Rod of Seven Parts in Dark Sun

darkbard said:

Most definitely 4E. Your suggestion of TotFS is in place of the Satisfied concordance rating additional power, right? Are you suggesting replacing both the encounter and daily powers with TotFS? As it stands, when Satisfied, the staff bestows an encounter fly speed move action and a daily close blast attack power. Does swapping both of those for an encounter area attack power (and TotFS is arguably somewhat weaker in effect than the daily) seem well balanced?

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I was just thinking of the attack power, and I'd keep it as daily.

The invoker/wizard in my game has the Rod with 6 parts, and TotFS, and (as an encounter power) Thunderwave. With an invoker's WIS, Thunderwave gives huge push. Gust of Wind has better area, I think (cl burtst 5 rather than 3). TotFS gives reasonable AoE (a burst 2), a movement-related debuff which overall is weaker, I think (slow, rather than a decent push) but an ally boost. So in lieu of the burst push you get a burst slow plus some ally-movement. I think that's reasonably equivalent.

pemerton said:

The invoker/wizard in my game has the Rod with 6 parts

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Indeed, I've read the play reports and they were in part the inspiration for my own idea of including the Rod in my game. The player of the Druid expressed an interest in a longterm goal of bringing healing to Athas (an epic challenge if ever there were one!), and together we had come up with the idea of her character receiving from a mentor prior to play a map that leads her to Tyr in hopes of gaining admittance to the King's Gardens there (as part of fulfilling this destiny). So in thinking what's next, and also with the idea of prolonging this narrative arc from heroic to epic play (grand dreams, I know), one thing led to another and I recalled the role of the Rod in your campaign.

All that said, I am interested in how vital a role the Rod and gathering its parts actually played in your various sessions. Were most (even all) the adventure arcs connected to retrieving the pieces, even if only tangentially? Did the Rod itself receive a lot of focus at the table, or did it serve largely as a motivating narrative factor? From my recollection of this drawn from reading your play reports, it seems like the Rod plays a somewhat peripheral role, providing a loose narrative arc but fading to the background quite a bit when the PCs' other goals came into play. But it's hard to know how it actually played out in your game, especially as the reports I found only go back to mid-Paragon or so.

darkbard said:

The player of the Druid expressed an interest in a longterm goal of bringing healing to Athas (an epic challenge if ever there were one!), and together we had come up with the idea of her character receiving from a mentor prior to play a map that leads her to Tyr in hopes of gaining admittance to the King's Gardens there (as part of fulfilling this destiny).

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That sounds pretty cool to me.

darkbard said:

I am interested in how vital a role the Rod and gathering its parts actually played in your various sessions. Were most (even all) the adventure arcs connected to retrieving the pieces, even if only tangentially? Did the Rod itself receive a lot of focus at the table, or did it serve largely as a motivating narrative factor? From my recollection of this drawn from reading your play reports, it seems like the Rod plays a somewhat peripheral role, providing a loose narrative arc but fading to the background quite a bit when the PCs' other goals came into play. But it's hard to know how it actually played out in your game, especially as the reports I found only go back to mid-Paragon or so.

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The Rod is important to the player of the relevant PC. For the party more generally, it sometimes sits in the background, but at other times it comes to the fore. At the moment they are fighting Miska and the Rod can sense its seventh part ready-to-hand - and the players (and PCs) are well aware that (according to prophecy) reconstituting the Rod is the mark of the beginning of the Dusk War. It is also the final act of remaking necessary to allow the Lattice of Heaven to be recreated.

So in that sense it does loom quite large.

Was this also known as Llods Rod in the DarkSun PC game

Wyvern-Quill said:

Was this also known as Llods Rod in the DarkSun PC game

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First time I'm even hearing of the game, let alone Llods Rod. Details?

darkbard said:

First time I'm even hearing of the game, let alone Llods Rod. Details?

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Been 15+ years since I played it

It was a Rod in more the none part that once collected and assembled allowed the party to teleport from from one village or area to another that had a magic stone column with the lost special magic gem returned to a socket on top the column

Interesting places:
- A mudflat rising out of the Sea of Silt. Somebody has taken over the place and fortified it. The someone does not realize that the ancient foundation he built his fortress atop has a secret entrance going downwards; nor that a piece of the Rod is in his deepest sub-basement. Nobody realizes that when the Rod-piece is taken away, the mudflat will dry up and be covered by the silten 'waves'.
- Much like Masada, Israel or the US desert southwest, a mesa-top is home to an aaracockra tribe. You have to negotiate safe passage across their hunting territory (the lands around) to get where you want to go next.
- A small poor village hidden in a fold of the hills, populated by escaped slaves. One of them knows a clue to the location of another Part of the Rod. The others may not want to let the PCs go, because they might 'spill the beans' of the village's location. Plot twist Mk 1: the informant escaped a very long time ago and his knowledge is out-of-date. Plot twist Mk 2: the informant just escaped recently and Powerful Forces are searching for him.
- A fortified tower rises above an oasis. The merchant clan who owns this tower wants you to pay a toll or do them some favor in return for the privilege of drawing water from their well.
- An ancient ruin, up in the mountains, far away from any civilized lands, holds a piece of the Rod. Getting there is more than half the battle. (This should evoke 'climbing Mt. Everest', but sideways not upwards.) Inside, pick some really old Earth culture which is NOT represented by any Sorcerer-King's city-state, and be as descriptive as your PCs will listen to.
- The most unlikely person possible has a piece of the Rod and is wandering about with it, not knowing what it truly is. (I recommend an Elf, so he might be totally faking everybody out - April Fool's!)
- The Deepest Desert has a hidden oasis, and a part of the Rod is in there.

Nice! Some fine suggestions here, [MENTION=6803337]Eltab[/MENTION].

Darn it, I think of the best stuff when I am far away from computer:

- An aaracockra tribe can fly overhead and see something the ground-sloggers cannot: this area of ground has something like the Nazca Lines carved into it. The pictures draw attention to an otherwise-unremarkable spot. If the PCs find this out and dig around a bit, they find an old buried ruin. (Maybe like Pompeii?) Inside is a book written in Dethek (ancient Dwarven alphabet), which is no longer used on Athas.

The PCs have to find a translator (this probably means 'kidnap a servant with technical knowledge from a Sorcerer-King') -or- purchase a scroll of Read Languages -or- find the equivalent to the Rosetta Stone (message carved into rock in multiple languages, including one you know and one you want to learn).

When all that is taken care of, the book holds a bunch of gossip about long-dead people, study notes, and written-out directions to find one of the Parts of the Rod. Even the numbers are written out, as 'one hundred twenty-three and a half' not '123.5'.

For fun (and incidental educational value), make Dethek do something that Roman letters do not. For instance: .tfel-ot-thgir morf nettirw si kehteD