form of white feathers or fur, darkly dressed interlopers stand out against the snow. Blizzards and blowing snow obscure friend and foe alike, but you’ll have the advantage of early detection if you possess a keen sense of hearing or smell. Also, as featureless as it may look, arctic terrain is usually difficult terrain. Moving overland across deep snow or slick ice is punishingly hard work. Skis or snowshoes can help on snow, but only if you master the basic techniques, and which of the two to use is a function of the depth and density of the snow and the hilliness or flatness of the land. Plus, what makes movement easier on snow won’t help much on ice, and vice versa. As for bare tundra, it may be easier going in the winter, but during spring thaws and autumn rains, it turns to mud. Whether you can survive if you flee your lair depends on your ability to preserve body heat and find nourishment. If you can do both of those things on your own, through either natural adaptation or learned skill, ditching your lair to save your hide makes sense. If instead you’re wholly dependent on your lair for warmth, food, or both, fleeing into the frigid waste is a death sentence; you may as well make a final stand and hope to prevail. UNDERGROUND
Caves form by many different geological processes, but when we imagine a subterranean realm inhabited by entire civilizations as well as ecosystems of both ordinary critters and fantastic monsters, the images that come to mind are generally either solution caves, which form in sedimentary rock when it’s dissolved by eons of mildly acidic groundwater flow, or lava caves, tubes of igneous rock that form after volcanic eruptions when lava that’s exposed to the air cools and hardens faster than the still-flowing lava beneath it. I Large cave systems are most often solution caves. But while solution caves, unmodified, may be okay as short-term hideouts, they’re not necessarily a good starting point for underground strongholds. Look at a map of a large cave system, and it more closely resembles the pattern of cracks on a piece of glazed pottery than it does an organized underground habitation. Rooms, or clusters of rooms, large enough to establish a settlement in are scarce, and there’s constant dampness and threat of flooding, because the hydrology that created the cave system in the first place never shuts off. Unintelligent creatures, less discerning ones such as kobolds or troglodytes, or weird folk such as myconids might not consider these issues to be deal-breakers, but more sophisticated humanoids won’t tolerate them. Also, some caves, because of surrounding geology or microbial life, harbor pockets of toxic or flammable gas or chemical processes that consume the available oxygen, replacing it with carbon dioxide—or carbon monoxide. Therefore, if you’re going to try to turn a cave network into a dwarven citadel or a drow compound or whatever, you need three things: extensive mining, drainage, and ventilation. Those big, irregular cave rooms are going to be heavily modified, with lots of interior construction, probably rectilinear, and leveling of ground into stepped terraces. Smaller cave rooms will be dug out into more regular shapes, narrow passageways will be widened, and new rooms will be dug off those passageways, with many pillars to keep the ceiling from falling in. In room-and-pillar mining, cascade collapses can occur if the width-to-height ratio of the supporting pillars is too low. That ratio is a function of the type of rock being dug out and the “extraction ratio,” or the amount that ain’t there anymore divided by the sum of what ain’t and what still is. In metal mining, for instance, if you want to create a room with a 10-foot ceiling, your pillars need to
be at least 10 feet wide. In a gem or crystal mine, they need to be at least 20 feet wide. In a coal mine, they need to be 30 feet wide. And because collapses most often occur when the extraction ratio exceeds 60 percent—and geometry is a harsh mistress—those pillars must in fact be wider than the passages between them. A 60 percent extraction ratio means 40 percent unextracted volume, and a square pillar that occupies 40 percent of a larger square area is 63 percent of the larger square’s length and width. That being said, limestone is fairly strong, and even in the real world, you can sometimes get away with pillars as narrow as 55 percent of the ceiling height and extraction ratios of up to 90 percent, meaning pillars just 30 percent of the length and width of the square that contains them. However, this can only occur when all the stars align: You’re not digging too deep, so the overburden of the rock above isn’t too great; the surrounding rock is solid and stable; and there’s no risk of an earthquake. It’s best, therefore, to keep any new underground rooms you dig fairly small and unimpressive if you don’t want them to cave in. Where your ceiling is 10 feet high, for instance, don’t dig wider than 7 feet—or, if you prefer, dig 17 feet wide, but leave a row of 3-foot pillars down the middle, spaced 7 feet apart. Limestone is hard, but dwarves and drow are canonically very long-lived, so they have the luxury of being able to take their time and dig fairly extensive room networks, with pillars either left in place or added in after the fact as needed, through skillful stonemasonry. Those grand, high-ceilinged halls, like the Halls of Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring? Chances are, the dwarves who built those started at the top and dug down—either to mine out valuable ore, to get at valuable ore they thought might be farther below, or to quarry stone to use as building material someplace else. The “higher” the ceiling, the longer they’ve been digging downward. Such rooms will certainly have entryways near the ceiling that either are no longer in use or are now reached by stairs carved into the walls beneath them. (In addition to proficiency in mining, advanced underground-dwelling folks probably have some fairly advanced understanding of alchemy, which would allow them to use acid solution mining to widen cracks.)
What about shorter-lived folks, though? They’ll need something softer to dig through. An incredible real-world example exists in the underground cities of the Cappadocia region in modern Turkey, which were dug through volcanic tuff during the early Middle Ages. Many levels deep, these delvings not only included ventilation (shafts passing through multiple levels reach all the way up to the surface above) and drinking water (other shafts, also passing through multiple levels, reach down to the water table below) but storage for wine and grain and, near the surface, stabling for animals! The largest of these cities, at Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı, were large enough to house up to twenty thousand inhabitants, who used these subterranean shelters to hide from invaders during the ArabByzantine wars. Of course, the medieval Cappadocians didn’t grow grain or wine underground; they brought these down from the surface. Any undergrounddwelling folk needs surface access to produce the kind of diet we’re accustomed to. If your dwarves have a taste for ale and mutton, they need to either grow the barley and hops and raise the sheep themselves, on the sunny slopes of their mountainsides, or trade for them. Otherwise, they need a drastically different cuisine, consisting mainly of fungi, crustaceans, and edible insects—and room to farm these foodstuffs underground. Lava caves are drier than solution caves, but they’re generally long and narrow, with few or no branches. Most underground cities developed in and around a lava cave will resemble lengthy hotel hallways, with lava tubes as central thoroughfares connecting many small, hand-dug rooms arranged alongside them. There are a few exceptions, though, such as Kazumura Cave in Hawai’i, a crisscrossing of several lava tubes intentionally connected by cavers. The chief advantage of an underground lair is that it’s nigh impossible to find an alternative way in that its inhabitants don’t already know about. Every side of the envelope is blocked by billions of tons of solid rock. Tunnels are easy to monitor and even easier to block off. (The Cappadocians used half-ton rolling doors of solid stone.) Would-be invaders are in enfilade every step of the way. But maybe you’re not looking to go all the way underground. Maybe you’re content with a cave that’s relatively close to the surface. In that case, your needs might be met by a sea cave, created by waves smashing relentlessly against rock,
