[3.5] Experience with Elder Evils

[IthilanorStPete]

So I just finished reading through Elder Evils. Some of the bits in it seemed awesome, epic in multiple senses, and make me want to play a campaign with them - most of the malefic properties, Atropus, Pandorym, most of Leviathan, and Sertrous' backstory. On the other hand, there's the lameness of most of the art, the fact that many of the Evils seem just plain weak, the Hulks of Zoretha just plain seem stupid, and Ragnorra's weird "getting weaker when turning into her true form" thing.

So I want to ask - what do other people think of this book? I'd also like to hear stories from anyone who's used encounters from it, or based part of or a full campaign around one of the Elder Evils.

[IthilanorStPete]

Bump? Anyone out there feel like chiming in?

[Saint GoH]

Im personally using Zargon the Returner in my own campaign. To give him a little more punch I gave him a Divine Rank, and gestalted him with Sorcerer. Should be a fun final battle, though I have a feeling he will DESTROY the PC's.

[Saintheart]

The Age of Worms adventure path out of Dragon magazine had as its ultimate opponent Kyuss, who features in that book. Takes you a full 20 levels to get there, and features even taking a brief trip to the Tomb of Horrors to pick up the Sphere of Annihilation to use it against him. Even then he's no slouch.

On the other hand, it's a tremendously complex job for a DM to absorb the whole campaign, and I've yet to see a PbP campaign that lasted long enough to complete it (mine included).

[WinWin]

You have to make a clear delienation of their foreshadowing & description in their respective chapters and the abilities common to all elder evils.

They are immune to divination. That is a major strength. Even Gods and tweaked out Diviners do not see them coming. Sure, they may be able to see and interperet the signs of their arrival, but that should provide no clue as to what they are. As to defeating them, consider that a PC is not going to know their specific weaknesses.

If you're going to use them in a campaign, I would suggest emphasising this. Keep in mind that their cultists probably benefit from a bunch of free Vile feats, which is probably not enought to make a difference in any combat, but a wierd ability here and there will keep players guessing.

[IthilanorStPete]

Yay, thanks for the posts!

Saintheart - ooh, that makes sense, and makes me want to pick up Age of Worms even more!
WinWin - a good point. Also I only noticed the constant nondetection effect they're under, which makes it difficult even without divine scrying and what not.

[TheCountAlucard]

IMO, some of 'em are a little railroady - for Atropus, what if the party splits up to handle both problems? For Father Llymic, the white dragon encounter seems a little... forced. They're not all bad, but still...

[hotel_papa]

I just finished my Eberron campaign, the climax being the battle with Atropus, on Atropus and ultimately within Atropus, Lavos style.

I'm inclined to agree with the good Count. I was not terribly impressed with the writing for the adventures leading up to the Elder Evils themselves. I took them as politely worded suggestions at best. For instance, I dropped the nihilist elf NPC completely and replaced her with Vol / The Scar that Abides / Orcus. I remade the bodak Green Goblin rip-off into a reanimation of Vedim ir'Otik, whom they had defeated previously... None of these things need to make any sense to you if you're not knowledgeable about Eberron.

The point is that they make for very compelling save-the-world type campaigns, but, like everything else, require some reshaping to fit into the world you and your players have created.

[Callos_DeTerran]

I like the idea of Elder Evils and the executions of some of them. Atropus, the Levithan, and Ragnorra are my favorites of the bunch, while I think Zargon, Serotoeus (the snake one!), and Father Lymic have a lot of potential that's...poorly executed. I've always wanted to run or play in an Elder Evil's campaign but have never had the chance.

[Icarus]

I've been playing with the idea of making a campaign where the PCs end up having to deal with two Elder Evils- namely Ragnorra and Atropus. The idea being they cancel each other's signs out to a certain extent because of their positive energy/negative energy alignment, so its a real surprise when things start happening.

The only real thing I have solidified is that I want Atropus' moon to show up, then Ragnorra smashes through it during her collision with the world, raining pieces of the moon down, as well. I think the aftermath would make for a pretty decent Epic setting.

[TheJake]

Hope nobody minds the thread bump.

I bought this at the same time I was building a custom BBEG for my campaign. After reading Exemplars of Evil and feeling it missed the mark, Elder Evils was exactly what I was after. I wanted to build something that was godlike, but not a god and infact, wanted to annihilate the world, not gain the worship of sentients.

