Plots & PlacesPost your PCs and NPCs for others to reference and enjoy. This is also an alternate location for long-term campaign and plot development. These can be system neutral or relate to any game or system.
Whoops! "Dodge" should be "flanked," of course. My apologies.
Telay was a tiefling bard who trained Nolin in Sigil. They've had an on-again, off-again love affair since then (about six years game time.) She was last seen studying with Nolin at the library of Hagiok the lich. Nolin was charmed and mostly drained by two of Hagiok's vampire necromancer students. As far as he remembers, she got disgusted with him and left.
Uh huh.
Don't bring this up elsewhere; when she shows up, I want it to be something of a surprise.
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
-Iago, Shakespeare's Othello, Act III. Scene III. Lines 180-186.
PirateCat, I am itching to see what happens in this battle. If this is as bad as it is, I want even more to see the final, climactic encounter, hehehe...
Just wondering too... how much do you appreciate the ideas that people post here? Do you consider many of them for future battles?
__________________ -Kaodi
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
-Iago, Shakespeare's Othello, Act III. Scene III. Lines 180-186.
I have a small idea for everyone. I've been reading the Quintessential Wizard, and there is a great deal in there on Wizards with spells with very different visual effects. This has been a long standing interest of mine, and I just wanted to mention it here.
Combine this with feats like Energy Substitution and suddenly you've got an ordinary wizard throwing spells the party can't identify at them. Good for atmosphere and scariness without affecting power!
__________________ DM of Adventure Path Story Hour (now in Thunderspire Labyrinth!): Ryam Plays Dice - updated 8th June 09 (campaign on indefinite hiatus).
Player in Swordlands Story Hour: Interview with a Fey - updated 15th June 09. News just in - this campaign may be restarting in the near future! Watch this space!
I also have the singular honour of being Rouseketeer #20.
Kaodi, are you kidding? I freakin' love this thread. My DMing strategy has always been predicated on borrowing good ideas from everywhere around me, such as published modules, fiction, and the real world. With you folk, this gets remarkably easier, because you think of things that I never would. (And with luck, you're borrowing from me, as well.)
This might not always be obvious, though, because for all the good things I can say about my game it doesn't go fast. Plot often takes quite a while to spin itself out. But as long as you want to give me ideas, I'd be honored to learn from them and take bits and pieces. Have I said thanks recently? If not, I should.
Last edited by Piratecat; 4th November 2002 at 12:17 AM..
SA–Breath Weapon (Su): Cone of flesh corroding (acid) gas, 50 feet long, every 1d4 rounds; damage 14d8, Reflex half DC 29.
SA–Frightful Presence (Ex): Dragons can unsettle foes with their mere presence. This ability takes effect automatically (radius 210 ft) whenever the dragon attacks, charges, or flies overhead. A potentially affected creature (one with less than 24 HD) that succeeds at a Will save (DC 27) remains immune to that dragon's frightful presence for one day. On a failure, creatures with 4 or fewer HD become panicked for 4d6 rounds and those with more than 5 HD become shaken for 4d6 rounds.
SA–Half-Earth Elemental Spell-Like Abilities (at 24th lvl): 1/day-magic stone, soften earth and stone, stone shape, spike stones, wall of stone, earthquake, iron body, elemental swarm*, plane shift.
* Cast as an earth spell only.
Spells Known (cast 6/8/7/5; as a level 7 sorcerer): 0–daze, resistance, detect poison, read magic, dancing lights, ghost sound, mage hand; 1–endure elements, mage armor, shield, true strike, ventriloquism; 2–cat’s grace, endurance, fog cloud; 3–fly, haste
SA–Snake Form (Su): 4/day, this dragon can assume a serpentine form. In this form, the AC drops to 27 and the dragon loses claw attacks, but gains a constriction attack at the same bonus, dealing 3d6+9 damage; this attack has Improved Grab. Speed in this form: 30 ft, fly 20 ft (poor), swim 30 ft.
SA–Humanoid Form (Su): 4/day, shapechange into a basic Humanoid (human, elf, dwarf, hobgoblin, etc.)
SQ–Immunities (Ex): (includes immunities granted by active spells) Immune to charm, disease, earth-based effects, sleep, paralysis, blindness, critical hits, ability score damage, deafness, disease, drowning, electricity, poison, stunning, and all spells or attacks that affect the character's physiology or respiration.
SQ–Blindsight (Ex): Dragons can ascertain creatures by nonvisual means (mostly hearing and scent, but also by noticing vibrations and other environmental clues); this dragon's range is 210 feet.
SQ–Keen Senses (Ex): Dragons can see four times as well as humans in low-light conditions and twice as well in normal light. They also have darkvision (range 700 feet).
Note: Haste only lasts 7 rounds. Already figured in to AC.
Last edited by Piratecat; 4th November 2002 at 04:39 AM..
Don't cry too hard - the PCs are fully buffed and prepared, and that means a lot. Oathenor's normal strategy is to take out the cleric first, then the wizard, and then take his time finishing off the others. As it turns out, Velendo made that strategy a wee bit problematical.
