Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 widget311 Oct 23, 2009 9:06:15	Hey everyone! I am in the process of putting together a 4th Edition Eberron campaign. I'm an experienced DM but I'm new to 4E. The major story arc involves the manifestation of a new dragonmark; The Mark of Destruction. As you can imagine, there's a great deal of intrigue and action to be had in an adventure with such far reaching consequences. I can't wait to run my players through it. However, I'm struggling with creating a new dragonmark from scratch. So I thought I'd turn to the community and see if I could get some advice and ideas. The crutch: most dragonmarks allow the bearer to use certain Rituals and gain certain abilities and benefits. But with a Mark that bestows destructive powers, picking Rituals is not easy. Rituals are not offensive in nature. They don't allow for anything that inflicts damage or destruction. Those properties are reserved for Powers. I found a few from the Forgotten Realms book that might be good, such as Time Ravage and Feat of Strength, but they just don't seem to be doing the trick for me. So, I'm looking for advice here. Certainly someone else has given something like this some thought.  So far the ideas I have for benefits include:   Once per day, the bearer can roll two damage rolls on a successful hit and take the higher of the two. Once per encounter, when the bearer hits an opponent who grants him combat advantage, the target is weakened. +2 to intimidate checks. Those aren't too bad, I think. But I'm struggling with Rituals. Any ideas? Thanks!
#2 xiahouxu Oct 23, 2009 16:26:04	Hmm... This is just a quick idea, but... hows about this? Fearsome presence Surrounded by an aura that makes others uneasy, they become even easier to influence... Level: 1 Skill: Arcana(?) Benefit: Roll an Arcana check and consult the table. Roll: 15 or below   +5 Intimidate checks and a -5 to other's Insight checks to check your motives 15-25             +10 25+               +15 Thoughts?
#3 widget311 Oct 25, 2009 22:05:35	Not bad. I'm also looking for ideas for Rituals that could be destructive in nature. Has anyone created anything like this?
#4 moondoggy Oct 26, 2009 0:15:23	Check the Homebrew section for some custom rituals.  Maybe someone there has created what you're looking for.
#5 widget311 Oct 26, 2009 14:14:38	Yeah, I've tried.  Unfortunately, the search feature on these forums leaves much to be desired. I spent an hour or so looking and found nothing.
#6 moondoggy Oct 26, 2009 14:29:57	Yeah, I tried searching for you as well and found it difficult to pull up anything useful.  They're still working on getting it right though so hang in there.
#7 sfurtwangler Oct 27, 2009 12:06:05	Consider allowing them to cast "destructive" versions of the various construction rituals. They wouldn't be able to make magic items, for example, but they could turn them to dust (Disenchant Item). You could make up a few new rituations along those lines for things like alchemical items, potions, holy water, etc. At higher levels, maybe even disenchanting teleportation circles, portals, or disjoining buildings, groves, etc made with other rituals - returning all of that magic into its raw state (residium). You could even allow them to de-construct normal items, basically turning them into 1/5 of their value in residium - which wouldn't really be worth anyone's time for most items, but is a cool image that there would be some people who could (given time) reduce an entire city to sand. Since that is only about half of the rituals that the Mark of Making gets, if you wanted to make it a little better, you could allow them to wave the casting cost once a day, or even all of the time. Mechanically, if one of your players took this, it would be equivilent to always being able to "sell" items at 20%, even away from town (given the 10 minutes or whatever to cast). This is hardly game-breaking. The only thing you might worry about is if players try to de-construct things in town, but, frankly, in a setting where magic is common, you would face that with normal spellcasters anyway. They still could not de-construct anything higher level than they are, so most of your important plot-devices would be safe well into epic, anyway.
#8 boethius61 Oct 30, 2009 13:15:54	You can get a lot of rituals by simply refluffing the existing ones to make them destructive. Arcane Lock=Fuse Portal - you melt locks, warp door jambs, and fuse chests. Knock=Blast Door - Arcana checks to destroy locks, bars, etc. Magic Mouth - the mouth looks like cracked lips and as it speaks its teeth fall out. Passwall=Crumble Me a Tunnel Silence=destroy sound - you can literally see your words turn to dust and fall to the floor. Hallowed Temple=Waste Land - create an area that looks like a meteor hit a temple.  Crater and rubble, baby. Mark of Justice=Mark of destruction - pretty much as is. Thief's Lament=A Floor full of rubble Lower Water=Destroy Water Shrink=Pile of Dust - instead of smaller it is temporarily destroyed. Bloom=Overgrowth - area becomes overgrown as if left to the ravages of nature. Control Weather=Storm of Destruction - as is, just violently described. Create Campsite=Destroy Campsite - reverse the effect, instead of making a camp then breaking it down 8 hours later.  It desstroys the campsite and rebuilds it 16 hours later. Tree Shape=Busted Pillar - you look like a ruined column not a tree. Tree Stride=Ruin Stride - step from one busted object to another. I got those just skimming through PHB PHB2 Divine Power and Arcane Power.
#9 widget311 Oct 30, 2009 13:22:07	Great ideas, all. Thanks a ton!