or an eolian cave, eroded not by water but by abrasive particles carried on the wind. A red dragon looking for a nice mountain cave dwelling will probably have to settle for a lava cave, since most other processes of cave formation don’t operate at mountain altitudes. (There are talus caves—the leftover spaces in piles of tumbling boulders—but to a dragon, those would probably be the equivalent of a tin-roofed shanty.) UNDERWATER The rules for underwater combat dictate the choice of weaponry of marine humanoids: Crossbows and thrown tridents, spears, javelins, and darts are suitable for ranged combat, but they’re only good out to their normal range. Nets suffer the same ridiculous drawbacks underwater as they do on land (they’re largely ineffective without the help of an ally, it’s impossible to gain advantage on a net attack, and they’re much too easy to get out of) with one more besides: They miss automatically at a range of greater than 5 feet. However, creatures with a swimming speed can use any melee weapon they please, and they suffer no speed penalty underwater, as creatures without a swimming speed do. They can therefore pull off some unfairly clever maneuvers using long weapons without ever entering their opponents’ reach. What can you build an underwater lair out of? Would you believe… concrete? Stone may be as plentiful underwater as on land, but good luck trying to move it. There are no trees to harvest for wood, and baking bricks is out of the question. But all the ingredients you need in order to make concrete are there; in fact, living corals use the same substances to form entire reefs. That being said, without the aid of magic, it may take more time than you have available—a lot more. With the aid of magic, though, it’s a piece of cake. The spells fabricate, stone shape, transmute rock, and move earth suggest that some customized transmutation magic in the 4th- through 6th-level range should do the trick. Where do you intend to build your underwater lair? This question is surprisingly troublesome. The Monster Manual’s descriptions of legendary undersea monsters such as the aboleth and the kraken refer to their living in the depths of the ocean, but the oceans of our world are insanely deep—about 13,000 feet deep on average, and 24,000 to 36,000 feet deep at their lowest
points. There’s no light and almost no oxygen down there, and the water above exerts more than four hundred atmospheres’ worth of pressure. PCs who want an experience that alien are better off casting plane shift than trying to penetrate the lower pelagic layers. The beds of deep seas, such as the Arctic, Mediterranean, South China, and Caribbean seas, the Sea of Japan, and the Gulf of Mexico, are likewise prohibitively difficult for land dwellers to reach, ranging from about 4,500 feet to 7,000 feet or more on average. These depths are far, far beyond those that even determined swimmers can reach without causing themselves serious harm. We’re going to have to interpret “depths of the ocean” somewhat loosely if we want our lairs to be accessible by adventurers. Plus, most fantasy settings offer nothing in the way of diving gear. Diving without equipment is no small undertaking, and even if you presuppose that a magic item such as the cloak of the manta ray or a spell such as water breathing provides not just the power of underwater respiration but also protection from the effects of hydrostatic pressure, bad things can still happen if that magic is dispelled. If you’ve ever swum to the bottom of the deep end of the pool, you may have been struck by the amount of pressure you feel at just 12 feet of depth. Most swimmers never dive below 20 feet without equipment, and even experienced freedivers rarely venture deeper than 30 or 40 feet, where the ambient pressure is double what it is on the surface. At this depth, the additional pressure can rupture an eardrum or cause blood vessels in the lungs to burst; at 60 feet, where the pressure is triple what it is on the surface, the risk of such injury increases significantly. Trained freedivers use special breathing and “clearing” techniques to prevent these injuries from occurring. Sixty feet is considered the limit for safe diving without SCUBA gear. Beyond that, water pressure starts to affect not only the ears and lungs but also brain function. Nitrogen narcosis, while much less unpleasant than coughing up blood, presents with an even more dangerous symptom: a feeling of serenity and false confidence, which arises at depths below 100 feet. It’s dangerous because a typical swimmer already experiences minor impairments in judgment and motor function between 60 and 100 feet, and these only get worse the farther down
they go. Nitrogen narcosis is a particular risk for SCUBA divers breathing pressurized air, but it affects freedivers as well, especially at lower depths. Beyond 100 feet of depth, as if under the influence of alcohol, divers experience slower reaction times, worse risk assessment and decision making, and a tendency to burst out laughing. At a depth of 150 feet, anxiety starts to kick in, especially in water that’s cold and dark. Around 175 to 200 feet, divers start to experience sleepiness, dizziness, confusion, even hallucinations; reaction delays become severe, and the sense of anxiety may intensify to terror. Between 250 and 300 feet, it becomes hard to concentrate, to remember things, and to react to stimuli at all. Past 300 feet, divers may hallucinate, experience mood swings, lose their sense of time, or simply black out. Fortunately, the effects of nitrogen narcosis clear up as divers rise back toward the surface. Unfortunately, returning to the surface too fast can result in another unhappy condition: decompression sickness, also known as “the bends.” The most common symptom is intense joint pain, but other symptoms may include dizziness, shortness of breath, deep fatigue, nausea, paralysis of the legs, visual phenomena, and even seizures. These symptoms may occur at the time of ascent, but it can also take them an hour or more to occur; they mostly subside within one to three hours after onset and rarely linger more than a day, but they’re misery in the meantime. There are two key takeaways here: First, the effects of water pressure are a powerful counter against land-dwelling enemies, almost as powerful as the threat of drowning. Second, an underwater lair at a depth of more than 300 feet is effectively unreachable by land dwellers without the aid of magic, and if that magic is lost for any reason at all, they’re done for. You could site a lair at a greater depth, but your PCs would most likely never venture there and certainly shouldn’t try. Any attempt to do so would risk a very stupid and narratively unsatisfying demise. Therefore, if you want to build an adventure around an underwater lair constructed on the seafloor, it more or less has to be situated on a continental shelf: an area of relatively shallow water, usually less than a few hundred feet deep, surrounding land. Along some coastlines, the shelf is narrow or nearly nonexistent; along others, it extends for hundreds of miles beyond land. The
North Sea, Baltic Sea, Persian Gulf, Yellow Sea, Gulf of Thailand, Java Sea, Arafura Sea, Argentine Sea, and Gulf of St. Lawrence, along with Hudson Bay and the northern half of the Bering Sea, are all above continental shelves, so it’s entirely plausible for you to create places in your fantasy world where vast areas of water lie over seafloors just 300 feet deep, give or take. Now, if you loosen your definition of a “lair” to refer simply to an underwater region, as opposed to an underwater structure or formation, you don’t have to worry about how much water there is below it. You can also create a submarine palace, floating freely through Poseidon’s realm at whatever depth you please—it doesn’t even have to remain at a single depth, and can bob above and below 300 feet below sea level as your whims dictate. If you want your underwater lair to rest on solid ground, however, stick to the continental shelves. OceanofPDF.com
OPTIONALRULE: DIVETRAUMA The ability to breathe water, whether innate or granted by magic, confers immunity to dive trauma at depths of less than 600 feet. However, if this ability is lost while a creature is underwater, it must immediately make a series of Constitution saving throws as if it were descending from the surface to its current depth. Creatures sealed inside a pressurized conveyance, such as an apparatus of the crab, are also immune to dive trauma. Dive trauma doesn’t occur on the elemental plane of water: Because the plane consists of nothing but water extending infinitely in every direction, there’s no significant variation in pressure, because everyone and everything is effectively weightless. (Not massless, though; encumbrance still applies.) BAROTRAUMA When a creature that’s susceptible to dive trauma descends below 30 feet, it must make a DC 10 Constitution (Athletics) II check. On a failure, the creature takes one level of exhaustion. If the saving throw fails by 5 or more, the creature also suffers a perforated eardrum and has disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on hearing. The creature must repeat this saving throw when it descends below 60 feet. If it suffers a second perforated eardrum, the creature is deafened. A lesser restoration, prayer of healing, greater restoration, heal, or regeneration spell repairs the eardrum(s) and removes the deafened condition. NITROGEN NARCOSIS Nitrogen narcosis works similarly to exhaustion: It occurs in levels, with escalating severity. However, levels of nitrogen narcosis don’t require a rest, short or long, to reduce; they can be reduced simply by swimming back up to higher depths.
