1. How would the wraith interact with whatever triggers the collapse of the ceiling since they are insubstantial?
2. Level up the Beholder to 11 and add a few monsters to pad out the encounter since you're running with a larger than normal party.
3. If there's a lot of undead in the area, have some negative energy pools. Black liquid that absorbs light. Maybe even causing it to be dim in a Burst 1 radius around the pool. You could also have some good old fashioned spike and spear traps from the floor, walls, and ceiling. Rolling boulders. If your dwarves were heavy into runes, have a few of those on statues or sarcophagi.
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
Insubstantial things still have some effect on solid matter even if it is reduced. Or he left a minion in the previous room to set off the collapse? Honestly I don't see it being that big a deal. The whole place is ancient and crumbling anyway, it could just be a coincidence.
Maybe the Beholder zaps an eye ray at the door and traps them in with him himself? The Wraith has convinced the Beholder that if he doesn't deal with the party then more dwarves will come to kick him out of his lair so he has good motivation for cutting off their escape.
A lot of the games I've been playing in/GM'ing for the last few years, the players are fairly familiar with the system (almost universally some variant of d20, be it 3.5, Saga, or 4e) and more than a little character optimization occurs, as well as some players leading other players in their character build choices. Fine, I suppose, if that's your thing. I'm not a big fan of it myself, and I think it's led to a lot of d20 burnout on my part. Familiarity breeds contempt, etc.
So I've been wanting to hit the bookshelves and try out some other games I've had for a while and have never gotten to play. Among them are the Serenity RPG, Hollow Earth Expedition, and Mouse Guard. I won't get into the logistics of my plan to try these out in a timely fashion, but long story short I'm starting with Mouse Guard.
I'm really excited to be playing a game where none of the players are familiar with the ruleset. Herein lies my problem.
One of the potential players is interested in borrowing my rulebook or getting a pdf copy to look things over before we play. Aside from needing the book to familiarize myself with the system before I GM it, I'd also like all of the players to start on a clean slate, and explain the system to everyone as they're creating their characters and as things happen during play. It worked out pretty well in the World of Darkness game I played for a while. He thinks this seems a little weird. I'm not militantly opposed to him borrowing/reading the book before we play, but I'd still prefer everyone to be on the same page. Am I out of line with this?
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
If you're the D/GM, the players get what you offer them. You can't stop him from buying his own copies, but you certainly don't have to lend him yours if your preference is everyone starting at the same spot on the learning curve.
It's not like you're demanding he sacrifice a goat to play in your group.
Though, I suppose if you think it's such a sticking point with him that he might decide he doesn't want to play, and that's not an outcome you're willing to allow, he probably won't get more than a cursory understanding of the rules by the time you start playing anyway.
Thanks, I just needed someone else's perspective; I wasn't sure if it's preferable to start a new system with everyone at square one.
He's in regardless, having had the most interest in the game for the longest time aside from me. I won't be starting until after we get back from GenCon in August anyway, so having the book on loan for a short time before then won't make a big difference in the long run, as you said.
My players (well, mostly my Ranger player) have been bugging me for a dump of Comrade's Succor scrolls so they can trade around healing surges between fights. This is mostly because I have two melee strikers and a melee leader, and a defender that generates enough temp HP to barely need a single surge after any given fight. I have finally relented, after a fashion. I am going to give them the following item, which is going to seem pretty benign at first and then work its way up to cool, and then annoying and then scary and end with "holy frick it's going to kill us all."
This is very loosely based on an item from 2nd Edition called a "Spirit Womb". They used to be huge elementals/constructs that could be ridden around and have PSPs siphoned off of them. This is going to be a little thing that starts as a turtle shell carved out of sandstone and feeds off of the party's healing surges (which they will be happily giving it) until it has enough power to pupate and start wrecking house.
