Mage Tower

What sort of things would you expect to find in an evil mage tower?

Stairs and an evil mage. Maybe some skellingtons and cobwebs.

Evil mage

The abode of an evil mage. Maybe even an evil mage.

Curses and magical traps and (evil) tomes

Also evil mage

Tim

I always have some major function which necessitates a tower, and then everything is built around that. Examples:
>Telvan the Lensegrinder has a golem which stokes the furnace and helps him make the massive lenses for his archoscopes.
>Mistress Silia of the Bermfens has a kennel of bloodless hounds she uses to hunt for pixies and keep her company.
>Dolor the Mad has an aviary where he stores his victims after he steals their forms, and a theater under his tower where he makes them dance and act out his twisted art.

Nobody gets into magic because they're into normal shit. Figure out what your dude's bag is and the rest will follow.

delicious cakes and pies

also an evil mage

My ex-wife
The evil mage

The inside of a tower.

Also, an evil mage.

Man, what a quality thread.

goats

Evil goat mage.

In low fantasy I would expect a lot of slaves, some are servants and others are for experiments. These are guarded by
Intelligent undead, while the property is surrounded by fields of zombies.

High magic setting I would expect the inside to be nothing more than doors, which are portals to the different rooms of the place. The tower would be larger than most cities, and filled with even weirder experiments like a terrarium full of ant sized people who he dumps pets into as kaiju for his amusement.

Tomes, preserved body parts of various critters, a huge bed for getting down with various ladies, a telescope

Probably a bunch of books, since wizards are fucking nerds.

Also, an evil mage

a young virgin

A hall full of different kinds of cheeses

Bitch if they've already got a tower then they're well beyond becoming a wizard, they've got to be at least 70 or 80 years old.

Just because it's an evil mage tower doesn't mean there's an evil mage inside.

Everyone just gets the wrong idea. "Oh, it's really creepy and there's totally a witch living there I bet she sacrifices virgins and animals for blood rituals and sucks up all the surrounding mana." That's just propaganda. It probably doesn't have an evil mage at all, just a cute mage girl that wants to do nothing but read books and practice her magic in peace and the only way to do that was to make it all imposing so no one would bother her.

My ex-wife, the Evil Mage

This is good advice.

Thank you. Glad something good came of this thread.

An alchemy lab and library with books that attack you duh.

>mage has ruled over village in tower for over 50 years
>villagers don't even care any more because he's too decrepit and senile to make threats anymore
>party decides to raid the tower anyway because there might be treasure
>first floor
>everything is empty and dusty, no treasure
>"He he he foolish adventurers. welcome to my accursed tower - and quiver before my war beast!"
>feebly tries to crack a whip as a skinny, frail goblin wearing army made of cardboard boxes shuffles out
>second floor
>hey, this wizard is pretty fast
>"face you now the terrible wall of fire!"
>it's a rope soaked in oil, flares up to about 3 inches
>party feels kind of bad for him now
>third/top floor
>wizard is hiding behind the door and stabs whoever enters the room first in the kidneys

MAGIC

Around an evil mage tower?
Gardens growing alchemical ingredients, plant monsters, and food.
Shed in the back for smoking and curing meats, before stripping that meat off to get at the skeleton inside.
Graveyard for failed experiments, of which the mounds look freshly turned over.
Innumerable flying creatures in the trees, anything from crows to imps, some of which are familiars.

Inside an evil mage tower?
Evil mage.

I always did like mages best when they remembered practical things like "you can't counterspell a crossbow".

Oh man
This reminds me of Bleppo's tower, a scenario we played years and years ago.
Bleppo's tower was pretty much gutted and abandoned, but we wanted to claim it to sell it. Apart from the obligatory skeletons and screamers there was a fuck off huge spider which nearly did for the whole party, and cost the dwarf his arm.
A large percentage of the sale price of the tower went into getting him regenerational magic to grow his arm back.
Good times

Consider why they built the tower, and why it was built where it was. Or did they even build it? Was it something they came across and repurposed for themselves? Consider the full history and pieces fall into place.

It could be a natural leyline for whatever they're doing. It could just be advantageously positioned on a high point with clear sight around the surrounding lands.

And what do they plan to do with it? Are they truly evil, or is that just their reputation? As said above it actually could be a misunderstanding. Maybe magic is just unsavoury to peasants unless it's divine. The owner might have golems, familiars, watchdogs etc to protect it, but only intended to dissuade people from getting close rather than sending them out to terrorize or whatever. Perhaps there's an enchanted forest around it, or an unnatural fog. If they're a particularly grandiose mage maybe it's eternally night overhead. All to practice their arts and study in solitude, undisturbed by the local populace.

