Thoughts on Godbound

 Is Godbound OSR? Honestly at this point who cares, but it is at least broadly compatible with OSR content.

I ran two simultaneous campaigns for a rough average of 30-40 sessions each. One group leaned more 'philosopher-king refugee road-trip', while the other was more 'rock star adventurer vacation'

I drew for this campaign instead of the blog this past year which is mainly why the blog has been ded

The setting was the Sunset realm, as usual, but in an intersolar period, with no sun to chase off the infinite darkness and moon-madness normally kept at bay. This made for a world in enough shambles for Godbound characters to feel needed, and added an aspect of cosmic horror to tweak things just a little away from baseline godbound. Baseline godbound has dangerous monsters, but it's a universe where A Big God was basically in charge, giving a generally anthropocentric baseline. The likely 'top of the foodchain' in the sunset realms are kilometers-wide 'moons' which range in nature from derelict matrioshka brains to celestial superpredators to bubbles of alternate physics. The mighty solar pantheon driving off moons each solar age feels like triumphing over chaos to humanity, but to the moons it's more akin to gazelles escaping a lion... this time... kind of situation.

But from the godbound still changed the world, saved lives, etc etc, so this is not as grievous a departure from intended tone as my Esoteric Enterprises campaign, and as such my thoughts should remain relevant for people interested in the system in general.

Character Creation

Some aspects of the game feel vestigial, like in the case of lingering D&D sacred cows like 6 stat arrays and trying to make armor choice meaningful by having the tradeoff be 'worse saves but more AC.' Since you can pass saves with effort, this is not particularly menacing, and gifts that give base defenses are quite popular... as are enemies that auto-hit anyway. Parts of the game that take more from storygames feel a bit underdeveloped. Facts, things that give you +4 to relevant rolls and can justify starting with magic items or spellcasting, feel a bit like an Aspect from Fate, but without the narrative weight that makes Aspects meaningful. I barely remember more than one or two Facts from the dozens present on my players sheets, and I certainly don't think rolling under stat to adjudicate things was a common enough occurrence to make Facts feel mechanically relevant either (thank goodness.) Some players took the approach of having Facts add godly-sounding titles to their characters to commemorate their deeds, which seemed like a good way to add flavor even if they were usually mechanically irrelevant.

H'zeszh The Pitier

Words and Gifts

The meat and potatoes of the system. Again, I find it similar to Aspects and Stunts from Fate, but in a Dresden Files RPG way,where the reliance on them exposes why the mechanics of those abilities was actually fairly unimportant and focusing too much on them 'misses the point.' A list of cool abilities to peruse and select has some character-building appeal, and my players were torn between different character concepts, so I'm glad they had fun with this aspect of the game even if I find charop choices  to be of mostly illusory significance.
As a GM, I found the Words & Gifts system all vaguely dissatisfying, especially when I was called upon to use it in the bestiary. A lot of seemed to boil down to 'control things, destroy things, move through things, know things, protect things," with the flavor of 'with FIRE, or WITH WATER, or [insert flavor here.]' I do like reskinning abilities as a general design principle, but having about 25 pages of broadly similar abilities with a limited selection of unique ideas in there didn't really impress me. Having only the 'common miracle effects' could almost suffice if you wanted to have a superlite, trimmed down godbound document and indeed might encourage more personal, unique miracles.

The idea of the system is that you counteract and are countered in turn by gifts and miracles of opposing forces, using creativity to circumvent things. However, I couldn't shake this feeling of arbitrariness and homogeneity. When everyone has flexible, powerful abilities that mostly all equally counteract each other for 1 effort, it's easy for scenes to feel less like challenges and more like filler where we wait for someone to run out of effort, 1 action at a time.

Priestesses of Our Lady of Gardens

This may make it sound like I ran the dreariest empty-room battles ever to scourge RPGs, but I don't think that was (always) the problem. I tried to have environmental problems, stakes beyond 'fight or die,' motivations for involved parties. Classic superhero gaming concepts work well when applied in Godbound. And it's alright if combat isn't the main focus of a game- I really enjoyed the 'debate club of the gods' sessions, or the dance sessions.

But just as D&D has a very heavy focus on combat rules and filling your character sheet with combat relevant things, Godbound does too. And the non-combat gifts have a tendency to solve non-combat problems quickly and easily, so it becomes incredibly easy to overwhelm non-combat problems with miracles and gifts and then move on to a combat scene that takes up a fair bit of IRL time compared to anything else.

A good example is the Journey word. You might expect a Godbound who takes the journey word to be interested in long trips, and to have the game be about that to some degree. But the words of Journey ironically almost delete the experience of 'Journeying' from the game. Frodo going to Mordor with the Word of Journey would be like this
-He doesn't need to worry about supplies, or even sleeping. He can walk without rest forever.
-He doesn't need to worry about the ringwraiths- he is always faster than pursuers.
-He doesn't need to worry about terrain, or bad weather- he can cross Mount Caradhras as easily as the gap of Rohan. Moria is skipped.
-He doesn't need Gollum as a guide- he knows the safest way to travel already, and could slip through the Black Gates security, avoiding the Shelob encounter.
-No 'lesser foes' will appear as random encounters. No orcs, then.
-He could also really skip over things and just fly there in a day or two, essentially being the eagle question all over.

I certainly understand how design ended up here. Kevin Crawford sitting around with his game group, thinking of problems you have to solve with D&D travel, and writing down how Journey lets you avoid all that. But from a game design standpoint, the reward for being a master of Journey sort of just... removes it from gameplay. It would be like if Thieves had perfect 100% skills... at which point you might as well remove traps and locks from your dungeon entirely because they exist only to be skimmed over (said skimming was what I usually did for the players with the Theft word). Or if Fighters had 100% chance to defeat monsters, so why bother including them. Or if the Cleric can heal all consequences, so there's no great point in having curses, mutilations, diseases, or poisons. Or if the wizard can cast infinite Dispel Magic and simply magic any unpleasant arcana away. Normally, players have to interact with these things with some thought even if they can overcome these challenges, but when problems can be bypassed so easily, their inclusion in Godbound may make them seem more like bland Effort toll booths than anything.



I don't feel brainy enough to find an easy way around this design trap, and I have focused on the negative moreso than the positive here which may give an unfair impression of how bad things were. But that paradoxical feeling of 'your reward for playing the game well is... not having to play the game anymore' really haunted me when it came to prepping session content. It could be hard to linger in triumph  in noncombat problemsolving because it was over so quickly, and it had similar difficulty in creating challenges as high level D&D. One of the few things that gave the players any pause at all was a temple of a Frog God, who was enslaved by an ancient Lich who could call down meteors on anyone he knew the name of, who was in a temple supported by a vast self-replicating army of clay golems, who also each held a tadpole child hostage, and was supported by two other fell necromancers. The book informs me that it is fine for something like 2/3rds of situations to be solved quickly and easily, and I think I mostly followed that recommendation.... but it caused disparity with how the actually difficult stuff then took up, say, 7/10ths of playtime because the easy stuff was rolled over and forgotten as fast as I could prep or improv it, while the harder nuts to crack required much more IRL time devoted to them.

Salaneptha, nightmare princess

Magic

Definitely suffers from 'if magic is a good and versatile tool, everyone should want it' problem that games have from a design standpoint and fiction has as a problem of verisimilitude.

The limits on 'Low Magic' compared to divine powers and Theurgy is a pretty good solution, and could be broadly slapped onto other magic systems to prevent them from getting out of hand... though here they clearly seem to be mostly to stop magic from stealing the spotlight of Words.

Magic spells exist, but they're more of just a flavorful way to solve problems, and sometimes they allow for a cool solution that can't be covered by Words. Mainly, I think the magic system exists as a bridge between OSR content and Godbound rather than it's own thing, and that's fine.

The 'high' magics of Theurgy aren't bad, and cover the higher end of D&Desque spells fairly well, and have just enough 'utility that doesn't fit elsewhere' that the word of Sorcery should satisfy people who want to be the one with esoteric answers to esoteric problems. It definitely does not escape the prior-mentioned problem other words have though- when facing strange arcane abilities and evil sorcerers, players with the Word of Sorcery were typically better served simply effort-point-dispelling any fell magics rather than trying to specifically do things like 'wall of ice to block fireballs from having LoS.'

It did, however, make me aware of just how much of D&D is just pointing the DM back to the spell list. Demons and dragons and angels and liches and beholders and so on all require pondering the spell list, as do many magic items. And this causes some blandness, because the spell list is mostly about breaking and entering into high security dungeons, and so when Asmodeus pulls out his dark sorceries and it's just the usual wizard nonsense again, it doesn't feel strange and unknowable and frightening, but rather rote.

Arcem, the Setting

No opinions, honestly. I didn't hate it or anything, but I am fairly committed to layer-cake lore-stacks built on my own world and the adjacent realities of my player's campaigns, so I had no interest in using Arcem.

one of these days the Sunset Realm is gonna get the full 300x300 keyed hex map and I'll stop using kitbashed screenshots of roll20
but it is not this day

Gamemastering Tools

People have been complaining about how hard it is to run high level D&D since the moment someone's group realized an ancient dragon was like 1/3rd the HD of the party and was no longer an appropriate 'final boss of the dungeon.'
Godbound, knowing what it was dealing with from the beginning, does an admirable job of warning GMs that they gotta run a sandbox and gotta be pretty good at prep and improv. I was somewhat dissatisfied with the provided prep tables and mostly relied on personal improv, as I found the included tables were suitable for sketching a rough idea of a place thematically, but lacked the ability to whip up something meaningfully challenging or strategic. A longform example of play, or more than one to show starter and high-level play, would have been more useful to me than the 'cool character owns peasants with facts and god powers' examples given.