Here's the initial item writeup:
Wondrous Item: Earth Spirit Womb Effect: As part of a short or extended rest, any character can spend a healing surge to activate this item. Once activated, that character can spend any number of healing surges, which are then stored in the Spirit Womb. During a short or extended rest, any character can retrieve surges stored in this manner and add them to their number of available surges. No character may exceed their normal maximum number of surges in this fashion.
So basically the Fighter spends a surge to activate it (which is just lost) and then can put any number of his remaining surges into this thing for someone else to pull out. It works exactly like Comrade's Succor as far as the players know, except that it's repeatable.
Then, as more surges are channeled through it (I'm counting the ones that are used to activate it and any that are "left" in it at the end of the day), extra effects start to show up. Like a character that retrieved surges from the womb gets DR 5 until the end of their next turn whenever they spend a surge. Something that gets them thinking that this thing is pretty cool. And then I'll throw in something like Slowed (save ends) on spending a surge, something to get them wary of using it maybe. Though I'm betting they become pretty dependent on it pretty fast. Then, at some point well down the line, the thing finally busts open and pops out fully grown from the plane of Earth as a huge elemental creature and tries to eat them during their short rest. Because I think this sounds like fun.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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AnialosCollies are love, Collies are life!Shadowbrook ColliesRegistered Userregular
edited July 2011
Sounds awesome. Perhaps have every benefit its ever given, like the DR 5, be one of the elemental's attributes. Same thing with the detriments, except they are caused by its attacks or an aura. Basically, without a guaranteed TPK you should make them hate you.
Freaking awesome is all I have to say to that. So good I may filch it myself. Of course with proper credit to you once it has eaten a sleeping party member.
It's fashioned after an item with the same name from the AD&D version of the setting. I won't be informing the players of the name until it "gives birth" and eats them.
Leading on from my earlier posts, we actually managed two encounters last night! The skeleton trap chamber one went very well. The party took a while to twig that these skeletons are going to be coming forever unless they do something but once they got the idea they had fun herding the bad guys to the defenders whilst finding and playing baseball with the skulls.
The Beholder fight was then great fun for both sides of the screen as we're all intimately familiar with this D&D classic but nobody had actually ever fought one. Eye beam shenanigans all around.
Ok. Next session, next request for idea help.
The party need to interrupt a ritual to raise a dragon. The dragon skeleton has been unearthed (map in Keep on the Shadowfell) and four captured dwarves are circled around it. As the party enters the scene, a silver dagger is plunged into the chest of each captive and visible chains of life force start to drain from them into the dragon as it starts to raise.
The end of the encounter I envision is that a PC tries to pull a dagger from the chest of one of the captives. At this point the ritual all goes highly tits up, the energy back fires along the chains and the four captives messily explode. A swirling maelstrom then whips up the dragon bones along the party members and sucks them all into the Shadowfell. They drag themselves from the wreckage as the Wraith who was conducting the ritual flies off into the sky on his shiny new Dracolich (tied to the Shadowfell due to the interrupted ritual, but the PCs don't yet know this) leaving the party stranded in the wasteland.
The question is, what comes in between? How do I have a fight that will keep the PCs away from the captives?
My lame ideas are limited to some kind of impenetrable magic plot barrier that will only drop once certain bad guys have been defeated, or bad guys with some kind of rule breaking power to whip the players back into the fight whenever they break for the captives.
What about adding some kind of terrain effect to the skeleton itself that triggers when a PC gets within a few squares of it? Give them a push + slow vs Fort, maybe. Or a prone if you want to be really punitive, since that will put them out in the middle of the combat on their backs. That should give them some pause in approaching the dwarves at least until the combat is over
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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AnialosCollies are love, Collies are life!Shadowbrook ColliesRegistered Userregular
Use enemies that get OAs or stuns on shifting players and controllers, should be able to either deter the players from moving towards the captives or throw them away once they get close. If you don't think that will suffice, make it take more than one turn to yank out a dagger.
