Can I get help fleshing out a new campaign?

[SangoProduction]

I was thinking of a new campaign. Basically, the war between the celestials and infernals have finally broken out, though not so directly. Still being bound by pacts of noninterference, they use the half-celestial, half-infernal creatures to do the fighting for them.

The celestials are attempting to bring everything back to true order, bringing an end to all pain, misery....and everything else. The infernals don't like that for fairly obvious reasons, and wish to stop it.

The players are an elite task group of the side they chose to be in season 0, or before the game. They will select a typically mortal race (Even monstrous, up to DM discretion, with RHD eliminated and LA applied normally), and apply either Half-Celestial or Half-Fiend, or similar template, like Fiendish, for free.

The combats will tend to be more objective-focused than "kill everything", most of the time.

Now to the questions that are less vague than "how to flesh this out?" (which would still be nice, but still)

1) What level should the players be? I was thinking level 15, but making a character with that many levels from scratch is rather daunting, so maybe level 10, since they get a template for free?

2) Sabotaging supply lines, taking out / capturing artifacts, investigating a past attack, blacking out area's communications for a follow-up group and straight up trying to murder as many as you can are great and all, but can someone think of more mission types?

3) I was thinking of allowing the players "requisition funds", which would basically be funds in addition to their wealth, which would be returned back to the organization at the end of the mission (thus making it easier to kit out for this particular mission, if they've got intel). One-use items would have to be reimbursed from mission rewards/loot, and limited use items would cost some multiplier more than they do for regular funds.

How should I handle that? Should I cut in to a the normal WBL, or should I just bump up the ECL of the group for the purpose of fights, and let the requisition funds be the value of the next level?

4) Would allowing Bane weapons / similar abilities cause problems?

5) I know to ban wish, celerity, time stop and polymorph, but are there any more that I should pay attention to?

[DrMotives]

Bane weapons, and the "X bane magic" feats would be too obvious, and should probably be banned. But then ban them for NPCs too, otherwise you'll have resentful players. Although leaving a MacGuffin that works as touchstone to add bane or bane magic would drive both factions to try & control it.

[SangoProduction]

Bane weapons, and the "X bane magic" feats would be too obvious, and should probably be banned. But then ban them for NPCs too, otherwise you'll have resentful players. Although leaving a MacGuffin that works as touchstone to add bane or bane magic would drive both factions to try & control it.

Hmm not a bad idea.

[Honest Tiefling]

So...Maybe this is obvious, but how are these two sides fighting? I worry because usually when angels and demons get involved in DnD, there are some assumptions. Firstly, that it is not just combat, but souls getting bickered over. Is this not the case? And secondly, where are all of the gods? Are they a part of this? This will probably affect what missions there are. Are there other planar races involved at all? Can they be recruited as allies? How did that Bloodwar go?

As for the Wealth...If it is temporary, I would just increase the ECL, or more preferably, ignore it. Make it hard to get a hold of, that they need to do favors and get allies to get access to this equipment. If the ECL increases, it might feel like this hard work to get it means nothing. If they don't have to work for it, then getting help just makes things tougher, so why bother?

[LTwerewolf]

1. Celestials vs infernals gives a lot of content even at the lowest levels, so the level you start it at can be literally any. They could be level 3 and have a ton to do on either side. It depends on how directly you want to throw them into the war how quickly. Lower level characters can assist on either side indirectly based on their side's goals. Celestials that try to help solve problems, or infernals that try to cause them. After a bit you could start having the opposing side show up to try to prevent them from doing their thing, and it can develop organically. If you want them higher level, you can throw them directly into the fighting of the other side with no buildup. It's entirely what you want to bring to them because there is SO much content available for the concept.

