So...When D&D 5E came out, I was initially excited as it seemed like it'd decently fit a fantasy setting I made that some of my friends expressed an interest in playing in(The earlier ones had the whole scaling issues of leveling up making lesser foes swiftly irrelevant, plus OP wizards and such). I had to modify in some stuff-play around with the species traits, replace the spell system with spell points, and add a divine favor system but it seemed to work alright but...I can't help but think I'm trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
See, the thing is that Dungeons and Dragons is all about exploring dungeons and beating up exotic monsters and unlike some games, the mechanics actually seem to feed into that design angle. The game I have in mind is more political intrigue and battlefields between warring factions, and when the NPC Archmage is only CR 6 and he's the highest CR NPC, I begin to wonder how well that'd hold up. I know goons stay relevant a lot longer in D&D, but I can't help but think that PCs will inevitably run out of 'equal' mundane foes to face and I'd be left with throwing in demons and giant monsters.
There's always homebrewing up 'Royal Guard' and such to offer opposition at the higher levels, but I can't shak the feeling that I'd be trying to force the game to play as something it's not. Plus, there's other problems beside the adversity issue that makes me nervous (Rest rules are pretty obviously designed with the idea you pushing into dungeons, the lack of any really good social rules though that's pretty common, ect.).
So, I just gotta ask how adaptable Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition really is. And if there's any other High Fantasy games out there that would work better with a politics and warfare centered setting over a dungeoneering one. Anyone have some advice?
D&D has always been a game that assumes the GM will make up their own monsters and NPCs; it simply doesn't hold up without doing that because they can't account for everything.
It's also a game that assumes that after you begin to plateau in raw, physical power, the game shifts into lateral political power; in old-school D&D, the cut-off point for this was 9th level. Gains still exist, but you got diminishing returns and no extra hit dice.
And frankly, it doesn't matter how much spells or hit dice a king has. If he has more political power than you, he just does, and murder only does so much, if you're in a conflict where you need people to like you.
And frankly, it doesn't matter how much spells or hit dice a king has. If he has more political power than you, he just does, and murder only does so much, if you're in a conflict where you need people to like you.
D&D has always been a game that assumes the GM will make up their own monsters and NPCs; it simply doesn't hold up without doing that because they can't account for everything.
It's also a game that assumes that after you begin to plateau in raw, physical power, the game shifts into lateral political power; in old-school D&D, the cut-off point for this was 9th level. Gains still exist, but you got diminishing returns and no extra hit dice.
And frankly, it doesn't matter how much spells or hit dice a king has. If he has more political power than you, he just does, and murder only does so much, if you're in a conflict where you need people to like you.
Uh. Of all the games I've encountered, D&D has the most monsters/NPCs of any I've ever seen-probably the only one ever that I could go "Yeah, you can run an entire game with just those" presuming the standard dungeon setting. That aside, it rather feels like the game is trying to tell me something when there's hundreds of monsters, a handful of NPCs, and an Archmage is a whopping CR 6.
Secondly, old-school D&D's ideas of what should occur is rather irrelevant given I'm not talking about old-school D&D but 5E. You're still advancing throughout the second half of your career, there's no hard and fast rules on you getting strongholds and legions of followers, and there's a lot of differences in how NPCs are handled (As I recall, Dragons only had something like 67 hit points, and castles were suggested to have things like 13th level lords or what-not). It's not like all D&D games were great for leading stuff seeing as 3.5E was pretty terrible for warfare, given that Adventurers were one man armies and there's been the discussions on how nations in setting even kept from disintegrating from the hilariously powerful monsters.
And I don't care that a king can't singlehandedly take on the party (I mean, I'd stat most up to do so anyway, due to the way the setting works, but I doubt my players would even consider that anyway) but I find myself skeptical that a game that's very clearly built for dungeoneering will work too well for a game about politics and warfare. I mean, it's really, really nice that in 5E that an army can still take down level 20 PCs but like...How important in CR? IF I want an equal fight, will I constantly be having to scribe up new NPCs and having to work out justifications for what they are? Even so, how would the rest rules, exploration mechanics et al play with the change in focus?
Frankly, the NPC issue isn't like, some horrible issue for me so much as it did set alarm bells ringing. When I first started work on my game, I blithely assumed that the NPCs would be designed to scale levels 1-20 just like monsters, and the fact they weren't is a really strong indication that NPCs aren't really expected to be opposition for long (if at all), which points to all sorts of design focuses that make me worry that my game is going to be struggling against the system, rather than working with it.. That's something I've encountered more than once. Plus not even the numerous homebrew NPCs I've seen get past CR 7, which is a concerning sign when even other GMs aren't considering NPCs as long-term foes.
Maybe I'm wrong and the game works fine levels 1-20 even if you aren't really looting dungeons but caught up in military campaigns and political intrigue and the only problem is that nobody's designed high level NPCs. Maybe I'm drastically over estimating CR, and even at level 15 an Archmage would be a dangerous threat. Maybe all the mechanics work perfectly fine outside of dungeon delving and I'm just overly paranoid. I don't know, that's why I'm asking.