So I learned something about DMing. Alcohol makes the shy roleplayers very talkative, there was a threefold increase in in-character conversations. But when they hit the first encounter, they just sort of stared, then argued, then took a smoke break and never returned to the table.
So, D&D Beer: +5 charisma, -5 Fortitude and instant fail any endurance checks.
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AnialosCollies are love, Collies are life!Shadowbrook ColliesRegistered Userregular
We drink occasionally at my Sunday game. It does make the RP flow easier, but we all have the option to just stand up and take a break pretty much whenever, so mass exit upon combat doesn't happen.
I don't drink (I'm the DM), but my players are all professionals or late-stage college students and there's a fair amount of alcohol consumed at our table.
As long as it doesn't get to the point where we're losing game time because someone can't pass their dexterity check to roll the dice, it's usually fine.
Idea: The skeletal servants who plunge the daggers into the captives, then remove a large gem from the handle of the dagger and insert it into their ribcage. If someone tries to grab a dagger, the ribcage gems each flare up and for each flare the dagger being grabbed glows a bit brighter. Then energy release hits the potential rescuer. Make endurance check to hold on with DC set by number of ribcage gems still active (killing skelton destroys gem) starting at impossible if all four still going. If the endurance check is passed then the player can make an athletics check to yank out the dagger with the previously stated terrible consequences. If the endurance check is failed then take an attack vs fort which hit or miss throws the PC quite some distance and knocks them prone.
Make the gem holders evasive ranged types. Throw in some defender style enemies to tie the PCs down.
It'll be a party of 5 on Weds. Given that they don't actually have to kill all the monsters and that they'll be quite spaced out in defensive lines that wait for the PCs to come to them, how many monsties can I throw at them?
Party is at level 11.
I'm thinking 2 x lvl 11 Skirmisher (Chain Devil reskinned to Spinewhip Skeleton),
2 x lvl 11 Artillery (Nganga reskinned to Skeletal Archer firing various cursed bone bolts, lose the Curse of the Oba power),
2 x lvl 10 Brute (Skeletal Tomb Guardian)
and 4 x lvl 11 Minion (Putrescent Zombie).
The skirmishers and artillery being the afore mentioned gem keepers. Too much?
And for the DCs to hold on through the energy pulse:
No gems destroyed = DC infinity
One gem destroyed = DC 27 (Hard)
Two destroyed = DC 23
Three destroyed = DC 19 (Moderate)
Four destroyed = DC 0
Always a moderate DC athletics for pulling the dagger out.
If it all goes wrong and they pull out a dagger on like turn two then I can readjust the end condition on the fly and require more daggers to be pulled out :P
My game is Dark Sun, and it's kind of light on the maical items (though not as much so as I really feel like Dark Sun ought to be), and so I've given each of my PCs a scaling boon that is basically their own personal artifact. They build up resonance with it and it improves based on their actions, etc. But that's basically just background for why I was thoroughly inspecting this sheet.
I had a player rebuild their character fairly extensively recently, so some of the stuff that their boon did was no longer valid. Having asked them to send me their new character sheet, I discovered that this character is rather poorly built. Almost as badly as one could misbuild a non-Essentials character. For example this character, at level 12, has Axe Expertise, Master at Arms and Weapon Expertise (Axe). There are also a number of obvious trap feats that got picked here, and some other build missteps that could be very easily corrected. I don't think it's out of line to say that this character could be roughly 50% better at doing its job with a few simple changes (that would honestly combine into a fairly extensive rebuild).
Now, I'm not generally one to dictate how my players build their characters, but it really seems like not offering some degree of help would be a disservice at this point. Combined with the fact that this player basically uses one At Will over and over again unless they are blowing dailies for encounter long effects (rages), I really want to point them toward the Slayer and say go nuts. But this is kind of a sensitive topic, so I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I really don't want to say the equivalent of "Hey, so I noticed you suck at D&D" because that's just not true and pretty darn hurtful.
