Hi all!
It's going to be a long post, sorry for that, so I'm going to start with a TL;DR; for people that don't want to read it all:
"The players failed to stop Tiamat's rising in the Tiranny of Dragons campaign, now we're ready to start Dragon Heist, I'm creating a couple of one shots to tie them together and I need ideas for a one shot for high level characters to imprison Tiamat back to Avernus.
Also I'm using famous personalities from the FR as PC, possibly connected to Dragon Heist (Jarlaxle, Laeral Silverhand, the Blackstaff,...) to let the players know something about them (they're not familiar with FR) and I would like some help in choosing them (and building them) too."
Now for the real post.
With my group we decided to play all the official campaigns (almost all of them, we're going to skip a couple^^) as a unique continuity, one after the other, so that decisions and actions in one will modify the history of the FR and campaign after campaign the players will be able to see the fruits of their previous efforts. We decided to start with the Tiranny of Dragons campaign. Long story short the party got TPK'd before the end of HotDQ and, since they weren't really liking the adventure, they decided to just consider it a "failed quest" and move on to the next campaign, instead of making new characters (or even keep playing with the same characters after I proposed to them a solution "you're not actually dead, you've just been captured and now you need to escape). So we decided to go on and play the Waterdeep serie: DH and DotMM.
Since I have to incorporate the consequences (as for the agreement before we started) of them failing to stop Tiamat's rising, I was thinking that I can't just make it so Tiamat conquered the entire material plane, that would make most of the other adventures unplayable, so my thinking was: Tiamat rises, there's all out war against dragons for a couple of years until a group of heroes is successful in binding the queen of dragons again in Avernus. This would let me still give consequences for the failure (an after global war feeling to Toril, distrust against draconic races, stuff like that) without having to play in a post-apocaliptic world. Now: I don't like to have everything happen in the background and I wanted to create a bunch of one shots (4 to be precise) to connect the two adventures and introduce the players to Waterdeep, to make it more organic and teach them something about the FR (they know almost nothing about Toril). In the first one they'll see Tiamat's rising from the eyes of commoners, with the destruction and the terror that it brings, in the second one they will play the heroes that were able to imprison her again after years of war, and in the third and fourth one they will play in waterdeep and get to know the Cassalanters, Xanatar and the Zentharim to get familiar with the Waterdeep setting.
And that's where I need your help. The second one. I was thinking of using some famous npcs from the FR setting, possibly tied to DH or DotMM, as PCs, so when the players will meet them they will be like "oh... I know him/her!", but I have no idea on who to use and how to structure the adventure. So here's the double question:
1- About the adventure: I need something interesting, a good way to have them imprison Tiamat back. I was thinking either a kind of "stealth mission" into Tiamat's lair, to perform some kind of ritual or whatever to imprison her, or a Waterdeep under siege by dragons to have the players start caring about the city. I'm not great at creating high level adventures so any ideas that you could give would be great. I'm pretty sure that I would like for the player to actually fight Tiamat, because I think it would be an exciting fight, and I was thinking something in the lines of "Halaster comes out of the undermountain, saying that he's the only one who can perform a ritual powerful enough to bind Tiamat back to Avernus (in my version of DotMM he will have plans for the material plane and he doesn't want a dragon invasion to thwart them) and he needs the PCs to keep her occupied for an X number of rounds until he completes it". This could be a good way to foreshadow him, giving him the "crazy but crazy powerful" aura, etc... for when we'll play DotMM, and also to have it so the PCs don't actually have to kill Tiamat but just need to survive long enough (and protect him).
But aside for this idea my mind is blank.
Any suggestions?
2- About the PCs: I want to use famous people from the FR as PCs to make them known to the players and I would like them to be as tied as possible to DH or DotMM, so that they will possibly meet them and feel like they know them a little. I have three players but I like to give them choices so I would need more than 3 characters. As of now I was thinking of Jarlaxle, Laeral Silverhand and the Blackstaff. I'm not super expert on the FR (and I still haven't finished reading DotMM) so I don't know who else to bring. I was thinking Manshoon but I can't find a good reason for him to participate without being forced.
In addition, with the exception of Jarlaxle, they're all wizardly characters, and I would like to have a bit more differentiation (a cleric-like character, a combatant, a druid... I don't know, just not 3 wizards).
Finally: I have no idea what power level would be necessary. I don't want them to just fight Tiamat, I would like some other challenges before that, so I would need characters that can withstand Tiamat+something else. I was thinking 15th level? Maybe 18th? I don't know.
So my question for you is: can you suggest some more famous npcs, possibly tied to Waterdeep or DotMM, that could participate in the effort to imprison Tiamat, possibly non just wizards, and maybe suggest a good power level? (I will make the npcs into pcs, so theyir actual CR is not that important).