Oh yeah, I'd definitely be customizing the ah, 'bad guys' ('Tis a setting with some moral nuance to it) with rules along tohse lines. Probably not actual PC rules, but some cool NPC ones, and a few I could use monster rules for. There's at least one guy who's secretly a dragon and other characters who are vampires for instance.
The biggest worry is that I'm trying to make the game do something it's not. I've been on the bad side of crappy hacks of systems to try and make them into something they're not before, and it's not pleasant. Like, as an example, I wouldn't use Godlike (Game of super gritty WW2 superheroes. One group playing through had over a 100% casualties, and the only guy of the original nine to survive the campaign was crippled) for GI Joe. They might both be shooty military games, but they're still very different games.
Well, the setting generally looked like it was focused more on debate between the different Factions than on combat.
If they could manage that in 2nd then it should be viable in 5th.(in theory)
Uh. Of all the games I've encountered, D&D has the most monsters/NPCs of any I've ever seen-probably the only one ever that I could go "Yeah, you can run an entire game with just those" presuming the standard dungeon setting. That aside, it rather feels like the game is trying to tell me something when there's hundreds of monsters, a handful of NPCs, and an Archmage is a whopping CR 6.
Yea, but when you're running multiple campaigns with the same ruleset, your group will catch wise eventually. Even with the bucketloads of options already provided, you're meant to keep it going.
The NPCs especially, since the ones provided are totally stock and you're supposed to keep the progression going; 5E has a bigger focus on having more, smarter enemies rather than just throwing out CR appropriate loners; those CR 6 Archmages stay relevant the entire game, but once you figure out how the statblocks work, you can just add more casting levels for personalized baddies.
And I don't care that a king can't singlehandedly take on the party (I mean, I'd stat most up to do so anyway, due to the way the setting works, but I doubt my players would even consider that anyway) but I find myself skeptical that a game that's very clearly built for dungeoneering will work too well for a game about politics and warfare. I mean, it's really, really nice that in 5E that an army can still take down level 20 PCs but like...How important in CR? IF I want an equal fight, will I constantly be having to scribe up new NPCs and having to work out justifications for what they are? Even so, how would the rest rules, exploration mechanics et al play with the change in focus?
5E is built to handle three pillars of gameplay; Combat, Exploration, and Social. You're basically asking to swap focus on Combat and Exploration for focus on Combat and Social. That's not a big deal.
It also sounds like you haven't read the Dungeon Master's Guide; CR can be cumulative from the NPCs involved; Tucker's Kobold-esque strategies are wholly encouraged, and there's variant rules for fucking with rest rules and exploration mechanics for less dungeon-crawly games.
Frankly, the NPC issue isn't like, some horrible issue for me so much as it did set alarm bells ringing. When I first started work on my game, I blithely assumed that the NPCs would be designed to scale levels 1-20 just like monsters, and the fact they weren't is a really strong indication that NPCs aren't really expected to be opposition for long (if at all), which points to all sorts of design focuses that make me worry that my game is going to be struggling against the system, rather than working with it.. That's something I've encountered more than once. Plus not even the numerous homebrew NPCs I've seen get past CR 7, which is a concerning sign when even other GMs aren't considering NPCs as long-term foes.
By word of the creators, it basically came down to the fact that they didn't have a lot of player interest or playtesting in late-game material; most campaigns plateau around the middle-teens, so they basically made sure there was plenty of variety in the lower CR brackets and adapted the most iconic high-level monsters like the Tarrasque. It's not that the game doesn't handle it, or that you're not meant to do so, but that there's not much demand for it. The higher level you go, the more you have to diversify and customize anyway, since the strategies of an 18th level spellcaster will vary wildly based on the strengths and weaknesses of your party.
AFAICT with 5e you're supposed to be challenged by a fight involving larger numbers of low-CR monsters, so let the party fight a regiment of 50x CR 5 guards rather than statting up 5x super-elite limited-edition color-coded CR 20 ultra special power ranger guards.
A lot of what makes a fight interesting isn't necessarily the mystery of the opponents themselves, but rather the mystery of finding the optimal tactic -- which can be based on environment, or the enemy's equipment, or some other unknown factor.
Finally, in my game it was a soft-rule that people of the PC races tried hard to not kill other people of PC races. So, any fight between e.g. humans would generally lead to some other non-lethal resolution, or at least low-casualty resolution. Thus, tactics were different if you were fighting "town guards", even though those used the same stats as "evil death cult guards".
Well, the setting generally looked like it was focused more on debate between the different Factions than on combat.
If they could manage that in 2nd then it should be viable in 5th.(in theory)
Oh, you're recommending the setting? Yeah, I have a homebrew setting in mind. Actually created for a book I'm (failing at) writing, and some of my guys were interested in it. Actually part of the problem-D&D 5E is close enough to get me homebrewing stuff and adapting variant rules, but far enough away it's frustrating and I feel like I'm writing a Fantasy Heartbreaker rather than just a setting mod.
