| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 03:07:15
I gave the druid in my group a book that has a catalogue of several fey backroads in it, including how to get the guardian's attention and what to bride the guardian with to let a petitioner pass. The book is at least in part a way of allowing the party to plan two trips that they one to take soon, one to Damara and one to Anauroch.
The People of the Black Blood are already after the book, having killed the druid's master. Further, none of the backroads lead directly where they want to go, thus insuring that they will spend at least a tenday in each area pinpointed the locations they are going to. Finally, each guardian has its own foibles as to what will get their attention and what they will take in payment. There is a chance that the party will either not be able to pay or may not interest the guardian enough to get it to show up in the first place.
I want to know if anyone has any opinions on pitfalls I might run into letting them keep this book. |
| 17 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 05 Sep 2005 : 07:26:36
Okay, ressurecting this to ask a few questions from my fellow scribes regarding this particular item.
In order to establish a big quest that is tied to his deity, my back story for the book is that each gateway isn't just a conveiniant short cut, but also a location that had to do with a lost pathway that leads to a Malarite artifact, the first heart that Malar ever tore out, but did not eat. He saved this heart for one of his followers brave enough to find its resting place.
Followers of Meilikki found out about this pathway to Malar's realm, and this test, and hid the components to the gateway, though they could not destroy them. The heart itself is going to have a mastive Malar worthy beasty guarding it, but I was wondering if any of my fellow scribes had any ideas about what the clues and components to the various gateways might be.
I have gateways to Chult, the Moonshaes, the Riftwood, the Great Glacier, Hartsvale, Damara, the High Forest, Ardeep, the King's Forest, and I think a few more. Any ideas on ways to make the gate seem unique as an entrance to Malar's realm? What might the individual pieces and keys be? |
| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 08 Jul 2005 : 02:22:19
There must be some strange mojo between Lythari, monks, and fey crossroads, lol. |
| Vangelor |
Posted - 08 Jul 2005 : 00:44:05
I sent my players down a fey backroad from an obscure bardic enclave in the hills to a fabled, long-ruined elven temple-city inhabited by wild elves and hidden by its ancient, failing mythal.
Of course, that path only works at Midsummer, and is only one way... And the hidden elven city is inadequately defended (aside from its unreliable mythal), hundreds of miles from their homes, and surrounded by vicious Vhaeraunite drow... Closest portal home is probably somewhere around Myth Drannor.
And they are level 3.
Oh - funny coincidence - party leader? Lythari druid.
The rest of the lineup - Human Fighter from someplace dull and normal (he's our relief: "What do you do, Jim?" "I hit it with my sword."), moon-elf rogue who thinks Evereska is a good place to be away from for the next few hundred years, ghostwise halfling monk who is very lost and confused, An urdunnir dwarf cleric far, far from home, and a half-elven bard - who is the one who can find crossroads, and gain entry.
Book most frequently being fought over? Races of Faerûn.
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| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 07 Jul 2005 : 02:16:00
Heh heh, thanks to a Shadovar diplomat and some Veserabs they never want to travel in the Plane of Shadows again, and the funny thing is they didn't even get injured/inconveinienced in any way. They were all just very disturbed by the discriptions of the journey.
And the party is currently:
Chondathan (Cormyrean) Male Cleric of Helm, 5th level, Lawful good
Chondathan (Cormyrean) Male Rogue/Druid of Meilikki, 2nd/2nd level, Neutral good
Half-ogre Female Monk of Helm, 3rd level, Lawful neutral
Lythari Male Sorcerer, 1st level, Chaotic neutral
The Lythari is the only one that can read the book, and the druid won't let him near it (see here for details: http://www.candlekeep.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3820)
I plan on making sure some items that the fey guardians want for payment are difficult to procure, but overall the trip is still faster. I did toy with messing with them and making them skip a year travelling through the fey realms, but right now I am having too much fun with the current events in 1372. |
| tauster |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 17:03:33
we used to play appr. every 2 weeks, but the last two years it dropped to every 3 or 4 weeks due to some people relocating, or having examns in spring and late summer.
another factor is that we favour a roleplaying style, so it´s normal that we spend a whole session doing nothing (or not much anyway) that results in getting experience points. |
| Forge |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 16:57:04
Dunno, I think that a player should be rewarded for creative use of magic. At the very least, I don't think it's right for a player to be penalized for using a spell for exactly what it's intended to be used for. A good example is the Wish spell... improperly worded, it can really mess with you, however, we are given several good examples of perfectly acceptable use-cases that can be used pretty much risk free.
