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Ari
Acolyte
40 Posts |
 Posted - 29 Jan 2017 : 22:05:48
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So there's a pretty clear hierarchy to the various and sundry groups of secret people who gather in secret basements and secretly grouse about how all those people not in their club will be so sorry.
The Knights of the Shield/Hidden Lord, everyone's favourite insider traders to the god of treachery, are on base level not very dangerous. They have massive economic pull, exchange tremendous amounts of information for a world without centralized communication infrastructure and occupy positions of political heft on top of their vast wealth. Which is not much against the likes of the servants of the Aboleth Sovereignty, the Zhentarim or even AN enclave of the Red Wizards.
So making them the ultimate evil behind everything means that other organizations need to provide the muscle and such. After sessions of doing whatever high-octane action, is it better for there to be some kind of final battle or else have their defeat be a lot more political, social and personal rather than martial?
And of course there's the matter of what the players want, but in the experiences of people who have actually game mastered before, what's often been the more successful play?
Partly it's because the Knights are supposed to have been this pernicious thorn in the side of the PCs, undermining their successes, poisoning their political and diplomatic wells, potentially even arranging their exile from Faerūn into the Trackless Sea. Another part is how that relative weakness means that the PCs' inevitable return and methodical Count of Monte Cristo-style revenge is a lot less bogged-down in trying to explain how these disgraced exiles can muster the force to challenge one or other of the more powerful cabals.
So, in short, in your experiences what's a good way to keep PCs progressing without uninterrupted/unqualified success, what's a good non-infuriating way(for the players) to pull the rug out from under the PCs and how do you keep attention and a sense of threat when dealing with something so relatively low on the totem pole of evil as the Knights of the Shield?
I have my own ideas of how to do that, but being a rank novice figure I'd better ask all the questions I can.
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Faraer
Great Reader
3308 Posts |
Posted - 30 Jan 2017 : 02:33:06
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The hierarchy isn't supposed to be as clear as all that; you can play the Knights of the Shield, for instance, as anything from a slightly more widely based local merchant cabal to diabolical masters of the world with governments in their sway.
The big thing is to make the PCs work to figure out what's going on through the multiple layers of intrigue by which the people working against them will be manipulated and directed. They'll have access to gates, which they'll try to keep secret, and concealing magics. But in this sort of campaign you might miss other possibilities by trying to focus the PCs on reactive vengeance against a single foe. The Knights of the Shield will have more important purposes to direct resources to than opposing a single adventuring company, unless that company is itself committed against them for some reason. May the PCs not choose other goals, and come into conflict with other foes unconnected to the Knights?
There are many reasons why these intrigues rarely break out into direct combat. One is that powerful individuals have magical defences that make attacks on their headquarters extremely risky, even if they aren't backed by archdevils. Another is that at any given time there will be other power groups for whom (they think) the Knights of the Shield are useful allies, pawns or decoys, who will join in against anyone seeking to eradicate them. In the Realms as she is writ, making these wholesale alterations to the political landscape is very, very difficult: if groups like the Harpers think in terms of outright annihilating major despotic power groups, it's over decades and centuries. But your campaign may vary! |
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Ari
Acolyte
40 Posts |
Posted - 30 Jan 2017 : 05:30:33
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Yeah, the Harpers being actually useful and competent is a serious crimp in any would-be worldbeater's plan. It's like if the Justice League got down and dirty in the fight against tyranny on their Earth rather than just fighting supervillains. One way I'd figured on eluding that was by making the Knights' base plot something so legit(making the North less of a frozen wasteland) it had honestly slipped even their radar.
It WOULD be a little much to assume the players would give many damns if they're fighting a faceless menace. What if the Knights had a face, some obstructive busybody whose government job gives them a plausible reason to be in whatever area the players have been blowing up. |
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2460 Posts |
Posted - 30 Jan 2017 : 17:10:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Ari
Yeah, the Harpers being actually useful and competent is a serious crimp in any would-be worldbeater's plan. It's like if the Justice League got down and dirty in the fight against tyranny on their Earth rather than just fighting supervillains.
Harpers are busy covering up the existence of Eldreth Veluuthra who kills as many of the Harpers as they can. And have a similar strange dance going on with the Emerald Enclave.
Harpers part-openly oppose Zhentarim and the priests of Bane, and Red Wizards (even when the "peaceful" party is on top, they remain among the worst bunches of necromancers, summoners and major slavers on Faerūn's surface), and they cannot even do much about all the minor slave-traders, from that guy in Scornubel to those in Westgate, nor even deprive the latter of their main defence - the Night Masks, who also keep Westgate in the state of a "hive of scum and villainy". And never mind Skullport. Or even the Arcane Brotherhood.
Harpers are a very small organization spread very thin, whose most powerful members are far too busy with bigger fish than an occasional aboleth or three.
Considering all this, for Harpers the likes of Knights of the Shield are enemies on the 3rd-priority list at the worst times. While at the good times, they can be kept in check and used against worse threats, like Haedrak did with Lord Hhune. |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch |
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Ari
Acolyte
40 Posts |
Posted - 04 Feb 2017 : 10:54:29
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On the other hand, the style in 5e feels like a weird Age of Complacency. Sure, the Zhents and Emerald Enclave have reasons to join forces. With the Order of the Guantlet. Making the Harpers in this relative time of stability the nigh-omnipresent Force of Justice they never were back when things were really terrible(and when it'd have made a real difference) might help make the factions...anything.
Fair point about the threat the Knights represent compared to the other bad guy gangs. I'm spoiled from Mutants & Masterminds, where of course the heroes would go after even the smallest of criminal groups. There's a lot of other calls the Harpers still have to answer before their agents reach "these merchant princes are up to something" as a relevant problem. Plenty of excuses for why nobody's dealt with this until now. |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11961 Posts |
Posted - 04 Feb 2017 : 15:31:41
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quote:
Originally posted by Ari
Yeah, the Harpers being actually useful and competent is a serious crimp in any would-be worldbeater's plan. It's like if the Justice League got down and dirty in the fight against tyranny on their Earth rather than just fighting supervillains. One way I'd figured on eluding that was by making the Knights' base plot something so legit(making the North less of a frozen wasteland) it had honestly slipped even their radar.
It WOULD be a little much to assume the players would give many damns if they're fighting a faceless menace. What if the Knights had a face, some obstructive busybody whose government job gives them a plausible reason to be in whatever area the players have been blowing up.
The harpers are only effective so long as they are hidden as well, and no one turns around and uses magic to turn them into their dupes. Using the harpers against themselves in a massive misinformation network could be useful for the knights of the shield. After all, what if the knights of the shield fed information to the harpers that noble X was a knight of the shield that was bothering the players..... which in truth noble X is just a noble who is actually an issue for the Knights of the Shield and which they'd like dead.... so maybe the players destroy said person's base then realize the noble isn't the source of the issue.... they still don't know who the knight of the shield is, but they decide that the best way to fight them is to make this noble successful. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Knights of the Shield, Rug-pulling, Pecking Order