It provides some sandbox tools for creating political 'courts,' 'ruins' (dungeons) and challenges (assorted not-necessarily combat problems), which are not terrible, but lacked a certain substance in my opinion.
Something like 'the dungeon is full of toxic waste' will likely be solved with a miracle or two, so while it is fine for a quick improv, the random tables don't necessarily create a 'significant' challenge for godbound.
A good example might be, if godbound was a standard D&D retroclone, its tables would have entries like 'a locked wooden door' as a feature of a dungeon for typical OSR adventurers. While it is true 'locked wooden doors' are staples of dungeoneering, they are less 'something to define a dungeon and provide a memorable experience' and more 'a default assumption that may become interesting when combined with other, more interesting dungeon features,' not really something you can use on its own.

This may sound a little harsh, but the first(and last) ruin I actually generated with Godbound rules took, I dunno, an hour or more to roll up, and 1 fight scene and 4 noncombat miracles to conclude (the equivalent of 4 spell slots, not counting the fight). The godbound didn't actually have to leave the entry area, and only walked to the treasure vault themselves out of habit. I liked it well enough, but at the same time, I don't think any of the rolling and table consulting I did was all that relevant compared to the improv.

The factional play section had a sense it was going for a sort of minigame where the players tried not to create too many Problems by making Changes, and the factions did this and that to each other, but I ultimately didn't find it interesting enough to keep using after the first 4 faction turns. It had the same problem as the tactical combat section of gameplay, I would say- appears to have strategic considerations, quickly boils down to depleting the only relevant resource that matters and not really being worth tracking the minutiae of compared to focusing on Godbound actions. It's only a cul-de-sac of subsystem rules and easily disregarded, so this isn't a big deal. But, it's just another thing that takes up a few pages that I'd rather see an example of a Shard of Heaven high level dungeoncrawl, or an example of longer play in. The content tables are better here I think than in the ruin section though, and I think are decent for generating factions and giving them identifiable characteristics. All in all, the factional play won't suffice to turn the game into a 4X domain play grand strategy game of cult expansion, but would require a comparable level of fiddly minutiae to track for little reward.

The court of the Nightmare Sultan

The Bestiary

...is actually just "Words and Gifts" all over again, for the most part. Due to how combat works, monsters are mostly just smaller blobs of HP and Effort than a player is, and little of what they have will make them feel different, and most of what they have is a few gifts, or rarely full words. Reliance on the player-facing system makes everything feel very samey to me, while also requiring consulting the Words & Gifts section rulebook for constructing monsters, instead of just having them be challenges separate from the player-facing rules. I did not love this approach- it felt a bit like the problem of, say, the AD&D bestiary leaving it up to the GM to crack open the players handbook to kit out a Lich with spells, rather than the bestiary doing much on its own.

priestess of Yg

As a general rule, monsters that are actually threats are dependent on dealing straight damage (roughly 2-3 times more menacing than regular damage) and often hit automatically, ignoring AC, and finally get 2-3 actions per round. This more threatening type of damage can still be avoided via defensive miracles, so it is unlikely to manage to instantly kill people, and instead serves as a form of rapid effort depletion.

The game warns that for enemies to have a chance, they need to go on the offensive rapidly, or they will suffer from trying to defend against godbound who have higher total effort, and all the above traits serve to assist them. However, as godbound always go first and use side-based initiative, rather than something more staggered, fights tend to take the form of back and forth barrages that are either weathered, or result in destruction due to a lack of effort, with HD serving as a buffer. Supposedly creative back and forths of dispelling each others gifts typically comes down to nothing but effort depletion. If the GM is unable to come up with defensive options it may feel more like them folding a hand out of laziness, and the GM denying player ideas can feel like quashing creativity, and the GM not  denying such ideas makes everything a sort of laissez-faire, almost deterministic depletion of effort and HP.

Angel of Our Lady of Gardens and of Murulu

Being strict about allowing only thematically appropriate defensive miracles to block attacks may feel like you are being 'no fun allowed' but prevents combats from being such a slog. An example that came to mind is when a evil undead Luck god caused a allied NPC to slip and fall into a wall of fire... so the NPC used an effort to use her sword to catch herself... so the second luck-based attack had her falling on her sword... so the Sea godbound made a geyser to juggle her away...but if any Word can essentially be used as fine-control instant-reaction telekinesis, a lethal blow will never land until all effort is lost.

There are some unique abilities among bestiary monsters, but all that was mentioned above contributes to the sense that fighting an ancient mummy, a living hero, or a titanic mutant beast all plays out basically the same way. Some enemies have a 'random behavior' chart to ensure they don't simply soullessly dish out as much straight damage as they can with as much focused fire as they can muster, but this feels less like 'variety' and more like ' GM pity' or 'the enemies acting stupid.'

BLACK_SWAN

The ability to pass saving throws by spending an effort, no thematic justification required, contributes in part to this. There is no real reason to accept any seriously debilitating effect unless your effort has been strained to its maximum (a situation while not impossible, requires so much pressure from the GM that it may feel contrived), and saves are good enough that you rarely have to even spend effort to pass anyway. This contributes to the sense that 'the only thing worth anything is raw damage.' Both of the groups pretty swiftly discovered that using enhanced minions (who deal Straight damage) is pretty much the best way to carve through the health pools of your enemies, and Smite miracles likewise provide a 'delete an enemy' tool far more reliably than any clever effect that regrettably fades into irrelevancy due to being save-based.

If you are familiar with Magic The Gathering, imagine if all players by default had the ability to counterspell opposing spells at the cost of 2 Life points, or just had 7 'free' counterspells they could cast at any point. This may help illuminate the sense of 'nothing will do anything until the initial buffer of Effort is depleted, so you may as well just do damage with creature summons."

The face of the demon flail Temuridae should be credited to 'Dread the Slammer' by U M A M I on youtube

 

There are rules for adjudicating creative ways of conflict resolution that seem to have been made in the spirit of 'balance' which is well and good, but make it even harder to escape the 'creativity matters only as flavor in the face of Effort and HP.' One of my players had the idea that, as the God of Worms, they could transform people into worms, right? This is certainly allowed by the logic of other words, but the general miracle rules have a little caveat for transformations

"If the change would kill or totally incapacitate a (worthy foe)
person, roll it as if it were a damage-causing miracle. If the damage
rolled wouldn’t be enough to kill the target, the miracle’s not able to
change them that drastically, either, and no harm or damage is done"

So the creativity becomes yet another Smite vs HP calculation. Similarly, 'debuffs' like entangling vines, Slow effects, bestowed Curses, disadvantage on rolls operate with the same kind of considerations. They're not allowed to debilitate worthy foes in the same way that, say, a wizard catching someone in a Force Cage can. Nor is it permitted to seal people in stone blocks or pools of lava without a rather dull 'they get a round to move out of the way' caveat and a '1 damage per level per round' damage consideration, rather than more naturalistic rulings about 'yes they are sealed in a bubble of water and suffer the logical consequences thereof.'

 While I understand the mindset that led to this sort of balancing, know that the system can still be 'exploited' perfectly well via the use of summons and minions, who can chew through HP far more reliably than Godbound Player Characters can and get around the 'no extra actions for Godbound' action economy. My complaint is that while the developers did try to balance things so no one strategy dominates, their intentional or unintentional result was, in my experience, a HP/Effort depletion race.

Treasure

Many typical magic items that regular adventurers crave do not function for Godbound- a +5 sword is for different mathematical paradigms and works only for non-divine NPCs, and a flying carpet is encouraged to not function unless the Godbound have access to flight via a Gift or Artifact (more on those later).

Monetary treasure exists in a more abstract form of 1-10, ranging from the wealth of a rich man in a wealthy village to the treasure vaults of an Emperor. This wealth is valued for its ability to sanctify the temples of the Godbound or serves as an Influence/Dominion replacer, allowing changes to the world to be enacted abstractly. Mundane items have little value to Godbound, so wealth has little value save for being a protracted cipher for 'access to cult powers and existing mechanics.' There's not much point in determining whether the wealth is emerald-eyed idols or silk sheets- there are some considerations with regards to how difficult treasure is to carry or if it is fragile, since not all godbound will have ways around it, but unless your group is quite small, I wouldn't bet on the inventory being all too important to track most of the time.

Celestial Shards are an attractive generic reward to Godbound, but again, they are valued less on their own merit. They are simply a requirement for 'impossible' changes (such as conjuring pegasi to be the steeds of a city) and are essentially the 'key' to 'unlock' using your godlike abilities to make drastic changes in the world. You can almost imagine them as a 3rd type of special 'Experience Points' you have to collect to use your character abilities, or a kind of additional tax on certain actions.

Some NPC Hellknights with demonic weapons

Artifacts are the proper Godbound-level magic items, with powers along the lines of creating whole cities or chopping through entire armies! Mortals cannot even use them without being corrupted! They certainly seem akin to the Artifacts found in the Treasure sections of the AD&D DMG, which sounded well and good, but in practice it kind of felt like more of the same Words and Gifts with a use cap of Effort, just with a crafting system attached. Certainly unique powers can be conceived of and used as a nifty treasure, but the same applies to the characters innate abilities.
I might liken my disappointment with the Artifacts to be akin to a treasure table that was mostly crafting rules for making wands to cast spells you already knew. The God of the Sky can craft a flying carpet artifact, but can also just whip up a miracle to Wind Walk the party to their destination. (And so can the God of Birds, or Journey, for that matter.)

