Post/Author/DateTime	Post
sidekick 06-14-06, 04:39 PM	General - Eberron: DM needs help for side quest Okay first off, my player stay out!!!!! And yes I do know some of your screen names. Now that we have that out of the way – I need your help fellow DMs & am calling out. Currently one of the characters in my group has a cursed magical item that they need to have taken off them, which was placed on them by a rather mad and evil member of the Karrn military, who is now dead a buried in his facility that the group totally blew up. Here’s a quick party breakdown for you, just in case you need/want it: Everyone is 6th level, nearing 7th. Changling rogue1/Tramsuter5 – Lhazaar native who is seeking to become a recaster Human rogue3/cleric3 (Traveller) – from Thaliost Human Monk6 - from Karrnath Warforged fighter6 – the tank! The character in question is the changeling, the magic item effectively stops her from changing form in any but the most superficial manner [EDIT: This includes and goes to all magical abilities/spells that affect her physical form - so alter self etc can't be used. For a Changling Transmuter - that's a big deal!]. So she’s been asking around / doing research about how to get rid of them and I’ve given three options that she needs to choose from IC & then get the group to go along with. So here they are: 1) The cursed items were made in a manifest zone of Daavni by an eldritch machine and would need the creation skill of either the Twelve or the Arcane congress. She can try to find where they were created and then infiltrate the research facility to take them off. 2) A changeling supremacist org (modified Tyrants) is willing to trade her the info she needs to get them off, but they want a Dark Lantern agent killed & his info on the Tyrants erased.. 3) The Third option is dealing with a Lich. Now obviously the Lich will want something from the changling arcanist in return. But what. I’m thinking something from somewhere where his undead minions would not be able to go. So, basically I need help on these issues (please don’t all feel you have to give an idea for each, if I get 3 ideas for each one from 9 different people I will be a very, very happy man ). A) Where should the research facility be & how could the group find it? B) The assassination is a bit straightforward & I was wondering how I could spice it up? You know add in a twist that could compromise the group. C) What does the Lich want and where is it located. I’ve had fleeting ideas of something from a church in the Mournland (what) or perhaps something from an ancient temple near the fist of Onotar. I dunno really, what’s something that an ancient and mad Lich would want, but something that only a non-evil group could get for him? Many, many thanks in advance…
Kreistor1 06-14-06, 05:03 PM	All that just to get rid of a Cursed Item that only locks out a racial feature? Killing a Dark Lantern is risking a Death Warrant. Destroying the faciility of a member of a major magical house is risking a Death Warrant. Assisting an evil Undead is an Alignment risking activity. As a player, I'd just pass. That is just way off the scale for something that should be as simple as, "I walk to the local Church of the Sovereign Host, pay a wad of cash, and get a Remove Curse cast." Unless it was an off-the-scale evil artifact, I'd either suck up the loss of my Change Self ability, or just retire the character. Scale that back. A lot. You're asking the character (and consequently the party) to compromise their morality to get rid of an annoyance.
Errant 06-15-06, 02:22 AM	Firstly - as Kreistor says it does seem a lot to overcome a curse that just locked down "most" of a racial ability. Of course if it is a majorly cursed item it would make more sense if thats only the first symptom of a growing cumulative effect... Assuming the background on the strength of the curse IS more than just an excuse to annoy the PC/player and/or deal with the campaign dangers inherent to shapechangers with high disguise skills: A) (1) Not sure you mean a research facility where the item was created, or one where they can find out how to destroy/disable it. Either way it could easily be in a wing/section of the floating halls of Arcanix or the towers of The Twelve would be a good excuse to introduce one of those famous location plus add in the complication of having to penetrate the facility without alerting/killing scores of "innocent bystanders" (ie wizards and students at the location pursuing their own completely seperate agendas). If it is supposed to be where the item was created, ie situated in a manifest zone of Daanvi/the plane of Perfect Order, where the eldritch machine was, it could be a small zone that manifested around the eldritch machine after it was moved there. A) (2) What information did they get when dealing with the now-dead badguy? If they didn't get any clues before they walked away from the smoking rubble of his facility they'll have to rely on luck to find an NPC that recognises the markings/aura on the cursed item or someone that can successfully cast Legend Lore to provide a useable clue. B) What if the Dark Lantern agent is posing as a loyal aid to an influential aid so a non-Brelish lord? Since they're spies they could easily have infiltrated any number of places. This could open the possibility of tracking down the agent's contact(s), finding/creating evidence of his true identity/role and placing it where he will be revealed. Plus, what's more important: killing the agent or erasing the information he has? If the PCs can think of a way to erase the information without killing the agent you could even make that worth bonus XP. Maybe the agent is a "disgruntled" Brelish expatriate working as an instructor at the Rekkenmark Academy (or mistress to the commandant?). Publicly she hates Boranel and all he stands for but secretly she monitors Karrn cadets at the academy and reports on any significant associations or news that come to her attention. If the information is recorded in a carefully hidden/disguised journal, the PCs might only have to sneak into the Rekkenmark Academy, penetrate the agent's rooms, destroy the part of the journal that contains the information on the Tyrants and "accidentally" drop the rest where its bound to be found by the Rekkenmark commanders. The agent may wind up forced to flee Karrnath to save her skin (with a grudge against the PCs of course). C) How about he wants a rare tome known to be held at a university in Shae Cairdal in Aerenal. A place his usual minions can't get to because of the presence of the Deathguard. Whether the PCs steal it, buy it, or copy it they have to avoid their association with the lich being detected by the Deathguard and heaven help them if the Deathguard track them back to where they deliver it to the lich!
