Glyph of Warding

Glyphs are a fine way to protect your stronghold. First, they’re programmable. You can set them to ignore people who have the proper password or a certain observable characteristic. They can also be set with regard to good, evil, law, or chaos or even whether or not the intruder is a member of the caster’s religion.

Second, you can use a glyph to trigger a blast or any harmful cleric spell up to 3rd level, cast by the same caster. Viable options include bane, bestow curse, blindness/deafness, cause fear, contagion, darkness, deeper darkness, desecrate, dispel magic, doom, hold person, inflict light wounds, inflict minor wounds, inflict moderate wounds, inflict serious wounds, invisibility purge, magic circle against chaos/evil/good/law, obscuring mist, searing light, shatter, silence, sound burst, spiritual weapon, summon monster I, summon monster II, summon monster III, wind wall, and zone of truth.

The level of the spellcaster you hire affects the efficacy of spells stored in the glyph, and it means that a blast glyph cast by a 5th-level cleric does only 2d8 points of damage.

A glyph can be activated by a touch, by simply passing it, or by entering an area it happens to be in. It can detect invisible intruders, but mislead, polymorph, and nondetection can fool it. Note that stored spells that have a range or require a touch only work if the target is within range or touching them. Plan the placement of your glyphs accordingly.

Smart characters link a glyph of warding with a permanent alarm or some other system to alert the character or the guards to the fact that someone has set off the glyph. Otherwise, the intruder might recover and move on without anyone realizing her presence.

The DC to find and disable a glyph of warding is 28.

Casting: 350 gp (Clr5)