PDA

View Full Version : DM Help Buliding a Removing-totally-not Titans campaign



Balor01
2014-03-31, 08:40 AM
So, I want to make a higher-level (about 10, its 3.5) campaign revolving around ridding the world of totally-not-titans. These creatures are basically barely-intelligent elementals with super-thick plot armor. In essence mobile volcanoes, earthquakes, storms that slowly traverse the world and reshape it. People have learned to evade them, but world as is is slowly demolished by them. There are some powerful casters and old dragon-casters in this setting that could do something, but have not so far, because things are unkillable. And by doing something I mean an elaborate plot (major quest) that could bind/immobilise/destroy all of these giants.

Now I'd appreciate some ideas on:
- Who would be interested in ridding the world of these pests (I came up with semi-divine NG silver dragon caster. His agenda is "doing good deeds")
- How would this be achieved? I'd like something beyond "get X parts of Ultimate sword and slay them (perhaps a deal with a god? I was thinking ... maybe I could attach this to making a dela with once dead-but now wants to return god ... )

This is what I have so far, I'm basically looking for ideas on how to shape my campaign.

thanks

Leviting
2014-03-31, 10:48 AM
while this would not be about killing them, per se, you could make it so upon death, the titan's element is unleashed, i.e., the fire titan's death triggers a massive wildfire, a flood begins from the water titan's grave, earthquake from the earthquake titan, things that would make it risky to even want to kill them.

Balor01
2014-03-31, 11:10 AM
@Leviting
Not bad. I got another idea. Say we have God of Elementals that can "shut down" these creatures permanently. What deeds would he demand from PCs? Also, why do other powerful casters not act on this? I was thinking something along forgotten lore and perhaps having hands full of other stuff. (what stuff? :))

Also, God of Elementals could supply "an antithesis" for each Elemental for each deed they would perform for him. What is agenda of god of Elementals anyway? What are his goals?

Fable Wright
2014-03-31, 07:13 PM
One of the best ways you can drive a plot, I find, is to just look to what you can do with the rules of the game and look how far that gets you, before you get to the land of DM fiat. When I read your description of the scenario, one thing came to my mind: Binding (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/binding.htm). The important bits are that, with a high enough caster level, you can deprive creatures of a saving throw for the effect, and that you can boost the caster level of the effect by getting other spellcasters to work with you on the effect. This is a plausible means of getting rid of the elementals, if you get a high enough caster level.

So, how high can you get? As a baseline, with a circle of 18th level spellcasters, you can get a caster level of 54, which is enough to bind any 27HD creature without a save. There are regular elementals that you can summon with higher HD than that. So, you need to boost the caster level somehow. The most effective way to boost caster level comes straight out of the DMG: The Red Wizard. A 5th level Red Wizard can lead a magic circle to raise their caster level to up to 40, for the course of the day. If you somehow managed to get a group of 7 Red Wizards that can cast 9th level spells together to bind this creature, you could get a caster level of 120, which is just enough to bind a 60 HD creature. This is better, but it still can't even bind a Primal Elemental (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/elementalPrimal.htm). How is it supposed to bind a force of nature?

For that, we look to the other major caster-level boosting trick: Consumptive Field. One cast and enough slaughtered innocents, and your caster level is boosted by half again. If we use our Red Wizards, after this, they have caster level 60 each for a spell caster level of 180, which is enough to bind a 90 HD creature. It's more than enough to bind CR 35 elementals, so we'll say that it's enough to Binding one with no saving throw.

So, now we have a means of trapping the titans. Let's look at some of the details to get some details on the whole thing to get setting effects. There are a number of options for Binding them, but one strikes me in particular:

Hedged Prison: The subject is transported to or otherwise brought within a confined area from which it cannot wander by any means. The effect is permanent. Reduce the save DC by 3.
So, we have these walking volcanoes, floods, and storms, and we can trap them in an area. Perhaps even turning them into, say, regular volcanoes, lakes, and areas of terrible storm, trapped in some form of area. This sounds incredibly useful for someone, say, trying to build a kingdom. You can get the first area in the world that has stable topography, and you can make it almost impenetrable. This sounds a heck of a lot like a motive, for a huge number of groups. You have your aspirant king, your Red Wizards who would very much like a place to settle down and recruit more spellcasters, you have your Dragons, who would like a place to lay down their hoard where they don't have to keep on moving it... you have a lot of high level spellcasters and mundanes who would be behind this.

