Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Gargs454 06-12-06, 12:12 PM	Hey all, I'm in the process of writing an adventure for my group and I've run into a bit of a snag on an idea that I had. Here's the situation. The adventure will take place in a town and one of the plot lines I wanted to develop was that the priests of the local church (who worship the main Good aligned Goddess of the homebrew world) are being attacked by a party lead by priests of the evil God. What I wanted to do was have the evil party infiltrate the church (more a cathedral like in the Cleric Quintet) from below and start fighting the priests. What I also wanted to do, in order to create an air of mystery and suspense, etc. was to somehow have the Church get cut off from the outside community. My thought was to have the evil party somehow seal off the entrances to the church so that the priests cannot escape and get help, but I am not sure how to do so in game terms. Spells like Hold Portal would only work for so long and presumably the priests would be able to get around said spells. Can anybody think of any means of sealing off the exits that make sense in game terms, or should I just go another route? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Bruunwald 06-12-06, 12:33 PM	Well, you didn't say how powerful the party was, so I am going to come up with something that could stymie even a high-level one. For me, doing something like this need not always involve true, linear rules mechanics. After all, anything you put into the game that can cite page and paragraph is something a PC could conceivably overcome in a round or two. So my initial idea, if you want mystery and you want a good challenge, is to concentrate on making the sealing-off, and unsealing, part of a story goal. In this case, an artifact, whose effects can only be undone by obtaining said artifact. It's a wild idea, but I suddenly found myself thinking of a plane shift of the entire cathedral, including the dungeons through which the bad guys enter. If it were me, I'd make the shift through the use of some mysterious device, which also happens to be the only thing that can shift the cathedral back. The plane to which the cathedral has been sent need not be one from the books. I'd make it some dark "nothing" plane so that exiting the building means falling into unknown depths. I'd maybe throw an NPC into it to illustrate the point, or if a PC could fly or levitate, let him go outside and get a look around at the Nothing. Now, perhaps somewhere in the cathedral library is a book that can identify what has happened and how to cure it. If the place is big enough this could go on for a good, long time, with the two factions sealing themselves off from the others to regroup. If the party fails at first to recover the item to get them back home, I'd just create hitherto "uknown" or forgotten portals that allow access to other, similarly-banished buildings, caves, what-not. This way the party could get to supplies and have alternate adventures while working out the means to rescue the cathedral. Voila! You have a sealed cathedral, plenty of mystery, high challenge and a goal, and access to other goals and alternatives so that you are not railroading the party.
olshanski_home 06-12-06, 12:35 PM	Rather than try to twist around the rules to make escape impossible, I'd try to work within the rules and come up with a more sensible plan. Perhaps the bad guys start a fire at one exit and enter the other way, to try to trap people (people can still leap out of windows and stuff). Perhaps one of the high priests is crippled, and cannot flee? Perhaps the priests were all engaged in a monthly ceremony in the burial crypts underneath the cathedral (so they have no escape route)... the bad guys timed the attack when they knew they could trap the priests. If you are having a city or wilderness adventure, it is going to be virtually impossible to prevent all means of travel in or out of a location... You've got windows, doors, roofs, walls, chimneys. You have abilities like wild shape (into a flying or burrowing creature); air walk; gas form; spider climb, feather fall, dimension door, passwall, and probably about 500 other possibilities.
olshanski_home 06-12-06, 12:41 PM	My post was not a knock of Bruunwald's idea. His idea is a good one and appropriate for high-level games. It is almost the exact plot of Monte Cook's fine adventure "A Paladin in Hell", in which an evil diety transported an entire cathedral into the Abyss so that the demons could beat the crap out of the clerics {EDIT: change "abyss" to "hell"; also change "Demons" to "Devils"}. The clerics, being on a different plane, were also no longer in contact with thier dieties, and thus had no spell access. It was a nasty scenario.
Bruunwald 06-12-06, 12:45 PM	Thanks for that clarification. I feel it is allowable, however distasteful to some, to create a plot hook that is independent of the RAW. That's the whole purpose of artifacts: to allow the indestructability and irreversability you see in certain magic items or situations encountered in novels and movies, into the game format. But you need not stat that artifact until/unless the party gets their mits on it and refuses to give it up. It's not wrong, or "insensible", it's just a different style. The idea of crippling the main priest is a good, simple one, which I would definitely use in a low-powered game. But again, as we all know, for higher level guys, it is one the party (or the priest himself) could quickly overcome. The OP wanted a not-immediately escapable scenario, and to me, that requires more plot/less RAW. Again, some may find that not to their tastes.
olshanski_home 06-12-06, 12:50 PM	What level are we talking about here? If the party is 3rd level, then having bad guys cast "walls of force" around the entire superstructure of the cathedral might be a bit too much. Low level bad guys should come up with tactics and plans appropriate to thier abilities. (Which was my point about trying to use the standard rules). If the party is 15th level, then plane-shifting the cathedral might not be too bad. Heck, you could even put the cathedral in stasis, so that time is frozen on the outside while the people inside are in a fight for thier lives.
