I am about to start a campaign in Sharn. As I look at a majority of the modules/Dungeon adventures taking place is Sharn, most either use ground level of the city or below or just use buildings you could find in any town and say that they are in such and such a district, but yet they still seem to be on the ground (as if they just slapped the word "Sharn" on some adventure they made for another setting).
I am trying to convert some "ground based" urban adventures to Sharn. Any advice on how to best do so? Would the entrances to businesses etc. be on the outside of towers? If so, are there like walkways everywhere? Or are many of the entrances on the inside of the towers, like our skyscrapers? In that case are all businesses just across a 10' hallway? If I look at the maps and try to conceive of how to map it, it get's confusing.
Still trying to wrap my head around how to map out things in a vertical world. And the new map that came with the 4.0 Campaign Guide doesn't help, nor really make sense to me for a tower world.
I think some of the towers are great wide affairs with large numbers of other buildings inside them. To the modern western mind, it'd be sort of like a mall inside one of those things. Great open spaces for walking and roadways, with several self-owned spaces within for shops, dwellings and other things.
Aside from that, some buildings cling to the side of towers like bracket fungus and, I'd imagine, some towers rise out of others like branches, possibly joining other towers further up. (The Flying Buttress allows for some pretty weird architecture.
At the highest levels, Sharn bears more resemblence to other cities, though pretty much only the rich and noble can afford to live there.
I agree, the "towers" in my view are anything but free standing structures. I imagine the web of walkways connecting them to include lots of open "ground." For instance, you may walk out of a Middle Tavick's landing shop and have 20-30' of cobblestone in front of you in a "street" which wraps around the building. Further than that, there is 100-150' of open space before you hit another "street" which in turn protrudes 20-30' from the building it is attached to. This may seem like a lot, but it's really only 30 to 50 yards between gigantic buildings which are hundreds of feet wide.
I picture the typical distance between lower city stuff to be maybe 60-100' gaps. Meanwhile the upper city probably has gaps of 100-300', which is still pretty crowded, but is visibly different from the other levels.
Building construction iirc is mostly to somewhat less in the form of buildings and more in the form of "shells" with entire communities living in one large open space inside the building.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is I think of the towers less in the "self contained building" sense and more in the "framework for the city, which self contained buildings are built in to." Connecting it all is a vast network of bridges, causeways, and walkways (including town square sized platforms).
I think it depends on what you need for the narrative. Here's my take on it:
Crowded urban/slum environment is best done near the base of a huge tower, with tall structures built onto the inside circumference. Not much light, poor air circulation, and the feeling of the weight of the city above you. Tenements, shantytowns, shady marketplaces all fill this dark and oppressive setting.
Middle class neighborhoods can be constructed from large, well ventilated passageways through in the center of towers. Most of buildings are still interior, but there are parks and some buildings on the "balconies". There are adequate openings to let in light and air, so these would feel much like a nice mall with good landscaping. Large bridges connect the towers. Still pretty crowded, but not as oppressive.
At the top levels, this is where the towers have branched extensively and a spiderwork of towers, parapets and bridges give the city the baroque and intricate flavor. There are numerous rooftop parks and gardens, open campuses, and the towers are narrow enough in diameter that they either encompass one building per floor, or the buildings are all exterior, with the sidewalks extending around the outside circumference. Lots of sense of vertigo with this section, since you are tremendously high up and everything is on the outside. Bridges are thinner and the wind is noticeable.
I visualize it as a fantasy version of Coruscant, to some extent. Clusters of vertical towers like skyscrapers rising from the plateus, and extensively interconnected by bridges, shared 'branches', etc. I like the idea that you can be at the mid level, look straight up, and see that you are directly beneath a tower which rises up another 30 floors above its base--and that this tower is supported by the very bridges and branches through which people access it.
a good tower encounter was presented in the eberron campaign guide.
One reason there's not a lot of edge-of-tower encounters in many of the published adventures is because they can be very deadly at low levels. With that said, looking to MY published adventures:
* The Forgotten Forge starts with a bridge encounter.
* The Sharn segment of Shadows of the Last War takes place in Lower Dura, because as originally written, this is supposed to be a hint that something significant has changed - Elaydren has gone from the top of the towers to the bottom.
* Fallen Angel is set in the district of Fallen, which is ground level.
* Likewise, Steel Shadows is about the plight of the warforged in Ashblack, and thus takes place in Ashblack.
Sharn IS the City of Towers. But every district adds to its flavor. In Fallen you see what happens when a tower falls. In Ashblack, you see the wretched souls who keep the heights running. There aren't towers in these adventures because the subject of the stories is the depths.
With that said, you'll find tower fights in most of my stories set in Sharn - City of Towers, The Son of Khyber (coming out November 3) and the novella "Principles of Fire" in Dragons: Worlds Afire. City of Towers presents MY view of the towers pretty clearly.
Having said that tower encounters can be deadly, you can certainly design them not to be so bad. A 200 foot drop is going to be very bad for a heroic level character if he misses that save to catch the ledge. But you can certainly construct a 3D map with multiple layers of bridges on the way down (fall 20 feet and you have a chance to catch a ledge; if you miss, you'll hit the next bridge, which is 40 feet down. But you're not dropping the full distance). This sort of encounter can be quite interesting, if you have acrobatic characters and enemies; the enemy warlock teleporting away to another bridge and the rogue having to dare the 30 foot leap to reach him can make some great pulp drama.
