Eberron: My players think they can rule the known world

[Glyfair]

Yf I pick it back up, the PCs will still be household names in Sharn, Stormhome, Fairhaven, and to a lesser extent Great Crag, Korth, Gatherhold, Newthrone, etc.

Remember, too, in Eberron there are the "sheets." When the players get a mention in the Korranberg Chronicle, that's big. When they make the front page, it's bigger.

 

[Glyfair]

Quoted because you mentioned the Daughters of Sora Kell, one of my favorite shadowy power groups, and one that's often overlooked.

Now that's a country I don't see PCs taking on until they are near-Epic level. The 3 leaders are very high-powered (indeed, some stats for them appear in their dragonshard). Even if the PCs manage to deal with them, perhaps Sora Kell herself will appear to stick her finger in.

 

[Henry]

Remember, too, in Eberron there are the "sheets." When the players get a mention in the Korranberg Chronicle, that's big. When they make the front page, it's bigger.

They already had an article include them in the Korranberg Chronicle, in an adventure they had at earlier level. However, the Gnome reporter with them on the expedition... well, downplayed their importance just a bit, but they did become a talking point in the pubs after that.

 

[Seaver]

I agree with this, but only because it's even more fun to give them their glory and then take it away then to just beat on them from day one. They look so adorably precious when they strut around all proud of their accomplishments. It makes the joy of watching them fall apart as they lose everything so much sweeter!


Quoted because you mentioned the Daughters of Sora Kell, one of my favorite shadowy power groups, and one that's often overlooked.

Level 14 party of four in Eberron. Barbarian, fighter/rogue type, wizard, artificer (that's me).

We just had a little encounter somewhere in the gray area between The Depths and The Cogs with a mindflayer sorcerer and a dolgaunt monk that had apparently been given some extra levels of monk.

It was a great fight in my opinion and resulted in a draw.

End result was:
The dolgaunt took off at a full run and never looked back after being shredded from the fighter/rogue type and a summoned bone devil. He was also the recipient of quite a bit of Con damage from the fighter/rogue type and Str damage from the bone devil's poison.

Oh and he was a little crispy around the edges from being on the receiving end of a few shots of Lesser Orb of Fire from the Artificer. I burned through some Action Points that round. Metamagic Spell Trigger, Quicken Lesser Fire Orb then Action Surge to fire off a Twinned Lesser Fire Orb and finally my regular action to fire another Twinned Lesser Fire Orb.

25d6 potential damage. Not the best that can be done, but respectable with no save and no SR allowed.

Note however that it is only potential damage. Unfortunately due to him being a Monk and some average rolls I missed his touch AC with about half my shots. Hence him only being a little crispy.


The illithid planeshifted away after having been practically tied in knots from wrestling with a raging barbarian, having had the stuffing squeezed out of him from a summoned Huge Fiendish Constrictor, and having been battered black and blue from a Tensored Earth Elemental familiar. The self-Dimensional Anchored Bone Devil headed his way since the Monk had left was incentive to leave as well.


There were also some goblins, but they were just bait to separate the party into two groups. Please note, if a small pack of goblins takes some pot shots at you then runs into a shadowy corridor, do not follow them! Level 1, level 14, doesn't matter. Bad things will happen. This particular group separated our fighter/rogue type from the rest of us for a few rounds with a dropped portcullis before he could kill them all and tear through the bars with an adamantine weapon.


The other team, us, fared just as poorly.
Right after getting a face full of fire from the Artificer the Dolgaunt Monk decided to smack him upside the head with Vibrating Palm. Fortunately the Artificer had a Statue spell running so he didn't die. However he now could be killed at the monk's whim for the most part if he could catch him in fleshy mode.

The party decided to play it safe and not coming up with a better solution decided it would be best to simply use Flesh to Stone on the Artificer and reverse it in a couple weeks.

The barbarian was doing pretty good before the illithid got sick of him and planeshifted him elsewhere.

