Help/Suggestions with Campaign in the making.

[Drevius]

Hello, it's been a loooong time since I have posted here but I am going to be running a campaign spanning about a week straight playing or more depending on scheduling. I have the basic idea of how the campaign will proceed after a freestyle campaign that everyone enjoyed that I am now giving some structure to and am running with a more experienced group. I have most of the villains formed in my mind but would like more help and suggestions for encounters and basic enemies/ one off villains etc.

Campaign plot/overview: The campaign world is essentially a mashup or crossover world of Forgotten Realms, Eberron and Core thrown in with most key locales and races included. The game will run from 1st level to roughly 13th-15th level depending on players decisions and side quests with leveling happening once or twice every session if we are doing it in a week (potentially slower if I had more time). I want to run the game similar to a popcorn movie with lots of fun setpieces and not as much focus on the story. The essential plot is that an evil force has occupied a massive spire called "The Planes Forge" that has mysteriously appeared in the center of their material plane. This "Forge" is beginning to produce cursed items of varying powers that are filtering out into the general populace corrupting them (including relgious icon copies and artifacts). The curses have varying effects including dominating victims and possession. The cursed are beginning to move towards the forge for unknown purposes (BBEG wishes to use the cursed as an army on the material plane) and there has been rumors of a mysterious gate that connects to all other planes of existence (BBEG wishes to send corrupt artifacts to other planes to strengthen his army and sever divine connections with powerful corrupted artifacts or "jammers"). Essentially the party will inadvertantly stumble across this plot and seek to find allies as well as destroy any major cursed items in their paths, ending in a climactic battle with the BBEG army and the parties army of allied forces. I really want to generate paranoia with magic treasure they find as well as with certain people they meet.

[Drevius]

Also a little info on some of the primary baddies I have created, any suggestions on how to improve them or any other baddies you can think of is appreciated as well.

BBEG 1: The Big boss is a wizard modeled after the Dread Emperor from the BoVD. He likes to corrupt childeren and transform them into undead spies and minions as well as the use of innocent souls to fuel his metamagics (through chains connected to the child and the "Dread Emporer".

BBEG 2: This guy is a corrupted artifact himself essentially. I made him out as an evil warforged or Kolyarut who is connected to the Planes Forge as essentially the sentient form of the forge. He was a rogue/fighter with levels in assassin and a very evil character the party really got to hate (from the use of well placed explosive runes on a vault and murder of a liked npc). When he is destroyed physically he can be rebuilt at the planes forge stronger with each incarnation.

BBEG 3: The last multi encounter villain I had in the free style game was a hob goblin the party met in their very first encounter of all things. He was knocked unconsious and taken captive by the group and later escaped after helping the party fight off some wolves. The party chased him and nearly killed him multiple times until I decided he had survived overwhelming encounters with the party enough to level up to their level (he was a level 1 warrior). His final encounter with the party was at their sanctuary where they destroyed cursed items and he had become a level 8 half fiend crusader with revenge in mind and took the entirety of the party and some npc's to finish off the hob goblin and his sentient axe "Gloomfang".

If anyone has any ideas for common baddies or cursed items it would be much appreciated.

[Drevius]

any suggestions????

[Show]

It would take some serious homebrewing, but I've been having a lot of fun recently with the idea of swarms of animated items. These might be a little out there:

For the Dread Emperor, you could use a certain spell(can't quite remember it) to animate the chains and attack PCs. At later levels, they could even inflict negative levels and force will saves or be dominated.

For the Artifact Man, you could give him some kind of crazy ability to dissolve into a swarm of flying, cursed items. At low levels, they would take 1 point of damage per shard of metal/cursed item/debris, and at later levels, assuming that he is some kind of a caster, they could inflict negative levels and miss chance due to all the flying stuff! It could make a good swan song for him.
If the party gets him down to 1/2 health or something, say something epic and activate the ability. He would start taking damage, the party would start taking damage, and you could use all kinds of cinematics to explain his escape.

Seeing as you mentioned the hobgoblin, I might as well say that you could easily make him undead and send him as a recurring villain for the party. More of a miniboss, probably.

As for the setting, sounds good! I might even have to steal some of it...

