Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Wizard Random 05-06-07, 05:02 PM	First off a little history is in order to allow everyone to make the correct decisions. This game started at level six and has so far stayed steady at level twenty-nine, tons of things have happened but only what has transpired in the later levels will be of importance to this discussion. Around level eighteen the party, which consists of a (Epic) Paragon Cleric of Lathander, a Temflaar Shadowlord of Mask, a Fighter/Occult Slayer of Lathander, and a Swordsage of the Dessert Wind School, and a Sorrcer/Archmage of Oghma, received a summons from a man calling himself Wizard Dorrin. The summons (which just appeared in their belongings) asked for them to stop by his tower near a little town called Corrin. The day they finally arrived (through different routes I might add since for some reason unknown to them they could not magically travel in a radius of a few miles of the town) they met up at Wizard Dorrin’s tower only to find the massive wooden doors unlocked and the inside empty. Infact this tower held almost no magic that the Occult slayer could find and after searching the lower levels they finally went up to the 3rd floor only to find a MASSIVE sized fire elemental with obvious demonic features (bat wings and such) standing over a charred corpse. Thrown off guard the elemental had time to smash a large glass orb sitting on a nearby pedestal. Seeing that this creature was NOT a friend they leapt to the attack, Well the Elemental chained a Destruction spell at the party killing all of them Except the Occult slayer who reflected the spell back at the elemental, passing his SR and what’s really funny about this failing the save too his OWN spell. With the party mostly defeated a ghostly image of a man appeared which seemed to grab the fading energies of the broken glass orb and used it to resurrect the fallen members. This image then introduced himself as the late Wizard Dorrin. Before he could continue any further a rather large explosion sounded from outside and from the windows they could see numerous black portals swirling in the air above the town with elementals of all types (except Earth) swarming the town and 2 MASSIVE elementals of Air and Water. Wizard Dorrin appealed to them to try and stem the flow of elementals theorizing that if they managed to kill what he called the Templars then the portals would close. With a goal in mind they set off eventually destroyed (with the help of the NPC guard) the last of the elementals. The reason Wizard Dorrin called them because it was his duty to guard a key. What this key unlocked he would not say but he explained that the parties exploits had reached even him and fearing that his enemies had somehow found a way through his defenses looked to acquire some body guards. The glass orb which was broken was what he called an Arcane Generator that had the power to keep even gods out of a predetirmed area. This was the reason they could not magically travel to the town of Corrin. The “key” that this generator and Dorrin were guarding was a little eight year old girl known as Nancy. The party eventually put Nancy permanently to sleep inside of a portable hole and the hole is currently in the Occult Slayers possession. (To keep her SAFE you understand) After this no so humble beginning the party found themselves traveling all over the place trying to stop a creature known only as The Elemental Eye. Along the way they clashed with an organization called The Order of the Silver Hand who was trying to stop the end of the universe and a Shadowy party lead by an undead Warlock. Wizard Dorrin explained that the Elemental Eye had four Princes who governed most of his cult’s activities; these princes could almost be called Aspects of him. Below the Princes where the Elemental Dukes, creatures once dedicated to their respective elements but now corrupted by the Eye’s dark energies, and finally beings that served the Dukes directly which were Massive sized elementals known as Templars. As the story unfolded they found out that there was no such being known as the Elemental Eye and infact this “Eye” was an aspect of the deity known only as Thazurdin. It turns out that Thaz had found a way (even locked in his prison) to fool and corrupt the Elemental Dukes, he is using them to search for the remaining two keys to his prison. In my world Thazudin was given the Portfolio of Creation, something which if abused could remove the current Multiverse and replace it with another one of his choosing. Hence he was beaten down by the other deities and locked away. By Divine decree they are not to take a direct hand in whatever conflict that should arise from him trying to free himself, the reasoning behind this is that the mortals should forge their own destiny if you will. Nonetheless the deities (especially Mask) has found a few small opportunities to “reward” the faithful service of the party granting them limited abilities and a few choice items that have proved useful. The party has been trying to remake the Arcane Generator which should've protected Nancy and Dorrin in the first place; they have yet to find out how the First Templar made it in his tower but are looking into the matter. SO far they have all but eliminated The Order of the Silver hand from existence over a SLIGHT misunderstanding. The Order wants to protect Nancy and thinks they are the ones best suited to the job, whereas the party thinks the Order is gay and should go F-themselves since they can take care of her just fine. Between Evil Elementals, Rampaging Demons, and the PCs the Order is stretched thin and most of the key upper members have been killed or are missing. Another wild card the party has had to deal with are the beings known only as THE WILL, which are responsible for stealing the last free roaming Key to Thaz’s prison from the Order. These beings have clashed with the PCs many times trying to get a hold of Nancy but have been rebuffed each