Critique/Advice Wanted On My New Adventure

[An-D]

Alright, so I'm a bit rusty on the DM-ing side of things, but I got my group back together after a couple month hiatus and I'm looking for some thoughts I'm putting together for their next adventure (it's a Pathfinder campaign in a home-brewed setting).

Currently, the party is in a big port town. They'll be walking down the street and see a strange-looking teenage elf that seemed to be phasing in and out of existence. From a distance, it looked like he was begging for help but no one else in the street seemed to be able to see/hear him...until the party shows up.

The teen-elf is frantic. His people are in danger and may be facing extinction and if the party doesn't help, the danger will definitely spread here.

Once the party agrees, he'll pull a little rope out of his bag, have everyone touch him and then the rope will yank them into another plane of existence.
As they learn about the situation, they'll find out that he is an elf but generations ago in a big war with another race of elves, his city entire city was forcibly transported to this dimension and they were unable to return. As they tried different magicks to teleport themselves back or open portals, something happened and a being from another place was sucked into their new home.

Spoilers: I've been reading a lot of Dan Simmons this summer, so this big bad guy was very much inspired by the Shrike from the Hyperion books.

The Blade King (as they came to call him) went into a rage at being pulled into that plane and eviscerated every wizard, cleric or soldier that tried to stand against him. After enough of the streets were soaked in elf blood, the incredibly dangerous creature went about turning the lost city into his own new home.

He planted a huge black tree in the center of the city that bore juicy, blood-red fruit. The tree's roots and a symbiotic fungus that seemed to grow with it, snakes it's way through the ground and into the homes/basements/sewers of most of the city. As elves became too old or too weak, the roots would "claim" them - painfully entering their bodies to suck out nutrients while the fungus worked some kind of magic to keep the rooted individuals alive for as long as possible (centuries, for some lucky elves).

The fruit that the Tree bore were the only food that seemed to be able to grow in their dark dimension and the Lord of Blades had no issue providing the fruit - as long as the elves provided the weak/elderly to the roots so the Tree could continue to grow.

As the generations passed, the elves were changed by their new home and the fruit of the Tree - essentially taking on the characteristics of the Ghost Elves (I really love this subrace of elves, and I think this is a neat way to bring them to my world).

Now, the elves in the city are essentially...well....dead inside. Too tired, weak and without hope to even think about rising up against the King of Blades. They go about their day like zombies - barely ever acknowledging one another except when it comes to harvesting the elderly or occasionally breeding (future food for the Tree). The fruit has magical qualities to it that increases the lifetime of anyone that eats it, but also lowers their willpower and has addictive properties.

The ambitious teen elf secretly taught himself magic in the city's ignored library and managed to craft an item (the rope) that could crash him randomly to the Material plane and then take him back to the city. He has some natural resistance to the effects of the fruit and he also has found other (though less nutritious) sources of food to avoid eating from the Tree.

He went to find help to try to free his people from the Lord of Blades and the Tree. Also, recently (now that the Tree was strong enough), the Lord of Blades had begun carving a massive portal into the trunk of the Tree and by the looks of it, it was nearing completion. The elf feels that it will either open a portal back to the creature's home and potentially bring more of his kind here or, due to how chaotic conjuration magic works here, it'll rip open a path straight to the Material Plane and give the Blade King an even larger population to harvest for his horrible Tree.

So...

1) Is that an interesting adventure? Any horrible plot-holes or things I should fix?

2) I'm still building the Blade King. There are seven people in the party and they're all in the level 8-9 range. Any cool suggestions to how to make it a super interesting fight? I see him as essentially a minor god from another dimension and I want the fight to reflect <i>that.</i> I don't even know if I want them to be able to actually "kill" him. Maybe just put him to sleep?

3) I also want to create some "lieutenants" for him. Definitely aberrations of some kind. I want them to be forged from elves that he decided to 'experiment' on - merging them with creatures he knew from his nightmare plane.

4) I'm toying with the idea of making the teen-elf planewalker back-stab the party. Have him be secretly working for the Blade King to get fresh, untainted blood (since the elves have all been 'changed') from the material plane so the Tree portal could open up there. But that might also be cliche? Thoughts?

[Scorponok]

This is actually a cool opening story, and pretty original, as I've never heard of this type of plot hook before! The only concern I see is whether the elf will be following along with the party for their quest. He seems a bit too important. Not that it's a bad thing, but one stray fireball or something, then what?

The elf is important to get the party into that particular plane, but he doesn't need to be so involved. The betrayal option also doesn't need to be decided right away. Maybe keep it in the pocket in case you need to shake things up.