sag3 06-15-06, 03:55 AM	The lich wants the item. Who doesnt from a position of power have to deal with pesky shape changers. The lich simply wants to built more of these and so wants the party to gather information (which it can rip from their minds if they are unhelpful afterwards). I would expect such an item would have come from Thrane in the war against shaper changers (lycanthropy). It would be very plausible that they asked Cannith to help which where at the time mostly based in Cyre (mournland). Twist to remove the item one must have lycanthropy removed. So they are going to need to curse him to get the curse item off. Any Thrane sage with knowledge history would have a good idea about the item remember not all in Thrane are noble. Well there is an idea.
sidekick 06-15-06, 04:03 AM	Hmm getting them to expose the agent who is undercover. I could work with that. A1) Yup they need to find where it was created - whoever made it is going to want a way of removing them right? Tey dont'; need to destroy the facility just get in and then get out as undeceted as is possible. A2) Well we had to high tail it out of there on the double,. When we killled the mad Col. who ran the undead facility we were being held in, all the karrn undead just went to 'default' as it were. That and the col.'s superiour was on his way pretty sharpish. B) If they can get rid of the information without the killing, then that'd be just great - especially as the changeling doesn't like to kill people period. But I'm going to leave that up to them to suggest/implement. Personally, knowing the players & their characters they'll not risk option 1 and go for either option 2 or option 3. Okay here's the deal with the Bracers. Essentially the character cannot change her physical shape outside of the current form. So she can change her features, hair color, race etc so long as she stays at her current heigh, weight and dimensions. When she tried to shrink her hand to get our of one of the bracers it shrunk with her hand and now she can't expand it. The bracers are resistant to dispel magic and remove curse - plus you're ignoring the fact that in Eberron you can't simply walk in pay 'a wad of cash' and get them to cast a spell. The party has 0 followers of the Sovereign host - we've got a cleric of the traveller an NPC cleric of the silver slame and the monk was trained by the BoV. They have zero friends within the Sov Host church and have had nothing to do with them in the past. Also my group has 2 DMs, we alternate. The character gained the Bracers during the other DMs turn behind the screen and IC the group are looking to solve the problem now, which means its down to me. So basic remove curse and Dispell magic don't work, you can't simply get a cleric to cast spells for you for gold in Eberron - which leaves them having to do a side-quest to get rid of them. Thanks for listening.
Dragonmann 06-15-06, 08:33 AM	You can put the research facility in the mournland, and if you haven't used the Shadows of the Last War adventure, you can even use some of the Whitehearth info to get them there. In this case you could find the means to remove the item, but the manifest zone that is necessary could have A: dispersed or B: be different. Created in perfect order, removed by... ... The agent could be a changeling himself, who has gone native with the Tyrants. They want the players to "kill" him, and take the fall so he can get on with his life outside the citadel. For more twists, he is actually a triple agent, attempting to dupe the Tyrants into believeing that he is ready to join them forever. Depending on how deep they dig, there are all sorts of possible outcomes here. ... The lich wants a part of a broken relic that was recovered by some adventurers in <insert obscure locale> , and put on display in a very public location <Morgrave?> The relic is actually a portion of the lichs phylactery, and he is concerned it will not function unless repaired. You can play up the lichs bravado, although false, to overcompensate for his (now uncertain) indestructability. This will let the party choose from 3 different types of adventure, the pure dungeon crawl (in the mournland), the social intrigue, or the subtle thieves.