time. The party is not sure what THE WILL wants, they only know they are helping Thazudin so they are an obstacle to be overcome. They ended up breaking into the Duke of Fire’s domain and trying to kill him, which is funny because they did this at level 26 and he is a CR 40 (as are the other dukes) Sadly because of their overdeveloped sense of teamwork and their sheer capability at destroying things they almost killed the Duke until he collapsed the area they were fighting in and flooded the place with lava, forcing the party to retreat. They have just returned from the Prison Plane of Carceri where (with the Orders help) they broke into a Prison tower fought their way past litterly a few hundred guardian demons and the founding member of THE WILL which turned out to be the Mother of Demons, Pale Night. After thoroughly kicking their ass Pale Night was driven off by the prisoner who they had come to see, someone who could help them restore the Arcane Generator. This prisoner was a Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon who they nicknamed Ax (since they couldn’t pronounce his name) After giving them a few scales Ax remained behind to continue his imprisonment and they escaped back to the Prime Material. The last place in the adventure we left off at was them guarding the Tower and Nancy while the Sorc (with the help of the simulacrums) are rebuilding the Arcane Generator. They have been attacked over and over by increasingly harder challenges. The last one was a crazy old swordsage that hit their swordsage for 1400 points of subdual damage. In otherwords I owned him IN THE FACE! However most of the last session was sort of a mystery “who dunit” game as the party woke from their nightly sleep to a deserted town, including the ghostly image of Dorrin. The world as they knew it seemed to be closed off and they were unable to travel far beyond the towns boarders. The Sorc was not present although he seemed to be “working” on the generator. In reality it was all a carefully planned deception by the enemy. The party (except for the sorc) was stolen form the tower and taken to the Evershifting Plane of Limbo. Using the raw chaos stuff they formed a small mini world to observe the PCs and find a chinnk in their armor so-to-speak. The mission was to just kill them but since the Cult of Thaz hired on some Slaads to do this work they didn’t get exactly what they payed for. After six hours of the PCs questioning their existence, the sanity of the other players, and weather or not if the Swordsage’s sword could actually talk, they figured out they were in a preconstructed world and we left the game on a cliff hanger with them confronting a Black Slaad , two White Slaads and 4 Death Slaads. At this point the party is so full of themselves they want to go confront Thazudin directly and “end the infection once and for all”. The only reason they think they can pull off this suicide mission is because of 3 important factors. 1: They have a weapon known as the Sword of Light which was supposedly used by Ao himself to help forge the world, its counterpart the Sword of Darkness is currently in Asmodeous keeping, while normally the Archduke himself is not in the “sharing” mood they think they can convince him to give it up so Reality is not unraveled as that would tend to inconvience him. That is assuming they can survive the journey to him. They believe by combining these two swords at a certain spot in the Outlands they can forge a weapon called the Chaos Breaker (anyone gets THAT reference  ) and thus giving a mighty edge over Thaz. 2: They have Nancy and a nearly completed Arcane Generator, assuming they can complete it, the 73 15th level Simulacrums that the sorcerer has should be more than enough to guard her while they are gone. While beings directly tied to the Elemental Eye and/or any deities cannot come within a few miles or even direct powers/spells into the area, people who have no idea what’s going on can bypass this restriction and hence the needed security. 3: They have in their possession a few handy dandy artifacts gained from killing a lesser deity who was the patron of The Order of the Silver Hand. (Which is a long story in and of itself?) Using these artifacts and what they called their Triple Threat tactics and the fact that Thazudin is MUCH reduced from being imprisoned they think they stand a chance. Now finally to the meat of the problem. It was never planned for them to actually go and fight THAZUDIN, I was hoping to end the game after they got the generator up and running and took care of a few loose ends I.E> purifying/killing off the Elemental Dukes thereby burning the bridge so-to-speak that Thazudin is using to make mischief in the world. Also maybe making friends with the Lawful Good organization that kina wants to help them. However looking at the glazed over expression they get from thinking about how they are going to KILL the being responsible for causing so much trouble and getting tons of good people killed, I can’t bear to end the game. Heck the Shadowlord has been cultivating a garden near Dorrins tower in his spare time, and like he says “anyone who TOUCHES my garden will find himself without said hand” Apparently Trying to unravel the Multiverse is “touching” his garden so he has a personal score to settle. My question is WHAT should I do about creating this deity??? Even books such as Lords of Madness are a limited help in forging an effective version of him, I was thinking maybe he could have some sort of Altering attack that could maybe change their forms/classes when he uses it?? I am stuck on ideas, mainly because in order to get to Thaz they need to kill/defeat the Templars (which are almost gone), kill/defeat the Dukes and Kill off the princes. So I have been busy getting stuff ready for when they go about it. As is they are preparing to move on the “cowardly” Duke of Fire and are then going to Attack the Duke of Air. I still got some time so any ideas/suggestions will be MOST helpful.