[Afgncaap5]

I definitely like the lore (and this is, like, the fourth or fifth time I've had some encouragement to read Hyperion). My wheelhouse is more 3.5 than Pathfinder, but I think you've got a good thing to build toward.

1) Definitely interesting, yeah. Not a whole lot in the way of plot holes that I can see.
2) He's a god and he's an alien, and between him and the tree he's had a lot of time to manipulate the environment, so I'd recommend tossing in some supernatural phenomena to mess with most standard tactics that party magic users might have. What if divination spells always came with a 25% chance to give the caster a vision of the Blade King, or to see hazy, incomplete things from the Blade King's eyes. If the effect lasts for more than a few rounds there's a chance that the vision might notice the caster or that the Blade King glances at a reflective surface which lets him see the caster through his own eyes, effectively revealing their location and activities to the Blade King. For added fun, what if the Blade King could teleport to anywhere the tree's roots had spread as a free action?
3) Nothing's really coming to mind that doesn't feel forced, but it's a good idea to roll with. Maybe something like Eberron's dolgaunts or dolgrims, but made from elves instead of goblinoids.
4) The Betrayal idea itself is more of a trope than a cliche, but it'd be good to play it safely. You might be able to write some way around that trope; if another character early on betrays the players then it might make the players think that that part of the story is "over", for instance. (A friend of the teen elf, maybe; a mini-adventure to lure the adventurers away for something this Blade King needs people from the material plane to do in exchange for a superior version of the tree's fruit. The initial story could be that this friend was an early attempt at finding a magical way to cure the stupor of the fruit, but it just results in a sort of perpetually sick person who's got a strange obsession with the tree.)


Just a couple other thoughts:

-Minor detail, but I'm wondering how the kid knows that what the Blade King is making is a portal. Are magic portals easily recognizable in this culture as having a well-defined size, shape, or construction method? Did the teen's research into magic let him see similarities in how his people meshed (something like) tree roots and glass to make portals in whatever it is the Blade King is doing? Or is it more of a "Well, the guy carved an archway through the middle of the tree, and covered it with some runes... sometimes it starts glowing... I've not ever heard of anything that could be other than a portal or gateway or something."
-How big is the city, and what's this other dimension like? Possibly not important, but I wasn't sure if I should imagine a kind of big, empty void outside the city walls, or if it's more like a mostly-dead, hostile planet outside, or if it's something entirely different. Players have a tendency to poke at edges if they can find them.
-As a plot element and bit of world flavor, you tend to have magic being presented as something that can be experimented with and, more importantly, messed up, otherwise I doubt the initial attempts to escape the world would have gone so poorly as to accidentally bring in the Blade King. One of the unfortunate parts of d20 fantasy games, though, is that magic tends to be reliable, especially when used by players. There's a risk that the evocative and mysterious/dangerous feel to this alternate dimension might be weakened if players can just say "Hey, it's nothing that a fireball can't fix. Good thing I prepared two!" I'd recommend making player magic carry some sort of risk. You shouldn't punish the players just because they used cure light wounds during or after a fight, of course, but finding dangerous (and, more importantly, consistent) ways that magic can backfire in this setting might help any theme you're trying to build. Might be as simple as a chance to have any spells cast also copy themselves onto branches of the tree (with writing similar to a spell scroll's) only to have the spells go off again at a random target or in a random direction 1d12 rounds later.

[An-D]

The only concern I see is whether the elf will be following along with the party for their quest. He seems a bit too important. Not that it's a bad thing, but one stray fireball or something, then what?

The elf is important to get the party into that particular plane, but he doesn't need to be so involved. The betrayal option also doesn't need to be decided right away. Maybe keep it in the pocket in case you need to shake things up.

Yeah, I'm torn about the best way to use him. At first, I was going to have him lead the party to the Blade King where the Blade King would kill him a horrible way as sort of a "Your-friend-is-dead-attack-with-everything-you-got" thing. Then I started thinking about the traitor aspect, and he was used as bait to get an appropriate party to enter the lost city. It'd probably be best to keep him as the guy that will try to rebuild the city and his people once the Blade King is dealt with.




Minor detail, but I'm wondering how the kid knows that what the Blade King is making is a portal. Are magic portals easily recognizable in this culture as having a well-defined size, shape, or construction method? Did the teen's research into magic let him see similarities in how his people meshed (something like) tree roots and glass to make portals in whatever it is the Blade King is doing? Or is it more of a "Well, the guy carved an archway through the middle of the tree, and covered it with some runes... sometimes it starts glowing... I've not ever heard of anything that could be other than a portal or gateway or something."

