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View Full Version : Fiery Warforged Bard Campaign- METAL MADNESS



Ason
2011-12-18, 05:21 PM
Hello again Playground! One of my good real-life gamer buddies and I have been talking about re-establishing a regular time/place for D&D and reviving our gaming group, and I've offered to DM a quick 3.P campaign to get us all used to each other and set a fun tone. Now, for the long-term I want a heavy RP campaign, but for this introduction, my goal is for us to be extremely silly and just let loose. Enough introduction, here's the idea:

The premise is that a metal band of hell-spawned monstrosities has been assembled by one of the lower planes' leaders (leaning towards Orcus) to compete in a plane-spanning battle of the bands. Most of the battles they'll fight will be against other music ensembles with their own themes: the gnome deities' servants as parody cover group (Weird Al, etc), Modrons in classical orchestra, Slaad as freeform jazz, a troupe of elementals playing new age (Enya, etc), a band of dim-witted Centaurs calling themselves Wyld Stallyns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Ted's_Excellent_Adventure), other demons/devils playing different kinds of rock, a human boy playing on a fiddle of gold, and so on and so on. There will be a few other encounters outside the battle of bands as well, just to mix things up, but even those will be humorous and may include things like undead mimes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlt0cKRjuLM).

All the players will be playing various Heavy Metal races. The ideas I've come up with so far are: Warforged with the Fire-Souled template given for free (Dragon Mag 314- gives a big Cha bonus and some fun toys) and LA+1 fire elementals, demons and undead (if you know any good ones for PCs, let me know). For simplicity and thematic reasons, I'll probably homebrew some extra features like the ability to make Perform checks each round in addition to their other actions and magical guitars/basses that double as axes. For class builds, everyone will be a gestalt where one half must be Bard or Bard PrCs, but the other half is wide open, so there should be plenty of variation.

Here are my questions:
1) Any ideas or suggestions for this kind of campaign? Has anyone done or seen something like this before? (My Google skills turned up nothing.)

2) I'm very curious to see what other kinds of bands or challenges y'all can come up with. Any ideas for unique encounter scenarios? (i.e. groupie battles, who can make the other guys sell out first) What about other band ideas?

3) Am I being too restrictive in any of these things? I only do it because my group is a bit too prone to excessive min-maxing, and I don't want us going too far afield from the usual heavy metal tropes. (i.e. a character playing a half-celestial gnome in this band would just be silly, obviously)

Thanks Playground! Party on dudes!

Curious
2011-12-18, 05:26 PM
Well, as a suggestion/warning, any of your Warforged players could become Dragonborn, so they could be ROBOT-DRAGONS! It would also allow them to gain Dragonfire Inspiration, which replaces Inspire Courage, and makes your weapons burst into flame.

hex0
2011-12-18, 05:34 PM
Well, as a suggestion/warning, any of your Warforged players could become Dragonborn, so they could be ROBOT-DRAGONS! It would also allow them to gain Dragonfire Inspiration, which replaces Inspire Courage, and makes your weapons burst into flame.

FLAMING ROBOT DRAGONS!

It'd suggest that they be multi-class bards possibly

-Warblade/Bard
-Crusader/Bard
-Bard/Sublime Chord
-Barbarian/Bard/Rage Mage?

Ason
2011-12-19, 12:04 AM
Right as I was embarking on my day's errands, I realized a few easy changes to this campaign that could improve its flexibility and quality. I'm revising it above, but for those too lazy to re-read, it will now be gestalt (Bard//whatever the player wants) and open to a few other races (but only those that have easy tie-ins to Metal). Fluff-wise, I think I'd get the most mileage out of making Orcus their patron (opens it up to demons, undead and flaming death-robots), unless anyone has a better idea.

The Underlord
2011-12-19, 12:43 AM
Maybe dragonfire adept to get an at-will fire breath attack?

GoatBoy
2011-12-19, 12:59 AM
I was a player in something exactly like this last Summer. It was a gestalt bard campaign, with the PC's as the members of a metal band called "Dire Fetus."

Warforged aren't an ideal race for bards so your players might chafe at that. You could perhaps remove the charisma penalty, or offer bonus warforged feats, which should be fine since everyone will be playing the same race.

Our game played very fast and loose with the rules. The DM didn't really keep track of XP, and we frequently were given large amounts of gold as "concert fees" or some such, without keeping track of treasure. Of course, the DM wanted us to level up very quickly, which might be a good idea if you're only planning on running this game for a short time.

Err on the side of easier combats, since players are going to favour flashy fights where they can do crazy things, and they will get bored if they get bogged down in a long, tough battle.

One of the most popular aspects of the game was our band's skeletal-unicorn-pulled tour carriage, the F*ckface Unstoppable.

I'll post later if I can remember any more details.

Ason
2011-12-19, 01:46 AM
I was a player in something exactly like this last Summer. It was a gestalt bard campaign, with the PC's as the members of a metal band called "Dire Fetus."

Warforged aren't an ideal race for bards so your players might chafe at that. You could perhaps remove the charisma penalty, or offer bonus warforged feats, which should be fine since everyone will be playing the same race.

Our game played very fast and loose with the rules. The DM didn't really keep track of XP, and we frequently were given large amounts of gold as "concert fees" or some such, without keeping track of treasure. Of course, the DM wanted us to level up very quickly, which might be a good idea if you're only planning on running this game for a short time.

Err on the side of easier combats, since players are going to favour flashy fights where they can do crazy things, and they will get bored if they get bogged down in a long, tough battle.

One of the most popular aspects of the game was our band's skeletal-unicorn-pulled tour carriage, the F*ckface Unstoppable.

I'll post later if I can remember any more details.

Thanks for all the advice! I was considering making it easy stat-wise but ridiculous/epic-looking fluff-wise, and your story confirms that a bit more for me. Quick level ups and gold also sound good. As for the Warforged Cha penalty, that is why I'm giving them the Fire-Souled template for free (it gives a +4 to Cha and some fire/leadership/Cha features). It makes them better stat-wise and MOAR METAL, heheh.

The carriage idea is totally being stolen, by the way. I will probably tweak the name to match whatever escapades the party pulls off, but I like that a lot!


Also, thanks everyone else for the good ideas so far. Keep 'em coming!