GPuzzle
2015-08-03, 08:56 PM
What is this?
This is a game that I ran for the last few months. It got some interest in the Campaign Quotes thread thanks to a choice in how I would deal with power levels by just making all of them insanely high - for all PCs and monsters alike.
Some quotes include:
Cyen: "I WAS RIGHT! I AM A GOD! BOW BEFORE ME, MORTALS!"
Wil: "We're more a mix of Jesus and Kamina than God, to be honest."
Cyen: "THAT'S EVEN MORE AWESOME!"
DM: "How on Earth is the Paladin sluttier than the Succubus?"
Olivia: "It's called a mix of Bluff and Insight."
Wil: "In 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. MOVE IN!"
DM: "Roll for initiative and wait for a minute while I start playing Rules of Nature in the background."
Cyen: "RULES OF NATURE!"
Olivia: "Wil, get out of here! You're gonna burn up!"
Wil: "I DON'T CARE!"
Olivia: "Wil, they need you!"
Wil: "Screw it. You get out of here. This is gonna get messy." *turns into a dragon mid-air and proceeds to begin combustion of himself bringing the star down alongside himself*
Cyen: "What of Wil?"
Olivia: "He's fine. Let's make sure he is proud of us."
Wil, some 500 kilometers below, burning up an Eldritch Abomination while in dragon form: "RULES OF NATURE!"
Why 4e?
Because I love it. It's that simple. I like going full-on ham on things and I like ease of handling encounters on the fly. 4e allows that, and much more. 4e needs inventive players and more importantly, an inventive DM. How many times have your fights been in rooms with a few doors on it, or in a designated area? If you can get a DM that plays it in a much more action-based way (for example, fights down a speeding river where certain areas will be destroyed within a few turns), it becomes one of the best games you can play.
Ok, I got that all, onto the characters!
Olivia: The group's Half-Elf Paladin|Battlemind (Battleminds are pretty much a mix between a Psion and a Fighter). Playful, constantly with a smile on her face, a Paladin of Ioun who discovered she had Psionic powers at an adult age, and had to survive 5 years with everything she had. Also, would have an amazingly active sex drive... if she was a Bard.
Wil: Olivia's brother, and Half-Elf Elementalist (Sorcerer, basically) at large. Trained to be a Paladin of Corellon, discovered Arcane power and said "screw you guys, I'm gonna train for what I really have skill at". Surprisingly, Wil's the most serious of everyone in the group, oftentimes acting as the group's voice of reason, as well as plan-maker.
Johan: If Olivia's the one who's getting laid, Johan's more on the side of "attempting to get laid but completely failing at that". The group's Tiefling Bard|Warlord, Johan's Charisma teeters more on the side of "force of personality" than "good-looking" - especially because you can't make horns look normal. Despite that, he's probably the one with more training in the arts of the arcane and the history and religion of the several tribes around the world. He's just not good at making plans.
Cyen: Cyen is desilusional, constantly drunk, sturdy as a rock and able to constrain everyone in the group in the blink of an eye. She also turns into a ram. The group's Elf Druid couldn't communicate with the spirits of nature. On the other hand, she managed to be able to create a connection that is more like an imbue of the spirits of nature in her, like the Invokers, than the druids' communication with the spirits. She's also a trickster by nature, which doesn't help.
4e has something called Themes, which are nifty little things that grant you a free encounter power, and some other benefits. They, alongside your background (which also gives mechanical benefits), help define who your character is, and can help to build concepts.
Olivia went with the Guardian theme. A perfect fit for any Defender, it offers you a punishment that you can use every encounter, as well as a few other benefits. It's a strong choice.
Wil chose the Sarifal Feywarden theme. Sarifal Feywardens are pretty much guardians of the Feywild, armed with Fey power to make enemies suffer by exploting the elements. Considering Wil's love for fire damage...
Johan's pick was Disgraced Noble. Dirty tricks in the sleeve of a noble are always good. Especially one which left his learning as a general and spent part of his adult life as a bard.
Cyen's decision was to get the Beguiler theme. She's a huge troll towards her enemies, and had a Palutena-Pit-esque relationship with Wil throughout the adventure, both OOC and IC.
As a result, the concepts I'd work around would be trickery and protection - two concepts that seem contraditory, but the concept was to make sure that they'd have to use every trick in the book to protect those who matter to them.
This adventure doesn't start in a tavern. It starts with everyone meeting one another in front of a castle that was said to be home to a portal to the Far Realms, or at least there was some sort of cult trying to summon it. Essentially, imagine if there were cultists of the Elder Ones in D&D. Why was the group there?
Basically, everyone which was in Olivia and Wil's temples, Johan's keep and Cyen's tribe just disappeared from existence. After a few weeks of searching, the four head to that castle. So you can expect that our heroes were more than a little weirded out by the fact that they weren't the only ones in this situation. What was more weird was that when they came back to the town they had left not 30 minutes ago, everyone was gone. As if, they had just disappeared from reality. Mugs broken on the floor, carts that had stopped in place, with the footsteps of the horses that had been pulling them disappearing abruptly. And many, many other things.
And then a tremor began, and suddenly they were being swarmed by things that looked like they came straight out Kid Icarus: Uprising.