For a game that doesn't really have a setting, but expects you to either make your own or use one of the many designed for it, Dungeons and Dragons is a shockingly non-generic game. I know a lot of setting specific games that could learn a thing or two by applying D&D 5E's level of mechanical focus...
Yea, but when you're running multiple campaigns with the same ruleset, your group will catch wise eventually. Even with the bucketloads of options already provided, you're meant to keep it going.
The NPCs especially, since the ones provided are totally stock and you're supposed to keep the progression going; 5E has a bigger focus on having more, smarter enemies rather than just throwing out CR appropriate loners; those CR 6 Archmages stay relevant the entire game, but once you figure out how the statblocks work, you can just add more casting levels for personalized baddies.
Dude, I'm coming off of two year long campaigns where 90% of the enemies were variants of 'Shooty mans with guns' and occasionally 'stabby mans with swords'. The idea that you're supposed to have enough enemy variety to make several hundred monsters quickly stale is...Absolutely flabbergasting to me. Though, I suppose not surprising. D&D has always been about venturing through dungeons full of countless different colorful monsters and stabbing them. More Nethack than Skyrim in terms of enemy variety.
In any case, I'm glad to hear that Archmages do remain relevant throughout as long as I play them right and support them (Which I planned to. Lone bosses tend to die easily due to action economy anyway, Legendary Actions or not).
5E is built to handle three pillars of gameplay; Combat, Exploration, and Social. You're basically asking to swap focus on Combat and Exploration for focus on Combat and Social. That's not a big deal.
It also sounds like you haven't read the Dungeon Master's Guide; CR can be cumulative from the NPCs involved; Tucker's Kobold-esque strategies are wholly encouraged, and there's variant rules for fucking with rest rules and exploration mechanics for less dungeon-crawly games.
Ehhh. I have read through the DMG, though I freely admit I focused on variant rules rather than advice. I'm aware that more enemies would have a higher CR, but there's A. Only so many dudes you can zerg rush players with at once and B. A need for peer esque opponents to challenge players regardless. As to the rest variants, I noticed those, but I'm unsure how they'd interact with the shift, given they're pretty obviously designed for being in dungeons. Gritty Realism might work well for more intrigue games but this is still high fantasy with a number of epic clashes planned along the way. Quandaries, quandaries.
As for the 'three pillars'...Yeah, I'm skeptical. A lot of games claim to do things, then have very little to actually support those things (Dark Heresy and, I believe, Call of Cthulhu for investigation, for example). Plus, more than a few other games have the same 'pillars' but hold up a very different 'ceiling' as it were.
I'm rather more interested in practice than theory, because in theory, a late game D&D campaign seems to be about fighting demons and jumping across planes which seems incongruous with my own plans for the game (or, in theoretically, it works fine without that. 'Tis the problem with theories). Though some of my fears have been relieved it's still...Well, yeah. Have you played a non dungeon crawling game, and how did it work if so?
By word of the creators, it basically came down to the fact that they didn't have a lot of player interest or playtesting in late-game material; most campaigns plateau around the middle-teens, so they basically made sure there was plenty of variety in the lower CR brackets and adapted the most iconic high-level monsters like the Tarrasque. It's not that the game doesn't handle it, or that you're not meant to do so, but that there's not much demand for it. The higher level you go, the more you have to diversify and customize anyway, since the strategies of an 18th level spellcaster will vary wildly based on the strengths and weaknesses of your party.
Okay, I freely admit that it appears I was wrong on the number of high CR Monsters. Whilst there's a frak ton more of them then there are NPCs, most are in the CR 1-6 range. It seems on my earlier read through of the Monsters Manual, I mostly jumped to seeing how many high CR monsters there were, rather than how even they are a minority. Still, as I mentioned, the NPCs were just what sent alarm bells ringing.
AFAICT with 5e you're supposed to be challenged by a fight involving larger numbers of low-CR monsters, so let the party fight a regiment of 50x CR 5 guards rather than statting up 5x super-elite limited-edition color-coded CR 20 ultra special power ranger guards.
A lot of what makes a fight interesting isn't necessarily the mystery of the opponents themselves, but rather the mystery of finding the optimal tactic -- which can be based on environment, or the enemy's equipment, or some other unknown factor.
Finally, in my game it was a soft-rule that people of the PC races tried hard to not kill other people of PC races. So, any fight between e.g. humans would generally lead to some other non-lethal resolution, or at least low-casualty resolution. Thus, tactics were different if you were fighting "town guards", even though those used the same stats as "evil death cult guards".
...50 guards? And you can actually run that without breaking down crying over the amount of stuff to keep track of?
Yes, I'm more than familiar with that sort of difficulty setting. My last session was a high speed car chase, with crazed wookie berzerkers leaping onto the players' stolen hover car, among other fun things.
