Anyone here currently playing D&D 4th Edition?

And of you guys watch The IT Crowd? There was a very funny RPG-centric episode this season.

What I've been doing in my campaign is making small armor and weapon improvements available. I have monsters that drop certain items like iron ores and rabbit hides. With those, they can take them to an NPC in town and buy a new piece of armor that, say, has +5HP to armor. The more monsters they kill, the easier it will be to upgrade their weapons. +5HP isn't much, but if I were to have a piece of equipment available that gave a permanent +1 boost to dex or something, that would be too much.

I've yet to figure out what magic weapons and items will be good for the characters, but don't want them to be too good that it'll break the game. So far, I've come up with wands that can cast 5 extra magic missile spells a day (fire, or lightning, or ice) and maybe a wand that casts a healing spell.

Also, a necklace made out of animal fangs that will give them a +1 bonus to attack rolls for one encounter, activated only once a day, with 8 total charges.

5 Magic Missiles per day is alot of castings of Magic Missile...I say make it a 10 charge wand (rechargable if we can afford it), or even a 20 charge wand with 1d20 charges remaining on it, or something, but to have it recharge daily is insanely overpowered. The necklace is a neat idea, but you need to think of a reason to explain the bonus, either magical or otherwise. It could be a mundane necklace with a tooth from a chimera, and the latent magic from the creature is what causes the boost (something to come up during appraisal), but to have a mundane item give a boost, no matter how small, there needs to be a reason behind it other than just arbitrarily handing them out. As for boosting regular items with other items, again, you have to make sure it's balanced. You may say you get an extra HP when boosting with this item, but if it's a common item, there's nothing to say the players won't pile on 300 applications of the boost. Keeping game balance is extremely tricky to do. Frankly, the item system you have running has potential, but it functions too much like a video game to really work as it stands. I like the idea of finding mundane items and making useful stuff out of them, but at the same time you shouldn't be getting boosts from eating a salad (although using alchemy to brew mild potions with the items in question does the desired effect and making complete sense game-wise). You definitely have some neat ideas, they just need to be properly implemented to make everything make sense in a gameplay perspective.

He could also fake the difficulty of the mobs they're fighting. If he accidentally made them too buff, just buff everything they encounter.

One of my DM's loves to run overpowered campaigns. He gave us bazookas and jet packs last session and the game's STILL hard to beat. The boss fight alone took over 4 hours.

Umm...isn't that how video game crafting works? You say you like finding mundane items and making useful stuff out of them, but that's usually the way video games do it. In fact, in the D&D guides, it tells us to give the PCs items so they can take them to appraisers, then to crafters to make more useful items out of them.

Hmm...speaking of salads....

I do have a salad listed, but the boost is very small.

Beggar's Salad = Romanov Leaves + Emerald Lettuce + Coniferous Carrot & Culinarian NPC
[Stats: dodge first attack against you. (melee)]

It could be said that since this entire area seems to be leaking magical energy, it ends up in some of the plants. Eating one of the plants doesn't do much, but those three combinations taken together ends up producing a very minor result.

See, now that's a legit explaination. I can live with that reasoning. As for making useful stuff, I was thinking more like taking a rock and a stick and making a spear out of it or something, not necessarily to have the best gear in the game from that. Also that it was too much like a video game in that the items we need are just...there. Not to say it's a bad plan, it just needs tweaking. Of course, after a few more sessions it may work better than it does in my head

Ohhh...so you want to make it harder. Well, that can be arranged!

Speaking of which, we still need to come up with a background for why you left the pirates. Your dad is Francini, leader of one band of pirates, but the other players don't know this yet. I think they may know you are a pirate though, since you showed your tattoo to the pirate prisoner.

From what you emailed me earlier, you said you were sick of being in the pirates. Your dad sent you to the funeral, which is where you met the other adventurers.

In any case, I'm having a tough time with your backstory, i.e. how does your family's current occupation make you want to leave it, and was it something you decided just recently, or if you've been away from home a long time.

