Cheap and Nasty 2
“Low-cost, effective tricks to keep your lair hero-free!”
Despot reveals shocking secrets to erasing adventurers! Henchmen hate her!
Have you a lair that is plagued with bothersome heroes? Can't take a nap without a howling barbarian trying to bisect your torso? Treasury depleted by the depredations of ravening rogues, money-grubbing mages, and tediously commercial Lawful Evil clerics capable of casting Resurrection for you? This irregular column aims to help you find affordable solutions to your PC Problems.
What the Adventurers Bring
The obvious answer, of course, is "pointy things". Or possibly "serious inconvenience." More practical overlords might say "a dozen pack mules, rope and ten-foot poles". A handful - an unfortunate handful - will flinch, mutter only "butter", and slink back into the shadows to dwell on past horrors.
On a global level, we villains are the movers and shakers. We unleash machinations, plots and legions of blighted echinoids wielding halberds of thrice-forged sorrow; others try to foil them. We are the inevitability of change, and others - the adventurers in particular - are the status quo.
In a lair environment, however, that situation is reversed. You dwell comfortably in your citadel, tomb or volcano, supported by a team of loyal minions; adventurers enter the lair and interfere. Thus, what they primarily bring is change.
On a more practical level, adventurers are also equipped with all manner of ropes, poles, caltrops, enchanted swords, boots, rations and so forth, not to mention thousands of gold pieces. All of these can be recycled for your own purposes. Indeed, one of the most successful business models for the modern lair is built around that principle.
Finally, adventurers often differ from your own minions in key ways. With careful design and policy, you can exploit these differences to hamper and harm the adventurers at minimal cost.
Size Matters
For the cruel kobold queen or the gnomish gnecromancer, a party of adventurers is likely to tower above your minions, holding them off with superior reach and raining down powerful blows. While that height is usually an advantage, with careful planning you can turn it into a serious hindrance.
Tiny Tunnels
The most straightforward approach is architectural: simply construct your lair to fit your henchmen. Few elves enjoy crawling through extensive tunnels on hands and knees, and it's hard to make use of a 6' longbow in passages 4' across. This method has the advantage of being cheap, since it usually involves less work than constructing on a larger scale, and uses less materials.
On the downside, it's hard to establish a serious reputation without echoing halls to expound your dreadful plans, and low-hanging ceilings give far less scope for giant spiders to descend on the unwary heroes. In addition, this tactic can be too effective, giving adventurers strong motivation to mitigate their disadvantage by means of shrinking magic. If they'll always be severely penalized by their size, the downsides of being shrunk may still be outweighed by removing this environmental disadvantage.
You can reduce this risk by limiting corridor size only at pinch points. Doorways and crossroads are an obvious choice; not only are these strategically important, but your minions will find it easier to handle doors sized for them.*
*Remember, an evil environment can be an ergonomic evil environment! RSI and workplace injuries can seriously reduce the effectiveness of your evil hordes, and awkward equipment greatly increases the chance that employees avoid using it at all. By ensuring your fixtures, fittings and machinery are designed with ergonomics in mind, you can keep your team healthy and ensure that loyal long-term minions aren't forced out through age or disability.
Don't see concern for your minions as a sign of weakness or insufficient evil. The evil philosophy embraces a wide variety of attitudes without judgement (that's a Paladin thing). Sure, some of us view minions as disposable fodder and potential sacrifices to dark gods. Some regard their followers with a fierce, jealous love that doesn't extend to any other beings, and are prepared to do anything for their benefit. Others view themselves not as tyrannical despots, but as simply an evil leader amongst an evil team. Still others care deeply for their minions as a by-product of concern for the smooth running of our despicable realms, and consider their welfare as a vital part of the wider evil picture.
Exit Strategies
Another way to exploit size is that your diminutive troops can get out of tight places far more quickly than bulky adventurers. A tunnel that your skulking minions can run through is a crawl for an elf - a crucial distinction when that tunnel is rapidly filling with water, smoke, or bees.
