Greysect
2010-11-16, 09:13 PM
Excuse the lame title, I tried packing in as much of the concept in as few words as I could.
Premise From the Player's Perspective
Once great adventurers who changed the course of their realm's history, the party has been reincarnated into a party of four to six mid-level, tier 3 augmented human living constructs compelled by an anonymous god to guard a massive gate in a five-floor tower in the middle of an abandoned city. Starting with nothing, the players must spend each week in a 10,000 years to scavenge the city for weapons and materials with which to make fortifications and on the seventh day defend the tower from a single wave of enemies who mysteriously appear within the city and charge the tower. The players will incidentally uncover clues as to the true nature of their divine assignment left by these defeated waves as well as by previous gate guardians.
Campaign Highlights
*The players will not know they are living constructs until they begin the game before then they will only be human. To compensate for starting the players with no equipment but their metal hides, god grants their metal bodies special qualities to emulate typical magical items they would have at their level. The nature of these body modifications depends on their backstory.
> Players are granted the weapon they favored in their past life, which is built into their dominant arm and will have magical qualities not yet decided upon, though including the typical +# weapon or the energy surge abilities as found in the DMGII.
> Each player is granted a unique special quality or spell-like ability that reflects their death (ex. The saint who died by trial by fire will have at least fire resistance, and the adventurer who succumbed to madness will be granted supernatural clarity in one way or another.)
> They have been rebuilt. They are faster, stronger, better, and because of it have a +2 bonus on a single physical ability score.
*For all the players know, they are the last sentient entities on the planet. There are no NPCs to coerce, which also means no vendors. Instead of using GP to buy items they must collect Craft Points by salvaging materials from abandoned buildings. My players wanted for a campaign that had less NPC interaction. I asked them if they would be okay with no interaction, and they said yes.
*With a city all to themselves and a time limit of six days, certain skills will yield more worth than usual. Tracking can be used to more quickly locate specific undiscovered structured. Craft(poison) and (trapmaking) can be used to impede waves of monsters as they scale the tower. Skeletons are hidden throughout the city, which can be animated by a Dread Necromancer to perform menial labor in peacetime, allowing players to get more done in a shorter time span, and making good cannon fodder in wartime.
What I Ask of You All
*What are all the nifty skills and class abilities that could come in handy in a situation like this?
*How do you all feel about Constructs Vs. Living constructs in terms of healing? Without a cleric or a vendor, I thought healing would be hard enough, so should I include a self-repairing ability, leave healing to a certain craft skill, or even introduce a class for healing purposes, such as the home-brewed Inventor class?
*I have not chosen the starting level yet, but have been gravitating toward 10. In this case, are the bonus goodies listed above good enough to replace starting equipment? Could I use more or less, and either way, what would be good to add/remove?
*What would your ideal tower setup be, and how would you go about creating it, assuming all materials are on hand and you are a tier 3 class?
*I want the players' aim to be to keep the tower fortified enough to last a day on its own, so the players can spend time on exploring the city and finding the loophole to escape their assignment. Should I plant some higher-level items and artifacts in the far reaches of the city to be found and used in the endgame to make guarding the tower easier, if not removing the problem completely?
*To facilitate travel across the city, the players will be given a gridded map of the city, each square representing a sector of the city, which takes a certain amount of hours to travel through. In this respect, time is a measurable currency all its own, signaling enemy attack when depleted. In order to explore the farther reaches of the city where stronger items are located the party must pass through previous squares at least once in the history of the campaign. Upon that first passing a planned encounter occurs, either being attacked by the neutral ghosts who inhabit the streets or discovering important buildings ripe for plundering. The players must resolve this encounter, or else must spend extra hours moving through the square so as not to alarm ghosts. The more hours spent exploring, the more the players risk not getting to the tower in time to defend, so these extra hours discourage players from rushing from one end of the city to the other and retrieving a powerful item early in play...How's that sound?
