Some locations—the wizard’s tower, the sunken temple, or the haunted house—have a well-trod presence in stories and adventures. In this series, we’ll explore the potential of these archetypal wizard’s tower, playing with or defying tropes, and presenting rules and ideas to bring them to life.

Wizard towers are an iconic staple of fantasy adventures. Narratively, such towers (and their wizards) often fulfill one of two purposes: They herald the call to adventure from a wizened mentor, or signal the end, a capstone battle symbolizing the perils of power. As a narrative archetype, it looms large, but that can be a problem. Too much of it crosses the boundary from “trope” to “cliche”. How do we take that and make it feel magical again?  

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The Man Behind the Curtain

This is it: The top of the tower! What’s it going to be? Beseeching the tower’s master for aid? Rescuing them from their own magical hubris? A good, old-fashioned mage battle?

It can be anything as long as it’s not boring. Or so frustrating that players feel like there’s no way to succeed.

Whatever you choose, this is the capstone encounter of the whole tower. As such, it’s most satisfying when players get to employ both their character abilities and their wits and clever roleplaying. Given our chosen setting, you also want to deliver on the premise—it’s a wizard tower, so that means magic and wonders beyond our ken, baby.

Elements of Wonder

So how do we do that? What kinds of elements can we introduce in this kind of encounter to cover those bases? Try these options:

• Include magical elements and effects that aren’t strictly covered in the game books. Pick a spell or a magic item’s effects as a base. Then build it into something bigger, selling the idea the wizard has access to greater mysteries of the magical world than the PCs have heard of yet.

• Make it complicated. Let there be multiple objectives. Let there be more than one way to resolve a problem.

• Make sure there’s a payoff for PCs who have paid attention to clues about the wizard and the situation by exploring the tower, doing research, or connecting the dots. Create a benefit to thinking about and engaging with the underlying story.

If you were expecting some examples… well, you’d be right.

Magical Elements

Keep the magic magic. It ups the tension in an encounter when the PCs can’t be sure how a particular enchantment works. And it provides additional immersion when these elements fit with how the wizard has been characterized. For example:

• The seeress scryed and divined information on the PCs long before they face her. She has knowledge to counter their specific abilities and understand their intent. During combat, she also seems to predict where the PCs attempt to strike her with eerie precognition.

• The battle mage is expected to lead with blasts and follow up with swordplay. An additional surprise is if those suits of armor and weapon displays in his top chambers aren’t just for show. They animate to join the battle mage as comrades-in-arms.

• A tricky illusionist refuses a fair fight, taunting the PCs from the cover of invisibility using illusory doubles and phantom sounds. The illusionist’s lair is a maze of false walls populated with minions and traps—not all of them illusory!

Complications

Scooping added problems on the party’s heads keeps a combat from coming down to an exchange of numbers. Mix it up with some of these ideas:

• The wizard isn’t the final foe—the summoned monstrosity that got the better of the wizard and trapped them in a crystal is. The PCs need the wizard free to help them banish the creature, but they also have to hold it off long enough to break the crystal prison.

• Every time this pesky necromancer dies, she immediately reanimates in a prepared body waiting in one of the sarcophagi around the room. Unless they want to fight her again and again, the PCs must split their attention to burning the unused bodies so she’ll stay dead!

• The wizard’s shattering, cataclysmic ritual is collapsing the tower in its final stages. During the fight, PCs dodge debris and disappearing floors, while finding (or making) pathways to get to the wizard before the ritual completes.

Multiple Resolutions

Allowing for multiple resolutions is another form of complicating the encounter. Instead of adding a problem, it presents a different means of resolving the main problem. For example:

• The sagely wizard prefers not to fight, beginning with questions intended to test the PCs’ wisdom and ethics. Responding well earns his favor, but PCs who kick in the door and start shooting don’t impress him.

• The utterly mad sorcerer will never agree to help the PCs or answer any of their questions, cackling and blasting until the end. Unless, of course, they play along with the delusions, convincing the sorcerer they are servants of the same nonsensical entity the sorcerer worships.

• One arrogant mage has no intention of sparing the PCs invading her tower, but a sufficiently intelligent spellcaster might capture her interest. While she protects her tower with force, agreeing to become her apprentice persuades the spellcaster to spare the rest and, perhaps, aid them with the knowledge they came for.

Payoff

Reward PCs for paying attention while exploring the tower, passing knowledge checks, and making good deductions about the tower and its master. Try these rewards:

• The PCs go through the wizard’s journals and gather information from his servants, piecing together that the calamity they think he’s causing is one he’s actually trying to prevent. He might still be an evil wizard, but it turns out he’s not interested in having the world end any more than the PCs are. If they persuade him they’re on the same side, they could make a tenuous ally.

• Through investigating the wizard’s tower and putting together some strange patterns, the PCs notice the wizard has a near-pathological aversion to having corners in his tower. Perhaps believing they invite some kind of malign influence, the PCs could use this fear against him.

• The PCs unearth strange notes and diagrams and odd attempts at explosive traps and potions. Putting together the clues, they realize the wizard developed a contingency to explode her body when she dies, vaporizing anyone nearby and much of her work. This knowledge allows the PCs to plan on incapacitating or negotiating with the wizard instead of killing her outright.

Let there be unexpected difficulties. Let there be plot twists. And absolutely let there be some flair. The archetypal wizard in a tower carries the weight of one of the most iconic images in fantasy gaming and fiction—so now’s not the time to settle for the low-hanging fruit. Get in the head of one of these beings, mortals with insight into mysteries and wonders, then let everything else grow around them.

Now, send forth your PCs to go harass some wizards!

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