If you read all of this I humbly thank you and if you are kind enough to reply and give my ideas I will intercede with the dark gods in your favor, I swear
It's going to be a long post, sorry for that, so I'm going to start with a TL;DR; for people that don't want to read it all:
"The players failed to stop Tiamat's rising in the Tiranny of Dragons campaign, now we're ready to start Dragon Heist, I'm creating a couple of one shots to tie them together and I need ideas for a one shot for high level characters to imprison Tiamat back to Avernus.
Also I'm using famous personalities from the FR as PC, possibly connected to Dragon Heist (Jarlaxle, Laeral Silverhand, the Blackstaff,...) to let the players know something about them (they're not familiar with FR) and I would like some help in choosing them (and building them) too."
Now for the real post.
With my group we decided to play all the official campaigns (almost all of them, we're going to skip a couple^^) as a unique continuity, one after the other, so that decisions and actions in one will modify the history of the FR and campaign after campaign the players will be able to see the fruits of their previous efforts. We decided to start with the Tiranny of Dragons campaign. Long story short the party got TPK'd before the end of HotDQ and, since they weren't really liking the adventure, they decided to just consider it a "failed quest" and move on to the next campaign, instead of making new characters (or even keep playing with the same characters after I proposed to them a solution "you're not actually dead, you've just been captured and now you need to escape). So we decided to go on and play the Waterdeep serie: DH and DotMM.
Since I have to incorporate the consequences (as for the agreement before we started) of them failing to stop Tiamat's rising, I was thinking that I can't just make it so Tiamat conquered the entire material plane, that would make most of the other adventures unplayable, so my thinking was: Tiamat rises, there's all out war against dragons for a couple of years until a group of heroes is successful in binding the queen of dragons again in Avernus. This would let me still give consequences for the failure (an after global war feeling to Toril, distrust against draconic races, stuff like that) without having to play in a post-apocaliptic world. Now: I don't like to have everything happen in the background and I wanted to create a bunch of one shots (4 to be precise) to connect the two adventures and introduce the players to Waterdeep, to make it more organic and teach them something about the FR (they know almost nothing about Toril). In the first one they'll see Tiamat's rising from the eyes of commoners, with the destruction and the terror that it brings, in the second one they will play the heroes that were able to imprison her again after years of war, and in the third and fourth one they will play in waterdeep and get to know the Cassalanters, Xanatar and the Zentharim to get familiar with the Waterdeep setting.
And that's where I need your help. The second one. I was thinking of using some famous npcs from the FR setting, possibly tied to DH or DotMM, as PCs, so when the players will meet them they will be like "oh... I know him/her!", but I have no idea on who to use and how to structure the adventure. So here's the double question:
1- About the adventure: I need something interesting, a good way to have them imprison Tiamat back. I was thinking either a kind of "stealth mission" into Tiamat's lair, to perform some kind of ritual or whatever to imprison her, or a Waterdeep under siege by dragons to have the players start caring about the city. I'm not great at creating high level adventures so any ideas that you could give would be great. I'm pretty sure that I would like for the player to actually fight Tiamat, because I think it would be an exciting fight, and I was thinking something in the lines of "Halaster comes out of the undermountain, saying that he's the only one who can perform a ritual powerful enough to bind Tiamat back to Avernus (in my version of DotMM he will have plans for the material plane and he doesn't want a dragon invasion to thwart them) and he needs the PCs to keep her occupied for an X number of rounds until he completes it". This could be a good way to foreshadow him, giving him the "crazy but crazy powerful" aura, etc... for when we'll play DotMM, and also to have it so the PCs don't actually have to kill Tiamat but just need to survive long enough (and protect him).
But aside for this idea my mind is blank.
Any suggestions?
2- About the PCs: I want to use famous people from the FR as PCs to make them known to the players and I would like them to be as tied as possible to DH or DotMM, so that they will possibly meet them and feel like they know them a little. I have three players but I like to give them choices so I would need more than 3 characters. As of now I was thinking of Jarlaxle, Laeral Silverhand and the Blackstaff. I'm not super expert on the FR (and I still haven't finished reading DotMM) so I don't know who else to bring. I was thinking Manshoon but I can't find a good reason for him to participate without being forced.
In addition, with the exception of Jarlaxle, they're all wizardly characters, and I would like to have a bit more differentiation (a cleric-like character, a combatant, a druid... I don't know, just not 3 wizards).
Finally: I have no idea what power level would be necessary. I don't want them to just fight Tiamat, I would like some other challenges before that, so I would need characters that can withstand Tiamat+something else. I was thinking 15th level? Maybe 18th? I don't know.
So my question for you is: can you suggest some more famous npcs, possibly tied to Waterdeep or DotMM, that could participate in the effort to imprison Tiamat, possibly non just wizards, and maybe suggest a good power level? (I will make the npcs into pcs, so theyir actual CR is not that important).
If you read all of this I humbly thank you and if you are kind enough to reply and give my ideas I will intercede with the dark gods in your favor, I swear