[Drevius]

I like the swarms of cursed items definitely going to use something like that at a big market place when they want to do some shopping... The Dread Emperor mainly uses the chains as an item to fuel his spells but it would be cool to see him use them as a spiked chain type weapon. The main strength of the Dread Emperor is the giant cursed gate within the Forge of Planes that he can summon practically anything or anyone from anywhere to serve him (yeah it's gonna be pretty crazy after a set period of time).

[Drevius]

I am just going to post ideas I think of as I go here, kind of like a journal and to get my thoughts in order ( I also do not want the topic to collect dust :smalltongue: ).

An idea that just came to me and I always wanted to do was a sort of prequel to the adventurers starting out and have them playing as level 1 npc classes in a small town or village where the terrible evil and misfortune lurks just beyond the horizon for the "party". These characters would be somehow related to the main characters as well such as cousins, sons, brothers/sisters etc. Have the party go about a day in their life hunting, working and heading to the pub and then have a survivor of a destroyed town run into the pub screaming about an awful army of creatures (The Cursed) coming to raze their town and kill everything that moves. The party would then (hopefully) gather the militia to protect the town and help to evacuate women and childeren and most likely sacrifice themselves since there is only a small chance the npc militia will be able to hold against The Cursed. This way they can have an idea of the enemies and I can show off major villains powers as they cut through the town and their main characters will really want to hate them for what they have done to family members and potentially their home town.

[Drevius]

Another idea I had that just came to mind was cursed items modeled after some of the artifact equipment items from Magic: The Gathering. We actually have a running joke going with one item a PC in my group always uses he calls his Jitte after "Umezawa's Jitte" and he calls it his little Jitty.

[Drevius]

In addition to the MTG artifact items, I think some powerful sentient cursed items that are being wielded by willing creatures will serve as the generals of the Cursed Army. I am thinking it will essentially be one fighter/prc x, one rogue/prc x, one cleric/prc x and one mage gish type character as of now. As for their sentient weapons...... A scythe for one? twin daggers that essentially cause the wielder to have split personality, and the other two I am unsure of right now.

This journal is starting to be really handy. :smallbiggrin:

[Drevius]

Now that I have a general idea of villains and enemies, I need to think of the allies that will aid the PCs. I want to make sure these friendly NPCs aren't regarded as cannon fodder and leave some kind of impact on my group.Interesting, unique, original and general badass characters who all serve various purposes from comic relief to self sacrificing heroes who the PCs feel they want to avenge. An idea I might "borrow" is from a friend of mine who had statted out DotA characters and homebrewed all of their powers, etc. I already had a few cool NPCs from the original game such as the female elf cleric/monk of Corellon Latherian Karina Moonshadow who had trust issues with other races but slowly grew to like and trust the PCs (for the most part) until she was killed by one of the BBEGs of the game which did not sit well with the rest of the party as they were helpless on the ground as she was assassinated. She returned at the end of the campaign as the BBEG captured her soul and twisted her into a fallen angel type creature the PCs had to face.

[Drevius]

Okay another thought to jot down,

I want to name drop a few Warhammer 40k character names since most of my players are big 40k buffs, and give them class levels that resemble what they do within their own universes. One NPC I have thought of was Ursakar Creed, The Imperial commander/governer and have him be the mayor/marshall of one of the first towns they visit or the town they need to hold against the Cursed Army invasion forces. I may also include characters from "Gaunt's Ghosts" within the 40k universe. I also want to include a few Eldar characters as elven allies and Orks as well.... Orcs.

The 4 Generals of the cursed army are going to have tweaked versions of the weapons from Legacy weapons as I have found some pretty good base ideas from them. The first general is going to be a Feral Frenzied Berserker, not sure about race still Probably wielding a Greataxe/sword/hammer. Second General will be a Favored Soul?/Cleric?/Divine Caster? drawing power from the Planes Forge and potentially an unknown evil on the other side of the extraplanar gate wielding a scythe. The next General will be an agile scout/rogue type character wielding modified versions of the legacy weapons Devious and Vicious. The last General will probably be a gish and potentially a swiftblade using a bastard sword or katana weapon like the legacy weapon shishio (sp.). I was also thinking of possibly modelling them after the various gods of chaos in WH40k (Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Nurgle.).