Sparky McDibben
2019-12-06, 11:23 AM
Does anyone know where I can find some good information about Bael Turath from 4e? Seems a bit thin on the ground. Also my party may soon journey through some lands blighted by a pretty bad magical "total war." I need some ideas for mechanical rigor on these:
Storms of acid
The PCs are pelted by what they initially think is hail, but turns out to be gobbets of rotting meat
Windstorms of damned souls
Marshes of blood
Poisonous mists
Lightning storms that deal psychic damage
Please suggest any additional effects you might think of. I need to come up with a) mechanics suitable for a 7th-level party that will scale up if I need them to, b) when these happen. I want these effects to be a source of tension for the PCs which should ratchet up, trigger, then start ratcheting up again, so I don't think a random encounter table will work, or at least it needs to be part of a broader solution.
My current thought is that every day they travel through this area, I roll 1d6. On a 1, it triggers one of these effects. Every day that there was no effect, I add a d6. So if you go three days with no terrain effects, I roll 3d6 at the start of the next day. When there's a terrain effect, it resets.
Finally, does anyone have any ideas for stuff I can use that would live here? In case it's not clear, they're marching through old Bael Turath (or the transplant I put in my setting), so I'm thinking low-level devils, undead, and maybe some monstrosities warped by exposure to the magical corruption evident everywhere. For some reason WotC didn't include an encounter table for "Blasted Hellscape" in Xanathar's.
Ooh! OK, and is there a way to bring in effects of magical corruption on the PCs? DC 12 Constitution or Wisdom save to reflect the horror of marching through all this mess? Should I let the player pick the save, or should I determine it randomly? I would assume if you have a high Con and low Wis, the effects of witnessing this horror would be more difficult to shrug off than the effects of withstanding the fleshmelting magics of Xor'lieh. Does anyone have a good mutations table or a better guide on implementing madness in D&D?
Storms of acid
The PCs are pelted by what they initially think is hail, but turns out to be gobbets of rotting meat
Windstorms of damned souls
Marshes of blood
Poisonous mists
Lightning storms that deal psychic damage
Please suggest any additional effects you might think of. I need to come up with a) mechanics suitable for a 7th-level party that will scale up if I need them to, b) when these happen. I want these effects to be a source of tension for the PCs which should ratchet up, trigger, then start ratcheting up again, so I don't think a random encounter table will work, or at least it needs to be part of a broader solution.
My current thought is that every day they travel through this area, I roll 1d6. On a 1, it triggers one of these effects. Every day that there was no effect, I add a d6. So if you go three days with no terrain effects, I roll 3d6 at the start of the next day. When there's a terrain effect, it resets.
Finally, does anyone have any ideas for stuff I can use that would live here? In case it's not clear, they're marching through old Bael Turath (or the transplant I put in my setting), so I'm thinking low-level devils, undead, and maybe some monstrosities warped by exposure to the magical corruption evident everywhere. For some reason WotC didn't include an encounter table for "Blasted Hellscape" in Xanathar's.
Ooh! OK, and is there a way to bring in effects of magical corruption on the PCs? DC 12 Constitution or Wisdom save to reflect the horror of marching through all this mess? Should I let the player pick the save, or should I determine it randomly? I would assume if you have a high Con and low Wis, the effects of witnessing this horror would be more difficult to shrug off than the effects of withstanding the fleshmelting magics of Xor'lieh. Does anyone have a good mutations table or a better guide on implementing madness in D&D?