Campaign idea: Starvation game.

[Talanic]

I'm heading to bed in a minute or so, so I'll just throw this out briefly.

Abilities removed from the game: Create food and water. Any other food creation magic is also out (including Summon Nature's Ally).

Party alignment: Good.

Situation: Non-magical famine, caused by bad weather. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are likely to starve in the kingdom if a solution isn't found.

Edit: The problem's less of a season of drought and more of a repeat of the 'little ice age' a few centuries back, where global temperatures dropped slightly and we had many real-world famines as a result. SOME areas have enough food but little to no surplus. Others don't have quite enough.

Things that work only for the party are helpful, but assume the average level in the party is around five, with no higher level casters outside the party and on the same side. Also assume that creatures with regeneration who aren't fed stop regenerating. This is just a glimmer of a campaign idea so far, mostly a "Here's a realistic scenario. What will you do when things go bad and there's absolutely no easy fix? How long do you stick to your guns?"

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Planar Binding/Ally.
Control Weather.
Plant Growth.
Entangle.

[Tacoma]

It's probably better to restrict magic in general than to arbitrarily restrict "food creation" and "summon creatures".

After all, couldn't you just summon a bunch of fruit trees?

And can Minor Creation now no longer make vegetable matter?

Open a gate to the Elemental Plane of Air and let birds fly out into nets.

Cast spells on people that make sand edible. Or cast it on the sand. It's not creation, it's transmutation.

So I'd go with a low magic campaign with this idea in general.

[jcsw]

For the record, you can't eat summoned monsters. All traces of them disappear when they die.

[turkishproverb]

For the record, you can't eat summoned monsters. All traces of them disappear when they die.

So? Amputating wings etc. is an option, short term anyway.

[JeminiZero]

No Food? No problem. Camel's Tenacity (DR331 p71) and Sustain (BoED p109) permit the target to go without food and water for some duration. Both are Cleric 4 spells. I'm sure there are other similiar spells out there.

As Tippy likes to suggest, I would put them in traps, and have the populace stampeded over them once every few days or so, thereby keeping them in good shape despite the lack of food.

[Lemur]

Polymorph any object mice or rats into whales.

Use a single livestock animal, cow, chicken, sheep, etc. and chop off all its limbs, keeping it alive with healing magic. Cast Regenerate, repeat.

Use Plant Growth. A lot. Use it on grains, grasses to feed said livestock, and cacti for water extraction.

Transmute Rock to Mud-> Purify Food and Drink. Who says you can't squeeze water out of a stone?


Other than magicking up food, use an intensive amount of labor, probably supplemented or primarily done by magic such as unseen servents, constructs, etc. or with spells like move earth: dig until you hit water. If you hit rock, blast through it and keep going. If you discover elder gods sleeping below, eat them. Mmm, Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Stop being good aligned and go post-apocolyptic every-man-for-himself mercenary, or even bandit style.

[Stupendous_Man]

Considering that you only take nonlethal damage from starvation....

[elliott20]

find a troll, beat it until it's in negative hit points, and don't forget to occasionally whack it a couple times to keep there. Infinite troll jerky!

[FoE]

find a troll, beat it until it's in negative hit points, and don't forget to occasionally whack it a couple times to keep there. Infinite troll jerky!

That's what they do in Droamm. But they still have to use special herbs to make it edible, since troll flesh is bordering on poisonous.

[starwoof]

A lernaean hydra (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0326.html) might work better.

[DigoDragon]

No Food? No problem. Camel's Tenacity (DR331 p71) and Sustain (BoED p109) permit the target to go without food and water for some duration. Both are Cleric 4 spells. I'm sure there are other similiar spells out there.

"HP/MP Restored... but you're still hungry." -Chrono Trigger


(Gotta admit it's an interesting trap you got).

[Talanic]

It was late, so I was pretty vague. Now redefining the terms.

[Kizara]

I'm heading to bed in a minute or so, so I'll just throw this out briefly.

Abilities removed from the game: Create food and water. Any other food creation magic is also out (including Summon Nature's Ally).

Party alignment: Good.

