Previews for Dungeon 148 and Dragon 357 (July 2007)

[Upper_Krust]

Hello again!

Well, actually, there is.

NPCs in Eberron typically use NPC classes. Experienced veteran soldiers might be warrior 3. The highest-level person in Sharn is a 19th-level commoner, and she's extremely old.

The overall power level of Eberron is low, because most people don't even have PC classes and even those who do are likely to be 12th level rather than 20th. The only 20th-level PC-classed character in the entire book is a 20th-level awakened greatpine druid who spends most of his time sleeping. Even Sul Khatesh is bound in place and restricted in ability by the Silver Flame.

Lords of Dust:
Ourastoran = CR 25
Kektula = CR 32
Kashtarek = CR 24
Korliac = CR 24
Mordakhesh = CR 25

So Eberron does, explicitly, establish that its demographics trend lower, and to a majority of NPC-classed NPCs, than the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. There's a Dragonshard article about it on Wizards of the Coast's website.

You wouldn't happen to have the link to the article would you? Sounds interesting.

Oh, but I thought that the issue was verisimilitude of the setting. Like, for instance, whether or not a CR 24 Demogorgon is plausible as the most powerful demon in the Abyss.

But Demogorgon wasn't created for the Eberron setting, nor is he a native of that world, hes a native of the Abyss.

That doesn't really have much to do with the PCs' own power level.

Originally Demogorgon was notably more powerful than mortals.

Anyway, I'm done with the argument. If Upper_Krust really doesn't think that different campaigns have different levels of power and therefore different needs, then we just don't have any basis for a conversation.

What I think is that you should create a character based on their own setting, in this case the Abyss. No setting 'needs' a character from another setting. The second idea you proffer is not only that Eberron needs Demogorgon, but that we have to whittle Demogorgon into some sort of Demogorgon-lite so the PCs can kill him.

This is no different from adding Driz'zt and Elminster to Eberron and making Driz'zt 10th-level and Elminster 17th-level just so the PCs can kill them.

 

[Nightfall]

Krusty,

If you made Driz'zt level 10 I'd kill to see that.


And yeah it would be nice if there was some way to figure out just definitively where they stand on the cosmology ecology scale. It's just as perninent as whether Ao or Io is more powerful.