Definitely the last one. He's done a lot of research in how to escape their plane, so his specialty is going to be various transportation magic. But, when you see an alien death god carving a massive arch into a tree with glowing runes...it doesn't take much a spellcraft check to figure out that it's probably a portal.



How big is the city, and what's this other dimension like? Possibly not important, but I wasn't sure if I should imagine a kind of big, empty void outside the city walls, or if it's more like a mostly-dead, hostile planet outside, or if it's something entirely different. Players have a tendency to poke at edges if they can find them.

It's a fair-sized city surrounded by a dark, super salty shallow ocean. When the city was teleported to this realm, a big portion of the land under it was as well. So when it appeared, it made an island in the shallow ocean. So, imagine the city as on a round-ish piece of land. The water comes right up to the outside walls, and causes some minor flooding in the walls during high tide.



One of the unfortunate parts of d20 fantasy games, though, is that magic tends to be reliable, especially when used by players.

I've already decided to have divination and teleportation magic to either work super chaotically or sometimes not at all. That should explain why the original elves couldn't escape with portals of their own or send/receive messages asking for help.

I love your idea of divination spells revealing the party to the Blade King. Very "Eye of Sauron." I'm definitely going to use that.

[Extra Anchovies]

1) Is that an interesting adventure? Any horrible plot-holes or things I should fix?

Overall, I think it's certainly an interesting premise. Kinda feels like a cross between The Matrix and "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream".

These are elves - they're very much used to thinking in the long term. Once they were sure they had no means of destroying or banishing the Blade King, I could see a lot of them readily accepting death (and passing into the afterlife) over a lifetime of slavery.

If the PCs say "no, this is probably a trap, buzz off", what will you do?


2) I'm still building the Blade King. There are seven people in the party and they're all in the level 8-9 range. Any cool suggestions to how to make it a super interesting fight? I see him as essentially a minor god from another dimension and I want the fight to reflect <i>that.</i>

Give the Blade King two full turns - one at (initiative result)+5, one at (initiative result)-5. Include a number of helper baddies - maybe one that applies defensive buffs, one that applies offensive buffs, one that applies debuffs, and a few that take up space, soak hits, and deal enough damage to be worth removing. Have the Blade King create another body-blocker mook every few rounds to keep the PCs' hands full, but let the buffer/debuffer minions stay dead. Every now and then have the Blade King withdraw from melee and use ranged attacks to disrupt the party's attempts to flank and surround it. Maybe it vomits a cone of knives, dealing damage like a breath weapon and filling the ground in its area with sharp objects; creatures moving through them have to either treat the area as difficult terrain, or take a small amount of damage (1d3-1 or so) per square of movement.

Have them fight it multiple times. In the first encounter, it attacks in a fast-moving aerial form, shooting needle-like javelins from a large cannon of sorts. It uses a number of mutated elves (low defenses, few or no attacks) to see where the party is, and the PCs have to kill its spotters while staying out of its line of fire. Once it's effectively blind without chancing return fire, it flies off to its lair. Later on, it attacks them directly while surrounding itself with a whirling column of blades and hammers, forcing away attempts to strike it directly, and it uses a tail- or tentacle-like appendage to batter the PCs from well outside arm's reach; make it clear that the striking appendage is the only weapon it has, with the blade-column being purely defensive. Once the PCs sever the limb, it reassembles its defensive blades into a number of long spidery legs and skitters off faster than the PCs can follow. They'll know they'll have to fight it again, but they also know that it's been weakened because they chopped off a sizable chunk of its body (which they could inspect to learn one or two attacks that are more effective against the Blade King). Following the good ol' rule of three, the next encounter would be the battle to the death, where the PCs turn the tables by crashing into the Blade King's lair and facing it head on (perhaps after eliminating some static defense that had been preventing them from attacking the tree).


I don't even know if I want them to be able to actually "kill" him. Maybe just put him to sleep?

It can be unsatisfying for the players to defeat a BBEG and have the DM toss out some "maybe they'll come back, for REVENGE" - it can feel like you're just kicking the threat along to the next group of adventurers (or to yourselves in a few levels), which isn't really winning. If you really don't want it to be truly destroyed, it should at least be forced, mauled and broken, to return to its home plane, leaving a few severed limbs behind. Maybe other entities from the same plane could show up at a later point, with the nightmare-realm acting as a Xoriat of sorts, but if you want the Blade King to be a memorable fight I think it should be a fight to the death.