Consider also the Emergency Exit. When slavering wargoats are charging full-tilt after the adventurers, they will tend to hurl themselves at the convenient human-sized door marked Exit PUSH. Ensure the top and outer part is affixed to a solid stone wall, while the lower section includes a handy flap for kobolds to slip through unhindered. The additional cost of an oversized door is minimal.
Watch your Head
A more subtle approach is to exploit adventurer height at crucial moments, in order to catch them off-guard.
Construct a long, narrow bridge with no handrails across a chasm.* At the inner end, establish a guard post equipped with bows or slings to defend the bridge (as well as defensible walls, seats, and hydration stations). When adventurers reach the bridge, they will typically hurry forward to engage your guards. This is an excellent opportunity to place beams, wires or spider-webs 5ft. above the ground, where they can clonk hasty humans across the forehead at inopportune moments. The costs are negligible, especially where beams and wires are structural elements.
Villains with a flair for deception and engineering should consider building the bridge to seem as rickety as possible, adding patches of fake 'slime' to make it seem treacherous underfoot. This encourages adventurers to watch their feet as they cross, instead of looking up. A simple minor image or even prestidigitation can do this in a pinch. On plank bridges, attach prominent bells to some of the planks; unlike tripwires, these don't pose any hazard to your minions, but sneaking adventurers will tend to watch out for them and miss the cheesewire at ear-height.
For a premium experience, install invisible bars or force-beams, so the adventurers can't even see what's about to clothesline them.
*While bottomless pits, spikes and flames are traditional, a sufficiently high-walled swimming pool or ball pit will contain heroes just as effectively, while keeping minion attrition low.** Moreover, these can double as recreation facilities for your minions - and yourself!***.
**Modern malevological approaches reject the archaic thinking that pays no heed to minion welfare. Aside from purely pragmatic considerations of training and recruitment costs, knowledge attrition within your evil organization is a real threat to long-term survivability. A safe workplace builds minions' confidence in your leadership, improving retention of experienced minions and team spirit. Indeed, the advantages of 'soft' benefits (such as flexible working hours, on-the-clock fitness opportunities, and not falling into death-traps due to a momentary oversight) are particularly valuable to the low-budget villain unable to compete in purely monetary terms.
***While we fully support non-hierarchical teambuilding opportunities, please remain aware of workplace dynamics and avoid placing yourself in any situation that could be seen as harassing your minions, outside of contractually-agreed intimidation. Tracing another's bare, muscular abs with your spiked gauntlets while purring "I like a man with spirit" is best reserved for captured heroes.
A useful variant of this technique is the staircase. Construct spiral stairs and have your minions guard the top, rolling boulders or necromatically-empowered skulls down to assail the incoming adventurers. Hang tasteful curtains of beads, feathers, bells, seaweed, teeth or sea urchins* high enough that they will strike tall adventurers in the face, encouraging them to close their eyes. As an additional benefit, the poor housekeeping typical of evil lairs will encourage dust to settle in these devices, making them even more effective at blinding your adversaries. In many environments, unpleasant dangly things will grow without any particular effort or cost on your part.
*Spider-webs can serve the same purpose, and many minions enjoy cultivating spiders as a relaxing hobby or competitive sport. You can increase loyalty by offering the underside of your staircases as fertile ground for spider-raising, while inconveniencing invading do-gooders. Consider monthly prizes for the densest or most adhesive webs, or breeding new species that produce poison-infused silks. In damper lairs, try fungi or sea urchins for a similar effect. Not only will this be cost-effective, but your minions have personal motivation to maintain the defences, as well as professional motivation..
For staircases you expect adventurers to descent, stronger methods are available. The combination of height, stance and speed when descending a staircase means heads are closer to the ceiling than when ascending. Here, hang weights, or place invisible blocks halfway down where they can stun an unwary trespasser and cause them to fall down the stairs.