A creature that’s susceptible to dive trauma must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw when it descends below 100 feet and again every additional 50 feet beyond that. At 300 feet, the save DC increases to 15, and an additional saving throw must be made every 10 minutes. At 600 feet, the save DC increases to 20, and an additional save must be made every 1 minute. At 750 feet, the save DC increases to 25, and an additional save must be made at the beginning of every turn. Each failed saving throw adds one level of nitrogen narcosis. A creature suffers the effect of its current level of nitrogen narcosis as well as all lower levels. Level Effect 1 The creature takes one level of exhaustion. 2 The creature is frightened by the depths. If the saving throw fails by 5 or more, the creature has a panic attack, is incapacitated until its nitrogen narcosis level is reduced to 1 or eliminated, and cannot willingly descend any farther. 3 The creature behaves as if affected by a confusion spell, acting and moving normally on a roll of 7 or 8. 4 The creature must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw, as if to maintain concentration on a spell, at the start of its turn. On a failed saving throw, it doesn’t move, take actions, or perceive that any time has passed. On a successful save, it still behaves as above. 5 The creature falls unconscious. Whenever a creature suffering from nitrogen narcosis ascends above 300 feet, and again at each lesser depth at which it must make a saving throw, it can repeat the saving throw for that depth. On a success, one level of nitrogen narcosis goes away. When a creature’s last level of nitrogen narcosis is eliminated, one level of exhaustion also goes away without having to take a long rest. Levels of nitrogen narcosis go away automatically at a rate of one per minute of inactivity above 100 feet of depth. DECOMPRESSION SICKNESS Each turn, a creature underwater can safely ascend up to its swimming speed or half its walking speed, whichever is greater. If it ascends any faster, it must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw at the end of the turn. On its first failed saving throw, the creature is poisoned by decompression sickness for 1d4 hours. A second failed saving throw has no additional
effect. However, after three failed saves, the creature is stunned while poisoned in this way. A short rest reduces recovery time by 1 hour. I. It’s probably more correct to say that the images that come to mind are of soundstage sets constructed for movies and TV shows, meant to resemble those two types of caves. II. See Player’s Handbook, chapter 7, “Variant: Skills with Different Abilities.” OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER3 DEFENSIVE MAGIC By making the impossible possible, magic introduces all sorts of complications to the planning of a lair—adding many new options for defense, but wildly multiplying the number of ways one can be attacked. This phenomenon is one of many reasons why I personally prefer low-magic anchored fantasy settings to high-magic wild fantasy settings. When everyone gets their hands on magic, the whole schema of attack and defense is radically transformed, just as it was in the real world when people got their hands on gunpowder—only worse, because the range of applications of magic is wider than that of gunpowder. To me, the sweet spot is reached via the following premises: Magic exists, but… Magic is scarce. Magical practitioners are few—no more numerous than, say, people in contemporary society with PhDs. That works out to about two people out of a hundred, and it includes all spellcasters, both arcane and divine, of every level of accomplishment. Magic is expensive. Magic items are luxury goods; spells are premium services. Most magic items of any power are custom jobs. You won’t find a “magic shop” except in a city, or in a town with a community of wizards nearby—the fantasy equivalent of a college town—and its stock will consist only of material components and basic healing potions. In the biggest, richest cities, you can find shops selling other common magic
items. To acquire anything of uncommon or greater rarity, you’ve got to dig it up yourself, commission its creation, or know a guy who knows a guy. To have a spell cast for you, you have to hire someone to do it, and there’s no Yelp for spellcasters, only word of mouth. Even clerics, who are typically more generous than wizards about performing minor miracles, generally do so only for their own congregations unless you make them an offering they can’t refuse. On the flip side, if you happen into possession of a magic item you don’t want, you can command a high price for it. Magical practitioners are kept under close observation, both by governments and by their own organizations. You don’t want someone who can lob fireballs going rogue. Within these constraints, magic remains magical: something you don’t see every day, that isn’t oozing out of every crack in the woodwork. It’s not ubiquitous. It frequently comes as a surprise, even when you’re anticipating it. If you’re designing for a wild high fantasy setting instead, you’ll need to adjust accordingly, because threats are going to proliferate. For starters, governments and high-status individuals will spare no expense on protection against enchantment and surveillance magic. Every titled aristocrat and prosperous merchant in a high-magic D&D campaign will wear a ring of mind shielding and an amulet of proof against detection and location. A noble with a title equivalent to earl or count, or higher, and a fear of being kidnapped may also wear a ring of free action. A duke or royal will wear both a ring of mind shielding and an amulet of proof against detection and location, plus either a ring of spell turning or ascarab of protection. Even though these last two items are of legendary rarity, merely granting advantage on saving throws might rightly strike someone of such high status as providing insufficient protection. So let’s posit the existence of a talisman of inviolability, existing in various degrees of potency and rarity, that makes the wearer immune to all enchantment magic, mind-reading, and scrying up to a certain spell level: The uncommon talisman of inviolability is proof against 1stlevel spells, the rare talisman of greater inviolability against spells up to 3rd level,
the very rare talisman of superior inviolability against spells up to 6th level, and the legendary talisman of supreme inviolability against spells up to 8th level. Looking at the tiers of fifth edition D&D play, minor nobles and privileged gentry are unlikely to be threatened by anything worse than a 2nd-level spell, so a greater inviolability talisman should suffice for them; royalty and major nobility, who might be targeted by spells as powerful as 5th level, can make do with a superior inviolability talisman; and supreme inviolability talismans are made for the kind of people who aspire to take over the world, by the kind of people who merely aspire to work for them. These can take the place of the items mentioned in the previous paragraph. (See appendix A for complete item description.) Owners of castles will have to contend not only with battering rams and trebuchets but spells custom-made for siege. The ranges of fifth edition D&D spell attacks max out at 120 feet, but the Spell Sniper feat and Eldritch Spear warlock invocation increase this distance to an extent that makes them competitive with siege engines. What would it take to boost the range of a simple damaging evocation spell to, say, 300 feet? Comparing spells such as freezing sphere, ice storm, whirlwind, and insect plague to the suggested spell damage by level in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (chapter 9, “Creating a Spell”), it seems to be a simple matter of reducing damage by one die for instantaneous spells and two dice for spells that require concentration, or perhaps one die for elemental damage and two dice for mystical damage such as magical bludgeoning or piercing. Thus, we can easily imagine some wizardly Leonardo da Vinci devising a 6thlevel spell called hurlstone that deals 10d10 bludgeoning damage to a single target at a range of up to 300 feet, making it more powerful than a conventional trebuchet—or that deals only 8d10 damage on a hit but also deals half damage on a miss, making it equally powerful and more reliable. Either way, the spell could easily take a sizable chunk out of a stone curtain wall or crumple an iron portcullis like the front end of a Fiat. And that’s to say nothing of spells that allow attackers to charm or befuddle guards, deceive them with illusions, transmute a section of wall into mud, teleport shock troops past it, or simply fly over it.
Dialing the magic level back, we see that there remains a decent selection of effective but expensive warding magic in the pages of the Player’s Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything—if you can hack the spells’ duration, since very few of these spells last indefinitely. The Dungeon Master’s Guide has a solution for us here, too, although it’s a fiddlier one: We can follow the rules for crafting a magic item (chapter 6, “More Downtime Activities: Crafting a Magic Item”), using the Magic Item Power by Rarity table (chapter 9, “Creating a New Item”) to determine the base rarity of a spell we want to make permanent, then figure out how many times a day it needs to be cast for the benefits to be constant. The magic items in appendix A, which represent what I think are the most costeffective ways to gain the benefits of certain spells for your lair, are designed using these rules. Alternatively, depending on your budget and the cost of the spell, you may wish to employ a spellcaster as a full-time skilled hireling to cast the spell for you as often as needed. This kind of arrangement is a must for any spell that must be cast every day for a year to make it permanent—unless you know how to cast the spell yourself, which is always the cheapest way to go. (One implication of this last point is that such spells are employed much more often by spellcasters, and especially communities of spellcasters, than by individuals who have to hire others to cast spells for them.) All that being said, few creatures other than humanoids lean on spells or magic items for defense. Nonhumanoids typically rely instead on their own special features and traits, including heightened senses, camouflage, psionic abilities, natural weaponry, and—in the case of legendary creatures—legendary actions, lair actions, and lair and regional effects. Also, I would restrict only individuals to published spells. Long-established institutions, settlements, cities, or even realms with strong arcane or divine traditions may employ special permanent magical protections such as the ones placed on the scholars’ stronghold of Candlekeep, described in the D&D adventure anthology Candlekeep Mysteries. These can have a variety of effects, unbound by the limits of the spell descriptions in the Player’s Handbook and other supplements; presumably, these are the products of extremely carefully worded wish spells or other comparable magic. As a general rule, though, such
permanent wards should either be temporary (say, lasting up to 8 hours) and require intentional activation, or have loopholes that clever players can exploit. Spellcasting costs are based on D&D Adventurers’ League rules. Spells marked (X) appear in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. DETECTION SPELLS Alarm. A simple 1st-level spell, but one that needs to be cast three times a day to achieve constant coverage. Spend 500 gp on some trespasser’s bane (appendix A) if you want continuous protection. See invisibility. A 2nd-level spell that does what it says but lasts only one hour. Mounting alens of overwatch (appendix A) on your wall will grant you the benefits of this spell, but it will cost you 5,000 gp to have one made. For more limited personal protection, you can get a pair of lenses of revelation (appendix A) for 500 gp. Arcane eye. A 4th-level spell that creates a wee magical surveillance drone. Practical only on an as-needed basis, because it requires concentration and supersedes the caster’s own sight. Faithful hound. A 4th-level spell that, like alarm, lasts only 8 hours; it also ends when the caster moves more than 100 feet away from it, which makes it more suitable for overnight protection than for round-the-clock coverage. On the plus side, it doubles as a response spell. The going rate per casting is 160 gp; if you’ll need more than thirty nights’ worth of protection—or if you never leave your lair—you can drop 5,000 gp on Norton’s phantom sentry (appendix A). True seeing. A 6th-level spell that lasts only one hour. A gem of seeing (Dungeon Master’s Guide, chapter 7, “Magic Items A–Z”) is the easiest way to gain the benefit of this spell; you can have one made for 5,000 gp. DETERRENCE SPELLS Arcane lock. A 2nd-level spell that magically locks any door, window, gate, or chest, opening it only if someone speaks the password. Unfortunately vulnerable to another 2nd-level spell, knock, or the 3rd-level spell dispel magic.