Monsters of Faerun. Deep Dragons have true seeing always active.
Elemental Swarm is a very hard spell to employ I might add, the initial elementals that emerge are little more than flesh walls (if that), it takes some serious time for the power of the spell to show up.
Last edited by Jeremy; 4th November 2002 at 06:34 AM..
Please tell me that you remembered to cast elemental swarm before the combat started. Because IIRC, it has a casting time of 10 minutes.
Oh, ****. It's got quicken spell-like ability. Awwwk! But at least the party has got a ten minute gap between elementals appearing, eh? Doesn't it? Please?
__________________ DM of Adventure Path Story Hour (now in Thunderspire Labyrinth!): Ryam Plays Dice - updated 8th June 09 (campaign on indefinite hiatus).
Player in Swordlands Story Hour: Interview with a Fey - updated 15th June 09. News just in - this campaign may be restarting in the near future! Watch this space!
I also have the singular honour of being Rouseketeer #20.
What sort of things are still ahead for the Defenders, PirateCat? What haven't they done yet? I was sort of thinking about this last night and I was wondering if the Defenders had ever been immersed in a new set of cultures, sent to another planet, another reality, or hurtled forward or backward 10s, 100s or 1000s or year in time.
Also, just another thought, do you have any subservient ghouls like the Marquis (what the heck is the plural of Marquis, if anything?) in the original adventure?
Anyway... half-earth elemental deep dragon... hehehe... nice. Speaking of which, what kind of monsters might you be looking for ideas for in the nearer or further future?
__________________ -Kaodi
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
-Iago, Shakespeare's Othello, Act III. Scene III. Lines 180-186.
Originally posted by Kaodi What sort of things are still ahead for the Defenders, PirateCat? What haven't they done yet?
Wasn't there something about a powerful magical effect that caused people to forget that the king has actually a son? I don't this has been resolved yet...?
Since I haven't finished the dragon fight yet, let me at least answer this.
Potential ingredients in their underdark crawl include:
- blind, psionic, albino, cannibalistic halflings
- ghoulish and non-ghoulish mindflayers
- some up front and personal time with deific representatives
- A very difficult dilemma
I don't want to give too much away. But really, who doesn't love blind, psionic, albino, cannibalistic halflings? The big challenge in this sort of adventure is to make it stay interesting. The problem with the 2e Night Below boxed set, for example, is that the middle bit got boring. Just too much of the same old, same old. I'm going to try and avoid that. We'll see how well I do.
For instance, you'll notice that there aren't any ghouls in Mrid. That's because the ghoulish commanders thought, "Hmmm. Every time our armies meet these people, hundreds and hundreds of our troops die. Whaddaya say we try to avoid them until our assassins can take them down?" Thus, you won't be seeing as many large-scale battles for a while, unless the PCs catch up with an army that is trying to be somewhere that they aren't.
To make this work, I will gloss over the boring bits ("You travel for 4 days.") It should be a theme of epic, fantastic exploring, mixed with occasional vicious danger and clear signs of what the ghouls have done. It should be very clear that these are Bad. And they should wonder where the heck all those ghouls have gone...
But don't worry. The undead are working on something important. After all, the notion that the ghouls could wipe out all living creatures by themselves - religious quest or not - is absurd. They must have something else up their rotting, slimy sleeve.
Following this adventure, they'll have to deal with the aftermath of what the White Kingdom has done. They'll have to deal with the aftermath of what the Church of Aeos has accomplished. I'll probably toss some planar adventuring in there. And Knight Otu's correct; they'll probably want to find out why the king's son is missing, and why they can never remember that fact.
__________________ - Piratecat, EN World Admin
Currently editing the 4e War of the Burning Sky adventure path. Support EN Publishing, get excellent modules!
There are a LOT of good Psion/Psychic Warrior PrCs, powers, and Feats at the WotC website now. My favorites for Psion are Shadow Mind and Constructor. As it is, the Defenders have almost no psionic power with the disappearance of Tom-Tom, so the players probably wouldn't be familiar with that new material.
Constructor especially is a fun PrC. Besides adding a new list of abilities to choose from, you can add THREE more abilities to each construct, give them more HP, cast them for less pp but get 1d3 extra constructs, and metapsionic them (i.e., Quicken) way beyond the usual limit. It makes you a one-trick Halfling, but that's not a problem for NPCs as much.
Besides, it sorta makes sense as to how they'd have kept the White Kingdom at bay: when you can summon a mini-army (3-8 per casting) of constructs with lots of special abilities and DR, a pack of ghouls just isn't that dangerous.
What exactly does Knowledge: Tasty, Yummy Things do for a dragon that can eat almost anything already?
Is he thinking during the battle, "when this Iron Body wears off I shall eat the half-elf first, then maybe one or two of the humans and polish it off with a halfling desert." "I'm so sick of dwarves..."
Or maybe it is, "Magical mace, that looks tasty think I'll start with that."
"MMM, +5 with a hint of holyness."
__________________ "I'm off to see what an 18 Charisma is worth 'under the hood'" Haley, Order of the Stick.
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