2. I'm going to split this into multiple parts, because this is actually like 5 different topics.


Sabotaging supply lines
In order to sabotage a supply line, you'll have to establish what those supply lines are. If the sides are capable of getting supplies directly from their parent force, then it's pretty much not doable. They would have to have a constant forbiddance all over the enemy's base to stop supplies from being teleported in, as well as a huge area around the base in order for it to be doable. Even if they're not getting supplies directly from their parent forces, I'm seeing it implied this is intended to be a higher level game, making teleportation and specifically warded and named pocket dimensions a problem still. Unlike standard warfare, d&d has things in place where high levels never have a problem with supplies. If however you decide these things are going to be limited, you then have some opportunity to create encounters about attacking/defending caravans, as well as capturing towns that are the source of the supplies (a coastal village supplying fish for example).


taking out / capturing artifacts
Depending on how high-powered of a campaign you're intending, you'll want to be careful of this. After one or two artifacts, without a very high powered campaign, it'll end up snowballing and will not take long for the ultimate victor to be determined. After that, it's more tedium to get to that point than any struggle or challenge. A lot of artifacts are pretty game changing.


investigating a past attack
At lower levels this can be a fun and different type of encounter, using a lot of intrigue, investigation, and other not normally used aspects of the game. At higher levels, it becomes about finding someone that can cast the appropriate divination spell (I loathe divination spells for this reason). A 10th level bard or 11th level wizard can cast a single spell and get every detail ever about the people that have been attacked, including who did the attacking.


blacking out area's communications for a follow-up group and straight up trying to murder as many as you can
A joint attack would work fine, but one then the other would not likely be effective, as ways to limit communication are very difficult at higher levels. Since It was implied to be a higher level game, communication is pretty much assumed going to happen.



but can someone think of more mission types?

There's a lot of opportunity here. History was won not by battles but by sieges. You should probably have a few of each. Players should feel like they matter, but in this scenario, they should also feel like they're part of a whole as well. When they get higher level and are higher profile, base the types of missions you give them on how they go about solving problems. If they end up being super good at stealth and ambushes, it's reasonable to give them high-profile assassinations. If they tend to be charismatic, they would lead contingents of troops. If they end up liking the social stuff, have them disguise and distribute propaganda to the enemy, and reduce the morale. If they like the sneaky sneaky but not the stabby stabby, why not have them spread both misinformation and disinformation? Is someone a great tactician? Get them to write up some battle plans. Small skirmishes if they're low level, huge battles or sieges if they're high level. Have them sneak into the enemy smithy and add magnesium to their iron, making it far more brittle and prone to breaking. Better than stealing their iron, as they equip their troops with it with the assumption that it works properly to later find out it doesn't. Better to have more troops under-equipped than fewer well equipped. Have them prepare battlefields to their advantage, even if those fields are never used. If an enemy sees a prepared battlefield, they would be forced to retreat for a better position. It's mass-scale area denial. Have them hunt down rare materials in order to make some of the machines of old, such as airships to give significant advantages. It's hard to argue with the idea that your side can drop bombs from higher than the enemy can reach. If you ever run out of idea, just read through the art of war. Endless ways to make war interesting.

3. What you can always do is have them turn in everything they find (yeah, every bit of it other than consumables they found and immediately used) and then requisition things later. Have a list of things that are assumed supplies, and then over time have that list increase or decrease based on what happens. If a supply town gets captured by the enemy, obviously that type of supply is now short. You can also let the players requisition things they found during the previous missions. The turning it all in isn't to keep the loot from them, but to hold to the idea that they're working as part of an army and everything is turned in for sorting and paperwork and whatnot. They have a little bit of gear that actually belongs to them, and then they get a certain amount of gold value to requisition each mission based on their level. Ensures they stick to whatever wealth level you want them at.

4. I wouldn't allow the bane weapons to be plentiful (and nonexistant at lower levels if you start there), because of how many people would want them. They're not super game breaking though because it's not that much extra damage and it's not multiplied on crits or anything like that.

5. It's entirely based on how high-powered of a campaign you want.

[Sagetim]

well, when it comes to requisition a well funded and supplied organization should not be worrying about the little things like potion of cure light wounds as long as it was used properly (that is, used to heal a party member or, in the case of celestials, as an act of good). But if the party starts taking that as a way of supplying themselves with various potions that they try to hauck to npcs for 'very reasonable prices' then that's where an organization would start making the players pay for such things out of pocket.