3) I also want to create some "lieutenants" for him. Definitely aberrations of some kind. I want them to be forged from elves that he decided to 'experiment' on - merging them with creatures he knew from his nightmare plane.

Something like this horror (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Hoz2ZHYZM)? I like it. Why does the Blade King experiment on them? Is it done on a whim or out of boredom, or do they have a greater purpose? The reason for their creation would definitely affect their form and function.


4) I'm toying with the idea of making the teen-elf planewalker back-stab the party. Have him be secretly working for the Blade King to get fresh, untainted blood (since the elves have all been 'changed') from the material plane so the Tree portal could open up there. But that might also be cliche? Thoughts?

If the portal-rope works for elves but not the Blade King, anyone sent out from the pocket-plane would have no reason to return, because the Blade King can't punish them from inside the pocket-plane. If the portal-rope works for the Blade King, they'd come through themselves. Ensuring that a meaningful betrayal occurs would also mean adding another element to the adventure where the players don't have agency.

[An-D]

If the PCs say "no, this is probably a trap, buzz off", what will you do?

Improvise. If I really want to railroad it, I'll have the elf boy grab a hold of them and activate the rope to yank them back to the lost city. I don't think it'll come to that though.



It can be unsatisfying for the players to defeat a BBEG and have the DM toss out some "maybe they'll come back, for REVENGE"

I have no intention of having the Blade King come back in the future. But I do want him to seem kinda godly, and I'm not sure my player's egos could take having 'killed a god' before they even reached level 10. I'm thinking of either a Jeeper's Creepers thing, where after being defeated, he kinda coccoons himself in metal to recover (which would take centuries). Or maybe having them work out a way to pop the city back into the real world and leave the Blade King trapped, ruling over nothingness.

Maybe the Elf boy's role in this will be to use the Blade King's portal to bring the city back and the party has to fight him while he does the spell?

I may just let them kill it. I did say that it's more of a demi-god than a god.



Something like this horror? I like it. Why does the Blade King experiment on them? Is it done on a whim or out of boredom, or do they have a greater purpose? The reason for their creation would definitely affect their form and function.

Oh my god, that video was the best.

And yeah, something like that. Maybe a bit more...refined but yeah. Terrible, horrible mish-mashes of nightmare creatures doing the Blade King's bidding. He'd be making them (1) out of boredom and being trapped for all that time and (2) for utilitarian reasons - helpers he could send out to harvest certain elves or gather some kind of resource from the city. So, some would definitely be more useful than others.



If the portal-rope works for elves but not the Blade King, anyone sent out from the pocket-plane would have no reason to return, because the Blade King can't punish them from inside the pocket-plane. If the portal-rope works for the Blade King, they'd come through themselves. Ensuring that a meaningful betrayal occurs would also mean adding another element to the adventure where the players don't have agency.

Yeah, the existence of the rope does kinda make it harder to do the betrayal story. The way I originally planned it, the elf had created the item and had been using it in secret. It kinda crashes him into the Material plane erratically (he isn't always sure where he's going to land) and he can't stay there for too long because the rope will yank him back on it's own after a certain amount of time. He could let go of the rope and let it return without him, but he'd essentially be abandoning the city and his family and he doesn't want to do that.

[An-D]

I hope this doesn't break any rules about resurrecting old posts...

Anyway, in a couple of hours, the party is going to fight the horrible Blade King. They've defeated his lieutenants. They've found some siege equipment they're going to try to use. They're preparing to storm the base of the tree.

I have the Blade King written up. Should be an interesting villain for them to fight (he can teleport whenever he likes, and I'm probably going to have him use Time Stop at least once). I have some horrible base-ling monstrosities to fight with the Blade King against the party.

Buuuut, I want something else interesting in this fight and I'm just drawing up a blank. I don't want this to be a fight that's just a hit point meter.

The end goal of this adventure is to defeat the Blade King and get the city back to the Material Plane and out of the pocket Nothing-Plane that it's currently trapped in. Right now, the Blade King is carving a bunch of runes into the tree to bring more of his people to this place and then likely jump into the Material Plane - I'm thinking I'll have it powered by blood to make it super edgy/dark (maybe the Blade King keeps bleeding party members and tossing them so their blood drips into a specific chamber?). Easy thing to do would be to allow the party (or the NPC wizard that's helping them) to adjust some of the runes so it just transports the city. Anyone have a more interesting idea before I settle on that?

[TheBrassDuke]

You'd be better off creating a new thread and linking this one for reference, so that it's not locked and tagged for Thread Necromancy.