As for the 'don't kill humans' bit...Humans are actually the main antagonist in the game, and not even 'evi' humans as much. Hence my cause for alarm. Players aren't going to be fighting Demons or what have you at level 11, but rather mages, paladins, sword dancers, and so forth. Plus...Wanton slaughter of non-PC races is also not necessarily approved of. Often IC, but not necessarily good.
Dude, I'm coming off of two year long campaigns where 90% of the enemies were variants of 'Shooty mans with guns' and occasionally 'stabby mans with swords'. The idea that you're supposed to have enough enemy variety to make several hundred monsters quickly stale is...Absolutely flabbergasting to me. Though, I suppose not surprising. D&D has always been about venturing through dungeons full of countless different colorful monsters and stabbing them. More Nethack than Skyrim in terms of enemy variety.
Each type of enemy has its own tricks, nuances, and strategies to it. By letting the PC's face it repeatedly, you let them learn and master a new kind of challenge. Once they've mastered it, you can then make encounters that combine that enemy with other familiar or novel elements to keep the difficulty up while still letting the players feel rewarded by learning from their experience.
Think of the best videogames you've played. They're almost all like that.
Each type of enemy has its own tricks, nuances, and strategies to it. By letting the PC's face it repeatedly, you let them learn and master a new kind of challenge. Once they've mastered it, you can then make encounters that combine that enemy with other familiar or novel elements to keep the difficulty up while still letting the players feel rewarded by learning from their experience.
Think of the best videogames you've played. They're almost all like that.
...I wasn't commenting on whether random monsters in endless variety was good GMing. In fact, I think it's a pretty awful idea. But it's rather hard to deny that D&D does rather strongly encourage that sort of thing, given A. The sheer variety that push players to use 'a little bit of everything' (You can see this with GMs deciding to force people onto boat rides so they can finally use those aquatic monsters, for instance) and B. The whole 'Randomly gen up a dungeon and its monstrous inhabitants regardless of how much sense it makes' that's been a part of the series for the longest time. And, based off my glances at summaries of the official dungeons, those also tend to have all sorts of monsters stuffed into them.
I personally think random gen is usually pretty crap, but my opinion on it is immaterial to the general way the game is structured by default.
Rangen is only crap if it's entirely free of logic and structure. Wandering Monster Tables, after all, should be custom-tailored to what makes sense for the current environment.
Rangen is only crap if it's entirely free of logic and structure. Wandering Monster Tables, after all, should be custom-tailored to what makes sense for the current environment.
My statement kind of holds regardless; if you limit option pools in your randomness, patterns that facilitate players learning to overcome challenges emerge.
@Shephard, you may want to look at the E6 ruleset. It caps the game at level 6 (e.g. "peak human" territory), with advancement past that in the form of extra feats and other mechanical bennies that add more versatility than raw power.
It's originally made for D&D 3.X but a 5e adaptation would be pretty straightforward. That said, if you use it you may want to use 3.5 or Pathfinder instead, since they have a much, much greater variety of low-level non-class player content (feats, class variants, weird spells and traits that can be handed out as unique benefits, etc).
@Shephard, you may want to look at the E6 ruleset. It caps the game at level 6 (e.g. "peak human" territory), with advancement past that in the form of extra feats and other mechanical bennies that add more versatility than raw power.
It's originally made for D&D 3.X but a 5e adaptation would be pretty straightforward. That said, if you use it you may want to use 3.5 or Pathfinder instead, since they have a much, much greater variety of low-level non-class player content (feats, class variants, weird spells and traits that can be handed out as unique benefits, etc).
5E actually shares a host of mechanical similarities with E6. Plus, like, keeping players at a low level or 'peak human' doesn't appeal to me given that the setting was pretty explicitly written with the idea where 'high level' characters aren't terribly uncommon.And in 5E, generic mooks with spears and mail never become completely irrelevant (Even the mightiest of monsters will die to a fairly small army pretty easily), so unlike certain editions armies don't become irrelevant under that weird as hell paradigm.
My main worry in relation to the NPCs was 'peer' foes. And I can always homebrew those up. But the lack of peer NPCs made me notice how much the game is built toward dungeoneering (Rest rules are most obvious, and I have no idea how modifying those would make a war game any better or worse).
As a side note, D&D is rather strangely hard structured for how many options it has. It has rules for making the game pretty gritty with modern firearms, but it doesn't have anything for a magic system that doesn't involve pre-preparing spells (Spellpoints, alas, just replaces spell slots, as opposed to doing away with vancian casting. Had to rule that myself) or optional rules removing or limiting plane travel and Resurrection (Other than GM homerules at least). I can set the game in Fantasy Japan, but there's no alternate forms of generic monsters for different settings.
It is really freaking weird how for a game with no official setting, D&D is incredibly setting specific. It's rather bemusing to discover that a setting inspired by D&D requires extensive houserules and homebrew to work in D&D. It's also part of the reason I asked if there were good 5E alternatives that might be easier to mod, because all I've found are D&D inspired heartbreakers that work even less well.