Queen Farid bint Dumandred

Personal Takes on Power Level & Theme
For all I complain about the players being largely unchallenged and combat being a game of paper tigers, the Godbound power level is strangely low in some areas. The godbound may deal an astounding 10HD worth of damage in a single smite action... but cannot destroy objects larger than a ship, or take more than Level# of companions flying with them at one time.

I do not wish to emulate gods who are omni-anything, but even the flawed and mortal gods of the Norse pantheon have some better feats than simply being 'really tough & hard-hitting adventurers.' The example I have in mind is when Thor is tricked into drinking the ocean during a drinking contest. He fails, but his mighty attempt creates the very tides of the sea from the depleted water level sloshing about. 

Godbound doesn't operate on this level  of mythological magical realism logic. Thor in the above scenario in godbound might instead simply spend an effort to not vomit profusely from being tricked into drinking saltwater, but lacking the word of the Sea, the Influence/Dominion required to lower its levels, and of course, the motive to do so, he can't really stumble into something like that. The limits of crushing/hurling objects with Strength are boat/wagon sized typically, and so the gods are more like street-level superheroes who occasionally do a wide-spread miracle, but feel less like these greater workings are some fundamental part of themselves embodied, and more like a Big Wizard casting a Big Spell. I tried to get around this sometimes like having murder be made impossible in a region because the God of Murder had sworn never to set foot there as the explanation for the expenditures of dominion/influence. Godbound was likely never meant to emulate Aetiological myths like that, so I may be being unfair here, but it's something that may make campaigns feel more mundane than mythic so I do feel the need to bring it up.

A god manifested from the bond between dogs and humanity

Even so, if we're thinking of the world more in terms of 'physics,' than 'symbolism,' the powers of the godbound are mighty in the world of D&D HP and Saving throws, but when confronted with certain questions of mass and energy beyond what can be expressed in human-scale D&D adjacent combat math, the feeling of 'just being Big Wizard Guy' tends to return.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Demigodbound, but my real complaint is that the system is unsure of where it stands to some degree on its own power level- endless abilities for bullying masses of peasants abound, and large changes can be enacted with Dominion/Influence, and things with stats can be smited... but things without stats, like a storm or a chasm, sometimes remain stolidly beyond the players reach, outside of the 20 cubic foot intervals they might be allowed to chip away at.

As a personal point of thematic inconsistency, I mildly disagree with Godbound's conception of Words. The god of Fear can also banish fear, making them the god of bravery as well by default. The god of Flames can also dispel them. The Word of Death is as much Undeath and 'Not-Dying' as it is 'Death.'
This has some advantage in that it allows players to put their own interpretation and spins on the Words, but I find it to smack a little of comic book writing, where justifications for why a character can use their powers to get to whatever point the writer requires can feel like the tools of lazy writing.

As such, anything the gods do, they are typically able to undo. Narratively, I think this is questionable because it gives a lack of consequences to actions. Game design wise, I think it's bad because it removes the design space of the 'negatives' of things, and while Godbound says that it's not supposed to be a game of 'gotchas' and 'unintended consequences of actions' I think something is lost when their decisions can be walked back. An example that comes to mind is the poor mortals cursed by the gods in Greek mythology- Arachne's story from greek mythology turns into something else entirely if she is brought back from the dead, or turned back into a human due to the changing whims of the gods rather than as a reward for lengthy quests or bizarre moral fable. Of course, such alterations only apply to the weak, as strong entities would simply spend 1 effort to ignore the effect, forcing any such transformation to require lengthy strength depleting battles to actually take effect.

As a bonus point of annoyance, there's a great deal of mind control scattered about with rough emotional correlations such as Fire=Angry, Madness giving control over the insane, or Dance having mind control just cuz. Turning roleplaying into 'I make the NPC do what I want them to do' is another of the much loathed 'abilities that skip over the act of playing the game.' And while the godbound are largely immune to it being done to them due to Effort, since the enemies all use the same abilities as the Godbound it does tend to be thrown at them as a possibility and imo, mind controlling player characters is something I think is Bad for a myriad of reasons both socially and game designy but I'm on enough of a tangent...

Actually Positive Remarks

The Bradster

This all may seem awfully negative for a game I played ~75 sessions split between two campaigns of, so lets try to throw in some things I liked. Not all of them are necessarily system specific, but oh well.

Players of the power level of Godbound are immediately Important. Their opinions about geopolitics, ethics, etc, matter because they can enact change. I think this encourages characterization and development of thought in ways that being a dirty adventurer dying in a hole does not.

The players can Change The World. I think it is low-key a waste to run a godbound campaign and then not have a future campaign in that world where players may be clerics of the gods, seek out their artifacts, marvel at their temples (ruined or otherwise) and so on.

You can use all the weird monster manual beasties that normally were 'level-gated' out of typical 'new D&D campaign' gameplay. Admittedly, they might not be as impressive if their main appeal was combat, but I had a good time using a False Hydra without it taking an entire mystery campaign arc, and had them fight Juiblex (or at least a simulacrum) for fun.

You can go absolutely nutty with designing challenges without much fear of a TPK ending the campaign, and so can use ideas that were too 'out there' for other campaigns.

It is, in my humble opinion, a waaaaay better approach to high level D&D shenanigans than 'This being has 10 million HP and +127 to-hit'

Advice if YOU ever want to run Godbound

A good way to approach interesting combats is to think of it as a superhero showdown- throw in ticking bombs and endangered civilians and crumbling buildings and mobility in combat to break up the back-and-forth of HP and effort depletion.

'Dungeons,' fortresses, etc that they raid should similarly be full of perils and obstacles which are not just passive walls of monster meat and stone, but problems the players must react to or go out of their way to preemptively solve. Some high level D&D dungeons try to solve player power by applying antimagic, anti-scry, anti-teleport, anti-tunnelling measures. I don't think that's a good idea for D&D, but it's DEFINITELY not a good idea for Godbound. Certainly it can be used in appropriate areas like the heavenly fortresses of rogue gods, but giving the players great abilities, then denying the players the use of their abilities to keep things 'manageable' misses the point entirely.

Run the game with intent to be very roleplay heavy, and not as a tactical wargame/problemsolving exercise as more standard OSR dungeon delves may be. The game advises 2/3 combat encounters to be there not as threats but as ways for the godbound to show off, so I think this intent exists in the game already. Bear in mind that Gifts abound with ways to bypass many social and informational problems, however.

Consider the game to be, in part, a world-building exercise. Anything that happens in a godbound game can be grounds for mythological past events in a future campaign in the world, and material for you to use later.

I recommend changing the initiative such that it alternates between 'player takes an action' and 'NPC takes an action' to break up the glutted barrages of side-based action and reaction. Or even doing a more standard individual initiative mode- I strongly think 'side based, with all players going first always' encourages boring strategies from the NPCs and PCs alike. 

For Legibility: Boss Monster, Smite Gifts, Entire Party of Godbound

Streamlining Procedure- Just as you should not require players to repeat things like "We look at the ceiling and tap the floor with a 10 foot pole as we advance through the dungeon" in every room after they've established that's what they do, similar streamlining of Godbound player action should be taken into account. A list of Journey miracles can be assumed to be in play unless otherwise mentioned with travelling. If the players want to know something, or even probably would want to know and have the word of Knowledge, and aren't in a position where spending effort would endanger them, you can simply tell them things without demanding precise announcement of which miracle they're using. If they walk into a room with sinister magics, you can spring right into describing what the bearer of the Gift of Perfect Understanding will understand about the evil runes.

Consider having one or more Big Bad Evil Guys who are out to GET the players. A sandbox is all well and good, but realistically speaking, most entities who are not aware and actively scheming to counter the players will likely be rolled over due to a lack of specific preparation against the myriad abilities of the godbound. If the players can phase through the earth, the majority of stone fortresses will suddenly be more disadvantage than defense, and there's no reason for Joe Tyrant #8 to see the player-stone-phase strategy coming any more than Joe Tyrant #1 did, assuming the players operate in a modicum of obscurity and the world does not have public television.
However, if Big Joe Evil is scheming to destroy the players and actively has spies and time to scheme, perhaps Joe Tyrant #8 will have Stun jellies on the edges of walls waiting to engulf unwary tunnelers, or Explosive Runes, or SOMETHING, thanks to the intel provided by Big Joe Evil. Having this kind of foe who can learn the players capabilities and try to come up with countermeasures not just for themselves, but for their lesser allies, can help keep the tactical/strategic aspect of the campaign continually challenging in a way that does not also have the issue of verisimilitude where each foe is inexplicably better prepared than the last one.

As a minor personal recommendation, word of Knowledge has a gift called 'The Best Course' which I think is absolutely terrible with regards to gameplay and you should ban it and any other gift that asks the GM to make an OOC decision about a value judgement about what is 'best' or tells the players what to do, rather than simply providing value-judgement neutral knowledge. If the players can ask the GM 'what should we do that has the best outcome' I believe the campaign will enter a horrid state of false player agency. Where their own decisions cease to be made, and the GM simply tells them what to do whenever they spend an effort, turning a game with multiple participants into a novel with one author.

And finally... consider a different system lol.

nuthin personnel, m'godbound

Should you play Godbound?
It may seem harsh to play what was by all accounts a very successful set of campaigns for nearly a whole year of weekly sessions, only to then say 'this system, which is most nobly available for Free online, wouldn't be my choice to run a campaign about Gods' but I think that is my ultimate conclusion. My summation of Godbound is that its design is ultimately derived from being "a power fantasy for D&D characters" and while it succeeded... that success shows the limits of this fundamental premise, and the possible clash of expectations derived thereof.

