Help me hide my mcGuffins

[SteelDraco]

I would actually have divination be quicksilver - it looks mirrorlike, and divination has associations with mirrors. A mirrorlike liquid that reveals glimpses of the past and future as you look into it, maybe?

If you want them to be an item rather than a raw material, I'd go with....

Abjuration: a shield or suit of armor of dark metal or adamantine
Conjuration: ???
Divination: a mirror for scrying or a crystal ball
Enchantment: for some reason I'm picturing this affecting people nearby like a drug, maybe something that gives off vapors
Evocation: a rod or wand, usable with offensive magic.
Illusion: ???
Necromancy: (already done)
Transmutation: something unstable and always changing... not sure on this one. A liquid that warps anything it touches?
Universal: an eight-sided prism

 

[Loonook]

Why do the essences not have a dual nature? Magic is the manipulation of forces with intent. The following could supply the eldritch 'forces' that the individuals are seeking, along with an item/place where they may be utilized:

Abjuration: I'm fine with what you have, though would suggest that the players must con the Abjurative Veil into not deciding to dispel them to their deaths, and that their intentions are pure blah blah blah. Though honestly PCs plummeting to their deaths due to a Disjunction is humorous and could supply them with the chance to really outthink you . The Abjurative Focus lies in a mailed glove worn by the Priest-King of Somewhere, that he uses to 'bless' his warriors with before combat. Perhaps he is unaware of its deep arcane meanings, or he is a charlatan, using the religious evangelism for his own purposes.

Necromancy: Already have it. For a focus I think something akin to The Black Cauldron would be great. Hidden in some otherwise forgotten academy torn by its previous use, it is the initial origin of an undead creature in your campaign (I like Wights for this personally).

Conjuration: The Essence of Conjuration is found in a hidden locale, deep in the artic reaches. Frozen in time, the essence is the Creation, trapped here by ice to prevent explosive regeneration of the Worlds over and over and over again. There are ways to extract the essence from its icy prison but doing so leads to the creation of Conjuration's Focus, an entity known as the Cradle. A primordial ooze, the Cradle can actually cleave itself into a thousand shapes, a million nightmares, and if ever released...

Illusion: Like the idea of an illusion within an illusion/Inception/Erised sort of situation. The Focus of the Illusion is your initial Dreamer, or at least his bloodline. Think Mastermind.

Enchantment: The Essence of Enchantment is in the blood of a powerful Feylord. The Focus of Enchantment is a crystal decanter that can be whatever it wishes to be. The Focus will be important as it is the only way to destroy the other Essences or at least to contain the Universal Essence.

Evocation: Evocation's Essence is the byproduct of what happens when a Portable Hole gets placed in a Bag of Holding. You can find the little gems all over the Astral Plane... But retrieving it FROM the Astral Plane is the tricky bit. The Focus of Evocation is how Staff of the Magi are made.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Ramen]

I like the inception concept for Illusion but I would take it one step further. The Illusion McGuffin that they recover at the core of the illusion isn't real. In fact the real Illusion artifact is part of a previously recovered artifact for another school.

Why? Because Illusionists are evil tricky bastards.

 

[Jinete]

Thanks for the great ideas guys, keep 'em coming

The thing with the "magic as item" solutions is, I think it places too much power into the hands of the person possessing it, be it PC-s or the BBEG. And what if the item is destroyed?

 

[Celebrim]

Thanks for the great ideas guys, keep 'em coming

The thing with the "magic as item" solutions is, I think it places too much power into the hands of the person possessing it, be it PC-s or the BBEG.

It's the raw primal essense of magic from which all other magic is but a shadow? What exactly do you expect?

And on the contrary, the container's purpose is to ensure that the stuff doesn't escape. It's a container. You'll note from my description that the containers are generally extremely dangerous. I adhere to the Necronomicon theory of powerful magic. When you play CoC, players aren't eager to try out the new magic item because it might suck their mind or soul out of their body or leave them a withered husk or turn them into a servitor of some dark mad god. So it is with D&D artifacts. If I was a God hiding magic from mortals, I'd make srue that the container was lethally trapped. If you could use it as item at all is probably only a side effect of the container leaking.

