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Seatbelt
2008-12-16, 01:22 AM
As many of you may or may not know by now I'm running a ravenloft game and I have a question about a sinkhole of evil I want to add to the encounter with one of my BBEGs. The location would be in a room in his attic in a flat in a city.

The character in question discovered the body of his murdered wife, and his daughter kidnaped/dissapeared/whatever. His intense despair at the loss of his wife and child has led him to tap into non-euclidian geometry and Things Men Should Not Know to try and ressurect his wife/locate his daughter/go back in time to stop the event/something noble but because of the lovecraftian conotations, ultimately evil.

His daughter is another BBEG. Something about a quest for beauty or revenge on her father for his (percieved) failure or something similar. I'm debating whether the teenage daughter murders the mother and flees or the mother is murdered by an old enemy of BBEG1 and his daughter abducted in infancy or very young, and brought up to hate the father. (she is statted as a cleric with heavy emphasis on shadow. I used the Captain Spooky Shadows prestiege class from the Cdiv web enhancement. I forget what it's called exactly. Domains = darkness and trickery. Exact motivation not nailed down yet, but mechanically she serves a purpose within the world so her motivations are pliable while her crunch is not.)

Anyway, I'm having trouble deciding what kind of rating to give this sinkhole. There was no specific onging crime like the examples in the book. The murder was a brief event, and the mother wasnt tortured or tormented, just killed. But BBEG1's grief has been persistent (20 years or so) and intensely focused on this room. He only truly feels the grief while in this room, playing his music and communing with unnatural things. I'm thinking that the sinkhole's rating should be around 3, and I guess I'm looking for some validation.


Idealy when the party finally encounters him he's in the full midst of his madness and the room 'sings' in absolute harmony to his utter despair as he makes one last attempt to call to the unknown. I want the room to do all kinds of things to keep them from killing him until they've been suficiently abused, because he's pretty fragile as a villian.

But I'm not sure how to justify that given the rules. I've already taken HUGE liberties with his statbloc. I've rewritten the Music of the Outer Spheres feat, redesigned the dirgesinger prestiege class, altered bardic music so it works with the alienist prestiege class.. I'd prefer not to just say "Ok. Everything in this room works exactly how I want, and I'm more or less disregarding all the rules to make it work."

I'd also like to put in an aside and say I really appreciate this community. It really helps me get my creative juices going to ramble on about my problems and questions even if I don't get many responses. You guys are amazing with rules and crunch and you're all very helpful and creative people.

Zen Master
2008-12-16, 05:32 AM
As many of you may or may not know by now I'm running a ravenloft game and I have a question about a sinkhole of evil I want to add to the encounter with one of my BBEGs. The location would be in a room in his attic in a flat in a city.

The character in question discovered the body of his murdered wife, and his daughter kidnaped/dissapeared/whatever. His intense despair at the loss of his wife and child has led him to tap into non-euclidian geometry and Things Men Should Not Know to try and ressurect his wife/locate his daughter/go back in time to stop the event/something noble but because of the lovecraftian conotations, ultimately evil.

His daughter is another BBEG. Something about a quest for beauty or revenge on her father for his (percieved) failure or something similar. I'm debating whether the teenage daughter murders the mother and flees or the mother is murdered by an old enemy of BBEG1 and his daughter abducted in infancy or very young, and brought up to hate the father. (she is statted as a cleric with heavy emphasis on shadow. I used the Captain Spooky Shadows prestiege class from the Cdiv web enhancement. I forget what it's called exactly. Domains = darkness and trickery. Exact motivation not nailed down yet, but mechanically she serves a purpose within the world so her motivations are pliable while her crunch is not.)

Anyway, I'm having trouble deciding what kind of rating to give this sinkhole. There was no specific onging crime like the examples in the book. The murder was a brief event, and the mother wasnt tortured or tormented, just killed. But BBEG1's grief has been persistent (20 years or so) and intensely focused on this room. He only truly feels the grief while in this room, playing his music and communing with unnatural things. I'm thinking that the sinkhole's rating should be around 3, and I guess I'm looking for some validation.


Idealy when the party finally encounters him he's in the full midst of his madness and the room 'sings' in absolute harmony to his utter despair as he makes one last attempt to call to the unknown. I want the room to do all kinds of things to keep them from killing him until they've been suficiently abused, because he's pretty fragile as a villian.

But I'm not sure how to justify that given the rules. I've already taken HUGE liberties with his statbloc. I've rewritten the Music of the Outer Spheres feat, redesigned the dirgesinger prestiege class, altered bardic music so it works with the alienist prestiege class.. I'd prefer not to just say "Ok. Everything in this room works exactly how I want, and I'm more or less disregarding all the rules to make it work."

I'd also like to put in an aside and say I really appreciate this community. It really helps me get my creative juices going to ramble on about my problems and questions even if I don't get many responses. You guys are amazing with rules and crunch and you're all very helpful and creative people.

From a story-telling point of view, this sounds rather aewsome. From a rules perspective, it sounds like something I'd not hesitate to do. But I know my players, and they value story much higher than rules, and actually want me to spring surprises on them they could not have expected with their knowledge of the rules.

So - if you were gamemastering my group, I'd go with what suited the story best, and to Carceri with the rules. But you know your own group best.

Anyways, I'm also thinking: This room sounds like the living nightmare of your BBE. A dliemma without solution, that haunts him continually. I'd say in such a place, a certain dreamlike topography wouldn't be unfair. Having the room break up into isolated 'islands' connected by bridges of dispair, rivers of tears and staircases running with innocent blood isn't out of the question, I think. Meanwhile, the spectres of his years of misery would assault anyone trying to interfere.

Zen Master
2008-12-16, 05:38 AM
Ech - doublepost. *hangs head in shame*

hewhosaysfish
2008-12-16, 07:34 AM
To keep the guy alive during the fight, you could play up the non-euclidean geometry: the party fighter charges directly at him but somehow ends up on the ceiling, arrows followinf pretzel-shaped trajectories, that sort of thing. Fireballs could hit the anything, everything or nothing.

It could come across as DM fiat, though, if you just declare "You miss". Randomise the results of movement, ranged attacks and area attacks while giving the PCs the chance to roll Int- or Wis-based checks to figure out a pattern (at whatever cost to their sanity...) and ignore this randomisation.

Alternatively, come up with an actual pattern to the effects (at whatever cost
to your sanity :smallsmile:) and let the players try to work it out, maybe with Int or Wis checks for small clues. It doesn't have actually be a genuine mathematical model (:smalleek:) as long as it's consistent enough for you to apply it in combat. This would work especially well if you do your combat on a grid.

And then you have to think about how this applies to the BBEG. Is he equally disoriented or does he understand it well enough to compensate? If you really want your players to stab you in the stomach with their pencils, give him the ability to change the geometry :smallamused: