I run a Dungeons and Dragons group every sunday with myself and three of my friends. As with any self respecting DM, I like to think up new ways to keep my players interested.
Recently I thought up of the Idea of adapting D&D around Christopher Paolini's Inheritence Cycle (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr and Inheritence) adapting characters and monsters from the books to work with D&D, set in Alagaesia (The setting of the books.)
Alagaesia Map.
Due to the fantastical tales of monsters and magic in the Eragon books and the wealth of description of setting and character, The inheritance cycle is very fitting for the game of D&D but as I have not been playing D&D for that long, things like making statistics for the characters will be a little confusing for me.
So that is why I am calling out to the amazing community we have here. What do you guys think of my idea and is there any suggestions/help you can offer me with this project? I would be so grateful if anybody could.
Thanks so much in advance
skateweb500
One of the things that is central to D&D (particularly in 4th edition, but it's there in 3 and 3.5 as well) is the idea of a level appropriate challenge. Most of the time your party of PCs is going to face off against enemies of roughly the same power level. It's relatively rare that get to kick in the door and lay a beating on a vastly inferior foe, and it's relatively rare that you face an enemy that is so powerful that your only option is to run for your life.
One of the main ideas in the Eragon books is that dragons and dragon riders are vastly more powerful than normal people. If your PCs are dragon riders, then unless they are facing other dragon riders, they will spend a lot of time dealing with mobs of much weaker enemies. If your PCs are not dragon riders, then they are going to need some serious help when they have to deal with any dragon riders and dragons.
Maybe you can work around this, just by shaping your adventure arc in a way so that the PCs spend most of their time facing off against well-matched opponents, but it seems like there is some potential for a power imbalance.
This is an interesting idea. Let me raise one issue that might make things more complicated (but please don't take this as me trying to shoot down your entire idea).
One of the things that is central to D&D (particularly in 4th edition, but it's there in 3 and 3.5 as well) is the idea of a level appropriate challenge. Most of the time your party of PCs is going to face off against enemies of roughly the same power level. It's relatively rare that get to kick in the door and lay a beating on a vastly inferior foe, and it's relatively rare that you face an enemy that is so powerful that your only option is to run for your life.
One of the main ideas in the Eragon books is that dragons and dragon riders are vastly more powerful than normal people. If your PCs are dragon riders, then unless they are facing other dragon riders, they will spend a lot of time dealing with mobs of much weaker enemies. If your PCs are not dragon riders, then they are going to need some serious help when they have to deal with any dragon riders and dragons.
Maybe you can work around this, just by shaping your adventure arc in a way so that the PCs spend most of their time facing off against well-matched opponents, but it seems like there is some potential for a power imbalance.
Thanks for your advice. Yes, I do see where your coming from
but remember this is eragon adapted for D&D. We can change the characters so that they are level appropriate for my PCs.In my opinion a decrease in power to the dragon riders to better match the PCs and the monsters would be the most obvious course of action as I dont want my PCs just facing one species.
Do you have any ideas how I can avoid this power imbalance?
Thanks so much for your suggestion!!
S500
1. Dragons. If you look through the Monster Manuals, you can find dragons of appropriate challenge for any party of PCs, but if your characters fight dragons all the time then you lose the idea that there are only a handful remaining in the world and whoever has one is a BAD DUDE. Maybe the best approach is just to not have your group fight a dragon until they are at a pretty high power level themselves. There are plenty of other challenges you could throw at them, and it gives them a long range challenge to look forward to.
2. Elves. D&D elves/eladrin are designed to be a PC race, roughly equal in power to humans. That is pretty clearly not the case with Alegesian elves. A simple, but limiting, solution would be to simply say no PC elves. Another possibility would be to start all characters at a higher level, explaining that the humans are battle-hardened and experienced and the elves, though equal in D&D level, are actually young and inexperienced for elves.
Would your players go for a campaign where you asked them all to play humans? It doesn't really deny them playing any particular class that they want, but it allows you to start them off as normal guys (maybe even the group from Eragon's village). At the start of the game dragons and elves are just crazy stories, and the most threatening thing they know of are Galbatorix's soldiers. Through the campaign they learn all the other interesting and dangerous creatures that are out there. I think I would enjoy playing in that kind of game, but I know some players would want to mix it up with the big names from the book sooner rather than later.
Another idea that just came to me as I was writing this would be to set your game in the world of Alegesia, but not during the time of the Eragon books. Maybe dragon riders are still common. Maybe all the characters are dragon riders and their various adventures are traveling around the land righting wrongs and smiting evildoers. Maybe the climax of the campaign is Galbatorix's attempt to subvert the dragon riders.
There are two places where I think the power balance could get really weird. In both cases you could default to what D&D already has, but you lose a little bit of the Eragon flavor.
1. Dragons. If you look through the Monster Manuals, you can find dragons of appropriate challenge for any party of PCs, but if your characters fight dragons all the time then you lose the idea that there are only a handful remaining in the world and whoever has one is a BAD DUDE. Maybe the best approach is just to not have your group fight a dragon until they are at a pretty high power level themselves. There are plenty of other challenges you could throw at them, and it gives them a long range challenge to look forward to.
2. Elves. D&D elves/eladrin are designed to be a PC race, roughly equal in power to humans. That is pretty clearly not the case with Alegesian elves. A simple, but limiting, solution would be to simply say no PC elves. Another possibility would be to start all characters at a higher level, explaining that the humans are battle-hardened and experienced and the elves, though equal in D&D level, are actually young and inexperienced for elves.
Would your players go for a campaign where you asked them all to play humans? It doesn't really deny them playing any particular class that they want, but it allows you to start them off as normal guys (maybe even the group from Eragon's village). At the start of the game dragons and elves are just crazy stories, and the most threatening thing they know of are Galbatorix's soldiers. Through the campaign they learn all the other interesting and dangerous creatures that are out there. I think I would enjoy playing in that kind of game, but I know some players would want to mix it up with the big names from the book sooner rather than later.
Another idea that just came to me as I was writing this would be to set your game in the world of Alegesia, but not during the time of the Eragon books. Maybe dragon riders are still common. Maybe all the characters are dragon riders and their various adventures are traveling around the land righting wrongs and smiting evildoers. Maybe the climax of the campaign is Galbatorix's attempt to subvert the dragon riders.
I like the idea of starting them off as normal guys from Eragons Village. I think my PCs would actually enjoy this alot. Thank you so much for your advice.
S500
Here is also an idea for you this is what I'm doing cause I'm doing a d&d campaign as well in the world of alegasia instead of players getting dragons each. I'm letting everyone choose there race. Now I created all the races over so I can make adjustments to all there stats so there all basically equal. But I had everyone roll to find out who gets to be a dragon if they wanted to. But I'm only allowing one dragon making it so one player is a dragon and one other ( random lucky roller) gets to the rider. Now I'm placing my story after the fourth book so I have the freedom of story. But haveing a player be the dragon rider and dragon is just to unfair unless you make them all dragon riders I figured this way it sticks close to the original idea of it being two beings. Makes the game funner that way. Now I know I'm two years past this I just figured if you still check this might give you idea I case you haven't yet.