On the upside, a single casting will cost you only 90 gp, and it lasts until it’s dispelled. Magic mouth. Sometimes all it takes to make a trespasser go away is to warn them that they’re someplace they don’t belong, and this 2nd-level spell does just that for you. For 60 gp, you get an enchantment that plays a recorded message on whatever condition you choose, unless and until someone shuts it up with dispel magic. One nice side effect is that it makes interlopers fret that they’re going to face worse magic the farther in they go. Arcanist’s magic aura. This 2nd-level spell has two main defensive functions: to disguise a magic item from one school of magic as being from a different school of magic (or not magical at all), and to disguise one type of creature as another type of creature. The first function can prevent a magic item from lighting up under a detect magic spell or deter trespassers from handling a magic item by making it appear to bear evocation or necromancy magic, which seem to make D&D players the most nervous. The second function, concealment of one’s nature, is especially useful for such monsters as vampires, liches, succubi and incubi, and rakshasas. It lasts only twenty-four hours, so for continuous coverage, you’ll need to spend 500 gp on a bottle of lacquer of dissimulation or aring of imposture (appendix A). Arcanist’s magic aura can also make a nonmagical item appear to be magical, although that’s generally less useful for defense and more useful for perpetrating fraud. Still, if you can’t afford higher-level magic, fraud can serve a defensive purpose: Slap this spell on an ordinary door or other random surface to make it emanate an aura of abjuration as a temporary deterrent. Dispel magic wipes it away, but you’ll make a trespasser squander precious time as they mull over whether to cast it or not, and then they’ll either balk or waste a valuable spell slot annulling a harmless bit of hocus-pocus. Major image. A 3rd-level spell that normally requires conscious control. It can be stored in a glyph of warding (see “Response Spells” below), but the illusion is centered on whoever triggers the glyph, and any physical interaction with it reveals it to be an illusion, so any illusion you create with it in this way must be one that immediately scares the target away from wherever they’re standing. That’s tricky to pull off, especially when you’re not there to customize
it with convincing details; plus, the glyph spell adds another 490 gp to the cost. Don’t bother. Instead, if you can afford it, get yourself a programmed illusion (see below). Alternatively, if you’re going to be expending a 6th-level slot—or paying for a 6th-level spell—anyway, a permanent major image is useful simply for hiding things in what would otherwise be plain sight, as long as no one’s going to be bumping into them. Nondetection. A 3rd-level spell that provides one target creature 8 hours’ worth of immunity to all divination magic, including clairvoyance and scrying. At least it doesn’t require concentration, but for continuous coverage, it has to be cast three times per day, sucking up three spell slots at a level that has lots of utility and self-defense spells competing for those slots. It also consumes 25 gp of diamond dust every time it’s cast. If you can’t cast it yourself and have to pay someone else to, it’s going to run you 420 gp per day. At that rate, if flying under the radar is important to you, you’d be a fool not to get yourself an amulet of proof against detection and location (Dungeon Master’s Guide, chapter 7, “Magic Items A–Z”) for a one-time outlay of 500 gp and an attunement slot. Private sanctum. A 4th-level spell (which can be cast using a higher-level slot for greater coverage) that prevents unwanted scrying and, more significantly, teleportation and planar travel. The area of effect is enough to cover a typical manor house, tower, or keep, though not enough to cover a large palace or an entire castle bailey. It’s a crucial defense in a high-magic campaign. One drawback is that it’s cube-shaped by default, which can result in coverage gaps if you’re using it to protect a non-cube-shaped area—although certain NPCs may plausibly have access to customized versions of the spell with differently shaped areas of effect. It also has to be cast every day for a year to become permanent, so it’s a costly proposition if you can’t cast it yourself or get a wizard to cast it for you at well below the market rate of 160 gp per casting. Hallow. Depending on the nature of the threats you face, it may be worth it to have part of your lair consecrated (or desecrated). This 5th-level invocation, the effects of which are permanent unless dispelled, will run you 2,250 gp. Forbiddance. Powerful, if limited in its application, this 6th-level spell requires—and rewards—close reading. It’s not for keeping out any old intruder, but specifically for keeping out supernatural intruders. A single casting lasts only
a day, but casting it for thirty consecutive days makes it permanent. Its material component is costly, but it’s not considered consumed until that thirtieth casting. Thus, the total cost to outsource the creation of a permanent forbiddance zone in your lair is 12,800 gp. That’s expensive, but if you have genuine reason to fear a large-scale supernatural incursion—or more than one— you’ll be thankful for the whopping damage it deals to designated foes who transgress. Guards and wards. This 6th-level spell is one of the best ways to place an assortment of permanent protective enchantments on your lair. It’s also one of the most expensive: Like private sanctum, it has to be cast every day for a year to stick, at a cost of 361 gp per casting. You need to be a bard or a wizard, or have one on your payroll, if you want to enjoy the benefits of this spell. Programmed illusion. A 6th-level spell that works like magic mouth but produces a convincing visual and auditory illusion across a large area of effect— large enough to contain the illusion of a Gargantuan monster. Sometimes, though, simpler illusions—such as having a door appear to open and a squad of guards pour through it, spears at the ready, or an area appear to fill up with yellow-green gas—are more effective at delaying or repelling intruders. The spell persists until it’s dispelled and will run you 362 gp per casting. Add another 760 gp, and you can put it in a 6th-level glyph of warding (see “Response Spells” below) so that it runs only when you need it. Mirage arcane. At first glance, this 7th-level spell looks like a good way to confuse and discourage enemies by making the landscape around your lair appear impassable—or by surrounding your lair with a bewildering number of identical copies, costing your enemies time by forcing them to figure out which one is the real one by process of elimination. Unfortunately, it lasts only ten days, which isn’t long enough to fool anyone who puts requisite effort into reconnaissance: A savvy foe will easily find out that those lava pits didn’t exist two weeks ago. You’d need to have sprung for a permanent illusion (using the custom magic item workaround) when you first established your lair, and while a few nabobs might have the money to do that (500,000 gp), nobody’s got the time (fifty-five years). Except elves. Elves would totally do it.