Well, the players know I'm a pirate, but their characters don't. Hell, if the Paladin knew he'd never let me do anything outside of his supervision ever again Anyway, I was thinking that my character had no real issues with his family or homesickness or anything like that. I'm thinking he had more of a moral dilemma. We'd have to discuss it for future plot hooks you might try out, but I was thinking perhaps that he was part of a raiding party and just didn't have the stomach for the atrocities being committed by his fellow pirates. I'm also thinking that he used the opportunity put forth by being sent to the funeral as his way out. This part's up to you, but it's possible that his father knew he wanted out, and sent him to the funeral knowing he wouldn't return (although this part should probably be unknown even to the character, whether or not you use it or not). If he did have foreknowledge of his son's intentions, nobody else should know about it, as it would likely be as big an offense to fascilitate the desertion of another as it is to desert yourself. No matter the circumstances of my departure however, word will be out that I had deserted, and only pirates considering desertion themselves should even be friendly to me. With my desertion being recent, however, it's likely that word hasn't spread about it outside of a few pockets here and there, so until my character builds a reputation (maybe level 3-5), he would be relatively left alone. However, when a reputation is built, it opens the possibility of perhaps a price on my head or something. Honestly, I haven't given it too much thought, so we should likely hash out details at some point in the future.

I've come up with a campaign in the span of two hours.



The world is divided into two main regions - the islanders to the southwest and the mainlanders to the north-east. They are divided by what is essentially a permanent blockade in the shape of a series of islands known as the Arc of Fire (similar to the Ring of Fire on Earth).

Their hatred for each other stems from creation itself. The mainlanders believe the world was created by the tear of a goddess, and out of her anguish rose the land. Unforunately the tear (the ocean) was nearly destroyed by the rage of Moradin, who forged islands out of volcanic rage. For destroying the peaceful ocean, Moradin is forever hated by the mainlanders.

The islanders however believe that Moradin forged the whole world out of lava, the ultimate feat in craftsmanship. They pray to him every year to keep the volcanoes calm, as there is at least one volcano in every island in this world. They see him as a brilliant creator and as the ultimate protector and giver of life.

Neither interpretation corresponds to the true nature of Moradin.

In reality, neither creation story is correct.
Asmodeus, the god of the 9 layers of hell, is the man who created volcanoes and the destruction they bring.
He nearly destroyed the world once.
It was he who created the islands through his power, not Moradin, and the other gods stopped him and left him in a weakened state.
He is now collecting souls to strengthen himself, and his strength is exponentially increasing every year, creating earthquakes and eruptions all across the south-western half of the world.
Unfortunately, no one knows how he is harnessing so much power. The amount of souls he is obtaining is not growing quickly enough to explain the recent chaos across the globe.
Something else is fueling him...

My players will reach epic level and fight with the gods to defeat Asmodeus, and destroy the true source of his power!


Pretty good, huh?

Yup, so far. (Rep ain't working so I can't rep u.)

It seems like a very epic campaign. If they will be fighting gods at or near the end game, it sounds like a pretty good story.

Only thing is, are they starting at level 1 and going all the way up? Or are they starting higher? If they are starting at level 1, they will need something more....how do I say....mortal, in my opinion.

There is a mystery in this already, which is good. It gives them something to have to find out. The hatred of Moradin, however, is it a deep seated hatred, or just a hatred such as the way a christian hates the devil? I am a christian, and I can't say I have a seething hatred of the devil. Is the hatred realistic? If the island formed over millions or billions of years, would it make sense that the mainlanders hate this deity so much? Especially generation after generation. How does this ring of fire affect the everyday lives of the islanders and mainlanders? Are the gods involved with their lives all the time, or are they absent gods?

Those lil dots on the map, are they all volcanoes?

It needs work, but it has a good background so far. It needs moar human element though, IMO.

Cool idea but your world design looks a bit simplistic- although maybe that's by choice. Maybe when they reach epic level the heroes will discover that Moradin, the Goddess, and Asmodeus are but three of numerous gods/demons/devils, and that their world actually doesn't reside in the Prime Material Plane proper, but in a 'pocket-verse' created created by Asmodeus as a wellspring of power for himself.

Maybe the task of the heroes becomes not just to defeat Asmodeus, but to find a way to transfer their world into the proper prime material, making it part of an existing planet or harnessing their EPIC power and moving the entire realm out of the pocket-verse into reality, thereby offering salvation to their people and opening up the whole pantheon of creation to them. Sort of letting them out of Plato's Cave, so to speak.