Fate, for instance, suffers from a similar problem of lots of conflict resolution feeling samey and being all about depleting Fate Points, but there's a lot less text to read and get caught up in thinking that it's all about the Combat Miracles. Fate is not my favorite storygame system, but I think it could work quite well for Godbound, without some of Godbounds mechanical pitfalls.

I'm not saying don't ever run or play Godbound. We had fun, for one campaign. You probably would too. It has a free version, so there's only moments of your lifespan at stake if you care to try it out. Not anything important, not like fungible currency!
But I think it's worth thinking to yourself about if, in your desire to play high-powered characters of myth, if a storygame might not capture the myth better, or if a superhero game might capture the spectacle of high powerscale battles of wits and might better.

What about Exalted?
AH HELL NAW I BEG YOU PLAY GODBOUND INSTEAD

Giant Lynx, Mammoth, Manticore, Masher, Mastodon

 AD&D Giant Lynx

 

don't sue me TSR games I own the monster manual and can show it to people if I want...!

AD&D Mammoth, Mastodon
These nearly identical entries (Mammoth has 13 HD instead of 12, does 3d6 instead of 2d8, and has AC 5 instead of 6) take up a good half of a page and are largely redundant with the Elephant entry earlier. More and more evidence for the existence of someone very interested in finicky details of the pleistocene being involved with early D&D.

AD&D Masher
Probably among the most forgettable monsters of all time, these are 8HD 'worm-like' fish, dealing 5d4 damage and being covered in poisonous dorsal spines that mean it must be attacked from the front or below, lest the spines fend off attackers who must either abort their melee attack or save vs poison or die. They eat coral but are prone to attacking if surprised or threatened in "self-defense." It's not a bad concept for a monster, though it being underwater and just a fish limits the need to engage with them.

One might expect them to be popular sources of poison spears by the underwater races of Sahuagin and so on, but I see no mention of interaction with other sea creatures. In fact, apart from a lonely 2e wiki entry and a mention of dwelling in the waters of Raven's Bluff in Toril, they do not appear to have any internet presence.

Some random 5e character named Masher has about the same online presence as this fish on search engines

AD&D Manticore
An interesting creature, it can fire 4 volleys of 6 spikes, dealing 1d6 damage each at the range of a light crossbow. As they can fly, one assumes they soften up or slay foes at range, then close in to finish off whatever remains with their unimpressive melee (a regular ol lizard man is about equivalent if you ignore the HD difference) Their treasure type E is typically unimpressive- there is a chance of something good, but it is a low chance indeed. If nothing else, their iron tail spikes can no doubt double as iron spikes to shut doors with.

Manticores are an interesting tactical problem for low to-mid level parties- one must survive the volleys of fairly accurate (+6) spikes, then be able to defeat the creature before it flies away to end its aerial reign of terror, or find a way to track a flying beast back to its lair for treasure. They are of low intelligence but are 'Lawful Evil' which might imply deals can be struck with them, though it is unclear if they speak despite having human heads.

Sunset Realm Giant Lynx
Like most giant animals, the answer is 'sure, why not, there are many ways to become gigantic.'

nasty man

Sunset Realm Mammoth/Mastodon
See the Elephant entry. Most of them are found in the frozen lands of Fomoria south of the fault, driven ever further south by Deadliege expeditions to steal their bones and make necromantic war-constructs from them, just as what was done to their less-hairy elephant brethren in the warm north jungles.

Lungfungus had an interesting approach for these beasts statblock wise that I think I'll steal- failing a melee attack against one incurs 1d8 damage from trampling, as an automated way to make unskilled hunters better off on ranged duty and account for the bulk of the beast simply trampling people.

Sunset Realm Manticore
Goblinpunch already did a pretty great take which I am mostly stealing from.

Manticores are Nightmare creatures, born of dreams of spite and grudge. As Nightmare is closest to the waking world in Saresare, they are known to be residents of that desert sultanate, though they are often hunted and driven into Yuba, Fassulia, and Mercia, cursing all the way. Their faces are that of the host of the nightmare that made them.

They eat hard things, breaking their teeth and bleeding their gums, and incorporate those things as their tail spikes. Shards of bone, stone, and metal compose the quills of a manticores tail. Vomiting forth unsuccessful consumption leads to their lairs being foul smelling and messy, and frequently haunted by unclean spirits of disease. Harpies and manticores do not get along well, but are frequently found together regardless. They fear sphinx.

Manticores are generally unreasonable, growing more resentful of everything you have that they don't but can be satiated temporarily with slander and general nastiness. Politeness and care only pisses them off more. Aiding them with whatever grudge they are nursing is the only way to be allied with one.
If a manticore cannot kill you, it will follow you, harassing your friends, scaring off game, leading enemies to you, and worse if it can manage it.

If you are hit by a manticore tail spike, it embeds in you and you become poisoned by hatred. You cannot aid other people, and can only laugh at their misfortune, mocking them, listing out all your grievances and resentments towards them. Pulling out a spike deals 1 extra point of damage per spike, and you can pull out any number within a round as a full-round action, but someone with a spike in them certainly can't pull spikes out of someone else. Those who die, not from the manticore itself, but from the side-effects of this poison, will spawn a Nightmare incursion upon death which in turn will spawn manticores with their face. Manticores try to engineer these scenarios, knocking people off cliffs and then poisoning their friends and similar so they let them fall.

This poison is nightmarish in nature and only takes effect when the manticore hurls spikes, it can only be collected by things that can collect dreams or emotions.
Similarly, only their spikes are real- upon being slain, the manticore collapses and turns to nothing. Manticores do not have biology or ecology, and could indeed sit in a dungeon room for 100 years doing nothing but hoping to eat the next person they saw.

Jackals, Jackalweres, Jaguars, Ki-Rin, Kobold

 AD&D Jackal
Included because of the Bag of Tricks, these are essentially just lesser wild dogs.

AD&D Jackalwere
An odd inclusion, I assume these are similar to wolfweres, ie, a wolf that can assume human form. With low numbers appearing, a sleep gaze that only works on the unsuspecting (not once combat has started, specfically mentioned) and a vulnerability to iron weapons as well as magic, they cannot engage in incautious melee as lycanthropes might, as while steel is preferred over iron, the odds of being incidentally bludgeoned by some pig-iron craftsmanship would be much more likely than humans trying to use silver lying around. Being mistaken for a werewolf would be of great help to a Jackalwere, so they would probably try to spread false rumors so that they could both face harmless silver, and loot it afterwards.

Still, against anything but the most novice of adventuring parties, they are likely to triumph only by stealth and subterfuge. In my opinion, this makes them a sort of questionable encounter for engaging gameplay, as 'being murdered one by one in your sleep' is both a terrible way to TPK the party, and the most likely outcome of being bamboozled successfully by a jackwere or group thereof.

AD&D Jaguar
While the differences between big cats may be of interest IRL, in D&D they are essentially just smaller lions/tigers, a south-american styled palette swap, so there's not much to say.

AD&D Ki-Rin
Similar to the Coautl, this chinese-inspired entity is given a great grab-bag of magic-user spells, psionic abilities, none of which are specified or detailed in the entry here, making it largely useless for the purpose of 'opening the monster manual to run a monster without needing further prep.' Apart from a nod to having 'double strength' for anything sky-involved, the creature has little to no identity of its own, so it comes off as a rather shallow entity, a flying quadruped wizard thingy that might show up to fight the forces of Evil.

While I normally am contemptuous of later edition adaptations that only focus on monsters insofar as how they may apply tactical maths at the player party, in this case the treatment of Ki-Rin is much improved. Their benevolent protection is described as affecting 3 miles (or a hex lol) around their lairs with various effects such as the purification of water, winds saving good creatures from falls and preventing evil creatures flying, which makes for an interesting sounding region, and their role in the cosmology becomes more distinct.


AD&D Kobolds
Like many other 'evil' demihumans, Kobolds have been redeemed and popularized as a player race in many games, and have leaned more reptilian/draconic in the USA, while the word came to mean a sort of dog-person over in the Japanese RPG scene. Mythologically speaking, Kobolds have much in common with the gnomes, sprites, brownies, and pixies that D&D set them in opposition to, so I find the more friendly depiction of them as rogues and tricksters one that is more in line of the spirit of things, even if the form has been warped.

Modern reclamation aside, Kobolds are essentially just the feeblest form of vaguely goblinoid creature, having 1d4 HP and not even having significant 'leader' types. They lay eggs, occasionally train boars or weasels, 'hate most other life and delight in killing and torture' and are especially hateful towards the 'brownies pixies sprites and gnomes' which seems to cement them as the villains of the 'fey folk' of the sylvan wood.

They commonly wield clubs, axes and javelins, with short swords and spears being, I assume, the 'superior weapons' used by their leader types and guards. Since it's mentioned that their shields are made of wood or wicker, I assume some of their AC comes from that and perhaps dexterity and/or leather armor. Unlike goblins, they are not good miners (ironic, given that mythological kobolds had a strong association with mines) and all in all they seem less well-equipped than their other demihuman counterparts. With that in mind, 'Tucker's Kobolds' were a significant departure from the standard issue kobold found in the AD&D DMG, though that's not to say I disapprove, not at all. It seems even back in the 80's people were not content to leave Kobolds as merely 'lesser goblins.'