Situation: Non-magical famine, caused by bad weather. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are likely to starve in the kingdom if a solution isn't found.

Edit: The problem's less of a season of drought and more of a repeat of the 'little ice age' a few centuries back, where global temperatures dropped slightly and we had many real-world famines as a result. SOME areas have enough food but little to no surplus. Others don't have quite enough.

Things that work only for the party are helpful, but assume the average level in the party is around five, with no higher level casters outside the party and on the same side. Also assume that creatures with regeneration who aren't fed stop regenerating. This is just a glimmer of a campaign idea so far, mostly a "Here's a realistic scenario. What will you do when things go bad and there's absolutely no easy fix? How long do you stick to your guns?"


The obvious solution would be to go somewhere where they had an abundance of life/food, and get some and bring it back.

Bardic knowledge, knowledge (the planes), knowledge (nature) combined with plane shift, teleport and the like.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

It was late, so I was pretty vague. Now redefining the terms.All of my solutions still work, though some require a couple more levels. The easiest thing to do is use magic to increase food production. Druids are good at this, though Wizards and Clerics can capture outsiders and make them bring food for everyone using Planeshift.

[potatocubed]

Yeah, it's an interesting idea but the presence of D&D-style magic kind of runs roughshod over it.

Here are two thoughts:

1. Different system with weaker magic. Same idea.

2. Keep the essence of the game but change it to suit D&D. The way I see it, the situation you're trying to set up is one where the characters might be able to alleviate the symptoms of a problem (local starvation) at a cost (somebody else starves instead of you) but absolutely cannot tackle the root cause of the problem. Then you see what happens.

How about... magic suddenly becomes finite? Every time someone casts a spell, they cannot regain that spell slot without 'taking' it from someone else. (By sacrificing them, perhaps?) Permanent magic items are no longer permanent (slow fade or immediate fade?).

Combine this with an Eberron-like world where magic is woven into the structure of everyday life (or, even better, a Tippy world) and watch everything implode.

[Telonius]

Edit: The problem's less of a season of drought and more of a repeat of the 'little ice age' a few centuries back, where global temperatures dropped slightly and we had many real-world famines as a result. SOME areas have enough food but little to no surplus. Others don't have quite enough.


The standard D&D solution to all problems would still apply. Get the Dwarves mine all the coal they can get their hands on, then light it all on fire. Ignore any Druids that protest. :smallbiggrin:

More seriously, this sounds like an excellent campaign idea. You might look into Frostburn for some ideas for cold-weather challenges. I'd also recommend "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond - particularly the chapter on Iceland - for some ideas on what might happen.

[Fostire]

Just play in the Dark Sun campaign setting

[Hunter_Rose]

You can do the Nethack trick and cast stone to flesh on a boulder or rock. Instant huge chunk of meat for a boulder and decent sized meatball with a rock. Of course it would be uncooked but you could barbque. Also you can do another trick where you polymorph any object the is inedible into something edible. Another Nethack trick where you would polymorph rocks into lembas wafers.

[vicente408]

Step one: Find the Terrasque.

Step two: Beat the Terrasque until it's "dead", then pin down the body with unmovable adamantium rods.

Step three: Harvest Terrasque meat for eternity.

Step four: Profit.

[daggaz]

Everybody missed the real point here.

1.Go Lich. No, make that LichKing.

2.Kill everybody, raise their corpses.

3.Now nobody is hungry, and you rule the empire, problem solved.


Its like... nobody on these forums actually reads the comic, or what?? =P

[Talanic]

Some of you are grasping what I'm thinking of, but with a clear(er) head I'm refining some.

Nothing has to be done to magic--or very little--just the number of spellcasters. If clerics are common but clerics able to cast third-level spells aren't, they'll never meet demand; they may be able to purify food and drink that have gone bad, but even supplies of rotten food will run out. A level 5 cleric can cast create food and water, but that's only enough to supply fifteen people with food for one day, per cast. That's not enough, even if the cleric's a few levels higher.