My main worry in relation to the NPCs was 'peer' foes. And I can always homebrew those up. But the lack of peer NPCs made me notice how much the game is built toward dungeoneering (Rest rules are most obvious, and I have no idea how modifying those would make a war game any better or worse).
The monster creation rules in the DMG are actually incredibly useful for brewing up peer opponents. Since NPCs don't have to follow PC logic you can assign them appropriate AC/Saves/HP and Attack/Damage to make an appropriate challenge for your party as needed. It's also trivially easy to scale up existing NPCs to peer level combatants. Just up the enemies AC/HP and Attack/Damage until it reaches the right CR for your group.
As a side note, D&D is rather strangely hard structured for how many options it has. It has rules for making the game pretty gritty with modern firearms, but it doesn't have anything for a magic system that doesn't involve pre-preparing spells (Spellpoints, alas, just replaces spell slots, as opposed to doing away with vancian casting. Had to rule that myself) or optional rules removing or limiting plane travel and Resurrection (Other than GM homerules at least). I can set the game in Fantasy Japan, but there's no alternate forms of generic monsters for different settings.
It's also part of the reason I asked if there were good 5E alternatives that might be easier to mod, because all I've found are D&D inspired heartbreakers that work even less well.
You may want to take a look at Dungeon World. It's a game designed to "feel" like D&D without actually playing like D&D (which is to say, no d20, no strict imitation of D&D combat, etc). Take a look at the character sheets in the play kit, and the abilities listed on them, for a better example of what I mean.
You may want to take a look at Dungeon World. It's a game designed to "feel" like D&D without actually playing like D&D (which is to say, no d20, no strict imitation of D&D combat, etc). Take a look at the character sheets in the play kit, and the abilities listed on them, for a better example of what I mean.
The monster creation rules in the DMG are actually incredibly useful for brewing up peer opponents. Since NPCs don't have to follow PC logic you can assign them appropriate AC/Saves/HP and Attack/Damage to make an appropriate challenge for your party as needed. It's also trivially easy to scale up existing NPCs to peer level combatants. Just up the enemies AC/HP and Attack/Damage until it reaches the right CR for your group.
True enough, I suppose, though I'll certainly do a tad more than that...Plus I'm a tad simulationist, so slapping extra armor onto mail makes me grumble. But then I can just justify it as Mastercrafted or runic enhanced crap. Still, all in all an easy way to scale foes, that.
Seems rather focused on 'psychics psychics psychics' (Which isn't a bad thing, I just don't think it'd readily adapt to wizardry), so I think I'll stay with my current house rules of 'Spellpoints, with no spell prep, and you don't get free spells on level up'.
Also, I can't help but laugh at the description. "Not all D&D settings have the same number of psionics...But they all get their power from the Far Realms!"
The whole 'Yeah, we'll leave this piece of setting open and then define this" style is so very strange...
You may want to take a look at Dungeon World. It's a game designed to "feel" like D&D without actually playing like D&D (which is to say, no d20, no strict imitation of D&D combat, etc). Take a look at the character sheets in the play kit, and the abilities listed on them, for a better example of what I mean.
...I don't care about feeling like D&D. I just want a high fantasy RPG that doesn't try to force me into dungeons and is easily modded to fit different settings. And where low level npcs don't become completely irrelevant. That'd be nice too.
And Dungeon World is...Not my cup of tea, bluntly. I don't really like light games (Especially with a narrativist bent), even if I've grown fonder of abstractions since most simulationist systems screw up hilariously. And based off the reviews I've read, there's more than a few things I'd have particular issues with.
Arc 1 (low level): the PC's investigate the mysterious artifacts, and the conspiracy that seems to be trying to hide them. The arc ends with the discovery that the conspirators are alien infiltrators, and that the "artifacts" dredged from the river are actually something much more sinister.
Before I get into the specifics of Arc One, here's some design theory.
As I mentioned a few posts above, the best way to pace a game is by gradually introducing new elements and mechanics that the players can master, and then combining them in new ways to keep the players on their toes. There are a few ways of going about this, but the easiest and most reliable is a four step process:
1. Introduce X in a controlled environment with relatively low stakes.
2. Over the next couple of sessions, have one to three more encounters involving X that force the players to adapt and deal with X in different contexts.
3. Have a big, high stakes challenge involving X with a big reward for success.
4. Stop using X for a little while so the players don't get bored of it, but then have it show up again later in the campaign so the players feel like their acquired experience is still useful. These future instances of X can also serve as a complicating factor when the players are learning to deal with new element Y.
Since the Tsarok are the ultimate enemy in this campaign, their four-step process is spaced over a much broader range of levels, and encounters with them can help set up the climax of smaller four-step processes. Since the campaign is about unveiling a conspiracy, Tsarok encounters also serve as a reward and an indicator of progress; when the PC's force the Tsarok to show themselves in person, it means they've blown something open. Each successful Tsarok encounter leaves the players knowing more about the plot, and opens the door for further escalation.
