Crinias
2013-01-02, 12:46 PM
Hey guys, I kinda need some advice in both doing things to my campaign and building NPCs.
To my players: not for your eyes, turn away.
My campaign is concerned mainly with ridding the world of aberrations and eldritch abominations. This aspect is proceeding slowly, but basically thirty years ago this mad druid took over the city of Greyhawk for a day and told a mad prophecy, saying that the truth of the world would be revealed and that the world would be changed irrevocably. He went on to say that the herald of this new age would be a high priest, that the high priest will come from great depths and that we must beware the Parabola (laugh all you want, I know how ridiculous it sounds). In the years since, an increasing amount of aberrations have been appearing all around the multiverse, and many have taken this to be a sign of the End Times (as usual). The campaign is sort-of interplanar, with some of the player's characters coming from Eberron or Faerun.
Shortly I will 'reveal' to my players that an Elder Evil (well, two if they're not careful) will be released or awakened into this world unless stopped. I say 'reveal' because they kinda sorta already know that one of them will soon be released due to the prophecy and whatnot, you know, the usual.
My players have been hired/are working with an organization which deals mainly as an information network that works alongside other organizations (churches, governments) in order to coordinate attacks on and by master aberrations and keep everyone informed, as information is always useful, even (especially) when dealing with otherworldly horrors.
So far things have gone well, with my players steamrolling through any and all opposition via clever tactics, a dedicated buffer and some cheese. Here they are:
For starters there's the Druid which has obtained a fleshraker animal companion (he calls him Fleshy) and has not particularly had any trouble exploiting Wildshape (that is to say, using it normally and not even having to use spells since he's so efficient). He's from Eberron.
Next up is our Cleric of Mystra which took Initiate of Mystra, Church Inquisitor, Dweomerkeeper and Divine Metamagic (Quicken and Reach). He's a real pain in the ass, mostly because he's very smart and his always-on Arcane Sight and Detect Evil allows him to detect almost any threat or thing that could put the party at a disadvantage. Not to mention his constant buffing makes the already-powerful ranger a living turret, blasting away at full power and taking down everything while being very mobile.
The real offensive powerhouse in the party is a Scout/Mystic Ranger which took Shooting Star substitution levels, Sword of the Arcane Order, Swift Hunter and some other stuff. He gets regularly buffed with Girallon's Blessing and many other stuff, and using Travel Devotion he pretty much applies full attacks with a lot of skirmish damage to practically everything. He also has a variety of useful buffs which he applies to himself and others, but that's on the side. He and the cleric are from Faerun, of course.
My other two players have been a Warblade and an Inspire Courage Bard with Dragonfire Inspiration, but they haven't been on the party at the same time, the Warblade's player was unable to come to the last two sessions due to RL reasons. They are from Greyhawk.
The bard has fully convinced me that I'll have to start throwing Elder Evils at them at this rate (something I had already planned, but I'll have to accelerate), seeing how a lot of buffs + ranger = lots of dead monsters.
To give you an idea of how powerful they are: When they were level 7 I more-or-less threw an Encounter Level 17 at them, composed of an advanced Tsochari with sorcerer levels, at least half a dozen Umber Hulks, a mind flayer and one of the main antagonists of the campaign, a psionic Ulitharid with levels in Illithid Savant. They survived it with no casualties and leveled up twice.
The set-up was as such: In the previous session, my players had retrieved a locked obdurium box which unbeknownst to them contained a piece of a minor artifact, which is rather plot-relevant. Basically mind flayers were looking for said artifact and stole the box upon finding out that it was related to one of the creators of the artifact. A regular mind flayer was the one to obtain the box, and was examining it while his superior, the ulitharid, was on some other business, securing help from neogi and their umber hulk slaves to raid the city and obtain a fresh supply of food and slaves.
The party had followed the trail of the mind flayer and obtained the box, bringing it into the possession of my aforementioned organization. They brought the box to a church of Pelor that was being used as headquarters for the local cell of the organization, which consisted of two clerics and a sorcerer who, unknown to all, was actually a tsochari spying upon them by the whims of a third party. After some exposition regarding the box and its creator they decided to rest in the church. They were informed that a wizard would come the next day and take the box to a safer location. The party itself had decided that they would go to a nearby city to continue a plot thread, upon rumors of the city being under the influence of a cult of some sort.
The ulitharid eventually returned to the hideout and realized his inferior's failure. He rounded up his servitors and prepared to retrieve the box from the city by force.