I would suggest level 12. It's high enough that you can get most of the way through a primary prestige class if you are gunning for one, but not so high level that the players have....say...finger of death, or intimidating arabs horrid wilting, or incendiary cloud and so on. Bear in mind that if the party makes it up to high enough level, I think half celestials have true ressurection or ressurection on their spell like abilities, which costs no money because it's a racial spell like ability. You could even use that as a plot point for one of the leading npcs of the celestial faction as a means of justifying bringing back party members without dropping thousands and thousands of gold pieces on diamonds all the time. And if the party members want rezzing without the whole 'by the way lose a level', then you could provide them with missions where they compete with the other faction for diamonds. After all, True Rez eats up something like 25 thousand gold worth of diamonds per casting. That's probably a fat sack of diamonds that could be fought over in some kind of back and forth grab it and fly type fight.

also that. Half whatevers have wings for flying. So even if you're gearing up with the expectation of the players being overpowered and you're going to bring challenges to match, everyone in the party being able to fly changes a lot of things. I was in a short little thing where the entire party was composed of +4 ecl things with wings...fighter/dervish half giant/half dragon who used strong build to qualify for dragon wings, redeemed half fiend phalanx style fighter who had wings because template, and a drow half-fey sorcerer who had wings because half fey. The ridiculousness of our fighting styles aside (especially mine with a power build, monkey grip, great sword wielding dervish with over 30 base strength) the fact that we could fly places meant that we could head straight there and ignore roads and ground obstacles. By going high enough, enemies on the ground could not shoot us because we were out of bow range, for example. And in at least one instance I bombed some enemies by dropping/bowling boulders on them because my strength score was obscene.

So, you know, get super familiar with the flying rules because they change combat a lot. Especially if anyone gets their maneuverability up to perfect, because then they can just hover in place and don't have to move each round to stay aloft.

[Bronk]

I was thinking of a new campaign. Basically, the war between the celestials and infernals have finally broken out, though not so directly. Still being bound by pacts of noninterference, they use the half-celestial, half-infernal creatures to do the fighting for them.

This sounds great, really getting into the blood war. I think that, at least up through Planescape and 3.5, this is actually the existing background!



The celestials are attempting to bring everything back to true order, bringing an end to all pain, misery....and everything else. The infernals don't like that for fairly obvious reasons, and wish to stop it.

You can spice things up by having the celestials be the three main good aligned exemplar races: the lawful good Archons from Celestia, the neutral good Guardinals from Elysium, and the chaotic good Eladrin from Arborea. Perhaps these guys have all gotten together under the banner of the Lawful Archons - for now - but you can introduce some tension in the ranks with some missions geared toward the other alignments, teasing a bit of dissension left over from the original war between law and chaos. They might be willing to fight for good, for now, but the other groups wouldn't want a completely lawful endgame.

Maybe the archons are taking orders from the Celestial Hebdomad?

Maybe over the course of their missions, they run into some of the neutral exemplars too, like the rilmani or modrons, who are also trying to affect the outcome... maybe sometimes helping, other times hindering the PCs.


I was thinking of a new campaign. Basically, the war between the celestials and infernals have finally broken out, though not so directly. Still being bound by pacts of noninterference, they use the half-celestial, half-infernal creatures to do the fighting for them.

The celestials are attempting to bring everything back to true order, bringing an end to all pain, misery....and everything else. The infernals don't like that for fairly obvious reasons, and wish to stop it.

The players are an elite task group of the side they chose to be in season 0, or before the game. They will select a typically mortal race (Even monstrous, up to DM discretion, with RHD eliminated and LA applied normally), and apply either Half-Celestial or Half-Fiend, or similar template, like Fiendish, for free.

The combats will tend to be more objective-focused than "kill everything", most of the time.

Now to the questions that are less vague than "how to flesh this out?" (which would still be nice, but still)

1) What level should the players be? I was thinking level 15, but making a character with that many levels from scratch is rather daunting, so maybe level 10, since they get a template for free?