Simulacrum. A 7th-level spell that creates a double of you or another individual you want to protect—an excellent security solution if protecting one specific life is a top priority. Hiring a wizard to cast it for you will cost you 3,490 gp. Sequester. Because of the powdered gemstones required to cast it, this 7thlevel spell is a costly way to protect a single item of loot or lore, but it’s an effective one, placing it behind a veil of invisibility penetrable only by truesight; divination spells such as locate object skate right off it. The third-party casting cost is high: 10,490 gp. However, it lasts indefinitely, unless you set a timer on it. Temple of the gods. (X) For the rich and pious, this 7th-level spell offers several concrete benefits over a limited but respectable area (120 feet wide, deep, and high): It hinders celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead from entering, and if they do somehow get inside, it impedes everything they might try to do. It shields everyone within it from divination magic, and it boosts healing magic. It bars entry via the Ethereal Plane, its windows are unbreakable, and its doors are unopenable if you’re not on the List. However, it has two downsides: Making it permanent entails casting it in the same place every day for a year, at a daily casting cost of 490 gp if you aren’t casting it yourself; and the 6th-level spell disintegrate vaporizes it, flushing all the time, money, and effort you’ve expended on its creation down the drain. Antimagic field. There are two catches to this 8th-level spell. First, it nullifies all magic within its area of effect, including the enchantment of any magic items you may possess. (Magical thrown weapons or missiles are still good against targets outside the field.) Second, it can only be cast on oneself; you can’t cast it on an area, nor can you hire someone else to cast it on you. A spell that can only be cast by a spellcaster, who in so doing has to abstain from casting any other spell? It’s a conundrum, figuring out how to make that one work. One solution: Shell out 50,000 gp for a circlet of magic suppression (appendix A) and call on its power only in time of need. Antipathy/sympathy. The antipathy portion of this 8th-level spell is the obvious choice for deterrence, but the sympathy portion also has its uses— primarily luring its targets into traps or contained areas, away from the assets you want to protect. The trouble with the spell, aside from its level, is its
impermanence: It lasts only 10 days. If you’ve got good connections in the magic world, though, maybe you can get someone to craft you a beacon of attraction or atalisman of repulsion (appendix A)—but it will run you a steep 500,000 gp. Mighty fortress. This 8th-level spell doesn’t live up to its name. For adventurers, it’s a dandy combination of temporary strongpoint and hotel with all-you-can-eat buffet. For anyone looking for long-term protection, its seven-day duration, unalterable shape, and wall height of only 20 feet are less than optimal. To begin with, it’s easily defeated by the 3rd-level spell fly, which is a lot more widely available—and availed—than the 8th-level mighty fortress. For that matter, anyone with a warhorse can effortlessly clear a 20-foot-high, 1-foot-deep wall simply by casting jump on the horse, and that’s just 1st-level. The duration problem can be remedied by casting the spell fifty-two consecutive times, which is fine if you have fifty-two 500 gp diamonds in your possession and not fine at all if you don’t. If you have the 26,000 gp to cast it yourself, spend 15,000 gp and have a mundane fort or tower built to your specifications instead. If you can’t cast it yourself, but you have the 85,280 gp to pay someone else to do it for you, spend 50,000 gp and get yourself a nice little castle. RESPONSE SPELLS Glyph of warding. Technically, any spell can be a response spell if it punishes a trespasser for trespassing. Most such spells, however, require a spellcaster to be around to cast them. Glyph of warding, a boostable 3rd-level spell, allows another spell—such as many of those below—to be triggered by an intruder without the spellcaster’s having to be present, circumventing the duration problem. The only catch is that to set it up, you have to expend two spell slots at the level of the spell or higher: one to cast glyph of warding, the other to cast the spell into the glyph. Therefore, you probably won’t be storing your highest-level spells this way. You don’t have to store a spell in a glyph of warding, though. You can, instead, simply allow the glyph to explode, dealing your choice of elemental damage over the same area as a fireball spell, at about 80 percent of the efficacy. You can also specify the precise conditions under which the glyph will be
triggered, reducing the risk that you or one of your minions will set it off by accident. If you have to pay someone else to cast glyph of warding for you, it’s a minimum of 490 gp, plus the cost of any spell you elect to store in it; the expense means you’ll probably need to use it selectively. If you can afford only one glyph, set it between your enemies and whatever asset you most urgently need to protect—and make sure it’s not going to destroy the asset when it goes off. If you place a spell glyph that deals fire damage in your library of rare scrolls, the consequences are no one’s fault but your own. Incidentally, if you’re using explosive runes, strongly consider having them deal thunder damage. That way, your response spell also has a detection component: The sound of the explosion will be audible throughout your lair. (Next door and across the street, too, so you may prefer a different damage type in an urban lair.) Suggestion. This 2nd-level spell is a lovely little bijou to stick in a glyph of warding. A suggestion such as “Your attempted invasion is doomed to fail, so surrender if you want to be treated with mercy,” if it works, can throw a real wrench in your enemies’ plans, as they have to divert their attention from carrying out their mission to stopping the affected target from giving them away. You can also add a sleeper trigger—“Your attempted invasion is doomed to fail, so when you reach your objective, surrender immediately if you want to be treated with mercy”—so that your enemies proceed with their plan, but then your target screws everything up at the critical moment. Even better, your enemies will freak out when the glyph is triggered yet appears to have no immediate effect! Could anything you do to them be as much fun as watching them speculate on what you might have done to them? If you can’t cast the spells yourself, hiring an outside spellcaster to install this combo in your lair will run you just 530 gp. Treat yourself. Bestow curse. It’s a 3rd-level spell, but if you have the power (or the money), store it at 5th level, so that the effect lasts 8 hours rather than 1 minute. Forget the second and fourth curse options, since they depend on the caster’s being present. Wrecking their Dex checks is a nice way to undermine a foe’s ability to sneak around without being detected, but the Group Checks rule (Player’s
Handbook, chapter 7) reduces the impact of any single character’s blundering. The best choice is therefore requiring the target of the spell to make a Wisdom saving throw to do anything at all, making them a cinch to apprehend. It’s a total of 580 gp to pay a spellcaster to store bestow curse in a glyph of warding at 3rd level, 900 gp to store it at 5th level. Faithful hound. See “Detection Spells” above. Awaken. This 5th-level spell can turn beasts and plants into defenders of your lair and its environs. Sounds great, doesn’t it? The downside is the cost: Each casting consumes a 1,000 gp agate. If you don’t have either a staff of the woodlands or your own agate mine, that’s going to get old fast. It’s even worse if you need someone else to cast the spell for you: 2,250 gp per casting, plus additional fees for pampering the beast or plant so that it stays friendly to you for more than 30 days. Geas. A 5th-level spell that produces an extraordinarily powerful magical compulsion—and built-in punishment if the target tries to resist. Because of its 1-minute casting time, it’s virtually impossible to pull off geas against an enemy in combat, but put it in a glyph of warding, and it takes effect instantaneously! You can compel a trespasser who fails their Wisdom saving throw to transfer their loyalty to you, to surrender to your guards, to confess their entire plan, to walk out of your lair without looking back, or even to perform the final act that completes your diabolical master plan. Store it at 7th level, and you can make the effect last for up to a year rather than 30 days; store it at 9th level, and you can make it last indefinitely. To pay someone to set it up for you, the price is 900 gp for a 5th-level geas—some of the most bang for the buck you can get. Higherlevel geasa, which generally require the scribing of spell scrolls to store them in glyphs of warding, are 51,380 gp for 7th level and 502,020 gp for 9th level, an awful lot of bucks for the bang. Flesh to stone. Placing this 6th-level spell in a glyph of warding is delightfully underhanded (if you have the spell slots or can afford an extra 2,500 gp for a 6thlevel spell scroll to cast glyph from—5,000 gp if you’re having it made and cast for you), but success is far from guaranteed. Suppose the caster has a spell save DC of 16, and the target has a Constitution saving throw modifier of +1. The target has only a 36 percent chance of avoiding being petrified, and they’ll be at
least restrained 68 percent of the time after three rounds. However, suppose the target has a Con save modifier of +8. This target has an 85 percent chance of shaking off the spell, including a 65 percent chance of being entirely unaffected; they’ll be free after three rounds 75 percent of the time. Therefore, you’ll have to be able to muster some other response within two rounds of the spell’s triggering for it to have any significant value. It’s a lot of effort and money to spend on something that requires a backup as often as not, despite its high scare factor. Forbiddance. See “Deterrence Spells” above. If the 12,800 gp cost to have it made permanent is too rich for your blood, get it stored in a glyph of warding for 1,350 gp (the cost assumes a 7th-level glyph of warding to hold the 6th-level spell) and have it activate when one of your designated enemy types comes within a certain distance of it. Because the spell will be centered on the creature who sets it off, not on the glyph itself, the area of effect may not line up exactly with the boundaries of your lair, but unless your foes are attacking from multiple directions, they’ll all be smack in the middle of it. Watch them get fried. Mental prison. (X) Already nasty for a 6th-level spell—it deals respectable damage and restrains the target for 1 minute and targets Intelligence rather than one of the big three saving throw abilities—this spell is even nastier when stored in a glyph of warding, with the caveat that targets immune to being charmed get off scot-free. But if 1,250 gp (which includes a 7th-level glyph of warding) is well within your price range, maybe that’s a gamble you’re willing to take. Modify memory. Putting this 6th-level spell in a glyph of warding is a nice idea in theory, but for it to work, you’d have to be present to tell the target what they remembered, which would defeat the whole purpose of putting it in a glyph of warding. Pass. Forcecage. A glyph of warding containing this 7th-level spell has several significant benefits: It lasts an hour. It can trap several intruders at once, not just the one who triggers the glyph. There’s no saving throw against being trapped. It’s immune to dispel magic, and even getting out via misty step or dimension door is a gamble. For simply and effectively putting a stop to an invasion attempt, it’s hard to beat this combination of spells. However, if you don’t have a second 7th-level spell slot or an 8th-level slot to cast glyph of warding with, hiring someone else to set the glyph up for you will run you 1,680 gp.
