Limited-Resource Campaign Design

mhacdebhandia said:
You're right about the grimlocks - they could easily fulfill the role of Lovecraftian ghouls, a la "Pickman's Model". In fact, remembering my favourite Lovecraft story makes me wonder if it wouldn't be fun to have the grimlocks steal children in exchange for their own offspring, the way Pickman painted his ghouls doing. Grimlock changelings . . . that's a scary thought.

I had originally envisioned grimlocks as raiding for some incomprehensible religious or ritual purpose, but perhaps part-and-parcel of their modus operandi could be abducting children, despoiling gravesites . . . it would provide a handy excuse for the PCs to have to deal with wights, since they're unlikely to disturb burial mounds themselves.

Quick suggestion, perhaps the Grimlocks are degenerating from inbreeding and constant breeding experiments from the yuan-ti. So you can apply a different smattering of templates as you see fit. Within Grimlock society there's a cabal who realise what's happening and to try to stabilse they look to their ancestry - human children are needed. Now being blind Grimlocks won't know the difference between human, aasimar or teifling, so now you have wierd sub-races of grimlocks.

A nod to Steven Erikson and the fate of the Toblokai in his series.
 

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Firedancer said:
Have you got Libris Mortis? There's evolved undead template which you could apply to shadows as a means of differentiating the newly created v the substantive shadows.
Yes, indeed. That's a very good suggestion.

As I recall there's also some monster advancement including lurking horrors or something. Essentially there's a few means of advancing the undead that would give you different levels of challenge.
It's surprising how flexible the short list of creatures I selected has proven to be, with a little imagination. :)
 

Firedancer said:
Within Grimlock society there's a cabal who realise what's happening and to try to stabilse they look to their ancestry - human children are needed.
I like this. So the abduction of children would be motivated by what the yuan-ti are doing to the grimlocks, but not at their behest . . . nice.
 

This also has some likeness to the plot in HG wells "the timemachine" (i think?). wo a timemachine ofcourse...

What are you going to do w. the humans and the outsiders?
 

mhacdebhandia said:
It's surprising how flexible the short list of creatures I selected has proven to be, with a little imagination. :)

It certainly has. Thank WotC for templates!

Have you considered how classes fit or are restricted by race?
For example in a campaign setting I am toying around with I have forbidden the main human race from being barbarians or druids - this uncoughness is not in their culture. Likewise ranger is supplanted by scout.

However, the indigenous folk are permitted the barb and druid class, but can never receive instruction in magic (so sorcerors are their only route of arcane power).

I'm going to use this to make clear delineations between the 2 cultures. This may not be so relevant as perhaps the PCs can only play humans/aas/tief but I wonder if limiting class choice would produce a stronger racial flavour.
 

As noted, fiends and celestials are barred from the region. The presence of tieflings and aasimar among the human population is a legacy of the war, not a result of modern-day contact with outsiders.

I'm thinking that the human towns and cities would be at an early medieval "Dark Ages" level - I'm just fond of it, I don't know why. I imagine that the cities used by the abyssal and infernal armies would be extremely suspicious of tieflings born among them, to the point of violence. Perhaps altruistic individuals keep an eye out for tiefling children and arrange to have them sent away, to temples or monasteries.

Heh. A large proportion of clerics, monks (if I include them), paladins, and the like being tieflings would be pretty amusing.
 

Firedancer said:
Have you considered how classes fit or are restricted by race?
I wouldn't want to bother with racial restrictions, per se, but the setting definitely doesn't need every kind of class shoehorned into it.

I might be inclined towards something like the following list of classes:

  • Cleric
  • Fighter
  • Rogue
  • Sorcerer
  • Wizard
  • Scout
  • Hexblade
  • Knight
  • Archivist
Hmm.
 

cwhs01 said:
This also has some likeness to the plot in HG wells "the timemachine" (i think?). wo a timemachine ofcourse...
QUOTE]

You think Grimlocks resemble the devolved humans from that film? How could you possibly derive that conclusion!!

There's a more direct clone in races of stone, but they aren't as strong (identity or statwise) as the Grimlock.
 

mhacdebhandia said:
I like this. So the abduction of children would be motivated by what the yuan-ti are doing to the grimlocks, but not at their behest . . . nice.

So, what are the Y-T trying to do? perfect soldiers, contagion, infection with Y-T blood? Messing with because they can?
 

Along with the grimlocks, you could throw in some mongrelmen. I've liked those guys ever since the AD&D days. I think they are in the FF or MM2, now.

For the shadows, there are a couple of templates that might be useful. In Manual of the Planes (3.0) there's an umbral (?) template -- name may not be exact -- and in Planar Handbook there's another, similar template that is 3.5-i-fied.

Also, if you're familiar with Sagiro's or spyscribe's story hours, there are the null shadows. Nasty blokes, those. (I can dig up the link if you want.)
 

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