Next the familiar got planeshifted.

Next in line was the wizard, who couldn't get past the illithid's Spell Resistance to hit him with any spells directly and being a gnome couldn't really outrun him. Fortunately that's when the dolgaunt broke and ran leading to the illithid fleeing as well.


So unless we resolve some issues away from the table via email our next game session will start with the Artificer petrified out of self-preservation and the barbarian and familiar stuck on other planes.

None of us actually took that much damage, we were simply neutralized via planeshift and that death sentence looming over my character's head for at least a couple weeks.

So yeah even at level 14 that whole "ruling the world" thing, not a topic we're really interested in right now.

Dealing with the top two targets on "The List", Mr. Squid and Monk? Oh yeah, we're all about that.

The thing is we're probably at the top of their list as well. We ran them off from what they consider their turf and we are well known enough that we can't run the risk of anyone finding out that we got run off either.

Basically both sides know we have got to fight it out again for sake of our reputations. It's just a matter of where and when.

 

[Seaver]

They already had an article include them in the Korranberg Chronicle, in an adventure they had at earlier level. However, the Gnome reporter with them on the expedition... well, downplayed their importance just a bit, but they did become a talking point in the pubs after that.

Monday morning after our last game session I opened up my email to find a Sharn Inquisitive article emailed to me and the rest of the group from our DM.

Apparently there was a group down in the Cogs recently including someone flashing around a badge terrorizing the inhabitants. There was a horrible incident involving this group of villains where one of the members, possibly a gnome or dwarf, completely unprovoked killed some innocent goblinoid bystanders including a small goblin child that got sucked into a massive wall of whirling metal gears.

The goblinoid inhabitants of the city are in an uproar over this now and there is a growing fear of riots within the Cogs which could potentially flow up into the Lower levels of the city.



Bad, bad, so very, very bad.

I found the newspaper email extremely entertaining however.

 

[Umbran]

Let them try to rule the known world. Even if they don't get their butts kicked in the process, they will learn that conquering the world and ruling over it are two entirely different things.

 

[demiurge1138]

My PCs are about 8th level, and they're already famous. The Sharn Freelance Police is well-known by the public, thanks to rather exploitative versions of their exploits published in pulp novels. "The Freelance Police and the Prisoner of Dreadhold" is a particular favorite, because everyone remembers the mad arcanist's attack on Crystal Bridge. Some of the readers might even have been there! One of the PCs especially, Joe Zor, is known as a folk hero to the lower classes (especially the shifter population), and Rife the warforged is a pillar of his community.

The best part is, they're perfectly content to still be running a detective agency out of Menthis Plateau. The money's good, the publicity's good, and the risks are a lot lower than, say, running a continent.

Demiurge out.

 

[Jupp]

If they really decide to become rulers of a country it would be nice to have an Eberron version of Civilzation that you could put on the table for that game session

Edit: Or one could tweak the old Greyhawk Wars boxed set or create a map for the old Great Khan Game

 

[Kristivas]

I'm not saying steal their thunder and make them look bad, but come on.. Rule the world?

For political power, you need to start smaller. Also, conquest seems borderline evil. You'd have to kill a lot of souls just to conquer a place. Imagine a force trying to conquer.. say.. L.A. Even after dealing with military, coast guard, and police.. people would be running from their homes with weapons to fight. Gang-bangers would be doing drive-bys, ect. You'd pretty much have to nuke the hell out of a large city to take it, let alone a whole country.

Conquest is not the preferred way to go for a DnD campaign unless your characters are evil. Can they become a major force? Yes. Can they gain power politically? Yes. It just shouldn't be handed over. If the PCs actually try to take, say Sharn, by force.. they deserve what they get. If the PCs use all of their adventuring money (forgoing their shiny new magic item upgrades) buying real estate and towers in Sharn, along with bribing politicians and stuff, then I'd let it happen depending on how well they plot and scheme.

 

[fnork de sporg]

Galifar did it. What level was he?