Thanks for the information RE Combat in in Towers. This has actually just come up in the game I was in. A Character crash tackled a 'monster' off a tower and yes did indeed fall 200 ft. Now there was a feather fall token involved (the 3.5 version given new life in 4e).
Should there be any other results from falling 200ft.. in fact what sort of vertical distances make up Sharn to begin with. Whats the height between 'Ground level' in Sharn to the top of the tallest tower in Sharn? What sort of vertical distance to districts average in Sharn?
The tallest towers in Sharn are said to be a mile in height. However, i think that it would be very hard to actually fall a mile. The towers (IMO) aren't single constructions. The city is centuries old. Once upon a time, it was only the lower districts. It took centuries to build up to the middle, and more again to build up to upper. As a result, the upper level of a tower will have a completely different architectural style... and if you're falling straight down the edge of a tower, there's going to be protrustions, buttresses, and the like that a suitably heroic character might catch hold of. Falling off a bridge, again, you're going to have other bridges below - or even the chance of falling into a skycoach or crashing into one of the many flying mounts or creatures used in the city. A common citizen might not survive a fall, but again, the remarkable land-in-the-skycoach-take-control-of-it-and-fly-back-up scene is exactly the sort of pulp thing you expect when dealing with heroes of Eberron.
What about the feather fall protections provided to bridges? And concerned citizens casting the spell on falling strangers? The Sharn book mentioned them, but does not say exactly how common they are. Somehow using them feels a bit like a deux-ex-machina...
(The action point mechanism in 3E actually made it possible for me to run a high speed skycoach chase at low level. It was one of the more fun encounters, but it did cost the PCs a couple of action points trying to stay in the sky coach and avoiding obstacles ;))
What about the feather fall protections provided to bridges? ... The Sharn book mentioned them, but does not say exactly how common they are. Somehow using them feels a bit like a deux-ex-machina.
Agreed. Of course, a few things about these: they are limited to the upper and middle districts, and I'd limit them even further based on the prosperity of the district and the nature of the bridge. The point of these things is not to protect the person falling, but rather to protect people on the bridge from being hit by someone who IS falling. So a main throughfare in a wealthy neighborhood should have this... but there's lots of secondary bridges (the equivalent of a back alley) that won't even in the best of neighborhoods, and plenty of middle distrcits (most of Dura, for example) where you wouldn't see them at all. Beyond this, remember that this is a protection that activates when a person is going to hit the bridge, not when someone falls off of the bridge. So the question is whether you hit the right bridge when you fall. It's an out you CAN use as a DM... or that PCs can take advantage of if they carefully plan the battleground. But you can't bank on the bridge you hit being a protected one.
And concerned citizens casting the spell on falling strangers?
That's just dumb luck. Consider how many people are in Sharn (and personally, I multiply the listed number by a factor of ten) and how many of them are actually capable of casting feather fall, and then the odds that they happen to make the Spot/perception check required to notice your falling body... Deus Ex Machina is EXACTLY what that is, a chance for you to make up for luck going against the PCs when you don't feel like having them go splat. of course, bear in mind that it's not just a service for PCs... it's a way for the villain to return after plummeting to a seemingly certain death.
Well, it IS Deus Ex Machina, but as Keith said, that's totally okay.
The point of Sharn isn't to be a deathtrap for low-level PCs. So if for whatever reasons - acrobatics checks, feather fall "safety" spells, air manifest zones, passing wizards, friendly flying monsters - you can save a PC from going permanently *SPLAT* when he goes off a tower, then that's all to the benefit of the adventure.
Personally, I like the idea of a network of catwalks. Getting thrown off sucks (and will probably hurt!), but you won't generally fall that far before you hit a lower level.
By the way, at least in the real world, terminal velocity kicks in before you fall too far (a couple hundred feet or so, IIRC), so the notion of "maximum damage from falling" has RL physics backing it up.
Personally, I like the idea of a network of catwalks. Getting thrown off sucks (and will probably hurt!), but you won't generally fall that far before you hit a lower level.
Basically you take a look at the DMG, note down the maximum adviced distance falling for the PCs of that particular level and depending on how challenging you want it to be, you assume falling creatures hit a bridge, ledge or catwalk at that distance. The few times I did not include something like this, the PCs would be pretty stupid to get into a fight near enough the ledge to be pushed over (most players are smart enough to realize the risk posed by a long fall 
).
By the way, at least in the real world, terminal velocity kicks in before you fall too far (a couple hundred feet or so, IIRC), so the notion of "maximum damage from falling" has RL physics backing it up.
Yeah, but RL physics does not take into account the ever growing hit points of the PCs
There was great 3.5 encounter from the old boards called Edge of the Sky that had the PCs attacked in a restaurant only to have the magic holding it up fail and the whole building beginning to fall. I ran a converted version in a 4e campaign and it was pretty fun.
Not sure if this is off topic, but in the Adventurer's Vault 2 there was a magic window that could be built into a building. It was enchanted so that if you fell out of it, you wouldn't take falling damage no matter how far you fell. I could see these windows being installed in the towers and buildings in Sharn.