It would depend on how experienced they are at making characters, and how much fun they have doing it. Plus, remember you said that they're getting all their RHD free for some reason... the higher the level you start, the less you'd need to give them freebies like that. If anything, I'd say keep the RHD but lose the LA. To me, it would be weird to have a nymph with no fey HD or a beholder with no aberration HD.



2) Sabotaging supply lines, taking out / capturing artifacts, investigating a past attack, blacking out area's communications for a follow-up group and straight up trying to murder as many as you can are great and all, but can someone think of more mission types?


Stealing information, redeeming evil outsiders, redeeming evil magic items or artifacts, taking and holding strategic planar touchstone sites, creating disinformation, changing memories, disrupting the soul trade (either directly or indirectly through fighting evil churches and cities on the Prime Material).

Also, you can free a captured ally or god/des or just free goodly prisoners. There's an old adventure, "For Duty and Deity", that details saving a goddess that had been captured by the demon lord Grazz't.

Or, there's another adventure hook from an adventure in Hellbound involving the Yugoloths. It seems that quite a few types of demons and devils can teleport or plane shift, and that's because the Yugoloths have been quietly researching, stealing or otherwise obtaining all of their true names and giving them to a captured celestial being called the Maeldur who acts as a dimensional gateway... the devils and demons think they can teleport on their own, but secretly it's all because of the Yugoloth's plan. The adventure has the PCs shutting the plan down early, and who knows what havoc that could play on the blood war, at least in the short term, when many of the powerful demons and devils find themselves stuck somewhere!



3) I was thinking of allowing the players "requisition funds", which would basically be funds in addition to their wealth, which would be returned back to the organization at the end of the mission (thus making it easier to kit out for this particular mission, if they've got intel). One-use items would have to be reimbursed from mission rewards/loot, and limited use items would cost some multiplier more than they do for regular funds.

Maybe if their leaders gave them a specific artifact that had to get somewhere specific for plot reasons, but otherwise that sounds like more work than fun.



4) Would allowing Bane weapons / similar abilities cause problems?

Bane weapons and so on would be something that the players should immediately hit on as a good idea to have, almost essential. I can see them stacking up outsider bane, sacred, magebane, weapon crystals, and so on. It would add up, but it would also be expensive. I see that a bunch of other people have flagged this as being problematic and want them banned, but I don't thing that's necessary.

For one thing, the bad guys could have them too.

Or, they could be rare. After all, there's a war on, and all the easy to find items could already have been snatched up and put to use! Their either still in hand by fellow fighters for good who've been around longer, or captured and in the hands of the enemy. (That could be another mission scenario, or a good idea for loot!) Meanwhile, new ones take time to make, and the PCs might be pretty far down the list. (Another mission scenario for them might be to achieve enough renown that they get bumped up the lists!)

So no, I don't think they'd cause problems. They'd either make combats more fun and exciting (and shorter), or be a story idea in and of themselves.



5) I know to ban wish, celerity, time stop and polymorph, but are there any more that I should pay attention to?

I'm not sure you'd ever have to ban any of those.

First, I'm not sure how high a level you're going for, but once you get to epic levels, there are potentially worse things going on than any of these. If you aren't going to epic levels, RHD or LA would prevent the higher level spells from coming online anyway. Those spells aren't all that bad, especially if you remember their limitations.

Wish is expensive, and most of the ways to get around that expense are under your control as the DM, especially if you're playing this campaign as a down and dirty war campaign. Luck blades - all taken. Rings of Three Wishes - all used up in the war. Candles of invocation - also used up. Supernatural wishes from genies or solars would tip off the other side, or the gods. Basically, you can have them under orders to save their wishes for the cause, no matter which side you're on.

Celerity is like a worse belt of battle that leaves the caster dazed afterwards.

Time Stop doesn't let the caster directly affect anything but himself, unless their leaving long lasting environmental effects.

Polymorph... I can't see any reason not to allow that one at all. Weird!

