Suggest Good High Level/Epic Adventures

[LordMelquiades]

Lord of the Iron Fortress <snip> I've used the framework to great effect, combining it and DGF into the plots and campaign created from running the banewarrens.

I realise it's somewhat off-topic, but would you care to elaborate on these ideas? Please?

 

[mrswing]

It's massive, it's Dragonlance, but Cam Banks' third installment of the Age of Mortals campaign, The Price of Courage, is a very good story and provides for 5 severely different end games - and it ends up in the low epic region at the end.

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I've enjoyed running both The Winding Way (weird undead in a monastery) and Throne of Iuz (tough orcs and an awakened titanic toad in an elven barrow) from Dungeon, plus the 3.0 module Bastion of Broken Souls. I liked the latter so much I'm planning on running it for a second time in my Freeport game. I also like the look of Bright Mountain King (another one from Dungeon) which I'll be running this Sunday.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Voadam]

I realise it's somewhat off-topic, but would you care to elaborate on these ideas? Please?

OK, spoilers below

I took over DMing the campaign after we did Banewarrens and Nightfang Spire. Vladaams had gotten a bunch of Banes out and released a few accidentally when they had the Key. The party is good (paladin, exalted druid, good dwarven cleric, others) and tries to hunt down banes.

[SBLOCK]I started with a murder of a dwarven master smith while the party was visiting the dwarf's undermountain homeland to get some magic armor upgrades for the paladin. Raises wouldn't work as the soul was gone. The dwarf as a recognized powerful cleric of the dwarven god of wisdom helped out in the investigation with speak with dead and found out about the smith's last moments being torn apart by a great cat like thing that sundered his and an invisible drow voice insulting him before it and the cat left by a gate. The speak with dead also revealed the dwarf was involved in a secret business deal to smith masterwork swords for Varaxus of Rigus. The cleric accepted a commission from the dwarven king to hunt down the murderers wherever the trail may lead or how long it took. The paladin swore to help him in this veangance. These were hooks for LotIF.

My character who was going solo investigated the Vladaams and snuck into a Vladaam auction to sell off banes they didn't want themselves. He found out they sent off one, a dagger to "Golden Lake" My eldritch knight then used a sending to ask the rest of the party to go there and take care of that Bane while I pursued other banes that had been sold off.

They agreed to the hook for DGF. The party used find the path and a shadow walk to get to Golden Lake at the northern borders of the Empire near the wilderness.

I changed DGF background. In the War of Powers Rotansin, Bastion, and the silver king fought against demonic and cultic forces of the Demon God in their great crusade against evil. They also had an army of humans, devas, and a gold dragon. In the great battle the forces of light prevailed (the vrock was hit by Rotansin, earning his lame foot) and forced the remnants of the demons and cultists into their temple. The main demon in the old time I switched from a Balor to an advanced salt demon (from Complete Minions) with corrupting prcs, he was the source of the bug like evil infection disease and had used that over many mortal agents. The demon was captured by Bastion, but permanently wounded the gold dragon. Rotansin performed a true ritual miracle to turn the demon into an inanimate but dangerous Bane dagger.

A party of knights and clerics burst into the temple but were ambushed by the Glabrezu and were repulsed at great loss of life and the paladin who got captured and tortured for a long time until he was turned into a ghost.

The silver King bound the Fane in recharging wards then the gold dragon agreed to sacrifice his life force to empower another of Rotansin's True Ritual Miracles with the devas and aided by the Silver King to seal the Fane into a dimensional prison where time passed slowly, so while eons passed outside, inside little time passed. The dagger was used as the key to lock away the wards on the Fane and the Fane would be hidden dimensionally so long as the magic of the Lake covered it.

Rotansin then took the Bane dagger away and constructed the Banewarrens to hold it and other captured banes.

Eons Later the Lake attracted Elemental Chaos and Good and planetouched animen from Mythic Races settled there. A cult of Demon God followers assaulted the area seeking the Fane and the animen were rescued by elven runemages who settled and founded Sigil Hearth.

Later Human wizard cultists who hid their alignment came to Golden Lake from the Lothian Empire and summoned Vorn the unspeakable and other demons to take Golden Lake. They drove the animen from their village and they retreated to Sigil Hearth while the demons tried to restore the Fane. Erepoth contacted the Lothians who sent out a great demon hunting army, led by Gaen the Lightbringer. The demons and cultists were overthrown but Gaen died fighting Vorn and became a saint of Lothian. Some human Lothians stayed and formed a village. Other Lothians returned to hunt down the rest of the wizardly cabal that was widespread throughout the empire, and there were great witch hunts with arcane spellcasters burning throughout the empire.

Years later when a Vladaam with a werewolf servitor brought the Banedagger to the Golden lake, disguised as a pair of hunters, the salt demon bane dagger's drought property kicked in and the lake receded allowing the Fane to reappear. As they stole the old soldier's rowboat he came out to stop them and he got scratched by the dagger releasing the infectious possession bug demons. The dagger allowed the Vladaams to bypass the Silver King's wards and enter the Fane to try and recover The demon king's heart an artefact that can grant wishes and diabolic power in return for sacrifices. I totally removed the time travel elements and had a confrontation with the mage and the Vladaams (one wielding the dagger) as the end encounter.

