Traab
2020-11-22, 05:05 PM
Just curious as to how you might handle this as both a dm and a player. You and your party gets to create level 20s, feel free to minmax as far as you feel reasonable, get a solid set of gear tailored for the adventure, with the express purpose of going to the underdark and just purging it of as many threats to the surface world as you can manage. Im talking drow, illithids, random unknown horrors that have been gnawing at the roots of the world since time immemorial, etc. Being a party of 20s, you are, obviously, going to be absurdly strong compared to most of the denizens here early on. How far would be reasonable to expect to get on your crush burn kill campaign, and what sort of story do you think this could make?
Here is a general outline for the story of the campaign. After enduring far too many raids from drow and assorted evil underdark creatures, the various lords and ladies have setup a call to action. They are building an army meant to cull the underdark and establish control of as much of it as they can to lessen the ever present threat from that direction. The point of the spear is going to be your party. Legendary adventurers who have reached the pinnacle of power. You will be in turn supported by a large force of builders, weaker adventurers, craftsmen and random other npcs whose job it will be to establish outposts in the areas you have cleansed before moving on to the next. Basically building underground forts protected by npc adventurers to hold the territory you take, and give you a place to fall back to for more supplies or rest or whatever.
You start the adventure with a solid understanding of whats down there, and where to go, but that will only take you so far before you are off the map and have to figure out where to go next. Your primary job is to locate and destroy the threats, leaving the mop up for the support teams following afterwards. So as an example, you smash your way through a drow town, not a city, and manage to smash most of their forces before the survivors scatter. Instead of hunting them down, you move on while the support staff moves in the clear out stragglers and protect the outpost your side builds there. That being said, as the underdark isnt exactly a straight line and single tunnel, expect to run into trouble as the various evil groups strike back, trying to retake their territory, so some contingency planning might be in order, such as thinking of ways to regularly check in with the outpost to make sure everything is fine and helping them out if they arent.
The interesting twist to the campaign is, its not usually going to be level appropriate. Your party isnt going to find itself inexplicably only fighting stuff tailored for level 20 encounters, you will often be fighting swarms of monsters far weaker than you, there will be tougher encounters from time to time, but a lot of the issues will be dealing with sheer numbers. I mean, drow can be as low as cr 1/4th or ramp up to cr20 matron mothers. And unless you are attacking Menzoberranzan (I wouldnt suggest that I dont think) the odds of having to deal with one of them will be fairly low. But that doesnt mean that you can ignore the 3 dozen drow warriors shooting at you from the shadows. At least at first. As you penetrate deeper in im sure the dm will be more than happy to start throwing big nasties at you, the matrons WILL start hunting for you backed by their elite warriors, you may even face alliances between underdark factions who want to kill you before you cause them too much trouble depending on how scattershot your depredations have been.
There is no real big bad of the campaign. The goal is literally, keep killing anything that might threaten the surface world until you are dead or have decided that you cant press on any further and maintain control. This is also about sending a message from the surface world to the denizens of the underdark. "We wont put up with this anymore, dont push your luck." So do enough damage and establish a solid purge and you can call it a day. Part of the fun is theorycrafting the ideal party for such an adventure and seeing how well you do. Maybe you can convince the nobles to send in the other adventurers and actually try to assault Menzoberranzan yourselves, not intending to take it over, but in an effort to destroy as much of it as you can before being pushed back out so they are too busy rebuilding to make trouble. Maybe you can manipulate the various factions and trick them into going to war with each other while your team picks off survivors? Maybe you can use your spells inventively enough to make the areas uninhabitable. Careful stoneshaping magic to drop the roof on the various underdark outposts and towns, diverting underground lakes that aboleths live in to poison the residents that try to drink it, that sort of thing. Its up to you and you could try it in several different ways if you like.
Here is a general outline for the story of the campaign. After enduring far too many raids from drow and assorted evil underdark creatures, the various lords and ladies have setup a call to action. They are building an army meant to cull the underdark and establish control of as much of it as they can to lessen the ever present threat from that direction. The point of the spear is going to be your party. Legendary adventurers who have reached the pinnacle of power. You will be in turn supported by a large force of builders, weaker adventurers, craftsmen and random other npcs whose job it will be to establish outposts in the areas you have cleansed before moving on to the next. Basically building underground forts protected by npc adventurers to hold the territory you take, and give you a place to fall back to for more supplies or rest or whatever.
You start the adventure with a solid understanding of whats down there, and where to go, but that will only take you so far before you are off the map and have to figure out where to go next. Your primary job is to locate and destroy the threats, leaving the mop up for the support teams following afterwards. So as an example, you smash your way through a drow town, not a city, and manage to smash most of their forces before the survivors scatter. Instead of hunting them down, you move on while the support staff moves in the clear out stragglers and protect the outpost your side builds there. That being said, as the underdark isnt exactly a straight line and single tunnel, expect to run into trouble as the various evil groups strike back, trying to retake their territory, so some contingency planning might be in order, such as thinking of ways to regularly check in with the outpost to make sure everything is fine and helping them out if they arent.
The interesting twist to the campaign is, its not usually going to be level appropriate. Your party isnt going to find itself inexplicably only fighting stuff tailored for level 20 encounters, you will often be fighting swarms of monsters far weaker than you, there will be tougher encounters from time to time, but a lot of the issues will be dealing with sheer numbers. I mean, drow can be as low as cr 1/4th or ramp up to cr20 matron mothers. And unless you are attacking Menzoberranzan (I wouldnt suggest that I dont think) the odds of having to deal with one of them will be fairly low. But that doesnt mean that you can ignore the 3 dozen drow warriors shooting at you from the shadows. At least at first. As you penetrate deeper in im sure the dm will be more than happy to start throwing big nasties at you, the matrons WILL start hunting for you backed by their elite warriors, you may even face alliances between underdark factions who want to kill you before you cause them too much trouble depending on how scattershot your depredations have been.
There is no real big bad of the campaign. The goal is literally, keep killing anything that might threaten the surface world until you are dead or have decided that you cant press on any further and maintain control. This is also about sending a message from the surface world to the denizens of the underdark. "We wont put up with this anymore, dont push your luck." So do enough damage and establish a solid purge and you can call it a day. Part of the fun is theorycrafting the ideal party for such an adventure and seeing how well you do. Maybe you can convince the nobles to send in the other adventurers and actually try to assault Menzoberranzan yourselves, not intending to take it over, but in an effort to destroy as much of it as you can before being pushed back out so they are too busy rebuilding to make trouble. Maybe you can manipulate the various factions and trick them into going to war with each other while your team picks off survivors? Maybe you can use your spells inventively enough to make the areas uninhabitable. Careful stoneshaping magic to drop the roof on the various underdark outposts and towns, diverting underground lakes that aboleths live in to poison the residents that try to drink it, that sort of thing. Its up to you and you could try it in several different ways if you like.