So, now we have our movers and shakers, and we have our means. Now we get to our players. What role do they play? They're level 10, so they can't cast the binding or the Dominates. That leaves one major role they can have: The glue that keeps everything together. Maybe they're the ambitious king-to-be that is trying to unite the magic users behind their banner to create a kingdom, and his favorite nobility-to-be. Maybe they're a nomadic caravan that was all but destroyed by the elementals, and they just want the damn world to quiet down.

So, what do they have to do? They have to find these incredibly high level magic users, in a world where everyone is constantly moving around and in a perpetually bad mood. They have to find the people that would be capable of this, first, which can be a challenge in itself, given that they're dealing with high level magic users. Then they might have to do some service to prove to their patrons-to-be that they're serious. And then we run into a snag. We need all of the spellcasters to be Red Wizards of 5+ level, and capable of casting 9th level spells. You could either have the party hunt down only Red Wizards, or tie the Red Wizards to high level spells somehow. Perhaps you can't cast spells of above 6th level without learning circle magic? It would explain why there are so many high level Red Wizards, at least. So we have some world-building there.

So, what about that climactic scene where the players finally get to bind one of the titans? What can the party do, while these people leaps and bounds above the party are casting their spell? The answer is simple: Make sure it works. You have to make sure that the titans doesn't flee, and doesn't get too close. You have to make sure that the 20+ innocent animals or humans get slaughtered on time, and that none die early, escape, or are killed outside of the killzone. You have to make sure that the defenses around the wizards, and the party, hold while you're binding down the force of nature. After all, the wizards have to spend 10 rounds doing nothing but casting the spell, and the titan isn't going to take this standing down. For each of the different titan types they fight, you can throw out different terrain types to screw with them. The party has to deal with Earthquakes and rockslides while fighting off xorns and lesser earth elementals while the very rock under their feet shift around every turn. They have to fight Krackens in storms while being sucked into maelstroms. They have to fight off air elementals and Skybleeders the middle of a Storm of Vengeance. You send them through these elemental gauntlets each fight while taking care to not have anything go wrong. And after forcing down the 5 elementals that make up the core of your new kingdom, you skip forward a few dozen years with new characters to explore the world that the PCs made.

Balor01
2014-04-01, 06:37 AM
@DMofDarkness
Well, that was quite an analyisis, my hats off to you. Still there are limitations. First, magic. Your plan could work if it was not for spell slot limitation in this world. Highest spell slot available is lvl 5. No higher level spells can generate enough "mana" to be cast. They just dissipate. As for Red Wizards, there are none in this world. They could be found by planehopping, but spells would not work here.

Plot solution/plan:
Still, Epic knowledge reveals that there is a creature, that could break "lack of mana" restrain. It is Lady of Pain. With her mastery of imprisonment, she could bind these creatures. Then again, it is impossible to get her out of her Sigil, so second best thing is a fraction of her power, bound in an artifact. There are few creatures that could do this in existence, but Vecna may be one? He actually managed to visit Sigil for awhile and not die horribly/be mazed.

So, dealing with Vecna, getting the über artifact of mazing and imprisoning all of them. How that sounds?

D-naras
2014-04-01, 07:23 AM
That sounds bog-standard actually. Not that it's a bad thing, but how does it differ from the "get X parts of Ultimate sword and slay them"?

You could try the old Kratos aproach. Climb onto the suckers, and destroy them from within/ find the "pilot" and kill him. Alternatively, what made these Titans in the first place, and why? Maybe reason with that guy? Or kill him? Or both? Or let the players wake the Tarrasque or something like that and have it kill the Titans like a Godzilla vs Monsters kind of deal. Sure, you will have the Tarrasque rampaging afterwards, but at least that's not a living Volcano moving around the face of the earth.

Leviting
2014-04-01, 12:05 PM
@Leviting
Not bad. I got another idea. Say we have God of Elementals that can "shut down" these creatures permanently. What deeds would he demand from PCs? Also, why do other powerful casters not act on this? I was thinking something along forgotten lore and perhaps having hands full of other stuff. (what stuff? :))

Also, God of Elementals could supply "an antithesis" for each Elemental for each deed they would perform for him. What is agenda of god of Elementals anyway? What are his goals?

for an antithesis, you could just drive the titans against one another, like fire/water, earth/air. For a favor... it sounds hard to appease a god with below fifth level spells. Is plane shift below fifth level? Because if it is, maybe you have to get the "purest ever" of each element from each plane, and hand them over. That's a minimum of four missions at least.