And that's when we decided we had a good point to start our first session.
This is a game that I ran for the last few months. It got some interest in the Campaign Quotes thread thanks to a choice in how I would deal with power levels by just making all of them insanely high - for all PCs and monsters alike.
Some quotes include:
Cyen: "I WAS RIGHT! I AM A GOD! BOW BEFORE ME, MORTALS!"
Wil: "We're more a mix of Jesus and Kamina than God, to be honest."
Cyen: "THAT'S EVEN MORE AWESOME!"
DM: "How on Earth is the Paladin sluttier than the Succubus?"
Olivia: "It's called a mix of Bluff and Insight."
Wil: "In 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. MOVE IN!"
DM: "Roll for initiative and wait for a minute while I start playing Rules of Nature in the background."
Cyen: "RULES OF NATURE!"
Olivia: "Wil, get out of here! You're gonna burn up!"
Wil: "I DON'T CARE!"
Olivia: "Wil, they need you!"
Wil: "Screw it. You get out of here. This is gonna get messy." *turns into a dragon mid-air and proceeds to begin combustion of himself bringing the star down alongside himself*
Cyen: "What of Wil?"
Olivia: "He's fine. Let's make sure he is proud of us."
Wil, some 500 kilometers below, burning up an Eldritch Abomination while in dragon form: "RULES OF NATURE!"
Why 4e?
Because I love it. It's that simple. I like going full-on ham on things and I like ease of handling encounters on the fly. 4e allows that, and much more. 4e needs inventive players and more importantly, an inventive DM. How many times have your fights been in rooms with a few doors on it, or in a designated area? If you can get a DM that plays it in a much more action-based way (for example, fights down a speeding river where certain areas will be destroyed within a few turns), it becomes one of the best games you can play.
Ok, I got that all, onto the characters!
Olivia: The group's Half-Elf Paladin|Battlemind (Battleminds are pretty much a mix between a Psion and a Fighter). Playful, constantly with a smile on her face, a Paladin of Ioun who discovered she had Psionic powers at an adult age, and had to survive 5 years with everything she had. Also, would have an amazingly active sex drive... if she was a Bard.
Wil: Olivia's brother, and Half-Elf Elementalist (Sorcerer, basically) at large. Trained to be a Paladin of Corellon, discovered Arcane power and said "screw you guys, I'm gonna train for what I really have skill at". Surprisingly, Wil's the most serious of everyone in the group, oftentimes acting as the group's voice of reason, as well as plan-maker.
Johan: If Olivia's the one who's getting laid, Johan's more on the side of "attempting to get laid but completely failing at that". The group's Tiefling Bard|Warlord, Johan's Charisma teeters more on the side of "force of personality" than "good-looking" - especially because you can't make horns look normal. Despite that, he's probably the one with more training in the arts of the arcane and the history and religion of the several tribes around the world. He's just not good at making plans.
Cyen: Cyen is desilusional, constantly drunk, sturdy as a rock and able to constrain everyone in the group in the blink of an eye. She also turns into a ram. The group's Elf Druid couldn't communicate with the spirits of nature. On the other hand, she managed to be able to create a connection that is more like an imbue of the spirits of nature in her, like the Invokers, than the druids' communication with the spirits. She's also a trickster by nature, which doesn't help.
4e has something called Themes, which are nifty little things that grant you a free encounter power, and some other benefits. They, alongside your background (which also gives mechanical benefits), help define who your character is, and can help to build concepts.
Olivia went with the Guardian theme. A perfect fit for any Defender, it offers you a punishment that you can use every encounter, as well as a few other benefits. It's a strong choice.
Wil chose the Sarifal Feywarden theme. Sarifal Feywardens are pretty much guardians of the Feywild, armed with Fey power to make enemies suffer by exploting the elements. Considering Wil's love for fire damage...
Johan's pick was Disgraced Noble. Dirty tricks in the sleeve of a noble are always good. Especially one which left his learning as a general and spent part of his adult life as a bard.
Cyen's decision was to get the Beguiler theme. She's a huge troll towards her enemies, and had a Palutena-Pit-esque relationship with Wil throughout the adventure, both OOC and IC.
As a result, the concepts I'd work around would be trickery and protection - two concepts that seem contraditory, but the concept was to make sure that they'd have to use every trick in the book to protect those who matter to them.
This adventure doesn't start in a tavern. It starts with everyone meeting one another in front of a castle that was said to be home to a portal to the Far Realms, or at least there was some sort of cult trying to summon it. Essentially, imagine if there were cultists of the Elder Ones in D&D. Why was the group there?
Basically, everyone which was in Olivia and Wil's temples, Johan's keep and Cyen's tribe just disappeared from existence. After a few weeks of searching, the four head to that castle. So you can expect that our heroes were more than a little weirded out by the fact that they weren't the only ones in this situation. What was more weird was that when they came back to the town they had left not 30 minutes ago, everyone was gone. As if, they had just disappeared from reality. Mugs broken on the floor, carts that had stopped in place, with the footsteps of the horses that had been pulling them disappearing abruptly. And many, many other things.
And then a tremor began, and suddenly they were being swarmed by things that looked like they came straight out Kid Icarus: Uprising.
And that's when we decided we had a good point to start our first session.