Okay, so, the first part of the first arc of the campaign now.
Murky Bottom is a human farming town along the Dawn Empire's backwater and lightly settled southern frontier. It gets its name from the small, murky lake fed by a waterfall that pours down from the overlooking foothills of the border mountains, on whose shores the town is built. A week before the campaign begins, there was an earthquake that caused some visible avalanches on those hills; a few days later, a pair of local millers accidentally dredged two mysterious artifacts from the lake.
PC's who have already been in the area prior to the game's start might know the following with the relevant knowledge or streetwise checks:
Easy DC: Many of the townsfolk suspect that the artifacts were once buried underground in the mountains, and that the earthquake shook them loose and let them tumble away down the river.
Easy DC: There is a dorf community called Mara's Hold upstream in those mountains; they might have found something interesting as well, but if so they haven't told anyone.
Easy DC: The artifacts are a pair of man-sized idols depicting an unknown god or other being. They appear to be made of gold, but are much lighter and seemingly unbreakable.
Moderate DC: Murky Bottom and its surrounding hamlets and farmsteads is governed by Junior Governor Marcus. Marcus has a reputation for being a lazy, hands-off administrator who is rumored to have received this backwater post after angering the eladrin clerics. However, he has taken the idol situation seriously, immediately putting the potentially cursed and/or heretical artifacts under heavy guard in his manor house to await word from the higher authorities.
Moderate DC: The millers who found the idols have an artistically gifted, but otherwise simpleminded, son who drew an excellent likeness of them before they were confiscated by Governor Marcus. The drawing should still be in the peasant family's possession.
Moderate DC: for recent weeks, a few of the fish and shellfish caught in the Murky Bottom and the river that it feeds have been slightly deformed or mutated. Some people have gotten reluctant to drink the water as a result.
The "idols" are not actually religious artifacts, or even artifacts at all. They are a pair of tsarok-ensis, aka swordwings, curled up and hibernating inside a grellstone shell to withstand the rigors of dimensional travel. A secret tsarok facility upstream has been gradually importing these hibernating soldiers and stockpiling them, keeping them dormant and encysted for the time being to save the costs of feeding and housing these high-maintenance creatures. The earthquake damaged the facility, and several encysted tsarok fell into the river.
The tsarok have been scouring the rivercourse to recover their missing personnel, but were too late to stop the villagers from discovering these two and sending word to the nearest city. Shortly after the discovery, an aranea killed Governor Marcus and is now wearing his skin and impersonating him. This aranea has a plan to make the "artifacts" disappear before they can be examined by professionals.
For many decades, small tribes of goblin nomads have snuck through the intermittently guarded southern border to forage and graze their livestock where the imperials won't notice. Some of them initially tried to raid the outlying villages, but the retaliation this brought down from the imperial orcish border patrols was a sufficient deterrent to end this practice. The Marcus-aranea has made contact with a tribe of goblins, and (pretending to have some arcane political motivation) bribed them to raid Murky Bottom at a specific time when the patrols are far away, assuring them that they can escape quickly enough to avoid retaliation. The Marcus-aranea is going to hide the two cysts during the raid, and make it look like the goblins carried them off. The likely outcome is that the border patrols will retaliate against some other random hapless goblins who happen to be in the vicinity, and the "artifacts" will be written off as "no longer our problem" by the imperial officials who had never gotten a chance to see the cysts and get really curious about them.
The campaign begins with the PC's entering the town of Murky Bottom just as the goblins are raiding it.
The townsfolk were caught unprepared, but the militia is still managing to do an admirable job at fighting them off; still, help would obviously be appreciated. When the PC's approach, they run into a small group of goblins and one hobgoblin that have slipped through the fighting and are in the process of breaking down a boathouse door in search of loot. When the PC's see the goblins, they can make some knowledge checks.
Common Knowledge: goblins are a morphologically diverse race typically found in badlands and deserts, with a strong reputation for clannishness, theft, and general thuggery. They've been known to hang around the southern border for a long time, but its been many years since they've last caused trouble.
Easy DC: goblins have a social structure somewhat like ants or termites. Those small, implike creatures prying the door open are common worker/forager goblins. The taller one watching over them is a hobgoblin, or soldier. Goblins are known for using sneaky tactics, like surprise ambushes and hit-and-run attacks.
Average DC: goblin war and hunting parties usually bring along tame wolflike creatures called worgs. Worgs are trained to attack from hiding and trip up the enemy so that their masters can overwhelm them.
Hard DC: each goblin tribe is led by a dominant elder female, a Hag. Goblin hags tend to be skilled in sorcery and potionmaking. Most famous of their potions are the smokebombs that they often give to their hobgoblin lieutenants.