Reverse gravity. This 7th-level spell has such a large area of effect—a cylinder 100 feet high and 100 feet across—that it needs a special area built around it, without any gap that would allow the effect to spill into adjoining space, to ensure that it affects intruders and only intruders. Also, paying someone to cast it into a glyph of warding for you will cost you 1,530 gp (positing an 8th-level glyph for the 7th-level spell). These requirements may make this combination impractical for your needs. That said, if you do decide to put reverse gravity in a glyph of warding, the ceiling over the area of effect should be as close to 100 feet high as possible without going over, so that foes who set it off take maximum damage, first when they fall up and again when they fall down. For extra-special Rube Goldberg shenanigans, put another glyph of warding on the ceiling and store web or black tentacles in it, so that targets who fail Dexterity saves get caught up there. Better yet, if you’re already spending a king’s ransom on magical defenses anyway, forcecage. Symbol. Storing this 7th-level spell in a glyph of warding would be redundant, since it functions substantially like glyph already. Instead of storing a spell or simply exploding, it has a variety of insensitive options, from putting its targets to sleep to inflicting a wave of necrotic damage. And yes, I said “targets”: Unlike glyph of warding, symbol affects not just the triggering creature but every other creature within 60 feet that isn’t blocked by a wall or some other form of total cover. Consequently, you need to be sure to place it where it won’t hurt you or any of your followers—you can specify that neither you nor your followers trigger it, but if someone else triggers it, it will still hurt you if you’re within range. For best results, choose one of the options that significantly disrupts your opponents’ ability to carry out their plans even if some of them succeed on their saving throws: Death, Discord, Fear, Hopelessness, Insanity, I Pain, or Stunning. Hiring someone to cast this spell will run you 2,490 gp, a bargain compared with some of the other 6th- and 7th-level options described above. Feeblemind. This 8th-level spell is brutal against Charisma casters: bards, paladins, sorcerers, and warlocks. It’s bad for wizards, too, but wizards have the best chance of resisting it, because it requires an Intelligence saving throw to
avoid its worst effects. Therefore, if you’re putting it in a glyph of warding— which will require casting glyph from a spell scroll, since you can’t have more than one 8th-level spell slot, period—try to set the glyph where it will attract the kinds of targets it hurts the most. The cost of hiring a caster to do it for you is 1,850 gp, two-thirds of which is for a 9th-level glyph to hold the 8th-level spell. Imprisonment. This 9th-level spell is the most nefarious possible response to an intrusion… so it’s probably a good thing for your enemies that imprisonment can’t be combined effectively with glyph of warding, period. Why on earth not? Because one of the components of the spell is a drawing or carving of the target, and another component varies in cost according to how many Hit Dice the target has. In other words, you can’t cast imprisonment on just anyone; you have to have a specific target in mind when you cast the spell. On top of which, storing a 9th-level spell in a glyph of warding requires either a second 9th-level slot (impossible without an epic boon of High Magic) or casting glyph from a spell scroll, which requires a titanic outlay of cost and time… but that’s all academic. We’re not incarcerating any unknown intruders in a Hedged Prison without doing the job ourselves, and that’s that. I. Treating insanity as an RPG mechanic is increasingly viewed as offensive. You may wish to recharacterize this option as “Delirium.” OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER4 HUMANOID (AND NONHUMANOID) RESOURCES Whether you take note of it or not, the area around your lair is full of life. If you’re based in a settled area, this life probably looks a lot like you. But even if your lair is situated far from humanoid habitation, there’s still an abundance of animal and plant life—and, possibly, monster life. Through awesome presence or the promise of a paycheck, you may be able to move some of these creatures to serve you. Even those whose loyalty you can’t command can still play a role in the defense of your lair, simply by being a danger to outsiders. Take a look at the terrain around your lair, as well as any regional effects your lair may have on it. Elements such as climate, altitude, visibility, verticality, and ruggedness will appeal to some creatures more than others. The traits in their stat blocks will give you an indication of whether they’re helped by a feature that hinders others. As an example, let’s look at the area around the lair of an adult or ancient white dragon. A couple of things leap out: First, white dragons dwell at high latitudes and/or altitudes, so adaptation to cold is helpful. Second, the presence of a white dragon’s lair causes fog to form in the area around it—but that’s not a problem for creatures that depend on hearing or smell rather than sight. Just these two pillars give us a solid foundation to build on:
White guard drakes have resistance to cold damage and proficiency in Perception, negating the fog penalty. Since guard drakes aren’t evolved creatures, but rather created deliberately through magical ritual, they won’t be found naturally in the wild, but the dragon might keep a few around in its lair as watchbeasts. Ice mephits would be drawn to the area around a white dragon’s lair and might even colonize the lair itself, like elemental cockroaches. They have proficiency in Perception and Stealth, and they’re immune to cold damage. Polar bears have Keen Smell and Perception proficiency. Need I say more? Winter wolves have both Perception and Stealth proficiency and Keen Hearing and Smell, plus Snow Camouflage, which gives them advantage on Stealth checks in snowy terrain and a decided edge over PCs. They’re also immune to cold damage. The region around a white dragon’s lair is a perfect winter wolf hunting ground; they’d naturally migrate to such an area. Yetis, like winter wolves, have Perception proficiency, Stealth proficiency, Keen Smell, and Snow Camouflage, and they’re immune to cold damage. Abominable yetis have all of that plus Cold Breath of their own. However, they may be a bit much to throw at your PCs when they’re off to fight a dragon, and a white dragon might well consider an abominable yeti an unwelcome rival that needs to be eliminated. Ordinary yetis, though, would probably be beneath the dragon’s notice. Barghests have resistance to cold damage, Stealth proficiency, and 60 feet of blindsight. Bheur hags are naturally drawn to the same climes as white dragons, they have Perception and Stealth proficiency, they’re immune to cold damage, and they share the Ice Walk feature. You don’t need to throw all these creatures into the mix. For one thing, predatory animals are territorial and don’t want competition. If winter wolves migrate into polar bears’ hunting grounds, or vice versa, the polar bears won’t stay around for long, because the stronger, social winter wolves will drive out the
solitary polar bears. A few bears may remain, but they’ll back down from the wolves. (You can create some interesting multilateral combat encounters this way —for instance, having an encounter with a single polar bear turn into an encounter with a pack of winter wolves, which initially are more interested in driving off the bear than in snacking on the PCs.) OceanofPDF.com
A secluded village of wary wood elves won’t have supernatural regional effects, but the elves’ presence will influence what creatures a trespasser in their woods might encounter. For starters, there’ll be few other humanoids: The territorial elves will have driven them off. They’ll also have banded together to hunt and kill any monster that might once have threatened their village. That doesn’t mean there’ll be no monsters or predatory beasts in their woods at all, only that such creatures won’t be so bold and ferocious as to pose a direct threat. Owlbears, for instance, will have been hunted to extinction in the area: They’re simply too deadly and destructive to put up with. Wood elves have an uncanny ability to blend in with natural surroundings that lightly obscure visibility, much like the fog around a white dragon’s lair. They’ll be drawn to areas with dense foliage, persistent mist, or frequent rain or snow—and so will other creatures with acute hearing and smell, or with blindsight. Beasts with keen nonvisual senses include badgers, bats, and owls, both ordinary and giant; wolves, both ordinary and dire; black and brown bears; and giant spiders. Possible monstrous denizens include catoblepes, leucrottas, shadow mastiffs, and werebears. Werewolves and wererats also fit the profile, but they and the wood elves would be implacable enemies, attacking one another on sight. Also, the sylvan elves share the woods with various fey creatures, both good-natured ones (such as blink dogs) and aggressive ones (such as yeth hounds). The elves are friendly with the former; they hunt down the latter whenever they can but may not be able to rid the woods of them entirely. While the forest terrain offers them a wide variety of advantages, the elves aren’t especially numerous, and they have a vast perimeter they need to patrol—one where conditions interfere with their ability to spot trespassers as much as with trespassers’ ability to spot them. However, they figured out the solution to this problem long ago: a tradition of echuided, or “rousing,” in which elf druids go forth into the woods and cast awaken on trees and beasts, then tend to them for thirty days, protecting them from harm and treating them with the utmost kindness, so that they
