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Instant Fortress 5e

October 29, 2023

Instant Fortress 5e

Wondrous Item, rare 

You can use an action to place this 1-inch metal cube on the ground and speak its command word. The cube rapidly grows into a fortress that remains until you use an action to speak the command word that dismisses it, which works only if the fortress is empty.

The fortress is a square tower, 20 feet on a side and 30 feet high, with arrow slits on all sides and a battlement atop it. Its interior is divided into two floors, with a ladder running along one wall to connect them. The ladder ends at a trapdoor leading to the roof. When activated, the tower has a small door on the side facing you. The door opens only at your command, which you can speak as a bonus action. It is immune to the Knock spell and similar magic, such as that of a Chime of Opening.

Each creature in the area where the fortress appears must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 10d10 bludgeoning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. In either case, the creature is pushed to an unoccupied space outside but next to the fortress. Objects in the area that aren't being worn or carried take this damage and are pushed automatically.

The tower is made of adamantine, and its magic prevents it from being tipped over. The roof, the door, and the walls each have 100 hit points, immunity to damage from nonmagical weapons excluding siege weapons, and resistance to all other damage. Only a Wish spell can repair the fortress (this use of the spell counts as replicating a spell of 8th level or lower). Each casting of Wish causes the roof, the door, or one wall to regain 50 hit points.

Commentary by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

There are some days when diplomacy fails, and you find yourself and your party fleeing for your lives from a swarm of furious harpies. On those days, you need an Instant Fortress to level the playing field (and take out the harpies with a giant tower erection). 

  • Creating it can act like a massive area of effect bomb that blast enemies back as you raise a massive adamantine rod from nothing. 

  • While you need to place it on the ground to activate it, it doesn’t care more beyond that if that ground can accommodate the space. 

  • There is no cooldown on using this thing. You can summon and shrink it over and over again if you’ve got the actions to do so. 

  • The tower is two stories and nearly invincible, with the main source of damage it will take coming from spells and magic weapons, and half damage at that rate. 

  • Repairing it is a bit of a challenge, but most groups won’t have too many problems making the most of it for its lifespan. 

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The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

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and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
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