D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts on converting BoBS to 3.5 (inc Spoilers)

[FrankinLondon]

Lorillomar

Nice conversion stats, thanks for posting them.

Why won't you tell us the levels of your party ? Don't they know ?

I think you are right about Heal and Disjunction. My players are going to be seriously naffed off with me

I too do not intend the party to fight Ammett in this adventure. He will allow the bleeding single remaining survivor to limp away with the dead in a bag of holding and act as the major villain (with the Cathezar as a side-kick) in our first ever Epic Level adventure.

Let us know how your adventure goes. I am particularly interested in the Desayeus encounter.

Frank

P.S. I love Mongo

 

[Lorillomar]

Party levels

Nope, they know not. Each character receives their periodic experience point amounts in secret, either via e-mail or delivered by hand by me. There is a three-level difference between the highest and the lowest, as a result of old-school resurrections and roleplaying differences generated over a two-year-span. Oh, and the time everyone in the party climbed into a Portable Hole and suffocated except for one character. The intrigue can be cut with a knife.





Spoiler follows for my campaign as well as the Freeport D20 line of modules (boy, am I asking for it!?)










Really not kidding...









The party started out way, way back in Death in Freeport, which segue'd into the rest of the Freeport series interleaved with all of the other WOTC 3.0 modules (the "adventure path" ones), as well as The Rod of Seven Parts. Well, the Freeport series delves heavily into Cthulhu mythos, including the "ancient ones", "the unspeakable one", the concept of an advanced civilization which, thousands of years ago, delved into things better left undiscovered and found themselves wiped out and their continent sunk below the waves.

The Unspeakable one is probably meant to be Hastur, by the madness which he brings, but they also use Cthulhu because he was supposedly imprisoned below the sea.

Anyway, after freeing Ammet and ridding the multiverse of the dreaded Ashardalon, the party will return home to relax and heal up, only to find that the Blood War has taken a turn for the worse. The Gods of good approach the party through the Cleric, who is an Elven Saint of Corellon Larethian (see BoED), and ask for their help. The only reason that the universe was kept in balance since its inception was because Evil fed upon itself, so they were never strong enough to take over.

Well, now that Ammet has unified them, the Gods of Good know for certain that they will not last long before their might. They approach the party and ask them to speak with Oghma on their behalf. You see, the Gods of Neutrality have steadfastly refused to ally with the Gods of Good because they fear that the "balance" will be disrupted if they do so. The party must work their way through The Outlands to Oghma's library, past his guards (he is really busy and not taking any visitors), and straight into his presence.

The party then has to come up with a good enough argument for him to change his mind and ally with the Gods of Good, bringing the other Gods of Neutrality (or most of them, at least) with him, just to help put the Gods of Evil back in their place.

If they can manage to come up with a good argument, Oghma will agree to form the temporary alliance, but with one condition: (and this one is a doozy, I SURE HOPE nobody in my group is reading this):

There is a sickness eating away at the base of The Spire in the center of the Outlands. The Spire is a utterly massive pinnacle of rock around which the entire multiverse revolves, and on top of which the town of Sigil sits. The party must travel to the Spire and solve the problem before Oghma will come and help.

Only two problems:

1. For those not familiar with The Spire and The Outlands, magic (even that of the Gods) is supressed the closer you get to the spire itself. Right next to the spire, almost no magic or deific powers work at all.

2. It is no normal "sickness" that is eating at the spire. Oh, no. It is...


...wait for it...



...The Tarrasque. An old enemy of the party has surfaced at long last and is hoping to destroy the Spire and take the Multiverse down with it. The old enemy has summoned and bound The Tarrasque and forced it to claw its way through the spire, until it is destroyed.

The problem is that the only way to permanently destroy The Tarrasque is with a Wish spell, and Wish does not work until you get 1,000 miles away from the spire. The party is going to have to find a way to lure The Tarrasque 1,000 miles away and then kill it.

Ha.

Anyway, after they accomplish this, Oghma will grant his blessing to the Alliance. The party will take part in a few key assaults on strongholds of the Evil Gods, probably encountering weakened avatars in charge of small armies, and the Gods of Evil will eventually be vanquished.

However, because the Gods of Neutrality have abandoned their support of The Balance, it will then shatter, breaking down the barrier which until now kept The Unspeakable One entombed beneath the waves. The party will have to travel back to his watery prison and stop the ceremony which is even then in the process of breaking the seal on his tomb.

The Multiverse will be safe at last. Unfortunately for the party, that is when the REAL surprise is unleashed. That is the one that I cannot express here in this public forum (sadly).

Hopefully, you can take something from this for your own campaign, since they will be around the same level as my group when Bastion is completed.

 

[Bernardus]

Lorillomar,

WOW, that sounds cool, what you are planning.
I hope the party can stop it all.
I look forward in reading what will happen.