Magic DOES make things easier, and shortcuts a lot of things, but a good DM makes allowances and adjusts to what the players throw at them just like a player does with the GM's plot. |
| Jindael |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 16:32:35
Wise move on the spell acquisition bit. I’ve had the “If you don’t want me using that spell, then don’t give it to me!” conversation with my GM so many times. I like when a DM pays attention not only to building a good game, but what the players have access to as well.
But I have to ask…how often do you play? O_o 5 years and only 10th level? That’s slow even by 2nd edition standards. And 2ed took forever. The phrase “Could I please be a 9th level cleric now?” Will haunt me forever.
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| tauster |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 16:08:38
what your dm did is exactly the thing i try to avoid.
my players are around lvl 10 now (we needed about 5 years to get there, so they really earned it) and spell acquisition is one of the things i tried to made difficult enough to get the players to appreciate every new spell they got (apart from the basic stuff. nobody should spent years trying to get magic missile.  ). i also try to avoid spells i (as dm) don´t feel comfortable with, but everything i do must have an "in-realms"- reason.
for an example, see my musings about the permanent light spell:
http://www.candlekeep.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4352
i also try not to repeat things, like always getting the party into trouble when they use spells in a way i don´t like or did not foresee. in that case, its my liability as dm to adapt the story to give them the feeling that they truly can do whatever they want to do.
at last (but not least!): my players definitively don´t belong to the abusive sort. no powergaming here, so the aforementioned problems don´t come up very often. |
| Jindael |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 15:43:23
A little off topic here, but my last DM did that.
DM: So, it’s going to take 5 days to get to the town of-
ME: Wait, since were meeting the bard there, I scry him.
DM: Okay…he’s walking down the road.
ME: Great. I study the area, then grab the rest of the party and Teleport there.
DM: *Huffs* Fine…*rolls dice, which, surprise surprise, come up with an error.* You are now 100 miles away from the town. *Goes back to looking at a wandering monster table*
ME: *restraining myself* I teleport again. *rolls my own dice* 52, it’s good.
DM: *Grumbles* No, you aren’t. There’s a magical barrier, blah blah blah, teleport into stone if you go, blah blah blah.
ME: I play a fighter.
And this happened about 3 different times to me, and about 20 times all around the table. We were consistently punished for going up in levels, getting new spells, and then actually using them. And it seems that travel spells are one of the most often targeted. (Wish being the most targeted; I just spent 5000xp or aged a bunch of years, I paid for this, don’t you dare pervert my wish!)
I’m not saying you are like this Tauster. My old DM was….”special”.
Just to bring back another incident at how nitpicky she was about magic…
In a 3ed game, I was playing a fledgling bladesinger, much more fighting than magic. I still could only cast about 3 first level spells at day at this point, despite being something like 10th level.
Some mage was trying to make a magic item that would open a portal to a specific location on demand. She screwed it up, and monsters came through, etc etc, time to save the town.
We fight our way through some critters, and eventually find the item in question; a mirror about the size of a person, complete with a very complex and unlabeled “control panel” of gems.
We are obviously supposed to try and guess how to work the magic item by trial and error. And we try once, and accidentally summon some demon thingy. After the (treasure-less *cry*) fight, we try and think of a different way of doing this, without getting into combat again.
Suddenly, I remember my pathetic spell list includes Identify.
And the DM rolls her eyes and starts a tirade about how magic just makes things to easy, and were taking the fun out of the game, etc etc. She totally ignores the fact that the rest of the table thinks the idea is great (Especially one of the fighters who is busy trying to stop her bleeding).
Maybe I’m just jaded because I had this particular GM for about 6 years, but being punished for using what you have just rubs my fur the wrong way.
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| tauster |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 14:48:43
quote:
Originally posted by Jindael
What level is the party, and what classes are they?