DarthMidget 05-06-07, 05:13 PM	Uh...whoa...that there's alotsa campaign. Sounds really cool too. Good luck. If I think of anything I'll post it here, but I think you nailed 'Epic' quite well.
Ubasrawr 05-06-07, 05:41 PM	Uh...whoa...that there's alotsa campaign. Sounds really cool too. Good luck. If I think of anything I'll post it here, but I think you nailed 'Epic' quite well. Wow ditto to his comment, you did get "Epic" right alright, but I'd have very little idea how to make an imprisoned Deity even a threat... They'd probably shouldn't kill off all the Templars or the bridge just vanishes... then they'd have to find another way of gaining access to him...
Wizard Random 05-06-07, 05:51 PM	Wow ditto to his comment, you did get "Epic" right alright, but I'd have very little idea how to make an imprisoned Deity even a threat... They'd probably shouldn't kill off all the Templars or the bridge just vanishes... then they'd have to find another way of gaining access to him... Heh thanks for the compliment i suppose, the Templars however are just pawns?servents?soldiers? they only exist to drop Templar Orbs which they use for a variety of things such as repairing the arcane generator. They came up with a couple of ideas to go fight him the most popular one is to go open up his prison themselves and kill him then O.O The second was to go destroy any/all aspects he may have to cripple him. I was planning to actually have a Aspect of himself for them to face, probaly somewhere around the door to his prison. However what that aspect can do /shrug Also the comment on the bridge was just a figure of speech, its more like playing chess and trying to remove all of your enemys peices before you checkmate him. If they leave something alive Thaz could conveivably use that to start all over agian.
Ubasrawr 05-06-07, 05:56 PM	Well i ment what ever the highest thing was before meeting Thaz himself. Kinda like if they kill of all Thaz henchies, they can't reach him, cause he lost connection, but if they leave 1 then they can reach Thaz and give him a smack down, but risking his resurrection, or they might just come up with another way to finish off both Thaz and his last henchy.
green_yawgmoth 05-06-07, 09:12 PM	Wall of force is a 5th level spell, and can hedge out almost anything. Wall of Text, I think, is a 9th level spell. Seriously dude, paragraphs. Small paragraphs. Paragraphs that don't take over 2 full screens to scroll through. As it is, I can't even read that. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/yawgmoth/kittyjig.gif
penchant 05-07-07, 04:11 AM	how about something in the beyond colossal scale? Like a super colossal amorph? Remember that ep in star trek where the ship entered the giant amoeba? That big. Go simple. A chaos being shouldn't be that complex while not being rational or definable. Watch the end of Hellboy 1. In 1e deities and demigods, the norse serpent jormungendir encircled the earth and PC's could encounter it and fight sections of it while never seeing the head. The only way to kill it was to find thehead and kill that (not easy). Make it like an arcade shooter where you have to defeat various levels of the creature itself before you get into the heart of the beast and fight the only section vulnerable to lethal damage. just some ideas (random)
stout 05-07-07, 07:45 AM	Well, time to build a Deitic template. Holy crap. I have no idea what stats to give a template of THAT magnitude. Maybe stick him in an avatar form where the PCs goto this Prison plane and fight him in environment of Thaz's choosing. As a God, with this item that can alter multiverses, he should have complete control over what the plane he's on consists of. With the key, plane shift to the prison (in and out at will, since they have the key). Thaz can have a set number of avatars to use, and can switch between them at will. Make them all kinds of different - one land based, one aquatic, one earth, one fire, one aerial, etc etc etc. Once they destroy all his different avatars, he's compeltely obliterated. Maybe? Once you get that part figured out, the next big challenge is to come up with another adventure. At this point, if they're killing Gods, it might be appropriate to allow them to bind the material plane to an object like a crystal and just toss it in their pocket to protect it. All those billions of people, going about their lives... in a crystal, in some extradimensional beings pocket. Kinda like the McGuffin of MIB, except that was in a crystal on a necklace on a cat. Oooo, maybe Thaz gets away from the PCs and take the material plane "hostage". Nobody on the plane would know, of course, until Thaz began dismantling it and rebuilding it with what he wanted. Then the PCs have a set amount of time to traverse planes, find the material plane, and free it. If they somehow transport to the material plane, time is much much slower outside of it than in - they could set an empire out to build equipment for them to aid them, hop out, do a few rounds of combat, hop in, grab the object, hop out... Just tossing out ideas. Hm. suddenly makes my pondering of a level 3 campaign seem so trivial. I actually have to worry about not killing my party off over here ...
kelvinaw273 05-07-07, 09:23 AM	Make it clear that the only way to get at Thaz is to release him, at which point he clicks his fingers and remakes the universe without them in it.
Wizard Random 05-07-07, 04:45 PM	All of these are +5 ideas and i am loving it, please by all means keep them comming. The part about fighting sections leading up to the main part has a very Crono Trigger feel to it (lavos) hmmm