remain friendly once the charm wears off. Thus, the woods are full of awakened trees and intelligent animals conducting constant reconnaissance and security operations on the elves’ behalf. The trees, especially, provide invaluable assistance when it comes to keeping the werewolves at bay. OceanofPDF.com
Therefore, let’s say the region around the white dragon’s lair includes at least one roving pack of winter wolves, a band of yetis, and maybe a single bheur hag. Meanwhile, you can have malicious, opportunistic ice mephits show up on the fringe of any encounter—combat or otherwise—to add insult to injury. RECRUITING FOLLOWERS When we think of “followers,” we usually think of humanoids, or as they were referred to in the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, “henchmen and hirelings.” These are people who are either hired to defend your lair as armed guards or who volunteer to do so out of loyalty, inspired by the honor of serving you, the chance to learn from you, the prospect of raising their own status, or some similar reason. To make a deal like this requires a certain level of intelligence: A nonsentient creature can’t apply for such a job, although it can be trained to perform aspects of it. On the other hand, there are many intelligent creatures that make poor followers because they lack any interest in serving someone like you. Good luck hiring a squad of giants, for example, unless you yourself are a giant with higher status in the Ordning. Giants don’t care two whits about impressing anyone other than giants. Fiends can be bound to your service, but they’re always looking for an opening to turn the tables on you, and aberrations’ motivations are inscrutable. Ergo, for the most part, humanoids. When you hire followers, you’re taking on a lot of burdens. First, you have to pay them. Second, you have to equip them, unless you’re all right with having a guard force equipped with a hodgepodge of armor and weapons. I Third, if you don’t want to deal with the complication of their coming and going at the beginning and end of each duty shift—an extra layer of vulnerability to consider —you have to house them as well, and if you’re housing them, you have to feed them. Fourth, you have to keep them loyal: You don’t want turncoats in your operation. If you’ve ever thought twice about the level of responsibility involved in getting a puppy, you’d better think real hard about hiring your own private army. Still, maybe having a private army is central to your plans. Or maybe your activities, were they to become known, would engender such a backlash that
having a private army is a sensible, proportional precaution. If that’s so, then bite the bullet, build the barracks, hand out the hauberks and crossbows and pikes, and start heating up the stew. Discipline is essential to the effectiveness of a fighting force. I’m not talking about being a tyrannical martinet, although if that’s your style, you do you (looking at you, lawful evil!). I’m talking specifically about ensuring that your troops hear and understand the orders you give them and are willing and able to obey. In this sense, discipline is partly a function of loyalty and morale, but it’s just as much—if not more—a function of organization. A single leader, no matter how charismatic, can’t issue orders to more than about two hundred fifty followers at once and expect those orders to be followed faithfully. Larger numbers than that simply can’t hear you without some kind of vocal amplification (magical, probably, as with the thaumaturgy spell or the War Leader property of a special magic item). For this reason, historically, bands of mercenaries and other soldiers united by the charisma of a veteran leader topped out at this size. Larger armies have to be divided into companies, with orders handed down from generals to captains, who then pass them on to their own troops. For practical, division-of-labor reasons, even companies will be divided into smaller units, generally tens or twenties, led by sergeants (also called “vinetars,” although this name connotes a leader of exactly twenty warriors). In larger companies, intermediate units of thirty to fifty, led by lieutenants, are anachronistic but practical; we refer to such units today as platoons. When units of more than two hundred fifty but fewer than the whole force are required, companies may be joined together within battalions of up to one thousand soldiers, led by commandants (also called captains-major—majors, for short—or “millenaries,” if they command exactly one thousand). Armies bigger than a company, however, are possessed almost exclusively by kingdoms (which raise them only in times of war) or empires. For you to have this many soldiers in your employ would mean several things: First, you’d be poaching most or all of the available able-bodied fighters from the local authorities, which they might resent. Second, you’d be demanding your troops’ ongoing service without giving them the opportunity to pillage—a strong
motivating factor among soldiers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, many of whom were pulled from their everyday work to fight for their lieges and had only so much tolerance for it, feudalism or no. Third, luring that many people away from other jobs would have a noticeable effect on the local economy. “Sorry, no arrows for sale in Galdrith’s Run. Milo Fletcher said he had a new job and hasn’t been seen in town since. Try over in Wythorp.” “Oh, sorry, mate. No arrows in Wythorp…” Assume, therefore, that you’re hiring mercenaries, one company at a time, unless there’s some compelling reason why people should flock to your side for reasons other than material gain—or unless you are the local authority. However many people you command, remember that they have to eat and sleep. If you’re trying to establish round-the-clock protection, you’ll need some awake while the rest sleep, and vice versa; they’ll never all be alert and ready to fight at the same time. Only one-third to one-half of your total guard complement will be on duty at any given moment. Thus, if you hire Roderick’s Red Wolves, a company of two hundred mercenaries, to guard your lair, what you’ll most likely end up with is two groups of forty standing guard from dawn to noon, two standing guard from noon to dusk, and one standing guard overnight. (If you hire a second or third company to increase those numbers, what you’ll most likely end up with is a counterproductive rivalry.) Guards are useful by virtue of their sheer numbers, but you’ll also want followers with more particular skills. Those skills include the ones we associate with PC classes, but they aren’t limited to those. For instance, if you’re brewing poisons, you’re not going to hang out a shingle and sell them over the counter; you’ll need expert smugglers to get them into your customers’ hands. If your lair is overrun, they can use their skills to help get you out safely. If you like to live in comfort, a chamberlain can keep your household in order while you do whatever it is you do—as well as sound the alarm, activate traps, misdirect intruders, lock down restricted areas, burn incriminating papers, and help cover your escape. I’ve already mentioned spies. Savvy leadership includes compensating for your own weaknesses by recruiting followers that are strong where you’re weak. If you’re a glass-cannon spellcaster, for example, surround yourself with formidable brutes who can
stand between you and danger, plus marksmen and skirmishers who can harass the enemy’s own ranged attackers and spellslingers. If you’re a brute, on the other hand, you want a couple of wingmen, a whole lot of ranged backup, and at least one sharp-eyed controller (a cleric or bard, perhaps, or a monster with similar abilities) to notice and neutralize attempts to outflank you. But that’s if you’re a savvy boss. If you’re a stupid boss—one with both mediocre Intelligence and mediocre Wisdom—it will never occur to you that you have weaknesses, let alone that you need to compensate for them. Stupid bosses know only their own strengths, and consequently they surround themselves with minions who possess the same strengths—only to a lesser degree, because any minion who had those same strengths in the same degree would be a rival! I. If you do go hodgepodge, don’t assign every guard a separate Armor Class and damage die. Use averages for the sake of efficiency, then embellish your descriptions for the sake of flavor. OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER5 BUDGETING Now that you have a sense of the various things you need to do, it’s time to confront the problem of figuring out how many of those things you can afford to do. If you’re a creature or monster with no involvement in any kind of economic system, you’ll have to make do with what you’ve got, what you can find, what you can take, and what you can attract to you. You may be able to scrounge building materials, but you can’t buy them. You may be able to acquire labor by force, but you can’t hire it. You may even have minions that fight on your behalf, but your ability to choose those minions is limited. In other words, you’re limited primarily by your nature and your environment. If you do live within an economic system, you’re limited by your resources within that system: money, status, power, and trust. The more of each of these things you have, the more you can spend on defensive measures. The less of them you have, the more you have to cut corners, the more risks you have to take —and the more creative you have to be. A significant challenge in building a lair is that you frequently have to go it alone. One doesn’t typically build a lair on behalf of Church, Crown, or the Worshipful Company of Mercers. One builds a lair because one is doing things that those established authorities might well want to put a stop to. You’re probably not going to receive infusions of outside funding for this project. But how to put a number on exactly how much you can spend?