Anybody got advice on how to broach the topic without making it personal? Because I really do think this player would be much happier with a Slayer than their current Barbarian, but I really don't want to dictate their choices to them.
Ask them if they're feeling like they're not terribly effective or contributing enough. If they're happy as they are and don't see a problem, it's not going to hurt them to continue. If they have noticed they're contributing less than the rest of the party, then they'll likely want some advice.
That would be great except that I virtually never see this person outside of game night. So I would have to specifically contact them to ask that, or do it at the table and put them on the spot. Either way, it's sending the message that the character is obviously substandard and will probably make them feel bad.
Is he counting the bonuses? Because then you have an obvious thing to point out. How is he your player, through a person you know better? Because if so, you could ask him to help him work it out.
Also, be aware that there is a rule for the basic low level magicness in Dark Sun on p209: Inherent Bonuses. (Which add scaling hit, damage and defenses based on level).
Since he sent you his character, I don't think it's out of line to send it back and say:
"Hey, these feats have the same type of bonus, so unfortunately they don't stack. You probably want to pick some different feats to replace two of them. Some great other options might be: X"
Then you fill in the X with the feats that would be better, and let them make the choice on whether or not to fix it. If they want to just keep playing w/ the substandard character, that's their decision, but at least you've made the effort to broach the subject...and I don't think anyone would get upset at the DM trying to help them.
Then, if the player is receptive to the help, you can start looking at other areas, like powers/items/etc.
@OptimusZed I had to come up with a treasure on the spur of the moment last night and have entirely stolen your nascent elemental egg idea. The party are currently overjoyed with what they have dubbed the 'orb of sacrifice'. A perfect sphere of rock that feels slightly warm to the touch and when filled with two surges allows a second player to draw one of them out. The feeling of secret knowledge is delicious.
I'm think that after 10 uses a band of red will appear around the circumference and when using a donated surge you'll get +1 to all defs for a round. After 20 uses the band will pulse and you'll get a 50/50 chance of +1 to all defs and to hit and dmage for a round or -1 to all the above for a round. 30 uses is elemental monstrosity hatching time!
My DM slot in the campaign is coming up again and I'd love to try and bounce more ideas of you guys as you come up with the best stuff.
Here's the pitch as I currently see it:
The party have been sent off to investigate Wraith activity (see OP) far from any kind of transport portal so will need to do a bit of a wilderness trek. After half a days travel they'll reach a hill from which they can see in the distance a small village, and not far from that, a stereotypical wizard's tower. Then WHOOOMF! they all get blinded, deafened and knocked off their feet as the top of the tower explodes in a massive sphere of elemental energies. Afterwards, the tower is knackered, but there is a noticeable lack of damage to the surrounding trees etc.
When they reach the village, it will be deserted as the magical explosion has done terrible elemental things to all sentient beings it passed. Ice block people, signs of spontaneous combustion, half melted corpses, more ideas please?
What has happened is that the wizard owner of the tower has been wraith possessed and put to work on using his knowledge of the elemental plain to create new undead gribblies. Then using an elemental artefact of amazing power (and exploding it in the process) set in process a spell that will have plot repercussions down the line. For now I just want the party to know that their enemies have just unleashed something huge and the consequences are yet to hit them.
So when the party come to the tower, the top floor being blown out but the lower floors being intact, they now have to fight their way through to the top finding out what happened on the way and defeating the experimental productions of an elementalist gone necromancer.
Ideas I'm struggling with:
- Exposition vehicle. Diary entries around the knackered tower a bit too trite. Keen to avoid the messy game bogging down interrogation of evil survivors. Any ideas?
- Hazards in an elemental planeswalker gone evil necromancer's tower. [Element]- [Undead Monster] obviously. I was going to do a bit with a room that can chuck you into the elemental chaos if you foolishly mess with the arcane equipment arrayed within. Again hit me with your best ideas!
