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Vellus
2013-07-28, 11:21 PM
So for my campaign, the big bad's blood has an effect on anything living that consumes it. I'm just not sure how to go about defining how it affects the game and the players are at the point where they will end up engaging people effected by the blood, so I've been trying to figure this out and it's stalled the game. We haven't met in too long, for more reasons than this.

So I'm asking playground for help!

The first thing to note is that it's a narcotic. Extremely addictive. Once addicted, the primary thing to note is that the infected's personality quickly begins to be overwritten, becoming wholly subservient to the big bad. I was thinking of making this be represented in a form of charisma damage, but then what about sorcerers or other such charisma-based classes who're affected? Make it work off another stat?

The second is that it makes someone more resilient, physically, and increases their physical strength. This easily can be represented as a buff to con and str.

The addiction is meant to not be simply cured by a spell, nor are the effects of the blood itself. I'm mainly struggling on how to make the people affected by it an interesting challenge as levels grow up (party's currently level 6-7) - I've already considered throwing in a few animals (I DID specify living creature) DR, SR, or other forms of durability increasing effects like that.

The large thing for those changes are that, aside from the fact that the person's personality is overwritten, the physical form is made increasingly more like that of the big bad.

The big bad... That, too, I'm having difficulty statting out so I'll toss it in here, too.

She's essentially an evil extraplanar existence using a human body as an avatar on the plane the campaign takes place in. Aside from the blood thing, she's nigh immune to magical effects that directly inhibit her actions, recovers swiftly from damage, and primarily deals with threats by being extremely agile and stabbing things with knives or shooting them with pistols. Aside from that she's tough to damage should be a significant threat even to a near-Epic party.

Without, hopefully, relying too heavily on magic items or magic itself. Her presence in the world itself corrupts it; the human body stops aging at about 20 and the world's animal life mutates slowly, growing larger and more vicious. The world's deserts expand; the forests slowly die. This process takes a few thousand years, I was wondering if this could have an effect in combat directly, something like the proximity having an effect on magic or people? Something akin to a Dragon's Frightful Presence? I have no ideas, so, potential help please?

Hanuman
2013-07-29, 12:03 AM
I'd write her blood as acting like a parasite or a magical curse/disease that can't be cured except by wish or miracle, and maintaining that the blood doesn't metabolize and stays as a magical liquid in the body that is very hard to detect.

So you give it a starting ego of 1 + party's ECL, and periodically make saves, maybe once a day, every failed save improves the ego score by 1, this slowly influences the host's subconscious and actions subtly, and at 20 ego the host's mind succumbs, it finds it's controlled actions preferable to it's genuine and it is mentally and physically compelled by the parasite.

That way if a player gets infected it can be more like whispers of sauron from LotR than something that makes people wither away.

You could add subtle physical signs that increase in severity as the campaign goes on, infected could look more and more sick as your BBEG mutates in power and magical attunement.

If you want this to be an OMGWHATAREWEGOINGTODO BBEG then reference Elder Evils sourcebook from 3.5.

When I thought about this I thought of:

Daemon (Reboot) "There will be unity."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpN4Z0EIGm0

Natira (Farscape) "I like your eyes." :sabine:
http://farscape.wikia.com/wiki/Natira

And with a little bat**** insane like Kefka (Final Fantasy) or Hexidecimal (Reboot)

Amnoriath
2013-07-29, 08:49 AM
She's essentially an evil extraplanar existence using a human body as an avatar on the plane the campaign takes place in. Aside from the blood thing, she's nigh immune to magical effects that directly inhibit her actions, recovers swiftly from damage, and primarily deals with threats by being extremely agile and stabbing things with knives or shooting them with pistols. Aside from that she's tough to damage should be a significant threat even to a near-Epic party.

Without, hopefully, relying too heavily on magic items or magic itself. Her presence in the world itself corrupts it; the human body stops aging at about 20 and the world's animal life mutates slowly, growing larger and more vicious. The world's deserts expand; the forests slowly die. This process takes a few thousand years, I was wondering if this could have an effect in combat directly, something like the proximity having an effect on magic or people? Something akin to a Dragon's Frightful Presence? I have no ideas, so, potential help please?

It sounds like a constant freedom of movement is a start. Regeneration is a possibility but maybe something like a swift action vigor as a psi-like ability combined with some illusion trickery might be more effective in "seeming" to recover quickly from damage.
Well then you may want to look at Geoccultism(Imachination for trickery) from Kellus's Grammarie thread. This principle allows the user to literally make environments. They do so by first making a pole and preparing an appropriate number of principles to fill out an area around it. The pole is basically like a furnace in which in Kellus's world you burn an appropriate kind and amount of metal or supply enough ebbs to sustain it. You could though easily substitute organic matter for your purpose.