I'm slowly building a campaign for my eventual debut as a DM. I have a very strong Dnd group now that would be playing with me and I want to have some good story arch for them. One of my main ideas was pulled from a prompt, that arcane magic is slowly poisoning its wielders across the realm and something is terribly wrong to cause it. Problem is, I need ideas for what would reasonably fit into Dnd lore and could cause this. Help!
Historically in D&D, arcane magic comes from manipulating the Weave (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Weave). I would say that for your purposes, something is likely messing with the Weave/Mystra, and that's leaking into magic users. Potentially some demonic/devilish influence that's slowing corrupting the Weave, leading to insanity. Or something like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, where there's a known evil in one of the pools of magic, which leads to the killing of all sorcerers or something, and every time you use magic it gets worse for you. If you don't want it to affect divine magic users, you could have their deity shielding them from the effects, which also comes at a cost (maybe the demonic influence starts corrupting the deity as well)
Either way sets off an epic quest to fix whatever is going on since magic is pretty integral to D&D lore. I would also say that this is something you'll want to be upfront with your players about--especially if you've players that prefer/only play magic users since this is going to make their life very difficult. I would also think about how this affects different types of magic users. Perhaps sorcerers notice it first since they're innately connected to the Weave, and wizards don't notice it until it gets bad. Or the opposite, where wizards notice it immediately since they study the Weave to do their magic, and sorcerers don't notice the slow corruption. I think it's a very interesting idea. Please keep us updated on what you decide.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Harry Hoblin, the happy goblin, doin' all of the goblin things
He likes murder, loot, and pillage; he's doin' all of the goblin things
He'll eat your puppies and your babies; he's doin' all of the goblin things
Demonic incursion in the material plain. Impacted sorcerers first because it's in their blood, but the taint has spread to wizards studying the phenomenon. Look into it before important npc a from players backstory dies.
I am going to parrot TheIsleWytch, the weave/fount of magic is being corrupted at it's source. In my world magic is a physical/tangible pool to the point that it's a resource much the same as oil, ores, water, etc. Having access to this pool of raw magic would allow a nefarious person to poison the supply, think Scarecrow from Batman Begins.
So I think right now my players have requested a Tal'dorei setting for the campaign. I'm a huge Matt Mercer fan so this is a fun move, but he never expressly talks about the Weave in Exandria at all. He does include a deity that is the equivalent of Corellon who is over the fey and arcane. I'm thinking something is poisoning the goddess herself because of a corrupted temple or something of the like. I'll probably incorporate the Weave in there as well, but I'm not prepared for the players to really interact with it as a separate force from the goddess yet. I'll try to update this thread whenever the story develops some more, I'm really excited for it!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I'm slowly building a campaign for my eventual debut as a DM. I have a very strong Dnd group now that would be playing with me and I want to have some good story arch for them. One of my main ideas was pulled from a prompt, that arcane magic is slowly poisoning its wielders across the realm and something is terribly wrong to cause it. Problem is, I need ideas for what would reasonably fit into Dnd lore and could cause this. Help!
Historically in D&D, arcane magic comes from manipulating the Weave (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Weave). I would say that for your purposes, something is likely messing with the Weave/Mystra, and that's leaking into magic users. Potentially some demonic/devilish influence that's slowing corrupting the Weave, leading to insanity. Or something like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, where there's a known evil in one of the pools of magic, which leads to the killing of all sorcerers or something, and every time you use magic it gets worse for you. If you don't want it to affect divine magic users, you could have their deity shielding them from the effects, which also comes at a cost (maybe the demonic influence starts corrupting the deity as well)
Either way sets off an epic quest to fix whatever is going on since magic is pretty integral to D&D lore. I would also say that this is something you'll want to be upfront with your players about--especially if you've players that prefer/only play magic users since this is going to make their life very difficult. I would also think about how this affects different types of magic users. Perhaps sorcerers notice it first since they're innately connected to the Weave, and wizards don't notice it until it gets bad. Or the opposite, where wizards notice it immediately since they study the Weave to do their magic, and sorcerers don't notice the slow corruption. I think it's a very interesting idea. Please keep us updated on what you decide.
Harry Hoblin, the happy goblin, doin' all of the goblin things
He likes murder, loot, and pillage; he's doin' all of the goblin things
He'll eat your puppies and your babies; he's doin' all of the goblin things
Demonic incursion in the material plain. Impacted sorcerers first because it's in their blood, but the taint has spread to wizards studying the phenomenon. Look into it before important npc a from players backstory dies.
I am going to parrot TheIsleWytch, the weave/fount of magic is being corrupted at it's source. In my world magic is a physical/tangible pool to the point that it's a resource much the same as oil, ores, water, etc. Having access to this pool of raw magic would allow a nefarious person to poison the supply, think Scarecrow from Batman Begins.
and just for giggles, you should grab this: Ginormous table of random magical spell effects
So I think right now my players have requested a Tal'dorei setting for the campaign. I'm a huge Matt Mercer fan so this is a fun move, but he never expressly talks about the Weave in Exandria at all. He does include a deity that is the equivalent of Corellon who is over the fey and arcane. I'm thinking something is poisoning the goddess herself because of a corrupted temple or something of the like. I'll probably incorporate the Weave in there as well, but I'm not prepared for the players to really interact with it as a separate force from the goddess yet. I'll try to update this thread whenever the story develops some more, I'm really excited for it!