Sunset Realm Jackals
Despite his focus on dogs, he is called the Jackal God of Yuba, not the Dog God. This curious incongruity of the god is suspected by some to mean the Jackal God is some manner of ascended Jackal that forsook its own kind in favor of the company of humans and dogs, though if true, this event is so ancient that it does not even have religious tales of its occurrence.

Jackals are treated as dogs in Yuban religion, forbidding mistreatment of them but allowing reprimands if they act wickedly, but they remain undomesticated. Yet, their wildness is not the same as the moonlit chaos of the Wolf, but simply a dry and dusty indifference. Some sects of the religion say the distance between human and jackal is to be taken as a lesson- if humans were meant to know about jackals, the Jackal God would tell us, but he does not, therefore there are secrets of the kingdom of beasts that are not meant to be known.

Sunset Realm Jackalwere
Though any poor beast could become a whateverwere, the curse of being tainted with humanity does not make for a specific species, but an individual accursed monster, and such creatures are usually more of a blight on their host animal populations than on humans, just as werewolves are a menace to humans moreso than to wolves.

Sunset Realm Ki-Rin
Nope

This post took forever solely because I couldn't come up with a kobold image til now

Sunset Realm Kobold
In the ancient days of the wars between the Serpent Empire and the Reptile Kingdoms, through strange reptile sorcery, an unfertilized egg could be hatched into a small homunculus servant- a Kobold. Appearing similar to the lizard that donated blood to the ritual, these mini-mes were used as assistants and sometimes infiltrators. However, after the Reptile Kingdoms fell, their secrets were scavenged by the rest of the world. Elves would alter the ritual to create goblins from animal-shadows, and Dragons would use the ritual to create servile cults to attend to their needs.

Like goblins though, kobolds could ascend from 'conjured servitor' to 'independent life form,' and that is precisely what they did over the years. Those who were descended from abandoned reptile king servitors would often forget their origins across thousands of years, and believe themselves to be the same people who built the ruins around them (albeit somehow shrunken). Those who were descended from dragons who were slain or otherwise left their servitors behind often believed themselves to be the descendants of that dragon, and often sought to transcend their small forms either by biomancy or pyromancy.

These isolated cults of bygone lizards aside, the most common kobolds are the source of the word, from Cobalt or Blue. These are the kobolds of the Dragon-Empire of Bai-Szue, a tremendous and ancient blue dragon of the Fault, and interbreeding with remnant goblins, lizardfolk, and other Fault residents have given rise to a population of kobolds of varying levels of roundness of feature, coloration, cold or warm-bloodedness, vivi or oviparity and other assorted additional or missing features from the 'baseline model.' Due to the highly variable background, there are kobolds who are destitute thieves and kobolds who are exalted bureaucrats alike, and they make up at least a third of the population of this realm in all social strata, even the very top, which is of course reserved for the bloodline of Bai-Szue.

Second in size (both numbers and stature) are the red kobolds of Mantlehearth, a volcanic isle near Oroboro long ruled by the red Dragon Anyash Surtor, who left half dragon everythings behind, and the dragon blood, when mixed with the little people of the isle, resulted in a significant kobold populace. Efforts to ascend to full dragonhood by medical science or theurgic pyromantic investigations into the Undersun are both common.

Third are the green kobolds, also of the Fault, descended from the extensive green dragon family of the northwest. These kobolds are recent, and thus, are conjured goblinoid-type shadow-entities, who, not being truly alive, can be destroyed without incident on the Fault (where otherwise nothing properly dies, thanks to the efforts of Townlocke, Prophet of M'shesh the Mother of Undeath). These entities are merely manifestations of the will of green dragon sorcerors sending forth small minions to plunder the ancient dwarf-cities... but history shows this is unlikely to remain the extent of their existence for long, especially with the blue kobolds as a nearby model.

Fourthly are the Black Kobolds, derived from not the Reptile Kings or the Serpent Empire, but from the Froglords of Zaba, or more precisely, the acidic black dragons born of the Froglord wartime experiments, who in turn crafted Kobolds as servants after the dragons declared themselves the masters after the froglords were defeated. These are the source of the aforementioned 'ruin dweller' type kobolds, who, though an ancient people of the Wurderlands in their own right, are overly obsessed with the works of the bygone Froglords, in ironic contrast to the modern bipedal frogfolk who have forsaken both human and frog heritage in favor of simply living as best suits them.

White kobolds, like white dragons, are likely some manner of Winter Moon corruption of extant creatures rather than their own thing, or simply albinos. If any exist, the Auroral Reaches or the Moonlands would be likely locales.

Mundane Security in a Magical Land

Something I experienced in D&D games where the players had access to spells of higher potency than the usual low level adventuring fare was that our understanding of defenses comes from a non-magical world, and as such, most locales are woefully underprepared for magical assault and infiltration.

This can work in settings that are generally low magic, where hostile wizards and monsters are freak accidents akin to a natural disaster. But in the highly fantastical worlds most games take place in, one has to wonder why the world is not ruled by sorcerers by now, and then further ask why countermeasures against said sorcerers have not been developed.

The answer D&D mostly came to seems to have been a 'magical arms race.' There are scrying spells, so there are anti-scrying spells. Personally I do not much care for this- it smacks of childhood playground roleplay where one insouciant youth declares they have a force field, another declares they have a force field breaker, the first responds they have a force field breaker proof force field, and so on until the recess bell sounds. Looking at the statblocks of high level characters, it also leads to a sort of tiresome 'checklist' of necessary defenses against increasingly esoteric means of attack- anyone who's anyone has to have freedom of movement and contingency spells and a ring of spell turning and I'm not here for it.
But what of the common humanoid, who does not have access to so much as a 1st level Magic-User, who nonetheless wishes to defend themselves against vicious wizards? These are the concerns and defenses and protocols that should be as commonsense as locks and walls in a world with magic, though not all locations would have the funding for all of these countermeasures.


THREATS AND POTENTIAL COUNTERMEASURES

In general- casting spells is VERY illegal outside of trusted individuals performing societally-approved functions.
Are you casting Cure Light Wounds on the wounded mayor, or Charm Person? Comprehend Languages to understand the foreign king, or Fireball to assassinate him? Throwing rocks, knives, ale goblets, and so on to disrupt anyone mumbling gibberish to disrupt potential curses would save many a village from wicked sorcerers, wall guards are probably allowed to shoot first and ask questions later if they see some gesticulating occultist, and anyone attempting to cast a spell unprompted in the presence of someone with enough authority to have bodyguards should expect to be clubbed and tackled, bound and gagged at best, and shot dead by arrows, javelins, shuriken, etc at worst.

Sanctioned wizardry would come from court-sorcerers who must go through a lengthy training and background-check process, battlemages who are part of an established military, and magically-engaged tradesfolk whose services are well known and have established trust, like appraisers, translators, educators at a wizard college, alchemists, etc etc. In few circumstances would foreigners, strangers, or vagabond adventurers be allowed to cast magic willy nilly. Wishing to practice sorcery would likely require applying for a permit of sorts, and any actual spellcasting would be overseen by two squads of burly fellows with instructions to bash the wizards brains out if anything untoward occurs- one squad being immediately present, the other waiting some distance away. There would likely be an alarm system for 'magic threat' in the form of drums, horns or bells, with codes to provide basic information throughout a fortress quickly, allowing word of shapeshifters, mind influencers, fliers, invisible foes, etc to be warned against.

This immediately makes it clear why wizards may wish to build their towers and dungeons far from society- it is the only way they can practice their craft in peace. Of course, going 'rogue' makes one an appealing target to other 'rogue' wizards, so defenses against spells are necessary be they a dungeon or a lord's castle.

Charm Person
Perhaps the most problematic spell for security, the simplest solution is probably to have all employees act in groups of two or more, without exception.Very high security positions would also likely quarantine any new hires for at least a month to allow any arcane influence to wear off. There would also be established protocols to enact if you believed someone was under bewitchment, the rigor and effectiveness varying greatly by circumstance. 'Charm checks' would likely be de-escalatory and delaying in nature rather than going straight to tackling and binding people acting suspicious- an invitation to sit down and talk and explain what they're doing, possibly calling in more people to judge, all the while searching for lurking sorcerers.

Guard dogs may also serve as security against this specific spell to some degree, both for places and peoples, and other types of guardian beasts provide even better insurance, though at some point the logistics of exotic and monstrous guardians may outweigh the benefits.

In terms of information security, this spell is a disaster, but it could be mitigated somewhat by keeping much information on a 'need to know' basis, and instilling values of secrecy where you do not tell details of an operation to anyone- not friends, not family, certainly not minions.

Depending on where the spell's description is from, "Protection From Evil" may prevent or suppress charm effects. If so, any churches should be able to schedule 'charm checks' within a 24 hour period. Though this is part of the 'magical arms race' I mentioned, such check-ups should be common in populated areas with organized religion as any cleric could pull it off.

Sleep
While groups of 2+ work well against Charm Person, to have good odds of at least one individual not falling asleep, the group must be of 4+ size, and to prevent those who resist from being taken out by opposing forces before they can wake their fellows, sizes of 12+ are likely required, which quickly requires unmanageable masses of personnel. The best solution is likely to have small squads of guards on mobile patrols and frequent check-ins rather than long, static positions. That way, if one person evades sleep, they can sound an alarm horn and expect hasty reinforcements, and if a small group of 2-3 is taken out, their absence will quickly be noticed. Passwords would help prevent the issue of Slept targets having their gear stripped and used as a disguise, though none of these are sleep-specific countermeasures so much as general security against guards being taken out.