This should be a not-too-difficult combat encounter, though not an entirely straightforward one. Unless the PC's succeed at a high DC Perception check (or a moderate DC one, if they approach cautiously and slowly), a worg with a goblin rider will leap out at them from behind another building once they engage the main group; this will demonstrate the goblin affinity for surprises and ambushes. When the fight is clearly going against him, the hobgoblin will throw a smoke bomb (a type of potion often brewed by the hags) and use its concealment to try to escape with any surviving goblins; the PC's will know about goblin smokebombs moving forward.
After the PC's and the town militia finish repelling their respective groups of raiders, the two will meet up. The PC's will be able to introduce themselves to the chief guardsman, the minor eladrin priestess stationed in Murky Bottom, and the entity that appears to be Junior Governor Marcus. Marcus will gravely inform the group that the goblins have seemingly made off with the artifacts, and that the valuable-looking items might have even been the motivation for the raid (assuming the goblins heard about them somehow). The chief guardsman will want to go after the fleeing raiders and recover what they took, but Marcus says that the milita shouldn't leave the town for fear the goblins may double back.
The PC's can offer to chase down the fleeing goblins. Marcus will say he'd rather keep as many armed people in town to guard it as possible (playing the part of a cowardly bureaucrat), but the chief guardsman and the priestess will both take the PC's side. With some high charisma related checks and good suggestions from the PC's on how to shore up defenses, they may even get Marcus to let a militaman or two accompany them (he can't be TOO adamant in his refusal without arousing suspicion). Araneas have a massive, massive Bluff skill, so only a very good roll from a PC with a high Sense Motive/Insight will reveal that Marcus is lying. Even if a PC somehow manages to see through his deception though, they will have no way of proving it just yet.
The PC's and any militiamen who they managed to get can make Nature and Endurance checks to track the fleeing goblins (easy DC's). Successes means that they will catch up to the goblins sooner and catch them unprepared. Failure means the goblins will have more time to regroup, and that the PC's will have to make Endurance checks to resist exhaustion from chasing them (in my modified fourth edition I dock them a healing surge or two to reflect tiredness).
Optionally, you may want to include another, minor encounter along the way with some goblin stragglers who haven't yet caught up with the main group. Just to give the PC's a feel for forest environments, and to give them a bit more experience fighting goblins and worgs before the tougher battle ahead.
When they catch up to the main group of fleeing goblins, it will be in a forested patch along bottom of a cliff. This goblin group is bigger than the last one they fought, and again includes at least one hobgoblin and worg in addition to normal goblins. This is a sort of boss encounter, and the last fight of the day, so feel free to make it harder. Successful tracking checks means the PC's will be able to make Stealth checks to catch the goblins unawares, while failed tracking means the goblins will be on the lookout for pursuers and can't be surprised. The goblins will use trees as cover, and some will try to sneak through the bushes to flank PC's, using similar tactics to last time.
When the battle goes against the goblins, their leader will call for a truce in broken Imperial. In exchange for the lives of himself and his men, he will allow the PC's to recover the stolen goods. If the PC's parlay with the hobgoblin, the conversation should establish the following facts: goblins are extremely loyal to their sovereign hags, there are at least two tribes of goblins in the area right now that do not get along with each other, and the goblins do NOT have the missing idols in their possession. Some social skill checks (moderate DC) will allow them to trick the hobgoblin into giving the name of his tribe's ruling hag, Grekl Shtath. Alternatively, the PC's can kill all the goblins, or force them to flee (their last smokebomb will be employed in this attempt) with only the smallest and lightest of their ill-gotten gains, in which case they don't learn as much about goblin politics, but either way they learn that the raiders did not get ahold of the idols and that Marcus must have lied. However the PC's resolve the situation, award them full XP for the encounter; they only fail if they are killed or forced to retreat themselves.
If the PC's manage to capture a goblin prisoner, some high DC interrogation checks will reveal that Grekl Shtath sent the raiders after having made some kind of covert agreement with a mysterious, cloaked and hooded visitor to their camp, and that they weren't expecting the village to be guarded nearly as well as it was. That's all that the raiders know.
When the PC's are seen approaching Murky Bottom again, Governor Marcus will suspect that they've already learned of his deception and not risk being confronted; by the time they get back into town, he has disappeared. With some investigation rolls (easy DC), the PC's learn that 1. the milita and manor staff have taken inventory, and the governors house where the idols were stored was never actually penetrated by the goblin raiders, 2. Governor Marcus sent his guards and staff members on various errands about fifteen minutes ago before dissapearing, and 2. a cloaked and hooded figure was seen riding out of town on horseback, with two big saddlebags. By the time they gather all this information, Marcus will have a sufficient head start on them to make pursuit exceedingly difficult.
After this eventful night, the chief guardman and priestess will offer the PC's free lodgings in return for their help. Either that night or the following morning, the PC's will probably investigate further.
Three likely avenues of investigation are the governor's house, the millers who found the artifacts, and the Murky Bottom itself.