I guarantee he'll be planning smaller foes to get the characters up to god-slaying skill levels. He's set a planned outcome (challenging deities) for the party, but the party's path to that outcome can take many forms and will likely traverse through mundane events like battling a tribe of orcs or standard dungeon delving, and the greater scheme will only be revealed to the players at such a point that they can actually DO something about it

EDIT: Honestly, I think a simple plan like the one he outlined is probably the best way to go about, especially if he's a good storyteller. It makes the campaign far more open-ended and thus more unpredictable for both the DM and the players, making it more fun in the long run.

See, I would do all this, but I have three hours a week for 4 months to wrap up the whole thing, skipping weeks for people's exams, etc.
I'll basically have 3 of those 4 months that will meet, so going into immense detail will drag this out way longer and I won't be able to finish.



So yes, super simplistic by design.

Also, maybe I'm werid, but I plan only as far as saying "Hmm we should do this today!" and then BS most of my campaigns on the spot. My players usually create the plot on their own, but I'm able to twist their ideas so it looks like I planned it all along. Then everyone is like "WOAH THAT WAS AN EPIC STORY" and I hardly even worked on it.

Edit:

This WILL happen though. I'm planning on an epic final battle between many of the gods and ALL of Asmodeus's forces, and ALL of his demons from ALL 9 layers of hell. I'll devise a way to do combat efficiently through this, but I will eventually introduce many, many gods into this.

Your obsession with starting at level one amuses me.
In all seriousness, they'll start close to epic level and unfortunately be "poofed" into epic because of lack of time. (Meaning, they'll be close, they'll fight some battles, and the gods will see their merit and something will ensue that will give them that last bump they need to advance to epic level)
I'll make that super fun though,I just gotta figure out how to throw them into an epic world of epic abilities in the most awesome way possible.
Again, I only have the spring semester to run this. It's only a test for the epic campaign this will turn into in grad school next year.

Now I'll take the other questions:
1. The hatred for Moradin is so severe that the ring of fire is a blockade between the peoples. They won't speak to each other. It makes sense that they'd hate each other for the same reason that people in the Middle East bomb each other - stupid prejudices and centuries of hatred and exaggerations carrying on and on and on.
2. The large mainland was created instantaneously by the goddess and her anguish, as the story goes. The islands were KABOOM into existence when Asmodeus snapped long ago and started exploding the planet.
3. The ring of fire is inactive until the story begins, so it serves as a bunch of military checkpoints and basically, again, a blockade between the two peoples. Think of it as a large, battleship-filled chain.
4. The gods are actually more concerned with the general balance of the world than they are about the general health of the Wise Man in Mountain Village #4. They step in and make appearances occasionally, but it's nothing extravagant. The gods seem to have lay low since their victory over the Devil. Perhaps they were drained in battle and also need to recover. I'm not sure yet.

If you're going to have somewhat weakened gods, you might consider eliminating divine spellcasting almost entirely (save through items, specific "chosen few" of a particular deity, etc), in order to play into the whole "conserving power" plan. Can't save one's energy when you have to answer the prayers of every priest on the planet. If you do this though, you may want to consider a way to convert some of the more necessary spells (mainly healing) into an arcane format. Regardless, you should avoid allowing a multitude of clergy in such a scenario. I would even go so far as to not allow priests at all, and restricting the "chosen few" to being paladins (if keeping divine casting) or going the arcane route (if the gods completely ignore the faithful). Just a thought

I just realized... they're not gonna have to beat ONLY Asmodeus, they'll have to take the other Eight Lords of Hell as well.
And since they're not likely to be spread out in a campaign that's slated to run for 4 months... this could be really fun. Basically tell them to load up supplies to take on ALL the lords one by one, one epic fight after another, until they reach Asmodeus and take him down.
And there's no guarantee, I love a campaign that ends with a chance for failure.

The Dark Sun books are about the Gods leaving the world or being absent, etc. No clerics and no Paladins because no gods to pray to. But in 4th ed. people get "healing surges". The new Dark Sun books just got released last week.

And yes TKO, I like starting off at level 1! People can't cure as well, and as DM, I don't hafta worry about people being brought back from the dead that are suppose to stay dead. There is moar drama in death.

The thing I'm finding about DMing is, the players generally take more time to finish something than I think.

I had a quest in the last session, where farmer Smokey said he needed help populating his field with snails. So he asked the adventurers to do it. It was a pretty simple "yes, we'll do it" or, "no, you are hiding something". Instead, it turned into this huge roleplaying instance that went on for about 25 minutes. Not saying it was bad at all, and in fact, it was quite amusing and unexpected.