I think some of the writeups (Atropos, Pandorym, Kyuss) were quite good. The others, I felt, were really weak. I think if you use the book as a guide for how some of these elder evils function, use their properties, the prophecies and warning signs, in conjunction with Exemplars of Evil, Book of Vile Deeds, etc, I think it works quite well.

If you have these materials, I think they would work quite well if you are running an Age of Worms campaign too.

- J.

[Midnight_v]

. I remade the bodak Green Goblin rip-off

I just wanted to say that... that bodak was supposed to be the silver surfer, and atrophus was galactus.

However, the elder evil really added a lot to my game at the time, and I decided to make my own and run more campaigns with that going on.
I find that its awesome because its turns established campaigns worlds upside down. I don't think you should try to run it just as they suggest straight out the book, though, but I find very little in D*D should be used that way.

[DiBastet]

I have a campaign setting. I wrote a book about it, regions with trade, culture and all, in the style of FR. Only the information about regions is more than 100 pages long (word, times new roman size 10). We play in this setting, with the players involved in the progress of the world, around six years now.

The last "Big Campaign" was about an elder evil, and while his presence was only revealed at the 7th chapter (out of 9), thing went downhill pretty fast. The said elder evil was a planet devouring elder god. It came to the planet, corrupted its positive energy and then swallowed it all, leaving the planet a lifeless rock then going on.

The signs were pretty hardcore too: Crystal glyphs crisscrossed the night sky, and people and itens lost CL. Those who came to 0 cl couldn't cast their spells. In the end only the highest mages and high clerics could even use spells, and only he mighty magic items would work (my setting is more like eberron, so 15th level is some truly amazing people in the world).

Then planar travel became more difficult, then divinations started failing.

And, of course, more dramatic, pieces of this crystalline meteor elder god started raining down as rain of crystal shards, very lethal to cities and common people.

In the end the characters solved the plot (So graz'zt didn't want the Spear of Kings to control the seven Master Elder Eidolons, but to not allow the mortals to use them against the elder god), and used two of the ancient construct beings to destroy the god. The creatures flew to space (taking the spear so mortals wouldn't have this kind of power again. It's a central theme of the campaign) and nuked into the elder god.

It blew into million crystal shards but a piece of it fell down on the planet, with the impact of a common huge meteor (hitting into the underdark, creating a rift into the land, that was latter filled with the north ocean who invaded it, dark ages of dust covering the sky and such). The chars went into the thing core and defeated it.

The rains stoped some time after, but around half the population of the world was dead, the cities in pieces, and civilization brought to its very edge. Fortunately, the death of the god released its positive energy into the world (some lifestream **** is essential part of my setting), that allowed itself to "heal", creating enduring plants that could survive the years without sun, impending the world from freezing, and raising the birth rates of the living beings.

There were some major features after the Fall.
-There were five years of dust in the sky and because of that dusk-like darkness and rains of mud. Five years of terror.
-Half the population is dead. In the years that we play (8 years after) the baby boon made the population come to around 70% of before.
-The billions of crystals from the nuke in the sky were pulled by the planet's gravity and made a more or less stable ring of shining crystals around the world, like eberron's siberys ring. Sometimes these crystals do rain down, but far less destructly, and a good moment to catch the remaining crystals and use them to pwoer magic.
-The pieces of the god's crystal have magical powers, similar to dragonshards. There is a market for pieces not too small (the majority is shattered glass, and useless).
-The elder races, like dwarves and elves, were a common part of the culture, not the "fading race" of tolkien, however, since their birth rates are smaller than human, orc, shifter, halfling and goblinoid, they seem to be declining.
-The fall was 8 years ago. Every character must feature this proeminently on their backstory.
-Finally, the influx of positive energy increased the ocurrence of "natural powers" on living beings. Now psionics manifest itself in any creature and race, instead of only in psionics race and very rarely on other races; and zodiac stone and zodiac marks (similar to dragonmarks in ability) appear more frequently on humanoids. Zodiac stones became wells of power.
-Not to mention the destruction of kingdoms, the mentioned creation of another "inner sea", and the wars that broke the Great Kingdom, and the new zealotry about the gods.


It destroyed my setting.

It was awesome. It works best on setting the players care about.