guileus
2019-04-09, 10:08 AM
I'm playing a campaign that's sort of sword and sorcery flavoured where the magical/paranormal stuff that makes an appearance in the game only comes from NPCs and is usually associated with evil/the forbidden (you know, the usual "powers that mankind was not meant to know"). The PCs are establishing a kingdom in *the* cursed lands that are haunted by beastmen, spirits from the Other World, etc. It's all great fun. since it keeps all the PCs in the fighting/thief classes and reserves anything magical for the bad guys (or at least, other people).
One of the things I want to play is a rival king that's trying to sabotage their kingdom. He's got a reputation for being a warlock and sports a deformity where he has a second head hanging from his left shoulder, asleep most of the time, but rumours say that it sometimes wakes up and whispers secrets and information into his ear. Anyway, the idea is that my players get the "this guy is actually a wizard who rules the neighbouring, established kingdom, and he wants to kill you guys because he is encroaching on your lands", so that they prepare for the confrontation, with him constantly being a step ahead of them. Then, when they finally meet and eventually fight, they end up discovering he has some sort of different "powers": in game terms, he is a psionicist, so that's the reason he was always being a step ahead (he is a powerful telepath who reads minds, communicates with his envoys over large distances etc.).
I think it would be pretty cool since they might be trying to prepare against magical threats ("bless those weapons to Treum! Prepare to attack him if he utters any weird words!") and then discover he plays using a different ruleset. I'd actually like for them to discover the whole thing in a psionic combat in the mindscape, using the eponymous system from Bruce R. Cordell. I've always been fascinated by psionic combat since the 2nd edition days and I loved the descriptions of it in The crimsom legion book from the Dark Sun series: a "plane" where it's your mental strength which is important and where you adopt different shapes to fight against your enemy.
The thing is that, if you're familiar with the system, it's basically designed just for psionicists or at least classes who are psionically active. So my question is: how could I make it so that players could somehow "fight" against my evil guy in the mindscape besides on the real world? I want him to have the upper hand in the mindscape, of course, but also for characters to somehow be able to make a difference trying to resist him there, so that they can eventually defeat him the real world (get a sort of "good thing we stabbed him in the real world, he was close to crushing our wills and minds in that mental arena!").
Is it feasible? Should I just use descriptions of how he is using his powers on their minds (ie. describe their will saves as them trying to resist his powers) instead of going with modes and the whole set of bonuses from the mindscape system?
One of the things I want to play is a rival king that's trying to sabotage their kingdom. He's got a reputation for being a warlock and sports a deformity where he has a second head hanging from his left shoulder, asleep most of the time, but rumours say that it sometimes wakes up and whispers secrets and information into his ear. Anyway, the idea is that my players get the "this guy is actually a wizard who rules the neighbouring, established kingdom, and he wants to kill you guys because he is encroaching on your lands", so that they prepare for the confrontation, with him constantly being a step ahead of them. Then, when they finally meet and eventually fight, they end up discovering he has some sort of different "powers": in game terms, he is a psionicist, so that's the reason he was always being a step ahead (he is a powerful telepath who reads minds, communicates with his envoys over large distances etc.).
I think it would be pretty cool since they might be trying to prepare against magical threats ("bless those weapons to Treum! Prepare to attack him if he utters any weird words!") and then discover he plays using a different ruleset. I'd actually like for them to discover the whole thing in a psionic combat in the mindscape, using the eponymous system from Bruce R. Cordell. I've always been fascinated by psionic combat since the 2nd edition days and I loved the descriptions of it in The crimsom legion book from the Dark Sun series: a "plane" where it's your mental strength which is important and where you adopt different shapes to fight against your enemy.
The thing is that, if you're familiar with the system, it's basically designed just for psionicists or at least classes who are psionically active. So my question is: how could I make it so that players could somehow "fight" against my evil guy in the mindscape besides on the real world? I want him to have the upper hand in the mindscape, of course, but also for characters to somehow be able to make a difference trying to resist him there, so that they can eventually defeat him the real world (get a sort of "good thing we stabbed him in the real world, he was close to crushing our wills and minds in that mental arena!").
Is it feasible? Should I just use descriptions of how he is using his powers on their minds (ie. describe their will saves as them trying to resist his powers) instead of going with modes and the whole set of bonuses from the mindscape system?