- Interesting things or challenges going on in the village.
Just had a thought. How about the wizard's gormless assistant had his head neatly severed by a falling beam in the explosion, but the head fell in a tank of necromancy ju-ju juice so is still alive? Gives me a bit of an exposition point at the end for anything they've not picked up on, but lets me then just have the head finish dying now it's out of the tank if questioning starts to drag on.
Posts
2. Level up the Beholder to 11 and add a few monsters to pad out the encounter since you're running with a larger than normal party.
3. If there's a lot of undead in the area, have some negative energy pools. Black liquid that absorbs light. Maybe even causing it to be dim in a Burst 1 radius around the pool. You could also have some good old fashioned spike and spear traps from the floor, walls, and ceiling. Rolling boulders. If your dwarves were heavy into runes, have a few of those on statues or sarcophagi.
Maybe the Beholder zaps an eye ray at the door and traps them in with him himself? The Wraith has convinced the Beholder that if he doesn't deal with the party then more dwarves will come to kick him out of his lair so he has good motivation for cutting off their escape.
A lot of the games I've been playing in/GM'ing for the last few years, the players are fairly familiar with the system (almost universally some variant of d20, be it 3.5, Saga, or 4e) and more than a little character optimization occurs, as well as some players leading other players in their character build choices. Fine, I suppose, if that's your thing. I'm not a big fan of it myself, and I think it's led to a lot of d20 burnout on my part. Familiarity breeds contempt, etc.
So I've been wanting to hit the bookshelves and try out some other games I've had for a while and have never gotten to play. Among them are the Serenity RPG, Hollow Earth Expedition, and Mouse Guard. I won't get into the logistics of my plan to try these out in a timely fashion, but long story short I'm starting with Mouse Guard.
I'm really excited to be playing a game where none of the players are familiar with the ruleset. Herein lies my problem.
One of the potential players is interested in borrowing my rulebook or getting a pdf copy to look things over before we play. Aside from needing the book to familiarize myself with the system before I GM it, I'd also like all of the players to start on a clean slate, and explain the system to everyone as they're creating their characters and as things happen during play. It worked out pretty well in the World of Darkness game I played for a while. He thinks this seems a little weird. I'm not militantly opposed to him borrowing/reading the book before we play, but I'd still prefer everyone to be on the same page. Am I out of line with this?
It's not like you're demanding he sacrifice a goat to play in your group.
Though, I suppose if you think it's such a sticking point with him that he might decide he doesn't want to play, and that's not an outcome you're willing to allow, he probably won't get more than a cursory understanding of the rules by the time you start playing anyway.
So... in summation: It's up to you, boss.
He's in regardless, having had the most interest in the game for the longest time aside from me. I won't be starting until after we get back from GenCon in August anyway, so having the book on loan for a short time before then won't make a big difference in the long run, as you said.
This is very loosely based on an item from 2nd Edition called a "Spirit Womb". They used to be huge elementals/constructs that could be ridden around and have PSPs siphoned off of them. This is going to be a little thing that starts as a turtle shell carved out of sandstone and feeds off of the party's healing surges (which they will be happily giving it) until it has enough power to pupate and start wrecking house.
Here's the initial item writeup:
Wondrous Item: Earth Spirit Womb
Effect: As part of a short or extended rest, any character can spend a healing surge to activate this item. Once activated, that character can spend any number of healing surges, which are then stored in the Spirit Womb. During a short or extended rest, any character can retrieve surges stored in this manner and add them to their number of available surges. No character may exceed their normal maximum number of surges in this fashion.
So basically the Fighter spends a surge to activate it (which is just lost) and then can put any number of his remaining surges into this thing for someone else to pull out. It works exactly like Comrade's Succor as far as the players know, except that it's repeatable.
