Door to the Vault

[Necrosnoop110]

3.5 D&D w/Houserules
12th Level Party (Psion, Cleric, Rogue, Warlock, Barbarian, Ranger)

I'm looking to make two huge double doors to protect a vault. The party wants in. I've handwaved the teleportation options saying that the vault's material is a magical ore that blocks those effects. Any ideas on making opening it an interesting challenge? Locks? Traps? Other ideas? 

Thanks,
Necro 

[sirpercival]

You didn't really need to handwave it, there's tons of stuff you could do to protect it from teleportation.  For example, place a Forbiddance on the inside, and coat the interior with a Wall of Force to prevent earthglide, passwall, and similar.

How hard do you want to make it to get in?

[Necrosnoop110]

You didn't really need to handwave it, there's tons of stuff you could do to protect it from teleportation.  For example, place a Forbiddance on the inside, and coat the interior with a Wall of Force to prevent earthglide, passwall, and similar.

Perfect 

How hard do you want to make it to get in?

Very hard.

[sirpercival]

OK, what's the setup around the door to the vault?

EDIT: Also, what level was the wizard/cleric who made this?

[Necrosnoop110]

OK, what's the setup around the door to the vault?

EDIT: Also, what level was the wizard/cleric who made this?

It is an underground tomb all made out of the same magical ore. So far I have had most environmental effects at about 12th-15th caster level with a few "artifact" level stuff at certain points. The tomb was created by a group of LG Paladins & Clerics to protect a whole bunch of evil magic items and creatures. After a few centuries the evil contained in the tomb crew too powerful and took over. The original idea of the tomb/vault was to keep the evil trapped within and to prevent anyone from freeing it. 

[Halinn]

A weirdstone (player's guide to faerûn) blocks astral and ethereal travel, divination (scrying) spells and conjuration (teleportation) spells, as well as any spell-like, supernatural or extraordinary abilities, psionic powers and pretty much anything else that mimics those effects. Normally it covers a 6 mile radius, but that's easily changed as the DM.

If the vault was made to be a permanent tomb for some ancient evil, why would it have a door?

Perhaps have some shaped, permanent antimagic walls inside the regular walls, to prevent travel through that.

[The_Laughing_Man]

Make the doors out of lead-coated riverine.
Fluff the underground to be lead-laced rock to prevent eartglide.
Make a maze/labyrinth to reach the vault.
Have false vaults as well for giggles.
Adamantine horrors for guardians.

[Necrosnoop110]

A weirdstone (player's guide to faerûn) blocks astral and ethereal travel, divination (scrying) spells and conjuration (teleportation) spells, as well as any spell-like, supernatural or extraordinary abilities, psionic powers and pretty much anything else that mimics those effects. Normally it covers a 6 mile radius, but that's easily changed as the DM.

If the vault was made to be a permanent tomb for some ancient evil, why would it have a door?

Perhaps have some shaped, permanent antimagic walls inside the regular walls, to prevent travel through that.

Thanks, never heard of the weirdstone.

The paladins and clerics needed the doors because in the campaign setting they gradually collected evil items and creatures over time and needed a way in and out. It wasn't a once and done deal.

Any suggestion on the doors specifically? I have the rest of the vault covered. 

[sirpercival]

I mean the really easy way to do it is to have a cleric with the Spell & Magic domains do the following:

1) Cast Arcane Lock on the door.
2) Cast from a scroll of Energy Transformation field, keyed to Flesh to Stone or some other nasty effect..  Make sure the field covers the lock.

That way you can't cast anything to remove the Arcane Lock.  Your only choice is to try and dispel the Field.

[Halinn]

The paladins and clerics needed the doors because in the campaign setting they gradually collected evil items and creatures over time and needed a way in and out. It wasn't a once and done deal.

Any suggestion on the doors specifically? I have the rest of the vault covered.

Improved Arcane Lock from Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. This means that more people than just the caster can be set to be able to pass through it, without significantly compromising the security it offers.

Have the door be built out of some very resistant materials, and have them be layered to protect against spells that would target one a single object. Defenses such as (Greater) Glyph of Warding, Alarm, and the various Symbol of X spells would likely have been used by the clerics you mentioned over time to layer defenses. I suggest mainly Glyphs of Warding with spells specifically only against the great evil, so as to not target the PC group overly much.

[Rejakor]

Yeah, a weirdstone, and shaped antimagic fields, with magical locks inside holes in the field (or cast by a sufficiently awesome/red wizard boosted Cleric of Mystra) is a pretty foolproof way to make something not easily accessible.  Riverine or Obdurium doors helps in that, too, especially with magic traps of Repair Object firing every turn to mean you have to shatter them all at once.  Putting an antimagic field over the door so you have to shatter it without buffs makes it even harder.  The walls of the place should all be like this, so you can't just dig your way in either.

They should also ideally be backed by permanent walls of force/cased in permanent walls of force, so people have to try to dispel a wall of force inside an antimagic field in order to get in.

Disintegrate will do it, though.

If you want to make disintegrate hard to do, have magic traps that every turn fire up dozens of 'wall of ice' or whatever in front of the real wall, so you can't easily disintegrate it from range, you have to enter the AMF to even be able to LoS the door.

[nijineko]

you can set a magical "trap" that triggers a repair object effect on the door anytime it is 'damaged' or 'attacked' with an automatic reset so that it self heals every round.

use the hardness spell to increase the hardness of the door.

make it immune to acid and sonic so that the hardness is very difficult to bypass.

if the complex was made by shifting the earth and stone to the ethereal, the shifted material becomes an ethereal solid automatically, blocking all ethereal travel for cheap. (doesn't stop digging, however, so the weirdstone is still a good idea.)

could put spell turrets or spell clocks on the doors which will shoot a variety of effects to make non recognized approach-ers to the doors very uncomfortable.

if you can add some sort of damaging effect to the weirdstone that only affects ethereal and astral targets within range, then metamagic it with explosive, and combine that with a force substantiation spell effect targeting the party from the ethereal plane... that would have amusing consequences.

have the doors be able to shoot chunks of themselves at the party with a splitting enhancement.

lots of options really.