The reason I ask is because as soon as the party gets some good travel magic, the biggest pitfall will be that the book won’t be as valuable to them anymore, and that plot thread might die.
my players learned that travel magic is not to be used frivolously:
- teleport: when you get stuck in solid matter, you´re more or less dead. (hasnßt happend yet, but i bring that warning up regularly, most often coming from npc´s)
-spells that let the party use other dimensions are my favourites: shadow walk or other spells that access the shadow/astral/etheral plane are a downright invitation for the dm to bring in all kinds of monsters, ether storms, githyanki and so on! my players soon learned that at most times, travelling through the underdark is preferable to a trip through the etheral plane or the plane of shadow.
- other travel magic might speed up a voyage, but somehow the amount of magic used to get faster from A to B seems to be correlated with the amount of trouble one meets en route, or the possibility to altogether end up in C instead of B.
example: the party wants to travel from tilverton (1371) to southern daggerlade. normally a trip of afew days, but it´s deep winter and they had to get fast to their destination (pursuing a villain), so they use "clear the path" (clerical spell from tome of magic, 2e) to negotiate the snow. ...which of course get´s them the attention of a zhentarim sky mage, who had spotted the path from above and would otherwise simply have overlooked them.
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| Jindael |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 14:13:02
What level is the party, and what classes are they?
The reason I ask is because as soon as the party gets some good travel magic, the biggest pitfall will be that the book won’t be as valuable to them anymore, and that plot thread might die. (Although the fact that the folks chasing them have killed the druids master will probably keep it going.)
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| Forge |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 13:53:08
Charge them something they DON'T want to give up. Like XP. Or gear the guardians to the situation. The Fey are closely tied to the land so if there are disturbances in the lands there could be warps in the pathways.
Sides, who says the gates are faster than walking? |
| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 10:58:40
Tauster, thats exactly why I wanted to opt into using the fey crossroads rather than having them find a portal network or something similar. |
| tauster |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 10:50:34
quote:
Originally posted by KnightErrantJR
I was just thinking . . . if they ever wanted to part with the book it would be a very good addition to Candlekeep . . .
i for one would be most interested in seeing the book.
not because of the specific backroads but because to "get the feeling" of them.
i think the concept of the fey back-/crossroads is even better for play than the "faerun-is-riddled-with-portals"-concept.
why?
because the fickle nature of the guardians allows the dm even more elbow-room when it comes to denying players to use them:
when it comes to portals, you "only" have to find out what makes them operate (special times, passwords, keys, etc).
a fey guardian, however, might need all of the above:
- being only there on special times (new moon, for example),
- has to be called with its real name (=password equivalent) and
- demand something special (=portal key) like a bottle of rare whine.
...and after the players found out all that, they need to argue the fey into letting them through - that´s when the dm can still deny them portal usage , which isn´t possible whith "regular" portals. besides, it has huge potential for great roleplaying!
also, regular portals might be taken advantage of by using them regularly and too often ("let´s go window shopping in waterdeep!"). a fey guardian might quickly get get irritated ("what, you again?¿?) and refuse to open the fey road.
hmmm... seems i´ve gotten in a rambling mode again...  |
| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 04:11:14
I was just thinking . . . if they ever wanted to part with the book it would be a very good addition to Candlekeep . . . |
| KnightErrantJR |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 04:10:07
Currently, as I have explained to the players, the book is heavily cross referenced and written in a stilted dialect of Sylvan, meaning that even someone speaking the language has to spend perhaps 1d4+1 days researching any given location. Ironically, the party lythari sorcerer is the only one that reads Sylvan, not the druid, and the druid doesn't trust the lythari as far as he could throw him, lol.
Obviously, once they come up with a pathway, I note it as being one already researched, and it becomes "set" in the campaign. Still, guardians being fey, even if they do what they need to to attract them and pay them off once in a while the fey might just decide not to open the backroad for them.
I have a very evil vision of them using the crossroads to enter Anauroch and ending up in an oasis surrounded by very upset Bedine . . . |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 06 Jul 2005 : 03:54:21
One possible pitfall is that at some point in the future, when you want them to spend a long time in transit, they can shortcut around it. Ditto if there's an area-specific encounter/adventure you've got planned for while they're traveling.
And of course, if bad guys get a hold of the book, that's a whole new host of problems -- possibly including angry druids, who are tweaked at the PCs for letting such a resource fall into evil hands. |
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