In the middle of the night, the tsochari sneaked out of the church and informed his superior (a third party) about the recent developments. He recieved orders to alert the party that there was a nearby threat and to delay them (without making it seem obvious that they were being helped), knowing that if they left too early the ulitharid would easily retrieve the box. The tsochari returned to the church, shed off his sorcerer's skin in the middle of the church for everyone to see and then using enchantments took over the body of one of the clerics.
Upon waking up the players were forced to play detective and find the killer, helped by the Warblade knowing about tsochari due to his backstory, and the ranger using his high survival skill; eventually they had him, and an innocent cleric, pinned (they figured out that it was one of the clerics, but due to the tsochari being buffed with nondetection and undetectable alignment they couldn't figure out which was which). In the period of time that they were investigating they had enough time to buff themselves up (as intended by the tsochari).
It was then that they heard the many screams of the citizens of the city. Glancing out the windows they saw neogi and umber hulks approaching the church and kidnapping several people.
To cut a long story short the party faced off against a half-dozen umber hulks, neogi, and the aforementioned mind flayers. In the middle of the whole battle the wizard who was sent to retrieve the box teleported near the church and nearly suffered a mental breakdown. The mind flayers were forced to plane shift away, they realized that they would die very quickly if they stayed any longer.
I am rather flabbergasted about this. I was prepared for them to either run away (the wizard could have teleported them out, and the tsochari offered a way out), be kidnapped or put up a good resistance, not for an almost complete curbstomp battle. Thankfully, I prepared a contingency (the spell) for the ulitharid, and he plane shifted away with a bit less than a sixth of his hp left. The other mind flayer was lucky enough to have the umber hulks tank the rest of the players and have enough time to also plane shift away.
From now on, how should I challenge my players more effectively? I've thought about this and I think battlefield control would be most effective. During the massive fight I just described, the terrain worked well in their favour: the only way in for the umber hulks was basically through the churches' front doors, which formed an excellent bottleneck. Furthermore, between all that chaos I forgot one or two abilities the ulitharid had, like being able to disintegrate (would have come in handy to) or many other things, keeping track of everything is kinda difficult.
Well, I started up by asking about help building NPCs and the campaign in general, but it's a bit too much to put in a single post. I'll probably keep posting stuff to explain some other stuff. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
To my players: not for your eyes, turn away.
My campaign is concerned mainly with ridding the world of aberrations and eldritch abominations. This aspect is proceeding slowly, but basically thirty years ago this mad druid took over the city of Greyhawk for a day and told a mad prophecy, saying that the truth of the world would be revealed and that the world would be changed irrevocably. He went on to say that the herald of this new age would be a high priest, that the high priest will come from great depths and that we must beware the Parabola (laugh all you want, I know how ridiculous it sounds). In the years since, an increasing amount of aberrations have been appearing all around the multiverse, and many have taken this to be a sign of the End Times (as usual). The campaign is sort-of interplanar, with some of the player's characters coming from Eberron or Faerun.
Shortly I will 'reveal' to my players that an Elder Evil (well, two if they're not careful) will be released or awakened into this world unless stopped. I say 'reveal' because they kinda sorta already know that one of them will soon be released due to the prophecy and whatnot, you know, the usual.
My players have been hired/are working with an organization which deals mainly as an information network that works alongside other organizations (churches, governments) in order to coordinate attacks on and by master aberrations and keep everyone informed, as information is always useful, even (especially) when dealing with otherworldly horrors.
So far things have gone well, with my players steamrolling through any and all opposition via clever tactics, a dedicated buffer and some cheese. Here they are:
For starters there's the Druid which has obtained a fleshraker animal companion (he calls him Fleshy) and has not particularly had any trouble exploiting Wildshape (that is to say, using it normally and not even having to use spells since he's so efficient). He's from Eberron.
Next up is our Cleric of Mystra which took Initiate of Mystra, Church Inquisitor, Dweomerkeeper and Divine Metamagic (Quicken and Reach). He's a real pain in the ass, mostly because he's very smart and his always-on Arcane Sight and Detect Evil allows him to detect almost any threat or thing that could put the party at a disadvantage. Not to mention his constant buffing makes the already-powerful ranger a living turret, blasting away at full power and taking down everything while being very mobile.
