While brainstorming ideas I thought of having a reoccuring side quest/mini-game to add a little fun for the group.
The idea is that hidden through out the map of where they will be adventuring are ziggurat like structures that send darkness into the sky, blotting out the sun. The undead leaders use this to bolster their armies and to scare the crap out of the fleshies.
I'm wanting to accomplish a few things with this, 1) the players feel a sense of accomplishment finding each ziggurat, 2) each of these comes off as short and sweet, and 3) to weave a side-plot into these side-quests.
This is what I came up with and I could use some feedback. Do not be afraid to be honest.
In RHoD there is a lot of traveling around and I was thinking that near each of the major locations in the first few acts of the story there would be one of these ziggurates hidden away pumping darkness into the heavens. To make it fun I was planning of having one of the fights near each of these locations drop a coded message. When the characters find the message I would actually hand the players a piece of paper with some sort of simple code. If they break it, the PCs know where to go to find the hidden ziggerat.
In each ziggerat there is going to be a recurring villain. I'm thinking some kind of special hive minded warforged (the Lord of Blades is helping the undead) and each time he will have some kind of saturday morning cartoon style gimmic to vex the players. Something like, "You're no match for my two titans of titanium terror!" and maybe the time after that they fight the "Nine Ninja Nymphs!" to which he will pull a switch, and well, you get the idea.
Basically each of the places would have a modified version of the same warforged baddy, a bad speech, an encounter or two and some skill challenge to shut the machine down.
That's the action part of it. For the side quest/plot I was going for something like this:
If the players have found all the clues at the ziggs, they can find and take out the Lord of Blades' base. If not they just continue fighting off the undead and have only a few encounters with the warforged.
At the moment I do like the idea, but I still feels it could use a little work.
In particular, I'm worried that when I hand over the coded message it might suck up the attention of the players and bring half the group to a grinding halt for an hour; what is a simple code to me might not be so obvious to my PCs. Should I just scrap that part of it and go for something else?
Also, becaus the guy is hive minded, he will know who the PCs are even though they've killed him several times. Over time, I want the players to really want to cream this guy. Maybe, if things go well, they will even rebuttle the villains speech with there own chessy lines. Who knows?
Anyway, I'm looking for some feedback on the idea. Anything you've got would be great. Believe me, I'm all ears.
Then modify the consequences of having the ziggs stay on and having them turned off. Maybe each one turned off gives the fleshies a boost of morale, and the undeads a nudge off in HP/armount/damage/etc.. turning them all off could trigger some event where the sun breaks through and destroys all the vampires who could walk around during the day. Or whatever
Letting them all stay on could just mean that they will encounter vampires and slightly more powerful undeads, but nothing that would make it impossible for them to do the quest. And if they DO stay on, maybe after they kill the bad guy, the surviving warforged "clones" in those ziggs start to develop their own agendas and identities... So, uhm, I think there is a lot of fun in your idea, but I wouldn't give out clues in each zigg to find the next one as that would steal a lot of focus from the players to figuring it out and going there instead of completing whatever you designed for them. Besides the warforged IS controlling the lesser versions of himself, so he ought to know where the rest are, right?