If I had to put one on the list, though, I'd say look out for any free use of teleport or plane shift. It comes up sometimes with different monsters, and since you're allowing that... Anyway, it can start to get annoying as a DM when your players pop around without limit, freely fleeing battles or bypassing obstacles. You either have to roll with it, or start consciously putting up dimensional locks, wierdstones, faerzress, teleport redirects, and so on. Not all the time, but enough of the time to shake things up. If they have the power from the start, work those in from the start. If they don't and get it later, well, they just didn't notice all the times it was used before, did they?

[LTwerewolf]

The blood war is between devils and demons, not between fiends and celestials.

[Bronk]

The blood war is between devils and demons, not between fiends and celestials.

The Blood War is the modern extension of the original, much larger war between Law and Chaos that preceded the smaller, almost cold war enmity between good and evil. Back then, good and evil fought on the same sides! This was brought up in older lore, and extended into 3.5 in the Fiendish Codex books.

According to those books, the devils were originally lawful angels who were entrusted to fight the battle, but fell, becoming evil themselves, continuing the war as the Blood War in order to fulfill a contract that allowed them sovereignty over the hells.

Their continued battle represents a status quo that allows the majority of all the mobile forces of the Abyss and the Hells to be caught up in battles far away from the rest of the planes.

[AslanCross]

They don't need to be that high in levels. There are a lot of low-level outsiders; on the other hand a single dretch isn't exactly a riveting encounter. I would go for level 3-5 at the start.

I'm AFB right now, but I know Heroes of Battle has interesting ideas for outsider armies.

[Bronk]

It looks like you've got a great initial description of your game going on your other thread! Nifty!

Here are a few questions that I think your players would come up with:

What monsters are we allowed to be? Basically, you might have a bunch of 1HD half celestial or half fiendish monsters running around with their full suite of powers and SLAs, either way. Dragons? Beholders? Stuff like that. You might want to at least come up with some examples of allowable monsters for them to use as inspiration.

Who are the celestials and infernals? You've got the sides split between the two, and it sounds like you're using the terms as catchalls for good planar outsiders and evil planar outsiders. However, celestials are usually just angels, and infernals are actually 40HD epic evil abominations. You might want to pin that down if the players ask.

If the celestials are just the angels, are they the ones that used to work for the gods that are now dying? If not, do they include the other planar groups as well (Eladrin, Guardinals, Archons) and if not, why not? Especially the lawful archons.

Why are the gods getting sick and dying? Is there an answer in your setting, and is that knowledge something the PCs can work towards, or quest for? Are there overgods in your setting, like Ao? If so, are they getting sick too, or why are they not helping... or are they causing it? Is your setting currently a 'Great Wheel' cosmology that's turning into an Eberron or Athas style cosmology?

Why do the celestials (Angels?) think that their plan of defeating the infernals will help? Do they have some kind of a convincing argument for this that they can give to their underlings? What's their master plan?

Whatever it is, if their plan is going to work, why do they think that bringing back the gods will result in a world of pure goodness and order? Or are they only to bring back some of the gods, the lawful good ones? If so, how will the angels who used to work for the other gods react to that?

Why are they waging a secretive proxy war with weaker stand-ins anyway? With the gods gone, who's left to enforce their treaties?

Also, who is giving them their orders? Monsters like themselves, or a powerful planetar or solar? What happens when they get to be more powerful than their leaders?

[SangoProduction]

It looks like you've got a great initial description of your game going on your other thread! Nifty!

Here are a few questions that I think your players would come up with:

What monsters are we allowed to be? Basically, you might have a bunch of 1HD half celestial or half fiendish monsters running around with their full suite of powers and SLAs, either way. Dragons? Beholders? Stuff like that. You might want to at least come up with some examples of allowable monsters for them to use as inspiration.

Who are the celestials and infernals? You've got the sides split between the two, and it sounds like you're using the terms as catchalls for good planar outsiders and evil planar outsiders. However, celestials are usually just angels, and infernals are actually 40HD epic evil abominations. You might want to pin that down if the players ask.