Did your read the 1st edition DMG's description of artifacts? Most of them had side effects so nasty that you hardly dared use them.

And what if the item is destroyed?

Very bad things. I'm thinking 40d6 damage over a 4000' radius, 20d6 damage in the 2000' beyond that, 10d6 damage in the 1000' beyond that, and 5d6 damage (save halves) in the 1000' beyond that. Additionally, all in the radius of effect must make a DC 30 save or suffer an effect related to the school of magic: death for necromancy, form instability (per a chaos beast) for transmutation, feeblemind and permenent suggestability for enchantment, etc. Additionally, 81 living spells are released in the radius of effect - 9 for each level of spell. Additionally, at least one God is now very upset.

Not that the containers would be easy to destroy. Generally it would require a divine or comparable being to achieve this.

The basic problem I have with your plan is it doesn't look like the gods did a very good job of hiding things if mortals can pretty easily obtain peices. If it was that easy, why haven't the worlds archmages brought back powerful magic long ago?

But, ok, if you want an ocean of the stuff out there for the taking:

Transmutation: It's distributed throughout the worlds water. To obtain some, you have to distill a lakes worth in a magical still, but it turns out that water deprived of its magic is sterile and can no longer sustain life.
Evocation: Can be obtained from the surface of the Sun.
Divination: It's hidden in the brains of all sentient species. The Mind Flayers distill it and use it to power their alien magic, and if you want a lot of it, that's the easiest place to find some.
Illusion: It's the substance that dreams or made of. You have to have make a dream catcher to wind them up like a duster gathering cobwebs. However, areas deprived of dreams become colorless and its people apathetic.
Conjuration: The stars were made out of it. You either have to steal a star or catch one as it is falling.
Enchantment: It was hidden in the Elemental planes. It's an addictive drug popular with the genii's. It can be obtained in the market's of the City of Brass or from the well guarded fire poppies directly.

 

[Jinete]

The basic problem I have with your plan is it doesn't look like the gods did a very good job of hiding things if mortals can pretty easily obtain peices. If it was that easy, why haven't the worlds archmages brought back powerful magic long ago?

Well, at least one archmage managed to collect all nine. That's how one of the settings gods came into existence. It is exactly what the BBEG is trying to accomplish.

Since then arcane magic was outlawed for a long time, and is being practiced again since a short while ago. Also there is a secret organization that tries to prevent this from happening again.

I plan to have some pieces accessible to PC-s of a relatively low level (6-7), and getting them should be hard but not impossible.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, at least one archmage managed to collect all nine. That's how one of the settings gods came into existence. It is exactly what the BBEG is trying to accomplish.

I still argue that this points to incompetency and sloth on the part of your campaign worlds deities. You'd think that beings whose wisdom and intelligence run in the 30's would do a better job of stopping mortals from getting hold of stuff that allows them to create gods. That's a direct threat to divine existance. As easy as it seems to be to obtain the substances (based on your two examples), what's to stop mortals from setting up a god making machine and creating a rival pantheon?

Since then arcane magic was outlawed for a long time, and is being practiced again since a short while ago.

Outlawed by mortals or by Gods? Because once again, it sounds like your deities are a pretty weak bunch.

I plan to have some pieces accessible to PC-s of a relatively low level (6-7), and getting them should be hard but not impossible.

On the general rule that something should only be as accessible as it is powerful (otherwise, your campaign fails a versimiltude test), that implies that peices of this stuff are only useful for doing things roughly equivalent to that obtainable with 3rd or 4th level spells. Furthermore, by the same principal it implies that at best, a full set of peices provides power equivalent to that obtainable by using 8th or 9th level spells. No 'Wish' can turn you into even a demigod, so speaking one DM to another, I think you are either trying to be too epic with the consequences of a full set or not treating the epicness of the consequences with enough seriousness. As an RPG rule, the difficulty to obtain something must match or exceed its utility. This is the basic law of RPG economics, and if you violate it then the economy/balance of your campaign world breaks.