Fable Wright
2014-04-01, 02:37 PM
@DMofDarkness
Well, that was quite an analyisis, my hats off to you. Still there are limitations. First, magic. Your plan could work if it was not for spell slot limitation in this world. Highest spell slot available is lvl 5. No higher level spells can generate enough "mana" to be cast. They just dissipate. As for Red Wizards, there are none in this world. They could be found by planehopping, but spells would not work here.
Mentioning this in the OP may have been useful. You could have an artifact that generates enough mana in a local area to actually let this work that the player starts with, as the foundation of how they get powerful spellcasters to agree. You could also add a segment where the players need to somehow get every member of their high level circle to gain 5 levels in Red Wizard, which involves a combination of the artifact and a manifest zone of Ysgard where all of the participants fight each other to the death for days on end, getting True Resurrected every time they die, until they amass the power needed to cast the spells and lead the circle. But only 7 people can fight in the zone at a time, and once they are done, the power is exhausted for 1000 years or something, to keep the players from just grinding up to epic levels from it.


Plot solution/plan:
Still, Epic knowledge reveals that there is a creature, that could break "lack of mana" restrain. It is Lady of Pain. With her mastery of imprisonment, she could bind these creatures. Then again, it is impossible to get her out of her Sigil, so second best thing is a fraction of her power, bound in an artifact. There are few creatures that could do this in existence, but Vecna may be one? He actually managed to visit Sigil for awhile and not die horribly/be mazed.

So, dealing with Vecna, getting the über artifact of mazing and imprisoning all of them. How that sounds?
This, however, would not be that artifact. Vecna managed to get into Sigil once. By ascending to Godhood within the bounds of Sigil, via a loophole the Lady of Pain deleted after he was kicked out. My recommendation? Don't tie the artifact to the Lady of Pain. Perhaps it was an artifact that was recently discovered floating in Shattered Night, from a previous multiverse. When a (maybe PC) Binder learned of it from an obscure text from Ahazu's cultist's library, he tried to bind it, and it actually came through to the multiverse. The PCs discover it and what it does, find the urge to build the first stable kingdom in the world, and then gamestart.

Balor01
2014-04-02, 05:30 AM
Splendid answers all around. I'd like to work on motives part a bit more. So we have a guy (wizard) who realized he can lead these phenomenons anywhere in the World and place them there permanently. How could he use/abuse that? Volcanoes do produce onyx and can make new islands. Typhoon in a desert can irrigate it.

This is a partial answer:


So, we have these walking volcanoes, floods, and storms, and we can trap them in an area. Perhaps even turning them into, say, regular volcanoes, lakes, and areas of terrible storm, trapped in some form of area. This sounds incredibly useful for someone, say, trying to build a kingdom. You can get the first area in the world that has stable topography, and you can make it almost impenetrable. This sounds a heck of a lot like a motive, for a huge number of groups. You have your aspirant king, your Red Wizards who would very much like a place to settle down and recruit more spellcasters, you have your Dragons, who would like a place to lay down their hoard where they don't have to keep on moving it... you have a lot of high level spellcasters and mundanes who would be behind this.

Building a kingdom ... well, with phenomenons becoming stationary, anyone can make a kingdom anywhere ... but how could one use these volcanoes/typhoons/earthquakes to his benefit? Sorry if it feels this has already been answered, but playground sometimes has some really ingenious ideas.

Arbane
2014-04-02, 05:47 AM
The Titans are wandering the world because they're looking for something. What is it? Can you find it and give it to them, or lead them to it? What happens then?

Balor01
2014-04-02, 07:46 AM
@Arbane
Interesting. I always had them in mind as semi-sentient forces of nature. Not really looking for anything ... except perhaps a home plane of their origin.

Leviting
2014-04-02, 10:21 PM
@Balor01 : Volcanoes apparently create amazing soil, and you can use the volcano's heat to boil and purify the water from the water elemental for drinking (as well as melting sand into glass). The storm could theoretically be used for watering crops, though flooding might be an issue, The Earthquake would be the only one without much of a viable use

Snowyowl
2014-04-03, 04:33 AM
Kings and suchlike might want to use the titans to block off the borders with their enemies, so they can't be attacked. Better yet, pay the wizards to bind the titans in the middle of the enemy kingdom. See how they like it.

Perhaps the act of binding the titans lets you harness their power - at least a small part of it. Someone suggested the party fighting off xorns and earth elementals. Well, once the titan's bound, the minions have to go somewhere. Lots of people could think of uses for them, if you can get them to obey you.

Or, more directly, instead of binding the titan to a particular spot, turn it into a portable form. Binding lets you transform the subject into a gem or puff of gas. If mana is limited in your world, they could be a very potent power source. Just don't get caught in an antimagic field.