But that's for a fortress with funding and troops- is there no way for, say, a small shop owner to prevent being robbed by a sleep-casting thief? One method to counter sleep would be an unpopular one- clothing or armor could be crafted such that, upon slumping or otherwise falling prone, a nail would stab the so afflicted, waking them. This method would be used only by those with serious personal investment or professionalism rather than the average hired guard, as those unwilling to risk accidental wounding would likely modify the clothing to reposition the digging nails, but circumstance where attack by enemy wizards could be expected (in a war zone, for instance) this sort of gear might be worn in appropriate circumstances of sentry duty (nail-suits being unsuited for actual fighting).


Magic Missile
Though not all too different from a crossbow in many circumstances, this spell would be of considerable concern for assassinating troop commanders and other VIPS through normal methods of defense like armor, horseback, heavy cover, etc. While it has a magical countermeasure in Shield, the mundane countermeasure would be decoys, bodyguards who are also body doubles, equipped in similar gear. Ornate masks and full helms that declare ones identity would be popular for this reason, and if lined with lead, this works well against ESP as well.


Light/Darkness
Though the short duration of these spells makes them not too concerning save for, perhaps, causing a focus on training to fight and operate blind from mage-hunters and elite forces, the Continual Light would change campaign settings considerably. Temples would likely be illuminated by continual light, as would the homes of kings and the like, and perhaps even the streets of cities or popular roads. Continual Light lanterns(or glowing swords) would almost certainly exist in abundance, as someone knowing the spell has little reason not to create at least one daily. Rather than a defensive concern, this is an infiltration concern, as there may be no way to approach a locale under cover of night or shadow if there are arbitrary amounts of 'Continual lights' keeping the grounds forever well-lit.

ESP
Infosec's worst nightmare, this spell actually has a mundane countermeasure in that a 'thin sheet of lead' will block it (and other scrying spells). As such, any structure with secrets should have lead embedded in thinner walls, and individuals such as guards, clerks, and so on who may have handy information should be clad in lead-mesh cowls/hats or lead-lined helmets. If operating costs are an issue, simply keeping things secret from ones own organization lowers the chance that an ESP-caster will gain access to someone with sensitive information. All manner of espionage tradecraft from real life will also be useful here- dead drops, coded messages, false information, agent handling, etc etc. Some of my players came up with the idea of using ignorant messengers to relay information they did not know of to break up ESP security and play double agent during a civil war.

One might be tempted to remove ESP from a game due to its ability to flatline an investigation, but having it available does allow one to sidestep boundary-transgressing torture/interrogation scenes that commonly may occur in groups. Also, it may keep nobles and other authority figures from becoming corrupt, or, in the event of corruption, they may disallow evidence obtained in that way from counting as proof, so the effects on a game are far from society-shattering, even if players may lean on it as a handy crutch.

Knock
A fairly comprehensive spell of opening, it has one notable weakness in that it will not open portculli. As such, having small but heavy interior portculli suddenly is not merely bizarre dungeon whimsy, but a legitimate defense against certain spells... though a rather expensive one, and one that can be foiled by Charming the portcullis operators. I wonder if dungeon portculli were introduced after knock as a knock-proof obstacle...
The existence of Knock also may explain secret passages somewhat- while a secret door may spring wide from a knock, an open passage behind a piano or whatever remains concealed. 

Spider Climb/Levitate/Flight
While largely not too different from the fear of climbers, this allows for access to basically any window, so height and difficulty of scaling a climb alone cannot be considered proper deterrents. Windows should be either arrowslits, or of metal bars to disallow entry or exit without relying on locks, on account of knock. Curtains or wooden shutters can block line of sight as well. Caltrop-like spikes, grease, or other hazards could line certain areas as well to discourage landing and setting forth a rope line to bring others up, and blind spots with regards to the sky and rooftops should be avoided. If nothing else, 'sky watchers' with bells to alert a stronghold of aerial infiltration should be employed in positions that more standard guards might find tiresome- a 'crow's nest' could be cheaply constructed, or belltowers, watchtowers, etc could serve this purpose.

A common concern is also the issue of locating invisible fliers, but apart from perhaps lighting fires and firing at disturbances in smoke, or perhaps keen-eared and nosed hounds put on sky watcher duty, I think it easier to prevent these fliers access rather than hope to deny them all nearby airspace, and hope they do not have bombing capabilities of breaching a location.

Locate Object
As mentioned in ESP, interior walls where secrets are to be kept should be lead-lined, and the same applies to keeping objects of value safe in lead-lined chests and coffers. Coffins may be commonly lead-lined as well.

Invisibility
Closed doors, doors that have bells to ring when opened, and guards trained to look for footprints, throw dirt or liquids, swing spears or ropes in wide arcs, and the ever-useful keen-eared and nosed guard dog will do much to limit the use of Invisibility. However, it becomes complicated when combined with other spells, especially those which allow the spellcaster to avoid contact with the ground like Spider Climb, Levitate, Flight, Silence etc. This allows casters to get close and perhaps get a spell off without interference. Exploiting the wizards self-preservation instincts with the threat of being caught in anti-aerial crossfire is hopefully deterrent force enough if the presence of sky-watching archers is obvious.

Clairaudience/Clairvoyance/Wizard Eye
A difficult spell to counter, as lead sheets do not block it, the best mundane methods I can think of would be to conduct sensitive meetings in secret code or obscure language, as well as to keep records written in ciphers, and of course, to change and update these codes and languages with enough frequency so that if the code is broken, the vulnerability will be temporary. Changing meeting locations would also help dodge such scrying attempts.

Speak with Animals
A rare but easily overlooked vulnerability could be the guard dogs, farm animals, and local wildlife around a location. The best defense is probably treating those animals very well, but this may not always be possible- for example, spikes on roofs and windowsills would upset birds, but may help keep away fouler fliers. Removing animals entirely may be possible depending on location, though this will in turn likely upset wild animals at being denied an environment and make them more likely to help intruders who encounter them nearby.

Fireball/Lightning Bolt/Arson
Soggy mats of vegetable matter or hides are sometimes draped over wooden walls to prevent arson via flaming arrows and the like, but this is not always feasible. Pots/Sacks/Buckets of sand and earth could be kept around to help extinguish fires before they get out of hand (and can help find Invisible targets in a pinch). Of course, the main defense is not using wood as a structural material, relying on stone instead, though this is a much higher cost of construction.

While less structurally menacing than Fireball, Lightning Bolt can smash through weak walls and devastate hallway defenses. Tricking a wizard into shooting a stone wall through a well-placed tapestry might kill them with a reflected bolt, but shortening lines of fire will also reduce the efficiency of ranged weapons. Having twisting corridors may be beneficial if guards are primarily melee combatants, though this defensive measure makes infiltration easier without clear lines of sight.

Protection from Normal Missiles-
Missile weapons are one of the best ways to interrupt wizard nonsense, so this spell is very relevant for siege-wizards. At close distances it could be foiled by molotovs, as it is the ensuing pool of flame that causes damage, not the thrown flask of oil or alcohol, but at longer distances, without magic, only siege weapons can pierce this defense. Providing such engines with anti-personnel shot like baskets of spiked balls may allow for more accurate blasting of wizards, though this is more of a measure to add to pre-existing siege engines, not a reason to buy them as a specific counter.

This spell may not work against specific projectiles depending on GM interpretation-odd ranged attacks like nets or bolas, boomerangs or blowpipes, or perhaps firearms, or attacks made such that gravity propels them like dropped rocks, may be able to bypass it.

Water Breathing
Castles with streams, local wells, etc etc should have grates that allow water through, but little else, and moats or other watery barriers should not be written off as inaccessible means of approach. Honestly, this is less for the concern of water-logged wizard infiltrators and more for various amphibious horrors.


Speak With Dead/Animate Dead-
These two spells turn the dead into potential liabilities, and as such, crypts to inter those knowledgeable about secrets should be a must-have over common graveyards. They must be securely guarded, perhaps by portcullis, certainly by lead-lined coffin, and perhaps by keeping those coffins held shut by nails, welding, etc. Corpses could also be staked down, mouths filled with lead, and other means of preventing speech or reanimation.

Polymorph-
As troubling as a perfect disguise might be, introducing code phrases would help shut this down, as well as help confirm anyone turned into a newt is who they say they are. The usual protocol of everyone always has someone with them would help reduce the chances of a single polymorph being sufficient Keeping cats and chickens about to menace any rat/insect-polymorphs for infiltration could help, though that then requires the cats and chickens to be marked somehow to prove they are local and not infiltrators themselves.


Dimension Door/Teleportation-
Though blindly teleporting in is too risky for most wizards, with some scrying or prior infiltration, they might be willing to try it. Having 'decoy' rooms (and ideally body doubles acting as decoy people to add a sense of liveliness to those locations) and guards ready for exotic modes of infiltration is the best mundane countermeasure I could think of.

On a side note, the safest method for an AD&D teleport pad would be a platform suspended about 30' above a pool of water, so 'low' mishaps teleport the person into water or free-falling into it, rather than into the earth.

Cloudkill/Gas- Though rather specific, ventilation shafts both for lighter-than air and heavier-than air gases could be placed in key locations. to help disperse such gases rather than let them collect within the halls. This does well to prevent problems with smoke as well, which is a mundane enough concern to merit inclusion anyway.

Passwall-
Walls that are a prime target for being passwalled, Dig'd, or sundered by various magics may do well to in fact be TWO walls, with a hollow space between them, ideally with a moat or spiked pit. While expensive and pointless against scaling or flying, on exterior walls this is a fairly effective countermeasure for subterranean complexes.