 

[Jinete]

I still argue that this points to incompetency and sloth on the part of your campaign worlds deities. You'd think that beings whose wisdom and intelligence run in the 30's would do a better job of stopping mortals from getting hold of stuff that allows them to create gods. That's a direct threat to divine existance. As easy as it seems to be to obtain the substances (based on your two examples), what's to stop mortals from setting up a god making machine and creating a rival pantheon?

Well when the archmage ascended to godhood there was a cataclysm the effects of which are still present in the game world. The second one could destroy it. You are however right that it seems the gods didn't do a very good job in hiding the stuff. I hope that in time I can think of their motives in doing so. They do work in mysterious ways

Outlawed by mortals or by Gods? Because once again, it sounds like your deities are a pretty weak bunch.

Outlawed by mortals. Thing is, when the gods hid the magic, it limited their power of manipulating the game world. They are now limited to giving power (divine magic) to mortals in hope they use it according to the wishes of the gods.

On the general rule that something should only be as accessible as it is powerful (otherwise, your campaign fails a versimiltude test), that implies that peices of this stuff are only useful for doing things roughly equivalent to that obtainable with 3rd or 4th level spells. Furthermore, by the same principal it implies that at best, a full set of peices provides power equivalent to that obtainable by using 8th or 9th level spells. No 'Wish' can turn you into even a demigod, so speaking one DM to another, I think you are either trying to be too epic with the consequences of a full set or not treating the epicness of the consequences with enough seriousness. As an RPG rule, the difficulty to obtain something must match or exceed its utility. This is the basic law of RPG economics, and if you violate it then the economy/balance of your campaign world breaks.

I agree. My plan is to give small bonuses at lower levels, and as the PCs become more powerful so will their understanding and ability to use (or abuse) the primal magic.

When the campaign started some time ago I didn't have time to do a full top-down approach to world building. It is only recently that I started to flesh out the world history and main plot. As a consequence I have to build around adventures and information the players have already had, in order to avoid things like "Remember when you encountered that dracolich guarding something powerful? Well, that didn't happen..."
That's the main reason I came to the boards for help...

 

[Celebrim]

When the campaign started some time ago I didn't have time to do a full top-down approach to world building. It is only recently that I started to flesh out the world history and main plot. As a consequence I have to build around adventures and information the players have already had, in order to avoid things like "Remember when you encountered that dracolich guarding something powerful? Well, that didn't happen..."
That's the main reason I came to the boards for help...

Sure. I try to respond to a high percentage of posts that have 'help' in the title.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking you. I think you've got good and creative ideas. I'm just trying to help you avoid writing yourself into corners.

Some possibilities is that there is division amongst the Gods over what to do. Some deities may welcome the apocalypse. Others may be trying to subtly alter the balance of power. This may be the reason that pure necromantic essence is comparitively easy to come by - the dieties that have the most sway over the powers of anti-life and decay are also the ones least likely to gaurd their charge or to have the best interests of mortals at heart. The positioning of the abjuration essence could have been necessitated by other concerns - saving the world from certain destruction for example. There doesn't have to be symmetry within the plans or in the natures of the essence. This might be a good time to devote some planning to top down mythology creation and deciding which groups of Gods were responcible for what and what their motives are or were.

 

[Coce05]

As i understood, the PC did not acquire the entire essence of necromancy, but a small fraction of it.

He also gave an example where abjuration essence protects the planet by serving as a protective layer in atmosphere.

So, the essence is very powerful and world altering, but the PC-s can collect only fractions of it.

Should the combined product be powerful - yes, should it create another universe - no. For that you should destroy this one, collect all the essence, and recreate.

Think in the same line as what happened to the archmage - he ascended to deity status.

---

Also, Enchantment: In the astral plane, there is an asylum adrift, that houses an ancient human cleric, that ate the essence of enchantment, to keep it from spreading through universe, as a favor to his god.

on a roll of d6: (roll each hour)
1) He is Insane
2) He is Laughing Hideously
3) He is Feeble minded
4) He is Raging
5) He is Confused
6) He is Screaming in Madness

Every day he has 1 hour of rest from this torture. How to extract the essence is up to players, don't even plan how to do it, let them surprise you.

Ofc, this asylum is also filled with some other inmates that are accidentally let lose on PCs arival.