Then, as more surges are channeled through it (I'm counting the ones that are used to activate it and any that are "left" in it at the end of the day), extra effects start to show up. Like a character that retrieved surges from the womb gets DR 5 until the end of their next turn whenever they spend a surge. Something that gets them thinking that this thing is pretty cool. And then I'll throw in something like Slowed (save ends) on spending a surge, something to get them wary of using it maybe. Though I'm betting they become pretty dependent on it pretty fast. Then, at some point well down the line, the thing finally busts open and pops out fully grown from the plane of Earth as a huge elemental creature and tries to eat them during their short rest. Because I think this sounds like fun.
Thoughts or suggestions?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The Beholder fight was then great fun for both sides of the screen as we're all intimately familiar with this D&D classic but nobody had actually ever fought one. Eye beam shenanigans all around.
Ok. Next session, next request for idea help.
The party need to interrupt a ritual to raise a dragon. The dragon skeleton has been unearthed (map in Keep on the Shadowfell) and four captured dwarves are circled around it. As the party enters the scene, a silver dagger is plunged into the chest of each captive and visible chains of life force start to drain from them into the dragon as it starts to raise.
The end of the encounter I envision is that a PC tries to pull a dagger from the chest of one of the captives. At this point the ritual all goes highly tits up, the energy back fires along the chains and the four captives messily explode. A swirling maelstrom then whips up the dragon bones along the party members and sucks them all into the Shadowfell. They drag themselves from the wreckage as the Wraith who was conducting the ritual flies off into the sky on his shiny new Dracolich (tied to the Shadowfell due to the interrupted ritual, but the PCs don't yet know this) leaving the party stranded in the wasteland.
The question is, what comes in between? How do I have a fight that will keep the PCs away from the captives?
My lame ideas are limited to some kind of impenetrable magic plot barrier that will only drop once certain bad guys have been defeated, or bad guys with some kind of rule breaking power to whip the players back into the fight whenever they break for the captives.
Help?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
So, D&D Beer: +5 charisma, -5 Fortitude and instant fail any endurance checks.
You win at DMing. I must do this to my party at some part. Totally inspired.
But five or six beers? I'm worse than when I started. It's a very tiny point at the top of that hill before you tumble down the other side. :P
That being said, since my group is all in our early 30's and we get together only a few times a year for a "big dorky weekend"...it's kinda the point.
As long as it doesn't get to the point where we're losing game time because someone can't pass their dexterity check to roll the dice, it's usually fine.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Make the gem holders evasive ranged types. Throw in some defender style enemies to tie the PCs down.
Sounds like a plan to me.
Party is at level 11.
I'm thinking 2 x lvl 11 Skirmisher (Chain Devil reskinned to Spinewhip Skeleton),
2 x lvl 11 Artillery (Nganga reskinned to Skeletal Archer firing various cursed bone bolts, lose the Curse of the Oba power),
2 x lvl 10 Brute (Skeletal Tomb Guardian)
and 4 x lvl 11 Minion (Putrescent Zombie).
The skirmishers and artillery being the afore mentioned gem keepers. Too much?
And for the DCs to hold on through the energy pulse:
No gems destroyed = DC infinity
One gem destroyed = DC 27 (Hard)
Two destroyed = DC 23
Three destroyed = DC 19 (Moderate)
Four destroyed = DC 0
Always a moderate DC athletics for pulling the dagger out.
If it all goes wrong and they pull out a dagger on like turn two then I can readjust the end condition on the fly and require more daggers to be pulled out :P
My game is Dark Sun, and it's kind of light on the maical items (though not as much so as I really feel like Dark Sun ought to be), and so I've given each of my PCs a scaling boon that is basically their own personal artifact. They build up resonance with it and it improves based on their actions, etc. But that's basically just background for why I was thoroughly inspecting this sheet.