The real offensive powerhouse in the party is a Scout/Mystic Ranger which took Shooting Star substitution levels, Sword of the Arcane Order, Swift Hunter and some other stuff. He gets regularly buffed with Girallon's Blessing and many other stuff, and using Travel Devotion he pretty much applies full attacks with a lot of skirmish damage to practically everything. He also has a variety of useful buffs which he applies to himself and others, but that's on the side. He and the cleric are from Faerun, of course.
My other two players have been a Warblade and an Inspire Courage Bard with Dragonfire Inspiration, but they haven't been on the party at the same time, the Warblade's player was unable to come to the last two sessions due to RL reasons. They are from Greyhawk.
The bard has fully convinced me that I'll have to start throwing Elder Evils at them at this rate (something I had already planned, but I'll have to accelerate), seeing how a lot of buffs + ranger = lots of dead monsters.
To give you an idea of how powerful they are: When they were level 7 I more-or-less threw an Encounter Level 17 at them, composed of an advanced Tsochari with sorcerer levels, at least half a dozen Umber Hulks, a mind flayer and one of the main antagonists of the campaign, a psionic Ulitharid with levels in Illithid Savant. They survived it with no casualties and leveled up twice.
The set-up was as such: In the previous session, my players had retrieved a locked obdurium box which unbeknownst to them contained a piece of a minor artifact, which is rather plot-relevant. Basically mind flayers were looking for said artifact and stole the box upon finding out that it was related to one of the creators of the artifact. A regular mind flayer was the one to obtain the box, and was examining it while his superior, the ulitharid, was on some other business, securing help from neogi and their umber hulk slaves to raid the city and obtain a fresh supply of food and slaves.
The party had followed the trail of the mind flayer and obtained the box, bringing it into the possession of my aforementioned organization. They brought the box to a church of Pelor that was being used as headquarters for the local cell of the organization, which consisted of two clerics and a sorcerer who, unknown to all, was actually a tsochari spying upon them by the whims of a third party. After some exposition regarding the box and its creator they decided to rest in the church. They were informed that a wizard would come the next day and take the box to a safer location. The party itself had decided that they would go to a nearby city to continue a plot thread, upon rumors of the city being under the influence of a cult of some sort.
The ulitharid eventually returned to the hideout and realized his inferior's failure. He rounded up his servitors and prepared to retrieve the box from the city by force.
In the middle of the night, the tsochari sneaked out of the church and informed his superior (a third party) about the recent developments. He recieved orders to alert the party that there was a nearby threat and to delay them (without making it seem obvious that they were being helped), knowing that if they left too early the ulitharid would easily retrieve the box. The tsochari returned to the church, shed off his sorcerer's skin in the middle of the church for everyone to see and then using enchantments took over the body of one of the clerics.
Upon waking up the players were forced to play detective and find the killer, helped by the Warblade knowing about tsochari due to his backstory, and the ranger using his high survival skill; eventually they had him, and an innocent cleric, pinned (they figured out that it was one of the clerics, but due to the tsochari being buffed with nondetection and undetectable alignment they couldn't figure out which was which). In the period of time that they were investigating they had enough time to buff themselves up (as intended by the tsochari).
It was then that they heard the many screams of the citizens of the city. Glancing out the windows they saw neogi and umber hulks approaching the church and kidnapping several people.
To cut a long story short the party faced off against a half-dozen umber hulks, neogi, and the aforementioned mind flayers. In the middle of the whole battle the wizard who was sent to retrieve the box teleported near the church and nearly suffered a mental breakdown. The mind flayers were forced to plane shift away, they realized that they would die very quickly if they stayed any longer.
I am rather flabbergasted about this. I was prepared for them to either run away (the wizard could have teleported them out, and the tsochari offered a way out), be kidnapped or put up a good resistance, not for an almost complete curbstomp battle. Thankfully, I prepared a contingency (the spell) for the ulitharid, and he plane shifted away with a bit less than a sixth of his hp left. The other mind flayer was lucky enough to have the umber hulks tank the rest of the players and have enough time to also plane shift away.
From now on, how should I challenge my players more effectively? I've thought about this and I think battlefield control would be most effective. During the massive fight I just described, the terrain worked well in their favour: the only way in for the umber hulks was basically through the churches' front doors, which formed an excellent bottleneck. Furthermore, between all that chaos I forgot one or two abilities the ulitharid had, like being able to disintegrate (would have come in handy to) or many other things, keeping track of everything is kinda difficult.
Well, I started up by asking about help building NPCs and the campaign in general, but it's a bit too much to put in a single post. I'll probably keep posting stuff to explain some other stuff. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!