Our Eberron Campaign "The Heirs of Cyre" is about to enter it's last and final chapter.
The Heroes have travelled to the Mournland to unearth the MacGuffin, only to find it has been salvaged by the Godforged and used to construct their Becoming God.
The ancient golden artifact they seek, now serves as the left eye of a giant warforged creature, while the right eye is a large glowing Khyber Dragonshard. The Becoming God is "stored" in an improvised tent-temple in the middle of the Godforged camp and (currently) inactive.
My party want to create a diversion and steal the "artifact eye" while the rest of the godforged are busy elsewhere. Little do they now that their distraction only made to followers of the Becoming God gather around the construct in the tent temple, so they have to climb the construct Indiana-Jones-style with the whole camp present with devotely bowed heads.
Unbeknown to the heroes, their golden artifact (being somewhat sentinent - long story) served as a psionic supressor to a demonic entity residing in the khyber shard.
So the moment they heroes remove the golden eye (pun intended), the construct comes alive with demonic energy and elemental energy - the party a possessed Warforged Construct!
Being only Level 10/11, I'd like to turn the whole encounter into an "epic" skill challenge:
They should try to weakening the demonic Warforged-Titan-Thing, while feeling it's infernal wrath, avoiding the panicking warforged in the camp and dodging it's arcane hellfire, before it finally facing the Becoming God in an "epicepic" battle.
I'd be happy to hear your suggestion on how to turn this into a series of encounters and skill challenges; my vision is, to turn this into a template that could be used for a whole number of "Godzilla-type" boss-fights everyone could use in their game.!
My party is not so great on improvising and free-flow-roleplaying, so usually I have to give them a number of options via perception/arcana/history checks.
Here's what I came up with till now:
- Around the camp, the godforged were working on a number of conductor stone. These stone could
be overcharge or destroyed to damage the creature.
- A nearby lightning train has a damaged elemental core, that could be manipulated to "summon" a
greater lightning/storm elemental that could fight the Godforged until banished/destroyed.
- By using various cranes, lifting platforms or scaffoldings they could climb onto the hulking Titan
and target weak links in it's framework.
- They could quickly construct improvised trip wires out of ropes or steel cables.
- They could use the power of their artifact to launch psionic attacks against the demonic creature
within the khyber shard.
Tomorrow I'll upload the stats Becoming God itself.
This is a work-in-progress, so I'd love to read your ideas on the matter.
Let's kill a God-Machine!
I think you've got a fantastic, nonconventional encounter ahead of you, and it looks like you know this already, but strive to say "yes". I think you've covered most of my ideas, but what about the possibility of shattering the khyber shard somehow? What would happen? Whatever's been imprisoned there is surely going to be let out. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I myself have been toying with using the Becoming God in my campaign, though not for as evil a purpose. Your post makes me rethink that. =P
NOW, Martin!
The artifact itself an ancient Gold Dragon egg, created as a counterpart to Lady Vol. The psionic Half-Dragon inside also bears the Mark of Death, it's mind/soul/incorporal form "escaped" the egg during an Encounter with the Emerald Claw just minutes ahead of the Mourning. The soul escaped into the minds of the Heirs, the party of my players, rendering the egg itself useless to the Agents of the Claw.
The Heir have been remembering the event through Dreams and the help of a Kalahstar (another player) up to this point.
The egg itself radiates a psionic field that suppresses the bound demon; it's a more or less accidental occurrance. The moment the players touch the egg, the soul of the Dragon Child is transfered back into it's original form. As soon as they hold the egg, the dragon will send them a telepathic warning what is about to unfold, and then the Demon-God starts moving...
So the Godforged themself aren't inherently evil or malicious; they've simply noticed the strong psionic aura of the egg, bringing the Khyber Shard with them.
I've pictured The Khyber Shard as one of the weak points of the structure. Destroying it somehow could either free the Demon from it's construct-prison, or damage/destroy the bound creature.
I'm not big on extra-planar demon binding, so I'd love some suggestions :-)
The Legs move the whole Titan around, stomp creatures and create difficult terrain.
Level 15 Solo Brute - HP: 324/324 HP - XP: 3500
- AC: 32, FORT: 32, REF: 28, WILL: 28 -
The Arms... well, attack, grab and throw players around the map and maim and crush the heroes in creative ways.
Level 13 Solo Skirmisher - HP: 264/264 - XP: 2500
- AC: 29, FORT: 26, REF: 29, Will: 27
The Head + Khyber Crystal, shoots infernal rays of hellfire, scorches the ground and creates walls of burning abyssal energy.
Level 14 Solo Controller- HP 234 / 186 - XP: 1700
- AC: 28, Fort: 24, REF: 28, Will: 32 -
The Body, keeps the energy core of the titan, connects the arms and legs and fuels the construct with fell energy.
Level 16 Solo Soldier (Leader) - HP 654 - XP: 3500
- AC: 34, Fort: 32, REF: 29, Will: 29 -
(If you came up with other huge creatures that are built with the Essentials-Monster-Design and with a bunch of interesting powers, I'd love to see them.)
The PCs are Level 10, so they have no chance to even damage the creature from the get-go.
In order to get the artifact, they have to disable the Titan somehow.
Here are a couple of my ideas to damage the becoming god:
- Overcharging Conductor Stones: Medium Arcana-based/Magic User Skill Challenge (6/3) - Damages the Titan's Legs and Body for about 3d10 HP, stuns it for a couple of rounds, and reduces the Defences of the Titan by 2 each time.
Failure: The Stone detonates prematurely and damages the PC.
- Climbing the Titan: Medium Athletic/Endurance/Acrobatic/Stealth Skill Challenge (4/2) - Opens up the next Skill Challenge.
Failure: Depending on the Number of successes already gained, up to 3d10 damage from the fall and the attention of the god.
- Attacking weak structures - Arms/Legs/Head: hard Arcana/Perception/Thievery Skill Challenge + Attack (4/2). If the Skill Challenge is successful, the character has discovered a structural weakness and reduces the Defences of this bodypart by 2.
Failure: The attention of the God.
- The attention of the Becoming God: hard Intimidate/Bluff/Endurance Skill Challenge (4/2). A single character becomes the focus of attention of the God and it is content to squash the PC. The God hunts the character and only attacks this one single target, even is another target is close by or caught the God attention beforehand.
Failure: Simply bad for the other PCs
- Escaping the Wrath of the Demon: easy Stealth/Bluff/Insight Skill Challenge (6/3). It is also possible to avoid or loose the attention by trying to hide or dodge the titan.
Failure: The god keeps attacking the PC.
- The Fall of a God: hard History/Endurance/Nature?! Skill Challenge (6/3). By using ropes, tents and random debris in the camp, the PC can try and create an improvised "tripwire". A Successful skill challenge drops the Titan, damages the whole creature, grants access to every body part and stuns the titan for a couple of rounds.
Failure: You've wasted time, enough punishment.
I could need a couple more Failure results and, of course, feedback.
Can you imagine this to play out good?
I also thought about shrinking the scale of the square map down quite a bit, effectivly reducing the movement rate of each creature by 2/3. A human would move 2 squares, while still moving 6 squares "virtually". That way I could still have the PCs being chased by the Titan around the camp, but keep it limited on a 1,5 x 1,5 meter map. Otherwise, I'd probably have to use the floor, the whole room and finally the whole flat to map out the encounter.