Or perhaps they are actually evil, at which point you need to consider their end game. Is their usage of it entirely linked to a longterm ritual? If so, what are the requirements? Are sacrifices necessary? If so there will be some manner of dungeons, and they'll need a way to acquire them. Perhaps the enchantments surrounding their land are lures rather than deterrents. Maybe the river that runs near by has been polluted by their magics for whatever purposes - to make the populace weaker, or again, entice them through mind control or what have you.

Regardless if they are seclusive they need access to water and food, so there's likely to be a river or lake nearby and a garden no matter who they are. They probably have some manner of sentries, be they animals or a spell that alerts them to intruders across their dominion. If they're evil and performing a ritual they might need access to esoteric spell components, so consider how they got them and what they'd have.

How do you make the evil mage character cool/memorable? I feel like they'd have to be a non-human race or else they'd just be a stock stereotype, a cheap Halloween costume, a clipart.

Bad guy stuff.

Dragon dildos

Why do mages always live in towers
What's wrong with living in a Mage 4-bedroom, 3-bath Townhouse
If I were magical I wouldn't be living in a fucking staircase storage facility.

Make him kill the entire party.
You didn't say it's supposed to be a pleasant memory.

Inferiors traps and mutated monsters. The usual, I guess.

As for the insides, I suspect they'd have a few different rooms depending.

No matter what their plans I expect them to have a bedroom, a library, and a ritual/casting sight. The first two are simple enough but consider how the second has to be made based on the magic they're performing. It might make sense for it to be on the roof, where it's open to the sky and the elements. Maybe it's more sensible it's underground in a cellar, which is more the stereotypical setting one might think of for dark rituals. If they are evil and their rituals demand it this might also function as their dungeon, or perhaps they're separate entitites. Maybe they've got quite an elaborate underground beneath them, excavated to provide ample material for golem creation and whatnot.

Do they fancy themselves an alchemist? They might have an alchemy lab somewhere, likely near the top so the fumes of whatever they're concocting don't fumigate the whole place as they rise. Or perhaps that's part of the design and their ritual - the tower is all a focusing point for their alchemical rituals conducting on the ground floor, the fumes rising upwards and the whole tower being something like a massive fireplace of sorts, maybe even functioning to strengthen the effects and disperse them across the nearby areas.

There are really just innumerable ways this can go. It all depends, again, on what the mage's goals and needs are. To truly craft an interesting mage tower you need to think logically and creatively. If their goal is to raise an army of undead they probably built it over a massive battleground or cemetary, or at least in proximity to it. If they're looking for immortality think through the methods of how that might be achieved in your setting; maybe the only way is to get the blessing of a god, and they've built this setup for them which means their methodology will be similar to divine rituals and sacrifices for that god but on a grander scale.

user, I say this only with the hopes that you improve as a GM, thus enriching everyone around you and uplifting our shared hobby.

If the only way that you can make a character memorable is making them a non-human race, you are a bad GM.

As for actual advice, perhaps he has a unique magical style. Stone Shape would be devastating in the close confines of a tower, Meld With Stone can set up ambushes well, and even a simple shoving attack like Thunderwave on the top of the tower could be effective.
He could also have several portals or magical effects in his tower or surrounding areas, allowing for anything from a suddenly flooded room to a staircase that doesn't leave the room.
This is his tower, and he is an evil mage. He had to know some group of adventurers would try and kill him for the color of his robes. He'd have time to set up his place how he wanted it.

A cage containing an irate grizzly bear and an owl. The cage is filled with lavender candles and soft music.

General things that are cool (to me) though, ignoring all these details: fanciful libraries of rare knowledge; delicate lab setups with potentially explosive or otherwise delicate alchemy; homonculi, familiar, animated doll, or enslaved servants; magical traps and enchantments that are intended to disarm or incapacitate intruders without killing so they can be sacrificed; collections of valuable gemstones and spell materials; exotic monsters or wildlife the mage has cultivated for whatever purpose, be it defense or just sheer whimsy of owning such a thing; unnatural/man-made conduits for mana running through it, the tower acting as a reservoir they fill with their own power making them quite a force within it; crazed, delusional prisoners who are so far gone a pity killing would feel proper to even the most bleeding heart; candles, so many candles, with flames of whatever colour they think is cool or matches their outfit or whatever; very little material treasure or wealth.

Which reminds me: where do they get the money to buy and build this? Definitely ought to consider that. It's implied with any of these constructs it must have been an expensive or time consuming endeavour unless it's a very high magic setting, but I'm thinking a little lower on that spectrum. Either way they either have a stockpile of wealth to purchase the remaining things they need; methods to procure the things they need without spending money; a lack of money for they have already bought the things they need; or a method of generating money and an ability to trade with someone to acquire the things they need. They perhaps also purchased the land from a noble, or they didn't and acquired it through force. All are things to be considered that shape the final product.