I had a player rebuild their character fairly extensively recently, so some of the stuff that their boon did was no longer valid. Having asked them to send me their new character sheet, I discovered that this character is rather poorly built. Almost as badly as one could misbuild a non-Essentials character. For example this character, at level 12, has Axe Expertise, Master at Arms and Weapon Expertise (Axe). There are also a number of obvious trap feats that got picked here, and some other build missteps that could be very easily corrected. I don't think it's out of line to say that this character could be roughly 50% better at doing its job with a few simple changes (that would honestly combine into a fairly extensive rebuild).
Now, I'm not generally one to dictate how my players build their characters, but it really seems like not offering some degree of help would be a disservice at this point. Combined with the fact that this player basically uses one At Will over and over again unless they are blowing dailies for encounter long effects (rages), I really want to point them toward the Slayer and say go nuts. But this is kind of a sensitive topic, so I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I really don't want to say the equivalent of "Hey, so I noticed you suck at D&D" because that's just not true and pretty darn hurtful.
Anybody got advice on how to broach the topic without making it personal? Because I really do think this player would be much happier with a Slayer than their current Barbarian, but I really don't want to dictate their choices to them.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Thoughts of a Part-Time Hobbyist - A Wargaming and RPG Blog
Which is what I want to avoid.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Also, be aware that there is a rule for the basic low level magicness in Dark Sun on p209: Inherent Bonuses. (Which add scaling hit, damage and defenses based on level).
"Hey, these feats have the same type of bonus, so unfortunately they don't stack. You probably want to pick some different feats to replace two of them. Some great other options might be: X"
Then you fill in the X with the feats that would be better, and let them make the choice on whether or not to fix it. If they want to just keep playing w/ the substandard character, that's their decision, but at least you've made the effort to broach the subject...and I don't think anyone would get upset at the DM trying to help them.
Then, if the player is receptive to the help, you can start looking at other areas, like powers/items/etc.
I'm think that after 10 uses a band of red will appear around the circumference and when using a donated surge you'll get +1 to all defs for a round. After 20 uses the band will pulse and you'll get a 50/50 chance of +1 to all defs and to hit and dmage for a round or -1 to all the above for a round. 30 uses is elemental monstrosity hatching time!
My DM slot in the campaign is coming up again and I'd love to try and bounce more ideas of you guys as you come up with the best stuff.
Here's the pitch as I currently see it:
The party have been sent off to investigate Wraith activity (see OP) far from any kind of transport portal so will need to do a bit of a wilderness trek. After half a days travel they'll reach a hill from which they can see in the distance a small village, and not far from that, a stereotypical wizard's tower. Then WHOOOMF! they all get blinded, deafened and knocked off their feet as the top of the tower explodes in a massive sphere of elemental energies. Afterwards, the tower is knackered, but there is a noticeable lack of damage to the surrounding trees etc.
When they reach the village, it will be deserted as the magical explosion has done terrible elemental things to all sentient beings it passed. Ice block people, signs of spontaneous combustion, half melted corpses, more ideas please?
What has happened is that the wizard owner of the tower has been wraith possessed and put to work on using his knowledge of the elemental plain to create new undead gribblies. Then using an elemental artefact of amazing power (and exploding it in the process) set in process a spell that will have plot repercussions down the line. For now I just want the party to know that their enemies have just unleashed something huge and the consequences are yet to hit them.
So when the party come to the tower, the top floor being blown out but the lower floors being intact, they now have to fight their way through to the top finding out what happened on the way and defeating the experimental productions of an elementalist gone necromancer.
Ideas I'm struggling with:
- Exposition vehicle. Diary entries around the knackered tower a bit too trite. Keen to avoid the messy game bogging down interrogation of evil survivors. Any ideas?
- Hazards in an elemental planeswalker gone evil necromancer's tower. [Element]- [Undead Monster] obviously. I was going to do a bit with a room that can chuck you into the elemental chaos if you foolishly mess with the arcane equipment arrayed within. Again hit me with your best ideas!
- Interesting things or challenges going on in the village.