Illusions (Thanks to DymeNovelti of the discord for this update)
For the most part, illusions function as a distraction to humans rather than a unique problem like Knock, and have a lot of variance of being 'hologram' or 'delusion' based on GM handling. I think for the most part, illusions would be handled much like any other distraction- trigger happy sling stones, investigating only in groups of 2+, and not clumping everyone up to investigate and sticking to chain of command, but still challenging illusory kings for passcodes, etc etc. I think generally speaking 'high alert' caused by illusory fires or dragons would still be met with 'standard' responses of locking down portculli, keeping people in their assigned squads and battle stations, and the like.

Dogs would be handy against certain illusions that lack full-sensory output (such as Phantasmal Force) and could be relied on against certain illusory tricks, and can sniff out illusionists regardless of what the illusion is, so whenever there's trickery afoot, there's sure to be a dog-team deployed to look for a mage sooner or later.

EXAMPLE SECURE LOCATION
I hope to use this map as a training grounds in one-shots to refine these ideas, and would welcome feedback for general countermeasures and specific ones so that future locations may have tighter security. Ways to reduce the number of staff, portculli, and general cost of operations would be useful too so as to scale things down to smaller operations. This isn't quite a full module, so certain NPCs and logistics may need to be improvised, but the goal is not to be a place impervious to guile or force- just one that will not roll over and die to wizardly action.

Missions
1- Assassination/Abduction- Take out the master of the castle
2- Rescue- Recover a prisoner or corpse.
3- Information- Learn of secret plans from encoded correspondance or a meeting with a visiting noble
4- Sabotage- disable defenses, allowing incoming army to take it over with ease
5- Compromise-Get an imposter, charmed, bribed, blackmailed, etc agent on the inside of the keep and a way to leak info
6- Theft- Steal an item of note, a confiscated artifact or legendary grave good.

Castle Gant Gard
A border castle of the north end of Queen's Coast, this place must be vigilant against infiltration by agents of King's Point, and frequently holds sensitive information, VIPs, and meetings of the lords of the warfront.

The "Forester Mounds" refer to semi-permanent dwellings of civilians who have served as archers and have taken this position out of patriotism, and often a lack of other good living opportunities. While the lack of prestige might breed resentment in 'real' guards, foresters are strictly separate from castle affairs and so are in little position to affect anything if compromised. They are not allowed within the castle,  except in event of a siege, and are expected to keep their distance from castle staff. They are barred from bearing arms within sight of castle-dwellers, and failing to do so may bring great suspicion or even arrows down upon them. This is to prevent assassins from replacing foresters. They are allowed to hunt men and beasts that come within 3 miles of the castle who are not on the Gant Road, shooting first and questioning later, leaving captured or dead foes at the castle gate for review by the castle. They are expected to keep at least one dog to help sniff for sneaking or invisible agents, and as they are responsible for feeding themselves, they are frequent fishermen, so as to keep an eye on the river/canal. The foresters are expected to meet daily with each other so imposters or missing peoples may not go unnoticed for long, and report inconsistencies at the castle gate, speaking through the portcullis, but have no strict organization, being a very passive and nebulous first line of defense.

General-
Most rooms have a large pot full of dirt to help extinguish fires, or throw to help reveal invisible infiltrators. Overzealous dirt-throwing is kept in check by the requirement that whoever threw dirt sweeps it up and returns it to the pot.

There are no windows or chimneys large enough to allow human passage, but any external room does have some to allow for ventilation and light.

Roofs of towers and the keep are steep and lines with caltrop-like spikes around the edges, making climbing or landing precarious and risky.

Passwords are required to have a house guard allow wallguards access to the keep, as it is strictly off-limits otherwise. Said passwords change every week, and are not known to the wall guards or other  staff, only by the garrison commander and the house guards of the keep.

The grounds and halls are kept well-lit by candle-lanterns, and are somewhat crowded, making it difficult to be alone and not within sight or earshot of someone else. Privacy is very low, and it is protocol to take at least one extra person with you at all times. Typically, ones chosen partner is also a good friend, and training exercises encourage partnering up to foster these duos.

Alarms go from whistles, which are for internal communication between foresters, wallguards, or house guards. To Horns, which are for communication with everyone on active duty and have codes for things like fire, invisible, fliers, climbers, shapeshifters, etc etc that squad commanders at least must have memorized. Finally, there are the Bells of the keep, which are used to rouse not just those on duty, but everyone, and have similar warning codes to horns but indicate a problem that even the serving staff and lord must be made aware of immediately. Bell alarms wake sleepers, and may wake those magically Slept as well, depending on GM ruling.

Any guard higher ranking than the rank and file will have a lead lined helmet and a horn.
Guard equipment includes a lantern and oil to light arrows with, a sling to hurl rocks if ammo is to be conserved, a bow or crossbow, and spears and shortswords. They are typically armored with chain mail, or unarmored if they are on arrow-slit firing/watching duty.

House guards (the guards of the Keep) wear Nail-Suits that deal 1d4 damage to them if they become prone (such as by being Slept) and count as leather armor. They also wear lead-lined helmets, have password knowledge, generally do not carry ranged weapons, and are high-morale elites unfazed by blindfighting, grappling, or other unusual circumstances, chosen for loyalty. Any bribe they are offered will be matched by the lord of the castle.

Keep servants are usually not true civilians, but experienced military camp followers who were recommended to the position after proving themselves to a knight or other high-ranking member of the keep occupants. All recruitment requires a quarantine period and background check that takes close to a month to ensure they are not compromised nor an imposter.

The master of the castle, when in public, wears a lead-lined mask and helm, as do their two bodyguards/body doubles. They are with the master at all times, and may even pose as the master to attempt to draw out schemes. There are two more, to take care of alternating day/night shifts, and they add to confusion by using the masters quarters as their own, doing paperwork, resting in the royal bed, and so on just as the master might, to bamboozle scriers and spiers.

The castle moat (a canal dug to divert the river it is near) is not that deep, and is surrounded by damp wooden spikes bound together, cheval de friese. This is largely an anti-siege measure, but for infiltrators, anything attempting to reach the castle wall will be delayed and likely noisy thanks to splashing, and zealous and bored wall-guards alike will fire bolts at basically any noted disturbance. At night they use fire-arrows to help illuminate the surroundings, animals being good sport or food. If a dog has an official collar, it may avoid being fired on, but animals(and their trainers) that run loose are not viewed with goodwill here.

The Drawbridge is controlled from the gatehouse, which also has a portcullis. Though the drawbridge is usually down, the portcullis is usually closed.

The Walls have overhanging machicolations to make climbing more difficult and are 2 stories tall, and are patrolled by 2-man teams of crossbowmen (or slingers in rain) who travel from tower to tower until their shift is over and they return to tower-duty. Their main task is to blow an alarm whistle if they spot a threat or anything anomalous to bring the larger squads inside the guard towers to attention. Whistles between the guards are common and do not cause larger alarm or reprimand for overuse save for in the most gratuitous instances.

The Watchtowers, A-F, 3 stories tall are primarily for sieges, allowing for crossfire upon enemy troops and are manned with swiveling ballista with a variety of shot, both anti-infantry, anti-air (chains or multiple smaller bolts in a bundle), and dirt-loaded sacks that are used for practice shots and for catching invisible foes in clouds of dust. They have small squads of men on each floor, including squad leaders- the top floor being the ballista crew and external lookouts, equipped with horns to blow alarms for various situations to bring the castle to alert status and alert other guard towers. The second floor, on the level of the walltops, has guards who watch the walltop patrols and the castle interior grounds, peering through door slots and arrow slits with crossbows at the ready in case of internal problems. Finally the ground floor has the keymaster for each tower, and resting guards who are only semi-on duty, armed with melee weapons and only called upon to respond to active threats.

Gatehouse C has no ground floor or entry for security reasons.

Gatehouse E has a door leading to the wall that runs to the Keep, but the Keep-side door is a small portcullis operated from inside the keep and is rarely used due to the annoyance of requiring a password and cooperation of the internal house-guards.

E's ground door entry is near the kennels, not in the inner courtyard.

The Gatehouse- A special watchtower with an added murder-hole and portcullis operations, and no ground level (the ground level being the space between the portcullis and the standard large gates.) Portcullis lifting requires several people to operate, as the winch-wheel is quite hefty. The doors to the gatehouse, on the walltops, are kept locked and guards on wallpatrol knock and ask for a 'all is well' password when encountering it on their trip around the walls.

Like Gatehouse E, there is a wall that leads to a tower of the Keep that is locked by a portcullis and barely if ever actually used in day to day life due to the required security measures, being primarily a way for the gatehouse guards to fall back to the keep in the event of the outer wall being breached.

Entry Booth- Inside the walled entry courtyard, this building is only manned when the portcullis is up by guards looking for imposters, infiltrators, etc. They make a record of all who enter or leave the castle, demand weapons be turned over (to be returned later), note declared cargo, beasts of burden, etc etc. They will always have guard dogs.

Inner Courtyard
Two more portculli and walls prevent access to the rest of the grounds around the keep. These portculli are not open even when the outer door is, opening to allow access to the keep and grounds only once the Entry Booth guards declare visitors cleared for entry.

Kennels- Where the castle dogs are kept by the Master of Hounds. Castle dogs have spiked collars with identifying marks and most squads of guards will have a dog whose main purpose is to sense hidden foes, but is trained to sic people as well. Dogs are only fed at the kennels, to prevent them from being fed poisoned food or distracted while on-duty.

