D&D General Quick idea for Netheril campaign

[JPL]

Maybe do a high fantasy riff on Rick and Morty and Star Trek: Lower Decks. In a world dominated by megalomaniacal archwizards ruling flying cities, the heroes are lowly but ambitious but probably doomed apprentices, running errands and trying to stay alive.

The party's patron is not necessarily one of the real big dogs of the setting -- just a 20th level Chaotic Neutral guy on his way to lichdom, with a short attention span and a flexible moral code and a lot of ideas. Might even do a "What We Do In The Shadows" vibe where the heroes kind of collectively apprentice for a collective of archmagi.

Probably wanna come up with some new wizard ("arcanist") subclasses --- Inventor (creates or destroys matter and material things), Mentalist (operates in the arena of the mind) and Variator (altered existing objects, materials, and even magic itself). No spell memorization required.

"Apprentice" could be anything up to 10th level.

Arcane magic (and wizard magic specifically) is where it's at, and you could play with the idea that even an eldritch knight with a 16 Intelligence, proficiency in Arcana, and the Arcane Initiate (Wizard) feat is universally seen as the dumb muscle.

 

[JPL]

The real hook, I think, is that this is a campaign where the PCs need to rely on their wits rather than their power. That Deception check might do more to keep you alive than a fireball.

 

[aco175]

The initial read seems like you want to have the PCs be the secondary characters in the story and the big NPCs be the world changers. This might be ok at lower levels, but at some point, the PCs start to be seen as people to be allies with or to take out somehow.

An idea might be around the Star Wars movies where young Anakin (at least the 2 movies with the Clone Wars) represents the PCs and the politics around him being drawn to the Jedi and to the Emperor as he advances in the political world surrounding the robot wars. This could be levels 1-5 or something. Everyone is distracted with the robots and do not see the bigger threat growing in their midst. Levels 6-11 might be needing the clone army to deal with the robots and suddenly they turn on you and the Emperor gains the throne. The PCs realize they have been duped all along. Levels 12-? the Pcs figure out a way to overthrow the Emperor and his minions trying to get the upperhand in the new regime.

 

[JPL]

[LOWER DECK AND WWDITS SPOILERS]

This concept isn't really about the PCs going from the Little Guys to the Big Guys . . . this is about surviving long enough to become a Lower Medium Sized Guy. It's like Lower Decks, where Boimler's arc is from being an Ensign who wants to be a Captain, to a LT(JG) who is Co-First Officer. Or it's like Guierrmo realizing that his destiny was not to become a vampire, but to find a balance between his life as a human and his vampire family.