[4e] The world Faeryll (PEACH)

[kakita]

Welcome to the world Faeryll. Yes, I derived it off Faerun. After all, it's an exploded version of it. I am however open to name changes.

This is primarily fluff homebrew. There will be some tweaks in the rules, but these will (hopefully) be few and far between, and primarily related to residuum, and the use thereof. This is because I want residuum to take a more important role in this world. Aside from that, I’m relatively leery in changing something I have no experience in. I've also included a map. Not much information is on it now, but hopefully it will help readers get their bearings.

I will talk about the history and magic, followed by religion, races and classes and then delving into the specific major powers of the world.

http://kakita.subtlethought.com/Faeryll.jpg

General gist of the word Faeryll:

Young. The world is only just achieving a renaissance after climbing out from the dark ages, a result of an earth-shattering cataclysm. As such, while a nation may have large extended borders, most of the area within might still be wilderness; civilization has only populated the most important, fertile and defensible areas.

The discovered world of Faeryll is small. The entire map above is only slightly larger than the size of Europe. Travel across the seas takes 2-3 weeks (important, as perishables are often shipped across).

Magic is treated more like a technology that aids civilization, rather than an exotic, difficult art to master. Low-level magic is relatively common, but magic and magical items of higher level are exponentially rarer.

Mana is a fuel/resource. 4e’s Residuum (hereby referred to as mana) will be playing a major part of the economy. Not only is mana used to build magical items, it is also used as a fuel to power the more powerful magical items/constructs. In addition, PCs will be able to spend varying amounts and types of mana in order to replenish or boost their daily and encounter powers. I wish to make it such that the economy of residuum impacts the world, and I want the PCs to understand that as well.

Intrigue is quite high. All three main powers have important resources the other two nations need, but the inculcated fear of war, incursions from outside sources and the fact that all three nations are naturally separated each other dictates that large troops cannot mass against one another, and so conflicts take the form of words, trade, and spycraft.

The gods are quiet. They give clerical power, and sometimes answer divinations, but do not actively participate with the world. The raise dead ritual does not exist.

The plane is disjointed from all others, except the astral realm, which is dangerous. No one knows why, but access to any other plane is singularly difficult. This explains the infernal and star warlocks; outside entities are taking this opportunity to try to enter the world. Related to this, long-distance travel is difficult. Gates, portals and long-distance teleportation do not work, and non-mundane travel may bring with it certain risks. No travel rituals exist.

History:
Millenia ago, Faeryll used to be a huge continent, a traditional fantasy world. However, a great war broke out between the two largest human nations, one from the north and the south (generally where the Aevlyn, Karax and Alliance of Winds are situated now). In this great war, a weapon of arcane mass destruction was built and triggered. It succeeded, but its ramifications were far greater than anyone had expected. It was built merely to destroy the arcane defenses of a nation, but instead cataclysmically overloaded the magical weave inherent in the world, cutting off the world from the gods and magic. It also happened to blow a considerably chunk of the world into smithereens, flooding the western half of the continent in water.

During the next few hundred years, magic was inaccessible. Considering that magic is a cornerstone in establishing civilization in D&D suffice to say that most of humanity disappeared. Rampaging monsters were the norm, and humans banded together in small settlements to try to protect themselves.

The world eventually rediscovered magic, albeit in a different form. Nations were reforged, and they worked hard at returning the world to its former splendor. The Cataclysm took place about two thousand years ago (reports are sketchy and range from one to five millenia), but it was such a devastating event that it still weighs on the collective consciousness of the new nations. Perhaps that is why they are still afraid to lean themselves towards open conflict.

[kakita]

Magic:
During the instability of the weave, magic was inaccessible. Now though, magic is accessible again. Residuum/mana is also an important resource. While adventurers can find many magical items in their dungeon crawling, magical items forged during previous ages do not work, useful only for the mana that can be distilled from it. That means the world needs a new influx of mana. This comes from mana ‘nodes’, areas of particularly concentrated ambient mana, so concentrated that it can actually be mined, tapped and distilled.

However, most of these mana-rich regions are debilitating to human life. This is generally proportional: the richer the region, the more dangerous. This provides a problem to the nations; countries which are rich in mana are considerably less fertile, and vice versa. This forces the nations into a sort of symbiosis with each other.

As mentioned previously, I want mana to be an important tradable resource. Not only is mana used to make magical items, but it is also used to power some of these (essentially plot-hook level) items and constructs. For example, golems and guardians may be workhorses, but run off mana, which will have to be replenished every so often. Sailing ships may have a ‘store’ of mana which can be used to ‘overboost’, perhaps generating wind in order to outrun pirates, or for pirates to catch their prey. There may even be defensive artillery that runs off of mana.

The world MAY eventually be drained of mana. However, that is so far in the future that I don’t see it coming yet.

PCs normally won’t have access to the above items (not yet, anyway). In order to bring to the forefront the idea of mana as a useful as well as tradable resource, mana may be used to replenish or boost their encounter and daily powers. They may use mana to boost their spell casting, or invigorate their body, or open another connection to their god, whatever it is; all classes may use mana in this manner.

__________________________________________________ _____________

This is where it falls into conjecture: I am unsure on how I should go about creating the rules for the above.

There are two options I can take; I can just use mana as an alternate currency (ie spend x amount of gold in residuum to do y). This would be convenient for both me and the players, they only need to track residuum’s gold cost. The downside is that players might be leery on using what they see as their gold as an item, and there is a lot of transparency on mana costs. Would they spend 250gp on 200gp worth of mana?

The other idea is to convert them mana into one-shot magical items (a level y power regenerator costs x amount). Might be more attractive as items are ‘meant’ to be used. However, this is more inconvenient. I’d have to tag a cost to each different item, and players would have to track multiple levels of items, etc.

Both provide a problem of scaleability and attractiveness; I want it such that PCs WANT to spend mana to increase their powers, and therefore become dependant on the mana economy, but at the same time I need to make it such that the burst damage it affords them doesn’t make encounters too easy. I’m thinking of just basing it off 4e’s magic item cost; for example, an replenishing an encounter power costs 10% of an equivalent level magical item, while a regeneration of a daily power costs 20% of that.

Too much? Too little?

Next up, religion, races, classes and other exciting things! Hopefully within a day or so.