kolikeos said:
So the party of adventurers (9th-11th level) is going to search a swampy area about the size of half the continent for a group of evil wizards bent on world domination. The swamps are filled with monsters and the only civilizations there are villages of evil humanoids. There are a few human towns and one city near the north of the swamps, the adventurers will probably start from one of those.
And damn if I know where to go from here... I'm really desperate for ideas.
Thanks in advance.
Ok, I will work from the following assumptions:
1) The wizards chose the swamp primarily for the security aspect (its remote, hard to travel to / find. And dangerous due to swamp denizens)
2) You do not require what happens in the Swamp to be tied to 'The Great Big Evil Plot'.
3) You need things to last in the swamp potentially for a while.
4) Other than its size, it is just a swamp. Not a Infernal Swamp of Terror.
First, I think that Diaglo has a point. You can get alot of mileage out of forcing the players to expend resources simply dealing with being in a swamp. Travel times will suck. Equipment may suffer damage. Lots of saves against Disease and Poison. Movement in a swamp is generally impaired, so ranged attacks should be prefered for humanoids anyway. Doing so will have the very useful effect of letting you get more mileage out of the weaker creatures that will make up the bulk of the swamp. The players should also be mindful that there will be areas where the water they are walking through will go from 8 inches deep to 8 feet deep. Keep those rules for swim checks handy, especially for characters wearing heavy armour.
Plenty of monsters can work out in a swamp. Monsterous snakes, Alligators, and Insects, plus plenty of other creatures may be decent choices for incidental types. For your party, you should absolutely look at applying the rules for advancing the HD. A 19 HD Alligator could be all sorts of fun. Templates may be a good idea in addition to advancing the HD, but I suggest avoiding that. Templates would probably not fit very well with a mundane swamp. Black and Green Dragons also fit. For humanoid monsters, I would go with the somewhat uncommon ones. Gnolls, Grimlocks, Troglodytes, Lizard men, Yuan-Ti. There is nothing wrong with Goblins and Orcs, but everyone uses them. To give them a bit more punch, use poisoned arrows. Also look for Aberrations. The odd Beholder is good. And any sort of Ooze or Slime, and every plant based monster you can find.
Trolls and Hydras can be great fun in a swamp, simply because the impaired movement means no 5 foot step, so no avoiding an AoO when closing into melee.
Now for some meta plots.
The easy one is the miscelaneous raiding among the various humanoid tribes. You can tweak this a bit by having one or two tribes allied with your wizards, giving them an edge on the other humanoid tribes. This creates a chance for your players to seek some allies. Just keep in mind that the Wizards will be working with the most reasonable minions. Let the players deal with the truly chaotic and brutal ones that just hate taking orders.
A secondary point for the above would be that if the Wizards have 2 tribes of different races allied with them, those tribes may have some rivalry in place already. The players could seek a way to manipulate that.
The previous idea about a dragon that was displaced by the Wizards could also make for some great fun. Also, given that a swamp is generally corrupt and nasty, why not some Hydras with a Half Dragon Template?
Tribe themes:
A Lizardman tribe who worship a Half Dragon templated Lenerean Hydra as their god thing.
A Cannibal Gnoll Tribe Led raid every other tribe for 'food'. Has no allies.
A tribe of Feral Insane Gnomes addicted to a hallucinagenic plant.
A tribe of Lycanthropic Python-Grimlocks that serve Yuan-Ti
A tribe of Trolls that Hate the Yuan Ti
A tribe of Evil Yuan Ti that Hate Trolls.
A tribe of Good Yuan Ti that Hate the Lycanthropic Grimlocks
A tribe of Troglodytes that want an alliance with ANYONE, but no one will ally with them because they stink so goddamn badly.
A tribe of Gnoll's that use giant Beetles as warmounts led by a Nymph.
Also consider borrowing from the Book of Vile Darkness, specifically the Vermin Lord.
END COMMUNICATION