Frank,

Unfortunatly I won't start DM-ing BoBS until probably 2nd quarter of 2005.
This because the DM-ing task is done by somebody elase. When he is finished, I will start DM-ing BoBS.
But I'm converting the adventure already, so that I'm ready to start.
The pc's will probably be 17th/18th lvl when they start playing BoBS.
There start will be in the world of Greyhawk.
I'm not finished building my own campaign so the World of Greyhawk is our campaign, where everybody may DM, of course they have to tell everybody where in the World. Every DM has a part of the World of Greyhawk under there control.
My own Campaign has some Oriental flavor, not completely, because I study martial arts and like to put some of it within my own campaign.

Greetings, Bernardus

 

[Bernardus]

P. 147: Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature +2 (minimum 3).

It is Level Adjustment that is +3, and although I would love to run Ammet as my own personal character, I just can't envision the DM who is about to allow that to happen ;-D

I just spoke with Wizards re: advancing monsters by racial hit die vs. class levels, and how it correlates to advancing their Spell Resistance, and they suggest having a monster's Spell Resistance go up by +1 per CR increase, since the base spell resistance amount has been playtested to be correct for a monster of the original CR. I think I agree.

Lorillomar,

You are correct, I mixed the Half-Fiend Template with the Half-Dragon Template. WIth the Half-Fiend tamplate you add +3 to the CR when the creature is 11 HD or more, so I that's how I made the mistake :\

 

[FrankinLondon]

Lorillomar

Excellent campaign idea.

I play in a group of 8 that meet up 4 times a year to D&D for 3 solid days. Of the 8 of us, 3 regularly DM and take it in turns. We have about 4 parties on the go, all sharing the same campaign world.

I'll not know for sure when I'll be DM'ing again after BoBS, so I'll keep my plans for Ammett and the Cathezar up my sleeve.

Knowing my luck, Ashardalon will fail spell resistance and saving throw against finger of death on his first round and I'll have to throw Ammett into the fray then

I'll keep you posted on how the group do.

Frank

 

[FrankinLondon]

Ooops. I just hit a big problem with Ashardalon in conversion to 3.5

1) Ashardalon is a 40HD red dragon half fiend
2) half fiends of 11th level or higher get Blasphemy as a SLA
3) half fiends use their hit dice as caster level for SLAs
4) Blasphemy has changed in 3.5 so that if victims in the area of effect are 10 hd or more below the caster they are killed, no saving throw.

I'll say it again - Ashardalon is 40HD !!!!!!

How have other people handled this ?

Frank

 

[FrankinLondon]

A small problemette in converting Ashardalon

1) He is a 40HD half fiend
2) Half fiends above 11th level get Blasphemy as an SLA
3) Half fiends use hit dice as caster level for SLAs
4) In 3.5 if the recipients of blasphemy are 10 hd or more lower than the caster, they die. No saving throw.

Anyone else spotted this ? How did you solve it ?

Frank

 

[Bernardus]

A small problemette in converting Ashardalon

1) He is a 40HD half fiend
2) Half fiends above 11th level get Blasphemy as an SLA
3) Half fiends use hit dice as caster level for SLAs
4) In 3.5 if the recipients of blasphemy are 10 hd or more lower than the caster, they die. No saving throw.

Anyone else spotted this ? How did you solve it ?

Frank

I wouold change the encounter.
Instead of using a Half-Fiend Great Wyrm Red dragon, I would use a Half-Fiend Mature Adult Red Dragon.
Otherwise it would become a TPK encoounter.
I would think the encounter still is very dangerous for the party because the Half Fiend Mature Adult Red Dragon still has 25HD and if the party is 19th level they still get killed, because Blasphemy at 25 caster level still gets everybody paralyzed for 1d10 minutes.

 

[FrankinLondon]

I wouold change the encounter.
Instead of using a Half-Fiend Great Wyrm Red dragon, I would use a Half-Fiend Mature Adult Red Dragon.
Otherwise it would become a TPK encoounter.
I would think the encounter still is very dangerous for the party because the Half Fiend Mature Adult Red Dragon still has 25HD and if the party is 19th level they still get killed, because Blasphemy at 25 caster level still gets everybody paralyzed for 1d10 minutes.

Bernadus

Please read this thread

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=106333&page=1

For why I think that a (or at least my) 19th level party would slaughter Ashardalon, unless you played the Blasphemy trick on them, which doesn't really seem fair.

Post #84 in that thread will tell you what I have decided to do about Ashardalon.

Frank

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Don't change a thing

Hi Frank,

Anyone else spotted this ? How did you solve it?Frank

I expected my players to plan accordingly.

After all, it's not like Silence is that high a level. Nor is it that difficult to put Silence on an item or three. What's more, Ashardalon only gets to use it once per day.

Whether you add it to his Sorcerer spell list is entirely up to you, however.

But even then, high-level Wizards and Clerics can cast from a distance (i.e. stay 40’ away from Ash). They can also ready actions to produce silenced items or to re-cast that spell right next to Ash’s head (they can also command their cohorts to do this for them).

Also, Spell Immunity is only a 4th level cleric spell.

I know a lot of folks think Blasphemy and the like are out of whack, but at 20th level or so (or particularly during a the major BBEG encounter of a character’s career) IMO Blasphemy isn’t unbalanced at all.

So if your group are experienced players, use it.

Good gaming.

J. Grenemyer