Druids SEEM like a bit of a sticking point, but there's a good reason they wouldn't be a problem. They CAN cast plant growth, but why would they? This is nature. They do not interfere with nature, nor are they nature's masters. There isn't enough food and people are starving, but that's just the way life goes; nature is NOT merciful. Druids would be targets of massive violence, but they're really just sticking to their true beliefs. Casting plant growth to feed people when the famine is a result of natural circumstances would be a violation of their code and might be enough for a druid to fall.

Goblinoid races would be riled up, as they are perfectly willing to consume their fallen foes. People who hold land that was traditionally fertile would be the targets of riots, vandalism and assaults, even though they're not really doing better.

So, what would happen right away is a flocking of peasants towards the religious orders, as low-level clerics could cast purify food and drink, stretching stores out. As the famine continued, higher level clerics would be called on to provide more food. Soon, though, the problem exists that there still won't be enough food, and those clerics are starting to burn away a lot of spells simply to maintain the situation--leaving them vulnerable to people who still don't have food and are desperate enough to resort to violence to get it.

Big moral quandary time: how does an order of paladins deal with a starving mob that just wants food and is attacking the church (which doesn't HAVE food) to get it?

[Twilight Jack]

The real trick to making this work is in the DMG. A community of 3,000 people has roughly 30-40 PC class spellcasters present, only 1/5 of whom are above 3rd level. Now, of them, how many are good-aligned and would happily help the population at large? Let's assume an even distribution of alignment amongst these casters. That means that you've at most 4-5 people in a large town of 3,000 with both the ability and inclination to keep the populace from starving through magic. Now you've got 2,600+ 1st level commoners who need to be fed, who've nothing to offer in return except their own empty bellies.

Those with the money and the connections are going to be able to keep food on their plates, for the most part. Neutral and Evil spellcasters might not be willing to play bounteous provider for those with nothing to give, but they are likely to reconsider if the price is right.

The fact is, there is no way that 4 or 5 spellcasters of 4th-9th level can reliably feed 3,000 people over any span of time. On any given day, only so many could eat. That means a rationing system would need to be implemented in order to ensure that as many as possible could be fed every day. That means bread lines and food riots. That means mothers with sick and starving children assaulting the PCs to be given more food than is due her.

Multiply this problem by a continent. Sure, the spellcasters get more powerful in larger communities, but so do the obstacles to implementation.

I'd say, allow whatever magic the characters want. Use subtle tweaks on things like plant growth to ensure that it's not a long term solution. Maybe magically grown corn is just less nourishing than the natural variety. It would make sense, after all.

If summoned creatures disappear when killed, then it stands to reason that any part removed from them does as well. After all, those pieces are no longer alive.

Troll meat is inedible. The tarrasque does not appear at the player's whim and even if the players found it, its meat is probably too tough to digest and continues to attempt regeneration within the belly of the eater, causing gastrointestinal catastrophe.

In short, don't nerf the magic system to make your plot easier on you. Let the players feel clever and powerful that they can create food for so many, just make sure that they always know it's not enough. They can fight the symptoms of mass starvation, but ultimately it won't matter if they can't find a cure.

Maybe, if they could bring together enough powerful spellcasters to concentrate on the problem . . . But how to convince them? . . . they've got their own cities to feed.

Perhaps the gods could be convinced to lift the blight upon the land. . . but what might they require in return?

A community a week's ride away seems to have bountiful harvests and more than enough food. What do the characters do when they discover that the town's elders are sacrificing a child a week to a Demon Prince in return for their good fortune?

[Bonecrusher Doc]

Twilight Jack has the right idea. Limited number of magic users, impossible to feed everybody. Even if you could make enough food for everybody, there would be the problem of distributing it. Some people will horde food. Some unscrupulous people will see an opportunity for power in exploting the division between the haves and have-nots.

The party could try to just run their own soup kitchen but will ultimately fail, especially with the famine getting worse and worse. Instead will have to go on an adventure:

-Why did the river suddenly dry up? Did somebody far upstream divert its course?
-Why did the migrating herds of bison/mammoth/whatever not come to the valley this year?
-Where is this plague of locusts/rats/whatever coming from?
-Why is the king taxing his country into complete economic failure and starvation?