Bruunwald 06-12-06, 12:52 PM	It is virtually taken exactly from Monte Cook's fine adventure "A Paladin in Hell", in which an evil diety transported an entire cathedral into the Abyss so that the demons could beat the crap out of the clerics. The clerics, being on a different plane, were also no longer in contact with thier dieties, and thus had no spell access. It was a nasty scenario. Ahhh... I've never read that. Obviously the idea was also taken from something... from that cool picture of the same title that we all loved from the 1st Ed AD&D PHB. A subtle kind of railroad, to be sure, but a fun and challenging railroad all the same. I wonder: did the clerics still have access to the spells they had memorized when the shift occurred?
olshanski_home 06-12-06, 12:57 PM	The clerics that were shifted were basically getting screwed. I think in the 1st/2nd edition D&D there were rules about what spells were available to clerics after a plane shift. I cannot recall if you get the spells you prepared, but cannot prepare more, or if the spells were level-dependant.... (the further away from the home plane, the less access to high-level spells). Since presumably high-level spells were granted directly by the diety or an agent of the diety that had to have contact with the cleric. Yes, the adventure was built from the picture in the 1st edition AD&D book. Here is the adventure:http://www.sfsite.com/gif/9810/paladin2.jpg The adventure involved the party trying to travel to hell to find the lost cathedral, and then to save the few high-level clerics and paladins that were under siege. The means of travelling to hell was aboard a very unusual boat that could sail through planes. It is available for sale on PDF, and is a very good resource for high-level play (even though it is 2nd edition). Monte Cook is regarded as one of the best adventure writers in the business, and Paladin in Hell is one of his best.
Illion the Red 06-12-06, 01:12 PM	[Warning: This is at least a PG-13 solution] Well, here's a more mundane solution (albeit a bit implausible)... The evil Bad Guys are the ones whose ancesters originally built the place. They have now come to take it back, but in order to devote the temple/church/cathedral to the evil god, the current residents need to be slaughtered and have the place sprinkled with their blood in a particualrly grisly ritual. In the original designs, there were steel/adamantine/mithral doors designed to drop down and block off the exits if someone tried to leave with the sacred relic of the church. Well, as it turns out, someone did steal the sacred relic, but the trigger for the doors was jammed when some damned-fool acolyte put a statue over the control lever. The first thing the evil group does is knock down the (now re-sculpted and slightly smaller) statue and seal the doors. This works with lower levels, but at higher levels, it will take magic to stop them for sure.
Gargs454 06-12-06, 01:15 PM	Bah I knew I'd forgot something. The party will be 5th level (maybe 6th) when then come into town. Perhaps I should try to clarify my post a little better. I was hoping to have a scenario where the PC's were in town (outside of the cathedral) when things go wrong. You're right in that cutting off all access points would extremely difficult at best, and it was really not my intention to completely seal off the cathedral (though the plane shift idea does sound cool, though my party is a tad low for that). Basically, what I wanted was a reason for why none of the priests could come out of the cathedral. I was hoping to create a sense of forboding (there are other bad things going on in town as well) by having this sense of silence from the cathedral even though from the outside, nothing appears to be amiss. The idea of the ceremony could work though. It would explain why the priests are trapped inside, even though the entire cathedral is not sealed off. It could even be a tad ominous for the PC's when they enter the cathedral only to find it seemingly abandoned. Let me know if you need any other ideas. I do intend to have other plot lines running through the city at the time the PC's are there, so they might even reach as high as lvl 7 by the time they enter the cathedral, though I would prefer to have the situation beatable by a lvl 5 party. Thanks again!
Illion the Red 06-12-06, 01:34 PM	Don't make the cathedral entirely empty. Make one area squirming with insects (left over from an insect swarm that disappated) crawling over the picked-clean bones of a priest/deacon/acolyte. Add touches like that to break the silence or add drama: A scream that echoes so violently throughout the halls that it can only be the unholy torment of a soul. No, you can't tell what direction the scream originally came from. A holy symbol falls off of the wall and shatters into pieces. The building creaks and groans as if in physical pain - occasionally plaster and dust rains down from the ceiling. The striker from the bell of the church crashes through the ceiling and upon closer examination it has been nearly shatterred through violent use - yet, there was never the sound of the bell ringing.