Magical ley lines are important in the x and y axis, but not the z axis, so you cram as much workshop as possible over the prime area.

Depends on the evil mage.

An evil mage is just the fetus of a lich that you only have to kill once and don't have to worry about after.

That entirely depends on the setting. There can be z-axis leylines; Hackmaster's spell slinging supplement points this out at least, I don't know about other systems.

If leylines are dependent or reflective of certain attributes or elements, it makes sense. Fire leylines could travel along a path but the travel vertically upwards near a volcano or something of the sort, for instance. A high mountain peak used for worshipping gods, or the sun, or whatever could actually be the epicentre of a descending leyline from the heavens. The field of a grisly battle where hundreds or thousands lost their life could have generate a form of leyline that rises up from the site of the battle. A particularly strong geyser or something like Old Faithful could be a Z-extending water leyline, etc.

If you don't want them to exist they're fine, but there's ample reason they could, and if they do building a tower along them would be incredibly sensible if it's possible.

OMG. Barry Wight is crooning in the background.

Why does everyone ignore the power of Stair Magic?

Disregard that I guess, I got a bit mixed up there. Either way the point remains any of the three axes of a leyline could be important depending on how you make them. It could be a particularly thick, river-like leyline, a narrow one, a conical one, etc. They come in all forms. It's probably true that leylines tend to have less depth than any other part, but it's not always true and it'd be kinda boring to say there was no possibility of such I think.

Says who? Your setting, your lore.

If you're the kind of man that prioritizes comfort over function, you'd have never become a wizard to begin with.

Nonsense. What is magic if not a tool to make our lives easier, and so that we can be lazy pieces of shit?

You can have fun in your little 4 story high 5x5 foot pinpick of a home, I'll be over here designing the world's first lazyboy in my winter cabin while eating a snowcone without using my hands.

>A tower is somehow more functional than literally any other type of building

I'm pretty sure there's a spell that fucking gives you your own luxury mansion pocket dimension that you can access at will?

Depends on the setting. Spells aren't universal across systems, so if you're referencing a spell from DnD or PF that means nothing to me and I don't have a clue.

Just saying there's nothing wrong with a mage getting into magic for less than grand reasons.

For giving you the most space with the smallest perimeter to protect, yeah, they are. Unless you can revolutionize the field of geometry.

What settings do you play? Where are you going for mages and magic? Is D&D really that bad? Shit

>What settings do you play?
Hackmaster 5e, GURPs, a couple other meme games and a passing familiarity with about as many other systems. Only Hackmaster for mages/magic/fantasy stuff though, never done it in GURPs.

>Is D&D really that bad?
No idea, I've just never played it, I'm not making any judgements.

Here, have an incredibly crude floorplan of an evil wizard tower, from top to bottom.

-Observation deck. Giant telescope and death-ray. (Surrounding environment littered with blackened craters.)
-'Dry' (non-biological) laboratories, alchemy & magic item crafting.
-Storage space, serving dry labs. Spare alchemical glassware & reagents, rare materials storage, etc.
-Personal living quarters, library, kennel for favored lap-monsters, other assorted creature-comforts.
-Kitchen, minion dorms, guardroom. All paths to upper levels magically locked, requiring wizard's permission to open.
-Ground level. Greeting area & security zone. Greeting area absurdly ostentatious, meant to impress, and covered in dozens of command-activated deathtraps both magical and mundane.
-Mundane storage. Food and whatnot. Another guardroom.
-Slave pens & animal menagerie. Serves the wet labs. Again, unauthorized access past this point is prevented by magical locks.
-'Wet' laboratory & surgical theater.
-Reinforced holding cells. Contain results of successful experiments.
-Abattoir. Disposal of failures.

>kennel for favored lap-monsters

I like using the bigger on the inside shtick. Also outside on the inside and labyrinth of magic doors.

Several evil mages.

They're having a sleepover.

What do mages talk about at sleepovers?

A giant baby catamite.

The same thing they did last time, how to take over the world.

Candles, books, finery, and an evil mage.

Oh you know pointy hats, someone's vacation in the lower planes, new curses, what other evil mages they have a crush on, that sort of thing.

This thread is now about witch slumber parties.

>Bury Wight

Summoning circle with an "angel" still bound inside. Are the players dumb enough to free it?

Old dwarf hermit making magic flamethrowers that give the user more honor every time they score a hit with it.
Napalm sticks to gobbos.

>Which reminds me: where do they get the money to buy and build this?
Casting spells for hire is very profitable, and with divination magic you always know what to invest in.

Flesh golem and other "made science (magic)" experiments