Godskook
2010-10-31, 12:54 AM
So, I got tired of knowing guys who play D&D, but not knowing any games set in a basic 3.5 splat setting, so I opted to start run one myself, complete with a cross-dimensional start-up, so my players are power-ranger(short version) versions of themselves walking into a D&D universe that has the following qualities, as far as they know:
Cult of Oblivion, a group capable of sending a small squad of trolls through a planar gateway for the purpose of gathering random guinea pigs for experiments.
A wizard named Dominic Alheera, a wizard renown for his expertise in planar magic, who was somehow black-mailed into creating the ritual that allowed for the above.
What I haven't told the players, but I'm thinking about.
Using this variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm), combined with backlashes that make it dangerous(negative levels maybe?), and required sites of magical import, most of which(especially the ones that are convenient) are guarded.
A giant scarred desert, in which little lives, but at the center of, a prosperous city of high-ish magic exists which sustains itself on the tarresque, whose capture founded the town of Kintarra. The previously mentioned magic sites of import are there as an outer wall of sorts, which kept the great beast's destruction relatively contained, in order to make its trapping far more feasible. (The setting does not currently have access to wish).
Since most of the world's greatest humanoid powers were among those sent to battle the beast, the world outside the scar was set backwards magically, currently holding at best in the 2-6 HD range for most humanoids, while the city of beast, Kintarra, has prospered, combined with long lives, somewhere around 8-12 HD. Kintarra itself is essentially the lead-front of magical revolution akin to what happened in England/America during the late 1800s and early 1900s while the outside the scar prosper on a more colonial-era level, stuck in low-magic tech(fireballs are new and scary!).
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My main problem is that all my plotting keeps going into stories that require ECL 8+(Mind flayers, trolls, powerful wizards and Kintarra itself), while I *REALLY* want to have the party grow through the early levels, albeit at an accelerated pace, to give them the feel that the new world they're in is changing them, somewhat akin, but on a larger scale, to what happens in Chronicles of Narnia where the heroes enter Narnia as normal people, but grow into things they almost couldn't have been in the real world. To that end, I want to start them at level 1, but knowing that level 1 is so deadly, I gave them 3 temp-HD for HP/BAB/Save purposes, so that hopefully, they'd stay long enough to mature into the heroic figures they dream of becoming.
So, questions, ideas, or criticisms?
Cult of Oblivion, a group capable of sending a small squad of trolls through a planar gateway for the purpose of gathering random guinea pigs for experiments.
A wizard named Dominic Alheera, a wizard renown for his expertise in planar magic, who was somehow black-mailed into creating the ritual that allowed for the above.
What I haven't told the players, but I'm thinking about.
Using this variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm), combined with backlashes that make it dangerous(negative levels maybe?), and required sites of magical import, most of which(especially the ones that are convenient) are guarded.
A giant scarred desert, in which little lives, but at the center of, a prosperous city of high-ish magic exists which sustains itself on the tarresque, whose capture founded the town of Kintarra. The previously mentioned magic sites of import are there as an outer wall of sorts, which kept the great beast's destruction relatively contained, in order to make its trapping far more feasible. (The setting does not currently have access to wish).
Since most of the world's greatest humanoid powers were among those sent to battle the beast, the world outside the scar was set backwards magically, currently holding at best in the 2-6 HD range for most humanoids, while the city of beast, Kintarra, has prospered, combined with long lives, somewhere around 8-12 HD. Kintarra itself is essentially the lead-front of magical revolution akin to what happened in England/America during the late 1800s and early 1900s while the outside the scar prosper on a more colonial-era level, stuck in low-magic tech(fireballs are new and scary!).
-------
My main problem is that all my plotting keeps going into stories that require ECL 8+(Mind flayers, trolls, powerful wizards and Kintarra itself), while I *REALLY* want to have the party grow through the early levels, albeit at an accelerated pace, to give them the feel that the new world they're in is changing them, somewhat akin, but on a larger scale, to what happens in Chronicles of Narnia where the heroes enter Narnia as normal people, but grow into things they almost couldn't have been in the real world. To that end, I want to start them at level 1, but knowing that level 1 is so deadly, I gave them 3 temp-HD for HP/BAB/Save purposes, so that hopefully, they'd stay long enough to mature into the heroic figures they dream of becoming.
So, questions, ideas, or criticisms?