The miller family will willingly tell the PC's that their mill-wheel got caught on something, and when they dredged around it they found it caught on one of the idols, with the other lying in the mud nearby. A Sense Motive check (moderate DC) reveals that this is at best a half-truth, and with enough Diplomacy or Intimidation (high DC's) they can be bullied, coaxed, or threatened into revealing that despite the dorf gold mine in the mountains having been tapped out a long time ago, they still occasionally find pebbles of gold ore in the riverbed, and that since the earthquake they've found more. Instead of reporting this as they are legally expected to, they've been illicitly selling these bits to a sleazy halfling merchant who frequently moves through the area as part of the official supply/trade convoys. Pursuing the smuggling ring is an optional sidequest that the PC's can follow up on throughout the first arc of the campaign.
The millers' son still has the drawing he made of the artifacts, which the family willingly shows to the PC's; the objects resemble beings both humanoid and insect, curled up into a fetal position and wrapped in a coat of folded blades, made of what looks and feels like gold but wieghing much less and being impervious to hammers and chisels. Seeing the picture will allow the PC's to easily recognize the cysts if they see them or other depictions of them in the future.
The governor's house seems to be in order, but a moderate to high Search check or a specifically stated act to check Marcus' bedroom will reveal a small, dried bloodstain hidden under his bed (the aranea missed a spot when it cleaned up after itself after it pulled Marcus under his own bed and hollowed him out). Interviewing his household staff will also reveal that Marcus has been distant for the last few days, and spent an awful lot of time and energy inspecting and looking after those idols. A moderate social check will also get Marcus' wife (a much younger village girl) to reveal that he seemed to lose any sexual interest in her starting from around the same time.
Finally, if the PC's do a bit of dredging of their own in the Murky Bottom, they will (with moderate DC Swim and Search checks) find shards of broken material near the waterfall. The outer surface of these shards is smooth to the touch and looks like gold, but the inner surface is chalky, powdery, and dark brown. A bit of experimenting will reveal that these shards are nearly indestructible if you hit the gold surface (high hardness and resistance to most elemental damage types), but extremely fragile to both heat and blunt trauma from the chalky surface. If the PC's show these shards to the townsfolk, they will confirm that they look like pieces or enamel from the surface of another "idol." These are fragments from broken tsarok cysts that were waiting to be recycled into raw grellstone that also got washed downstream. With a very high Search check, the PC's might also find a pebble of the gold ore that the millers were secretly dredging for (worth a few silver pieces to a metalsmith).
Successfully investigating any of these leads should give a moderate XP reward.
Once the PC's have finished in Murky Bottom, they have two leads to follow. They can go to the dorf community in the hills to learn more about the earthquake and the mysterious enamel fragments that came downstream, or they can hit the road in the direction of the city of Serpent's Fall, in whose direction Marcus was last seen riding. Both are about two days travel from Murky Bottom.
Whichever way the PC's go, they have a harrowing encounter along the way.
Another aranea has snuck into Murky Bottom in the wake of this fiasco, and hollowed out Marcus' wife shortly after the PC's left. Using her body, the aranea hires some local thugs to chase after them. These thugs can be more goblins, or just some human rabble. Since this is a solitary encounter along an otherwise safe road, the PC's will be able to spend all their resources on it; feel free to make it a level or two higher than normal. This encounter uses the same sort of forest terrain as the second goblin battle, so some skills should carry over.
The "wife" should make hit and run attacks, mostly just pushing the PC's into the line of fire of her hired goons while minimizing her own exposure to the PC's attacks. She will flee the fight as soon as she is injured, speeding off into the forest much faster than any normal person should be able to. A Perception or Nature check (high DC) after the fight will show that after escaping sight, her tracks cease to be bipedal; she dropped to all fours to run faster. It is unlikely that the PC's will catch up to her, but with the right abilities and very good rolls, they might.
The Tsarok-Aran don't actually have much in common with the little-used third edition monster that inspired them, at least in terms of stats.
They have a base movement speed of 8 squares (40 ft), spider climb, and a melee attack that lets them push or trip their enemies with sudden, jabbing limb motions. If cornered, they can (once per encounter) spray forth a sticky web of mucus that slows their enemies and allows them to escape.
If an aranea manages to attack from hiding, it can grab its victim and inject it with a powerful digestive agent. She won't use that ability in this encounter though, unless she's really in fear for her life and all her goons are dead and can't see it happen.
As a weapon of last resort, an aranea can also detach the symbiont that allows them to speak humanoid languages; this symbiont is a wormlike creature with humanoid teeth and tongue that makes up most of the mouth and throat of the aranea's disguise. The aranea is loathe to do this however, since losing the symbiont means losing the ability to pass for humanoid until it can get a new one.
Araneas should have high enough defenses and hp to let them escape a low level party. In general, they are much better than escaping and surviving than they are at fighting. Naturally, they also have high Intelligence and Charisma, and an ungodly Bluff and Disguise skill
EDIT: also, if people are still interested in this shit, should I start a thread for it?
