D&D 5E Harry Potter School Quests

[Mistwell]

TEN POINTS FOR GRIFFENDOR

So it's a general "adventure" school? Are their rogue and fighter instructors? Makes for fun dynamics.

Yes.

Fingers, the Infiltrations teacher, gives the advanced class their midterm: they have to steal a certain object from the Abjuration professor's study. Meanwhile, the advanced Abjurations class has to find nonlethal ways to guard it.

Oh, I like that one!

 

[Hand of Evil]

• Take the other dorm's flags or another school mascot.
• Games against other schools.
• Finding lost items.

 

[MarkB]

I was reading the barkskin spell, which has an hour duration, can be cast by the druid on any willing target, and makes their AC minimum of 16.

I was wondering when that spell would be needed to cast on other people, or even the whole party. Give it only lasts an hour, and it's a second level spell slot, that seems unlikely.

But, then I got to thinking about this campaign. What if there was a forest the party needed to enter, and no metal was permitted in the forest by the druids? Suddenly, the barkskin spell for the whole party would be great!

So, what quest in the druid forest? What threat would they face?

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be possible. The duration is "Concentration, up to one hour", so the druid can only maintain one casting of it at a time.

However, if we posit a group of druids who want to send a party of characters into the woods suitably armoured, while they themselves sit securely back at home concentrating on their spells, then it becomes viable.

Perhaps a group of sylvans - tree sprites, wood nymphs and similar creatures - in the deep forest has become hostile and intolerant of outsiders, and the adult druids can make no headway in investigating the cause. They need a group of students young and small enough to pass themselves as sylvans to infiltrate the deep forest and try to resolve the situation. The Barkskin spell will serve both as protection and as part of their disguise.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Cool idea for a campaign!

Can I ask what stops the "professors" from solving all the real problems, leaving the PC's to do only the menial work? What's stopping this from turning into basically what people complain about when they complain about Elminster and Drizz't and Mystara in the Forgotten Realms: the PC's are just shoe-shiners?

I ask because there's two major examples I can think of this kind of thing being major in a setting. The first is of course the Potterverse, and the other is the story of Naruto (which even in its most recent incarnations is basically a war fought by teenagers).

Both share a common theme: the reason that Adults Are Useless is because there is some great powerful entity of darkness and malice from before the precocious protagonists were born that the adults are all scared senseless of confronting/admitting to, and only Our Heroes (often lead by a Chosen One formed out of the chaos of fighting back that darkness and malice for the first time) are basically ignorant enough to be brave (and then in too deep when they're not ignorant). They've also got super-special unique powers that make them or their leader the Chosen One who has some sort of special bond with the Big Bad -- a sixteen year old with a special super unique power can trump even an ancient evil.

Potter and Naruto deals with this by making their respective titular protagonists the Chosen One and having everyone else play a support role. The other characters get their moment in the sun (and are key for the protagonist's success), but they are clearly in a support role. The Adults do big things, but the event is SO BIG that they can't do everything and the Protagonist is uniquely suited to confronting the main villain in various ways, making them the strategic choice.

Typically in an RPG setting, it's less about one special person, and the game is generally less big on "secret histories" that get revealed as great power (due to how that screws with a player's ability to determine for themselves what kind of hero they are), so I would think you've had to deal with it. Or if you haven't (because you haven't had PC's that explore it that much), it might be worth thinking about.

Why don't the grown-ups fix their own problems? And how do the PC's rise above their educators to become heroes that those educators then admire? How does our druid trainee character become a hero that the 20th-level archdruid Gardner admires?

 

[Jachywalcott]

Why don't the grown-ups fix their own problems? And how do the PC's rise above their educators to become heroes that those educators then admire? How does our druid trainee character become a hero that the 20th-level archdruid Gardner admires?

Well, you know what they say: Those who can't do, teach.

 

[Joe Liker]

Oh, how I wish my friends were awesome enough to participate in (or run) a campaign like this! I'm so envious right now.

How about someone is suspected of rigging the brackets of whatever fighting competition the fighting class holds to crown the fightiest fighter each semester? (It's wrecking all the Fantasy Fighting leagues, which are technically gambling and against school policy, but the administration turns a blind eye because hey, at least the kids are getting involved and not snorting toadstools.)

Well, you know what they say: Those who can't do, teach.

Or maybe the teachers are not actually useless, but they know a good learning opportunity when they see one.

I'm sure if the students were to undertake one of these challenges and fail, the faculty would step in and correct the situation before any permanent damage was done.

 

[Mistwell]

Cool idea for a campaign!

Can I ask what stops the "professors" from solving all the real problems, leaving the PC's to do only the menial work? What's stopping this from turning into basically what people complain about when they complain about Elminster and Drizz't and Mystara in the Forgotten Realms: the PC's are just shoe-shiners?

Sure. It's an ongoing issue.

For one, it's not children as PCs, this is a University. So they're adults, just young. Danger is an accepted part of being a student, and though quests are intended to be non-lethal, lethality is a possibility of life at the University (though they try to resurrect anyone killed).

Second, in our game war was coming, and the professors were mostly aiding with that and giving the normal difficult tasks to the students.

Third, the professors had been infiltrated by the enemy, and so had the school grounds. So there was a lot of manipulation going on, and students were sometimes endangered in ways that the professors did not know about, with surprise challenges.

We did have a MASSIVE battle against undead at one point, and all the professors joined in. The sheer quantity of undead made it so the players simply contributed to the larger battle, and they had fun seeing their higher-level professors take out lots of undead while they did their part. Also, since the party caused the undead to rise in the first place, they had to defend themselves for many rounds before help from professors arrived.

Why don't the grown-ups fix their own problems? And how do the PC's rise above their educators to become heroes that those educators then admire? How does our druid trainee character become a hero that the 20th-level archdruid Gardner admires?

In our prior campaign, in general the adults had even worse problems to focus on, and also the PCs kept getting caught up in secret plots that the larger group of professors were often unaware of until it was already resolved. Often these were plots that caught them up because the foes were less concerned about petty students and so more willing to expose themselves in front of the students.

 

[Andor]

What about a book discovered in the library (or wherever) full of ancient prophecies. One of them tells of a coming calamity and foretells that a student a good old Shiv U is the chosen one who saves the day. There are a few potential candidates that fit the bill and the school starts to factionalize behind the potential heros. There is a potential MacGuffin that can id the chosen one and the pcs may quest to retrieve it and either employ or destroy it to either end the factionalization or force everyone to grow up.