Smith
The blacksmithy for upkeep of arms and armors. Invariably busy. Well away from other wooden structures to avoid spreading fire, as are most structures. There are multiple smiths of varying quality ensuring the place is always active to keep up with demand.

Barracks A and B-  These 1-story wooden buildings are the quarters for the wallguards, who are the most numerous of troops for this place. The Garrison Commander has a special office in Barracks B where paperwork is handled. They are for the most part always semi-occupied by off-duty guards sleeping or relaxing, and there are usually guard dogs as well, either leashed to a post near the door or inside with their trainer.

Training Grounds
Where troops and knights drill riding, dog training, archery, and sparring, even at night, to keep eyes and boots always active around the keep.

THE KEEP

The keep has its own portcullis that comes down in front of its standard double door entrance, as it is a secondary fallback zone for the troops if the outer wall falls. Though closed at night, it is usually open during the day to save time.

Waiting Room/Checkpoints
The entry hall, mostly a place for guards to operate the portcullis mechanism, looks left and right down halls that lead to guard-manned checkpoints. Unlike other internal keep guards, these guards are armed with crossbows so as to catch intruders in crossfire. Similarly to the external checkpoint booth, the guards here take note of all who enter or leave the keep, and there are even more internal portculli that bar entrance to deeper into the keep past these checkpoints. While one portculli, typically the left one may be left open to speed things along (like when servants are loading up supplies), it is protocol to never have both open at once, and they are opened not from the checkpoint side, but from the hallway beyond, so that in the event the internal guards are taken out the keep may be locked down from within, and crossbow bolts fired from down the hall at anyone or anything attempting to force its way through the second portcullis line of defense.

Tower/Stairs
The northmost tower bottoms have stairs leading to the second level and little else.

House Kennel
There are dogs and cats kept inside the keep to hunt rats and other pests, and the kennels are located where they are to deter sneaky entrance through the left portcullis, sleep near their master's beds to raise the alarm if something untoward occurs, and so on. They are smaller animals than the large guard-dogs of the wallguard, though there are accommodations for larger beasts if required. House animals are closer to being pets and have collars and bells making their presence and identity easily known, and though these animals may go outside, outside animals are not allowed inside the keep.

Great Hall- a throne room/feasting hall/dance hall for general assembly of the house guard and guests, and where the castle master takes public audience. There are three thrones, occupied by the liege and their bodyguards/body doubles, and guards will typically be in attendance as well, standing to the sides of the room to keep an eye out for any would be sorcerers, assassins, etc.

The support wall behind the throne is actually two walls, with sand filling the gap between them, just as a possible preventative measure against a Passwall assassin.

Kitchen- Though the Great Hall also has a fireplace to roast things in, the kitchen is a crowded space full of servants, who frequently enter and exit. As an unspoken rule, it is expected that servers taste the food as they bring it out as a guard against poison, (and a chef who isn't tasting food constantly is a poor one) and failure to do so is seen not as a sign of potential poisoning typically, but of a possible imposter, to which a challenge of the weekly password may be posed as proof of identity.

Storage/Descent
A storeroom and cellar, frequently used as passage by servants. If the master of the castle is in his throne room, the door is usually guarded or locked, much to the dismay of the kitchen staff who must go the long way for ingredients so as to avoid bothering the master.

It also has the staircase to the lower levels.

Lounge/Stairs Up
A well-appointed and high-traffic room with stairs up to a landing, then to the second level.

Chapel
Somewhat isolated from the hustle and bustle, this is a chapel to Our Lady of Gardens, though a somewhat dingy one with no external window, reliant on candlelight. It is a common place for people acting suspiciously to be brought, and while this place is meant to focus on mundane countermeasures, if there is clerical assistance to be had, it will be had here.

Low Status Guest Quarters
A communal sleeping space, the barracks for the wall guard if they must retreat to the keep during a siege gone wrong. Also serves for the retinue of visiting nobles. It will be guarded at night on both doors, with anyone wishing to leave escorted by additional guards called in from the nearby right checkpoint, to ensure guests may not wander freely. As usual, guards operate in pairs.

Privys
Tunnels let waste go into the moat, and are blocked by metal grates. Occasional blockages require the appointment of a very small person to wriggle through the tunnel to clear the blocked grate, and nothing larger than a cat should be able to enter or exit the castle this way. Often clogged in winter due to freezing, leading chamberpots clumsily thrown out the arrow-slits to be the preferred method of disposing of waste.

KEEP, SECOND STORY
Guard Towers- Guards keep an eye on the wallguards and grounds from here. The towers with portculli leading to the walls are kept closed to the outside unless a password is spoken (and of course, the speaker is identified as someone to let inside) and there is a secondary interior portculli that requires further cooperation of someone from within the keep (typically guards from the top-right tower) allowing entrance. There are far fewer interior guards on the keep towers than on the walls, and they are more concerned with security than serving as archery-turrets.

There are stairs leading to the roof here, but the trapdoors are locked, and barred from opening due to the placement of stones that prevent them from opening from outside. Daily "Roof Duty" is undertaken by four house guards who must call the password to be allowed entry, even if they have rung alarm bells that indicate their peril. This 'third level' is wall-less save for defensive ramparts but not roofless, and has a hanging alarm bell and vision to the other bell-towers, save diagonally, for the steepled roof blocks vision.

The top towers have at times been used for nesting birds or messenger bats, though this is a potential security issue.

Guard Barracks
Near the noble quarters for quick assistance if an alarm is sounded. Though they sleep in shifts, these barracks are guarded as well, by human and dog.

Servant Quarters-
Unguarded, but often active with servant swapping shifts, with the top left guard tower guards able to keep an eye on this hallway in case something untoward occurs. Thin walls and arrowslit windows allow one to hear shouting from the lower left guard station, an awkward and slow way for the wallguard to request access to the keep if that tower is unmanned.

Armory
Guard equipment and masses of arrows, used to supply the house guard and equip troops that fall back to the keep in time of peril. Typically locked, requiring a key from the keep commander, so that those without weapons cannot gain access (though the doors are between two guard towers and behind portculli so it is difficult even ignoring the lock.)

Storage
Domestic storage for servant winter clothing, bedding, candles, stepladders, buckets, mops, etc. Frequently accessed by servants and guards alike for odds and ends.

Noble Chambers
Grand bed, closet,etc etc. Everything a noble needs to be ostentatious.

Noble Chambers (decoy)
Identical to the Noble Chambers, occupied sometimes by the master of the castle and sometimes by bodydoubles.

Noble Chambers (alternate)
Not identical, but equally well-appointed, and has a door to the bath-house allowing for more privacy than tramping in a bathrobe through the halls to the other chambers does.
Also has a secret passage behind the curtains of the four poster bed that allows for swift exit that will hopefully be mistaken for exit into the bath-house.

Panic Room/Secret Study
A portcullis can be lowered with the pull of a lever, but is kept open unless someone is inside. The walls are lined with lead, foiling some forms of detection. Sensitive items and information are kept here, and it is sometimes used as a meeting room by people who already know of its existence (past masters of the castle, royal agents, or body doubles.) It contains rations and weapons in addition to any secret information.

BASEMENT/SUBLEVEL
Dungeon Entry Guard Station
Manned by guards who are on long shifts, but have frequent checkups from servants/other guards due to the convenient location of being between two storage rooms.Their main duty is to restrict access to prisoners and the crypts, typically opening only to identified people like the master of the castle, garrison commander, or other people of note. They are equipped with crossbows and burning oil to menace anything coming up the hallway through the portcullis. They tend to have an older guard dog.

Lower Storage Room
The lower-food storage where root vegetables, wine, cheeses, etc are kept. Dungeon guards tend to gain weight and nibble on foods here out of boredom, which is overlooked as long as consumption is not egregious- a reward of being posted to dungeon duty. Dungeon guards and kitchen staff tend to be on a first-name basis with each other.

Solitary Cells
For important and public prisoners, or just quarantine for people who are suspected to be compromised, plagued, etc. Locked iron doors with more privacy than an iron bar door.

Prison Cell-
Single large room behind locked iron bar doors for containment of masses of prisoners of war and the like.

Secret Meeting Room (Alternate)
A dingy dungeon meeting room where clandestine meetings spoken in alternate languages or code may be held so as not to give away the location of the panic room.

Has a secret door (a brick-lined iron door that opens when a torch sconce is pulled) behind which is a locked iron bar jail-cell style door behind which a lead-lined oubliette where secret prisoners may be held is hidden.

Secret Meeting Room (Decoy)
A very obviously fake wall slides open to this room filled with compelling but obsolete or useless junk- a desk with a map, pyrite and glass treasures, code scrolls no one uses anymore, etc etc. A pressure plate will close the wall behind anyone entering, and it does not open from the inside, trapping snoopers. Occasionally used as a meeting room to bait suspected agents and spies whose presence is suspected but not identified.


Crypt
Old coffins line the walls, covering up older alcoves where the dead lie, with the central support pillar full of alcoves for corpses and their grave-goods. The hallway to the crypt is strewn with tripwires that ring small bells to alert the guards the dead walk if there are no prisoners to howl in terror at such an occurrence.

Behind one such coffin is an empty alcove that can be crawled through to reach the secret crypt.

Secret Crypt
The walls and the stone sarcophagi alike are lead-lined. Corpses of spymasters and others with sensitive information lay here and have their mouths bound shut with lead to prevent necromancers from forcing them to speak, and their stone coffins are nailed shut to further deny access to the dead and any sensitive grave goods they may be buried with.