If the celestials are just the angels, are they the ones that used to work for the gods that are now dying? If not, do they include the other planar groups as well (Eladrin, Guardinals, Archons) and if not, why not? Especially the lawful archons.

Why are the gods getting sick and dying? Is there an answer in your setting, and is that knowledge something the PCs can work towards, or quest for? Are there overgods in your setting, like Ao? If so, are they getting sick too, or why are they not helping... or are they causing it? Is your setting currently a 'Great Wheel' cosmology that's turning into an Eberron or Athas style cosmology?

Why do the celestials (Angels?) think that their plan of defeating the infernals will help? Do they have some kind of a convincing argument for this that they can give to their underlings? What's their master plan?

Whatever it is, if their plan is going to work, why do they think that bringing back the gods will result in a world of pure goodness and order? Or are they only to bring back some of the gods, the lawful good ones? If so, how will the angels who used to work for the other gods react to that?

Why are they waging a secretive proxy war with weaker stand-ins anyway? With the gods gone, who's left to enforce their treaties?

Also, who is giving them their orders? Monsters like themselves, or a powerful planetar or solar? What happens when they get to be more powerful than their leaders?

Holy hell. That's a brain melter. Thanks. I'll edit my campaign description as soon as I can answer them.

Know what? Let's answer here:

1) Monsters that are cited as being playable races, like Centaur and Ogres.

2) Celestials include the good-outsiders, while the Infernals are the evil-outsiders. I don't have a better name for these large groups.

3) The reason why is as of yet unknown even to the Celestials, who basically said "screw it" and found a work around. The knowledge may come up, depending on what the players do.

Overgods? They are probably not going to be used. Why? Maybe they don't exist. Maybe they're scared. Maybe this is their doing. The only deities that are known about in-world are the PHB ones.

The cosmology is just basically: there are elemental planes, alignment planes (which are taking the brunt of the fallout), and the material plane. Astral and Shadow planes have been peeled away, and are hard to access. No gameplay effect aside from not being able to teleport to or through those planes, just that those spells are rare.

4)

5)

6) They are simply bound by the pacts, which make it as impossible to directly attack each other as it is for an unassisted, mundane human to fly. They could try. But it's ultimately futile, and can end up in getting hurt.
Maybe this pact will weaken later down the line, but not at the point that the campaign is starting.

7) Generally the more powerful give orders to the less powerful. They are united by a general cause, though that doesn't neccesarily mean all groups work together, especially for the infernals.

[Bronk]

Totally awesome!

For the monsters, I would just point out that the first few age categories of pretty much every dragon are playable (some wyrmlings go as low as 2HD, 2LA), as are nymphs, which, with no RHD, would start out at level one with LA+7, but also 7th level druid casting. Don't get me wrong, that would be awesome as a player, just offering it for consideration.

For the planes, I would point out that normally teleport and plane shift require passage through the astral plane to work. Normally that means that the spells work normally on the Prime Material Plane and other planes coexistent with the astral (which only includes the top layer of the outer planes). You can totally decide that the spells work anyway, but the way you've limited the astral could naturally limit those spells if you wanted to.

[SangoProduction]

Totally awesome!

For the monsters, I would just point out that the first few age categories of pretty much every dragon are playable (some wyrmlings go as low as 2HD, 2LA), as are nymphs, which, with no RHD, would start out at level one with LA+7, but also 7th level druid casting. Don't get me wrong, that would be awesome as a player, just offering it for consideration.

For the planes, I would point out that normally teleport and plane shift require passage through the astral plane to work. Normally that means that the spells work normally on the Prime Material Plane and other planes coexistent with the astral (which only includes the top layer of the outer planes). You can totally decide that the spells work anyway, but the way you've limited the astral could naturally limit those spells if you wanted to.

Hmm.. right. I'll see what happens with those characters. Maybe keep a couple RHD based on the power of the race. But in general, I want to encourage going with non-standard races.

Yeah. Teleports will be difficult, and generally limited. Thought Plane Shift was direct teleportation though. I might change it so it is. Thanks.