That's all down to experience. Like I said before, one of my DM's is so good that he gave us jet packs, and, get this - new super-pimp weapons, ability score boosts and gear to cover our weaknesses.

And the boss battle was STILL four hours of nerve-wrecking near-death experiences.

The problem I'm finding right now is, there is a pretty big gap in the HP stats of all the characters. The Fighter has something like 23HP while the weakest guy in the party, (the_wizard_666) has 7HP. It kinda makes it difficult to choose which monsters to throw at them. A monster who can do 4 damage each attack is a bit too easy for the Fighter, but would kill the Rogue in less than 2 hits.

Oh, the_wizard_666 is not a wizard in DnD. He's a Rouge. A Rouge that decided NOT to buy any armor, for some reason. He ended up with about 60gp left after equipment. Not sure why he did this, but I think maybe it had something to do with the high DEX that he could just end up dodging attacks. Still, everytime he gets hit, things get a little dicey. :flow2:

That's why we have a cleric! Also, rolling a 3 and having 8 Constitution (for -1 hit points/level) hurts. Of course, it's hard to roll higher than 3 on a d4...stupid low hit points for Sorceror levels

Oh, and the lack of armor was due to the caster levels I planned to take. Remember, I salvaged some leather armor off those Kobolds to keep me alive. Once I can cast invisibility I plan to not wear armor anymore anyway. Kind of redundant when the enemy can't see me.

Bring the lady of pain in this campaign. Here's a good dnd site for you scorpo.
http://www.planewalker.com

Hmm, that's alright I guess. But reading through the invisibility spell description in the PHB, it says you become visible after you attack a creature. You could surprise an enemy, but after that, you would still have to deal with your low HP and AC. You're planning on being the last into battle and just using sneak attacks and flanking bonuses? That could work, assuming you don't piss the creature off enough for it to turn around and start to hit you.

By the way, for those not in the know, the_wizard_666 is building an arcane trickster.

As DM I'd find a way for the mobs to see through invisibility later on, just to mess up his trick.

I don't plan for the creature to SURVIVE the sneak attacks. And it's not like I'm planning to run in the midst of a mob and attack in the middle (although that would probably shock the shit out of them if I did). My primary spells are illusions, not planning on taking any attack spells at all, so it becomes a question of simply making sure I get in and out quick. So far I've been pretty resourceful, so I'm pretty sure I'll last

I'm not a one-trick pony y'know. Not building solely to use invisibility. I know anything with infravision will see through my invisibility. He just doesn't like that I'm running into combat, but it so happens that because of my dex boost that I have a fairly high AC. And believe me, when we actually fight something extremely dangerous, I plan to put a bit more strategy in than "run headlong into battle"

^ Oh, I don't care whether you're running headlong into battle. I just wondered why you did it with such low HP. I can partially understand it now, because you have a high DEX that ends up affecting your AC.

And I am a newbie DM, so I don't care if you break the game. Those things are just things I will have to take into account for the future encounters. The only thing I worry about is making the monsters too hard, or throwing too many of them at the group, and people dying where they shouldn't.

Another thing I worry a bit about are resurrection type spells. Sometimes for story's sake, someone is suppose to stay dead. If the Cleric can resurrect them, I'd have to find ways to adjust the story for those instances. (Like Hernandez the pirate who was suppose to be dead, but ended up captured instead. He survived a battle, and two poisoning attempts! The guy just won't die!)

If he won't die, stop trying. Play him as an NPC, throw him in battles, involve him in stories, up until we part ways. The fact that he wasn't supposed to be there but is gives you plenty of opportunities to utilize him later to play into the story. Just because he doesn't fit NOW doesn't mean you can't work something out for LATER. He's only gonna be along for a few sessions, then he'll have earned his freedom (or possibly kicked the bucket), but don't outright TRY to kill him. Hell, it gives a character that can be assumed if one of the players happens to bite the bullet prematurely. We travel with a handful of NPCs, so why not make up character sheets for them just in case? There's absolutely no reason that if a character dies one of the players can't temporarily assume control of an NPC and make a new character before the next session, but if they die and you have nothing prepared, it would require a halt to the session in order to build a character, and then a deviation while we try to find a way to bring the character in.

When my NPC's are meant to die, they just get killed by the boss, swarmed or trampled by the beasts, or disappear into a plot-cave of doom.

But I generally like my NPC's.