Let’s think about treasure hoards, as described by the random treasure tables in chapter 7 of the fifth edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, and posit that your hoard represents your entire accumulated wealth. Naturally, you don’t want to spend all that wealth on your lair. You want to have that wealth. Not only that, you’d like it to generate income for you, so that you can have more of it. If you do the math (and I did), at no tier is it possible to run a stronghold larger than a fortified tower on one-twentieth of the average treasure hoard per year, a reasonable rate of return on investment, and you have to have a challenge rating of 17 or greater to manage even that much. According to the Building a Stronghold and Maintenance Costs tables in chapter 6 of the DMG, to build and operate a stronghold, with paid guards and hirelings, you have to engage in income-producing activity. Fortunately, there’s a rule in the DMG for generating cash flow (chapter 6, “Running a Business”). Unfortunately, it’s broken. According to this rule, losses are proportional to maintenance cost, but profits are fixed sums—and paid out over any number of days the business-owning character chooses, which has a maximum of thirty but no minimum, so it could conceivably be daily. Calculated by the day, a business would earn an average of 14 gp minus 45 percent of daily maintenance cost, but calculated by the month, a business would earn an average of 14 gp minus 13.5 times daily maintenance cost. If you’re running, say, a shop, with a maintenance cost of 2 gp per day, that’s the difference between earning a little over 13 gp per day and losing 13 gp over the course of a month. Calculating monthly, there’s no way to turn a profit on any business with a total cost per day of more than 1 gp; calculating daily, the limit is 31 gp, which still isn’t enough to run an outpost or fort, let alone a castle of any size. Forget all that, then, and let’s roll with what feels right. TIER 1 The foes that D&D player characters confront at levels 1 through 4 engage in activities that are local in scale. At this tier of play, the largest lair you can establish is equivalent in size to an outpost or fort, which costs 15,000 gp to build. If you haven’t inherited a fortune from a late relative or struck it rich in
some other way, you’re going to have to scale your ambitions way back and make do with an armed camp, scrappy hideout, commandeered building, or occupied ruin, built with sweat equity. Anything you and your minions can’t do yourselves probably doesn’t get done. You can’t afford to hire trained warriors; any guards you have are loyal followers whom you’ll command personally. TIER 2 The foes that PCs confront at levels 5 through 10 engage in activities that impact whole regions. At this tier, you might be able to establish a lair equivalent in size to a small castle, with a guard complement numbering up to two hundred, divided into multiple units, and led by a sergeant or a captain (see appendix B). It’s plausible that you might be able to raise the 100 gp per day necessary to run it, but to do so will require a long reach. In essence, you have to make yourself a tax-collecting authority, extorting your operating cash from surrounding lands. Alternatively, you can establish a smaller-scale fortification and defend it using subtler methods than raw numbers. TIER 3 The foes that PCs confront at levels 11 through 16 engage in activities that can alter the courses of nations, or even the entire known world. At this tier, you can establish a large castle or complex lair with as many as two hundred to five hundred guards—a whole battalion, led by a commandant (see appendix B)— or a monstrous equivalent. Such a base will cost 400 gp per day to run. To keep it going, you’ll have to be an all-out robber baron—or be able to compel obedience by means other than a salary. And, again, sometimes a smaller footprint is better. TIER4 The foes that PCs confront at levels 17 through 20 possess cosmic powers, command legions of minions, and bend whole planes of existence to their wills. At this tier, you can establish a vast lair requiring days to infiltrate, with a guard complement numbering between five hundred and a thousand, and raise an
army of anywhere from twenty-five hundred troops to five thousand or more. At the head of these forces are a commandant in command of your guard battalion and a general (see appendix B) in command of your army, if you don’t lead it yourself. At this level, money ceases to be an issue, not because you have so much of it—you may not—but because you’re past caring about economic systems at all. Your status and power are so great that they alone procure you what you need. From this, I think we can establish a few rules of thumb. Let’s say the upper limit of what you can build, cost-wise, is set at 10 times the monetary value of your treasure hoard—if you exist within an economic system that allows you to leverage credit. Otherwise, it’s equal to your hoard’s value, on the premise that you wouldn’t have spent more than you could keep. Remember to account for any permanent enchantments or magic items and any traps, as well as any out-of-theordinary gear you supply your minions with. That stuff costs extra. All this being said, in many cases, it may be smarter not to build a base of operations but rather to take an already existing one by force (and, hopefully, defend it better than the previous owner did). This approach will grant you access to a lot more than you could afford to build on your own. The maximum number of guards you can employ is equal to your experience point value divided by 2.5. However, those guards aren’t all on duty at the same time; instead, they’re divided into multiple watches. Aboveground, in the diurnal world, these will generally be two day shifts and one all-night shift, with the assumption that anyone not on night shift but also not on active day watch had better be ready to step up at a moment’s notice in the event of an attack (flip day and night for nocturnal creatures with darkvision). Underground, among folks who don’t observe the day/night cycle, two or three equal shifts will be more typical. Thus, while you might command one hundred fifty guards in total, trespassers in your lair will never encounter more than one hundred
twenty of them, and they might encounter as few as thirty, depending on when they show up. The limit on how many minions you can attract to your service, including the region around your lair, is your XP value times 10. For instance, while a bugbear chief (700 XP) could theoretically have up to 280 followers behind it, it could command only thirty-five if all of them were bugbears (200 XP). Or, alternatively, it could command a mixed company made up of fifteen bugbears, forty goblins (50 XP), and twenty worgs (100 XP). Or twenty-three bugbears and forty-seven goblins. But again, remember that this is the total number of minions, not the number that are awake and alert at any given time. PCs should never have to encounter more than 80 percent of this number and will typically encounter far fewer even than that; the rest are sleeping or out hunting or conducting reconnaissance elsewhere. Built lairs have to be made from materials that one could reasonably obtain from surrounding lands, unless they’re significantly smaller than they need to be. Imported materials are expensive—about four times what they’d cost locally—if they can even be brought to you at all. If a PC wouldn’t be able to find more than one major magic item of a particular rarity in your hoard, you can’t have one as part of your lair. Thus, at tier 1, you’re limited to common and uncommon magic items; at tier 2, rare or less; at tier 3, very rare or less; and at tier 4, anything goes. This rule doesn’t mean you can’t carry an item of higher rarity, or that you can’t have it in your hoard. It just can’t be part of your lair, meaning something used specifically and exclusively in its defense. OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER6 BATTLESTRATEGY You have measures in place to detect and deter intruders. You’ve chosen a site for your lair and laid it out so as to provide the best possible protection for your assets. Your lair and the area around it are full of creatures—some loyal to you or in your employ, some there for reasons of their own—that anyone who poses a threat to your assets has to get past first. Now it’s time to come up with a plan. Having all the measures in place is good, but it’s not a plan. You need to make choices on behalf of yourself and the defenders you command—to decide how they’re going to respond once the anticipated threat comes to pass. This plan is the heart of the response component of your defense. Guards, in and of themselves, are not a response. Guards engaging with the enemy to stop an intrusion are a response. To recap: While attackers may get to choose the moment when hostilities begin, you, as the defender, have the advantages of knowing your territory intimately and being able to spend as much time as you like preparing for attack. Attackers generally get one chance to succeed in their objective, but every day your defenders hold their position, as long as they’re not shirking their duties, is a success—which furthermore lays groundwork for future success. The goal of defense is simple: to ensure that no attack succeeds. This goal can certainly be accomplished by slaughtering your foes, but that option is by no means the only one. In fact, if at all possible, you want to prevent attacks, not wait until they occur.