I am open to any questions or criticism, for I am bound to have forgotten an important factor in my design. Thank you very much for either.
Premise From the Player's Perspective
Once great adventurers who changed the course of their realm's history, the party has been reincarnated into a party of four to six mid-level, tier 3 augmented human living constructs compelled by an anonymous god to guard a massive gate in a five-floor tower in the middle of an abandoned city. Starting with nothing, the players must spend each week in a 10,000 years to scavenge the city for weapons and materials with which to make fortifications and on the seventh day defend the tower from a single wave of enemies who mysteriously appear within the city and charge the tower. The players will incidentally uncover clues as to the true nature of their divine assignment left by these defeated waves as well as by previous gate guardians.
Campaign Highlights
*The players will not know they are living constructs until they begin the game before then they will only be human. To compensate for starting the players with no equipment but their metal hides, god grants their metal bodies special qualities to emulate typical magical items they would have at their level. The nature of these body modifications depends on their backstory.
> Players are granted the weapon they favored in their past life, which is built into their dominant arm and will have magical qualities not yet decided upon, though including the typical +# weapon or the energy surge abilities as found in the DMGII.
> Each player is granted a unique special quality or spell-like ability that reflects their death (ex. The saint who died by trial by fire will have at least fire resistance, and the adventurer who succumbed to madness will be granted supernatural clarity in one way or another.)
> They have been rebuilt. They are faster, stronger, better, and because of it have a +2 bonus on a single physical ability score.
*For all the players know, they are the last sentient entities on the planet. There are no NPCs to coerce, which also means no vendors. Instead of using GP to buy items they must collect Craft Points by salvaging materials from abandoned buildings. My players wanted for a campaign that had less NPC interaction. I asked them if they would be okay with no interaction, and they said yes.
*With a city all to themselves and a time limit of six days, certain skills will yield more worth than usual. Tracking can be used to more quickly locate specific undiscovered structured. Craft(poison) and (trapmaking) can be used to impede waves of monsters as they scale the tower. Skeletons are hidden throughout the city, which can be animated by a Dread Necromancer to perform menial labor in peacetime, allowing players to get more done in a shorter time span, and making good cannon fodder in wartime.
What I Ask of You All
*What are all the nifty skills and class abilities that could come in handy in a situation like this?
*How do you all feel about Constructs Vs. Living constructs in terms of healing? Without a cleric or a vendor, I thought healing would be hard enough, so should I include a self-repairing ability, leave healing to a certain craft skill, or even introduce a class for healing purposes, such as the home-brewed Inventor class?
*I have not chosen the starting level yet, but have been gravitating toward 10. In this case, are the bonus goodies listed above good enough to replace starting equipment? Could I use more or less, and either way, what would be good to add/remove?
*What would your ideal tower setup be, and how would you go about creating it, assuming all materials are on hand and you are a tier 3 class?
*I want the players' aim to be to keep the tower fortified enough to last a day on its own, so the players can spend time on exploring the city and finding the loophole to escape their assignment. Should I plant some higher-level items and artifacts in the far reaches of the city to be found and used in the endgame to make guarding the tower easier, if not removing the problem completely?
*To facilitate travel across the city, the players will be given a gridded map of the city, each square representing a sector of the city, which takes a certain amount of hours to travel through. In this respect, time is a measurable currency all its own, signaling enemy attack when depleted. In order to explore the farther reaches of the city where stronger items are located the party must pass through previous squares at least once in the history of the campaign. Upon that first passing a planned encounter occurs, either being attacked by the neutral ghosts who inhabit the streets or discovering important buildings ripe for plundering. The players must resolve this encounter, or else must spend extra hours moving through the square so as not to alarm ghosts. The more hours spent exploring, the more the players risk not getting to the tower in time to defend, so these extra hours discourage players from rushing from one end of the city to the other and retrieving a powerful item early in play...How's that sound?
I am open to any questions or criticism, for I am bound to have forgotten an important factor in my design. Thank you very much for either.