When a released demon from the Fane entered the town and murdered people, the Lothian cleric used a sending scroll to contact imperial lothians who sent an army under a Bishop with numerous demon hunters. This complicated things for the Non Lothian party.

Sigil Hearth partially rewarded the party after their victory with planar information about Rigus and they were then off to the outlands for LotIF.

One of the Banes Accidentally released by the Vladaams from the Banewarrens was a Kyton rogue, a master of breaking and opening, he then went to free his partner servant of Belial, a dust mephit assassin, and the warlord named imperagon they both had served in the war of powers on the mortal plane before being overthrown and captured by Rotansin.

The Blade of Fiery Might was tied into our campaigns elemental shards theme. The efreeti had captured the Fire Shard and used it to make the Blade to bind all fire creatures into a jihad against the djinn. Lothian was a mortal paladin who had slain the efreeti, sundered the sword, and used the Shard to empower his own crusades against demon cults. He then used the Shard to ascend. Belial had recently acquired the Shard and bad things were happening as the church erupted in holy civil wars with both sides accusing the other of heresy and fiend corruption with no word from Lothian and both sides fully powered with spells.

Belial tasked Imperagon with reforging the Blade, then leading an army in various planar machinations.

I made significant changes to Rigus and fleshed out the investigations there with the Rakshasa being moved there as Imperagon's agent in the city, more murders of smiths, Belial servants in the city, Varaxus' manipulations, more details on the drow involvement, and an invasion of orcs trying to take over the gate city.[/SBLOCK]

 

[Celebrim]

Epic levels represent something of a double whammy. Not only do relatively few groups like to play there, but those that do usually get there from a long ongoing campaign that they don't want to drop and by the time you take a character up to 20th level the old fashioned way, the plot hooks are so numerous that adventures practically write themselves.

The short of that is you are dealing with a relatively small market.

My suggestion would be to adapt some of the 2nd edition planescape material. Planescape is the closest thing I've seen to a reasonable Epic setting. With just a little work, Tales from an Infinite Staircase, Dead Gods, Modron March, etc. could all be made the start of an Epic campaign.

If you want something that's close to plug and play, the best I've seen is the aforementioned 'Storm Lord's Keep'.

 

[LordMelquiades]

Voadam--thank you--that is all so very cool. I don't own DGF, but I've run the Banewarrens with a previous group. My main standing campaign is winding its way towards LotIF and either Bastion of Broken Souls or Hellstone Deep, and in my current (short-term) game I want to include pointers/foreshadowing towards other gameworld events. I hadn't thought about connecting the lot back through to the Banewarrens though, that is such a great idea...

 

[Bad Paper]

What are some good high level (15+) modules?

My party is knee-deep in Monte Cook's "the Harrowing" from Dungeon number...84? maybe? I think it was the first Dungeon to feature exclusively 3.0 content.

The Harrowing is intended for four 15th-level PCs; I have five 16th/17th PCs. Aside from upgrading to 3.5, I have also sped up its time frame. Monte built three stages into it (e.g. stage 2 lasts from days 2 to 4, or whatever, I don't remember). I simply sped it up to the frame of hours instead of days. I have warned the party of this, so they are racing through it to try to get the whole thing done in one day. This suddenly turns this thing into a challenge, with minimal work on my part, except to say, "ah ha, yeah, you didn't use to worry about six hit points here or there, did you, tough guy? "

They just came out of the Lord of the Iron Fortress. I got two PC kills out of that one, and some heartstring-tugging rules-bending generosity on my part prevented another one or two (which would have easily cascaded into a TPK). Must...prevent...TPK...until...BastionofBrokenSouls....

I'm such a softie.

oh, so the Harrowing is a pretty straightforward Kill The Drow adventure, with plenty of arachnicide and a little regicide thrown in for good measure. The hook is standard kidnapping one, though it has some nature-balance crap in there if that's the kind of thing you need. It's got a new PrC, which was revamped in the FR Underdark book, and a lot of the adventure was lifted and dropped into Fiendish Codex I. Consult both of those for appropriate help in converting to 3.5.

 

[TarionzCousin]

My suggestion would be to adapt some of the 2nd edition planescape material. Planescape is the closest thing I've seen to a reasonable Epic setting. With just a little work, Tales from an Infinite Staircase, Dead Gods, Modron March, etc. could all be made the start of an Epic campaign.

In fact, it is a Planescape campaign. Celebrim wins!

I own some of the adventures mentioned above, and will be adapting parts of them. I've never been much of a "Plug and Play" DM; In fact, I usually change up over half of any modules I run. But having the framework of a published module (and the puzzles, traps, and stats for monsters) helps give me something to start from.

I won't give any more specifics, because Drowbane is in the game.

Thanks for the good ideas everyone!

 

[Nightfall]

I had some...but they didn't come until this week. So I guess it's some other time huh?

 

[Drowbane]

In fact, it is a Planescape campaign. Celebrim wins!

I own some of the adventures mentioned above, and will be adapting parts of them. I've never been much of a "Plug and Play" DM; In fact, I usually change up over half of any modules I run. But having the framework of a published module (and the puzzles, traps, and stats for monsters) helps give me something to start from.

I won't give any more specifics, because Drowbane is in the game.

Thanks for the good ideas everyone!

It is a documented fact that I can't read Modules anyways... unless trying to beat insomnia