Something I've always enjoyed injecting into the campaigns that I run is that magic is powerful, but dangerous. Magic that alters reality in particular, either creating matter from energy, drawing entities from other Planes, raising the Undead, spells that focus heavily on peering into other planes or parts of the world used in one location for a long time, stuff like that all has repercussions, be it wearing thin the barriers between the Planes and allowing Outsiders to slip through, corrupting the land and creating Aberrations and Monstrosities, creating places where magical based on the rituals and effects over-used in that area happen of their own accord, creating Living Spells or uncontrolled visions of other places, times or different Planes.
I'm running a homebrew based on a setting where a few things are happening that's a bit unusual.
The world is a planet in a distant backwater Crystal Sphere, and as such isn't touched by most Faerun/Krynn/Greyhawk Deities. As such, Gods are either Ascended Mortals or Native Gods who arose from nature-spirits or ancient magical creatures so steeped in power they became Deity-level beings.
Due to the ancient cataclysm that sundered the original civilization and gave rise to the native Asimar, Tiefling and Genasi people, there's a magical storm constantly brewing over the capital of this long-lost civilization and periodically spews out short-lived warp-storms that travel randomly across the landscape and spread corruptive magic in their wake, essentially creating chimeric monsters from the creatures they pass over, converting materials into other types of materials, and most importantly, dropping off people and objects from other worlds into this setting.
The normal 'roles' of the races, ie Goblinoids and Orcs are always evil, Dwarves and Elves always good, etc, doesn't exist for the most part as while the 'Wanderers' dropped off into the setting by the Chaos Storms may have their old biases, thousands of years of needing to rely upon each other for survival against rival factions, monsters and surviving the Warp Storms has made most people more interested in what you can do and how reliable you are, rather than what you look like.
Depending upon the strength of the Warp Storm, you may need to take shelter in stone buildings, buildings lined with lead or deep vaults under the earth to escape the effects of a Warp Storm, and even then there's no guarantee that your home will still be habitable in the aftermath, with all your crops turned into gold, or a horrible gestalt creature wanting to eat you, or the land itself transmuted into solid granite, etc etc.
So when we've got spells like the Galder's Tower spell, or other spells that can create physical objects out of thin air, or the various other spells that, if cast over a year or for long periods of time, can remain in the material world long after the spell has been cast. With such spells, the players generally describe the spell either transmuting the ground or nearby objects into the material needed for the construction, or in the case of Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum, pulling energy from the surroundings to create the effect, how much of a 'drain' on the surrounding region should I be hitting them with?
Players know that over-use of summoning in an area that isn't properly warded and/or 'cleansed' of the magical after-effects of repeated summonings can allow smaller Fiendish, Fey or Celestial spirits to slip through, and in turn if this is allowed to continue, eventually you'll end up with a semi-permanent 'hole' in reality where the Higher and Lower Planes can more easily access the mundane world, but we've never really had a situation where the players have had to deal with using magic to build their own fortress.
Given how the setting can be quite volatile in settling down given the Warp Storms can have a variety of effects, ranging from Least Storms whose effects will mostly fade in a few weeks to Legendary Storms that will permanently alter the world with their massage, the players both want to create a Home Base that is defensible against an enemy army (They've been fighting a Human-centric city-state that reduces all other races to slaves or battle-fodder, and they bumped up from level 3-6 in the space of a few sessions because they just wrecked house, well above what I was expecting due to some amazing rolls and flat out 'Mad Bastard' strategies), can provide protection against the Warp Storms and serve as a both refuge and trading post for the soldiers and civilians who are going to be helping them create a fortress to help curb any further slave-raiding efforts against their home by the Humanists, and they pulled up Galder's Tower spell.
I've told the players they're going to have a year of 'Down Time', where they'll be going from level 4 (their current level) to level 6 (what they earned from causing such chaos on the battlefield that the Humanists F.U.B.A.R'd themselves and let two of their Champions get murked, which in turn freed hundreds of slave-soldiers from their magical bindings and causing thousands of Undead to become uncontrolled and start attacking the nearest living creatures ... which were their former 'handlers'.) and due to their 'heroic' efforts, they've been granted lands by the City-State they are acting on the behalf of to create a village that can sustain and support the nearby fortress that the City-State is building nearby.
Players are Drow Diviner Wizard, Kobold Alchemist Artificer, Minotaur Shepherd Druid, Lizardfolk Totem Barbarian, A Tiefling Cleric of Knowledge and an Asimar Cleric of Arcana, and they're ... a trip.
Never force Chaotic people to work together for your agenda, because they might get the job done, but by the Gods, you'll pray for death before they're done.
Long story short, the Wizard wants to use the Galder's spell to build two towers to serve as the watch-towers for the small community they're building, and the Druid and Barbarian are on farm/ranch duty, with the Druid planning on spamming Plant Growth to try and super-charge the fields, which have been the site of a bloody conflict spanning nearly a hundred and fifty years of bloody slaughter, into something that can provide a ton of food and fodder for the community, and the Artificer and Clerics want to build a Vault for the civilians to run into for safety in case of another invasion and/or a Warp Storm.
With all this magic shenanigans going on, and the players are well aware that over-using magic can have side-effects but they feel that getting this place built up and prepared for trouble in a year is worth the potential risk, what should I be rolling for potential shenangans?
I was thinking of the following lists, rolling on a D20:
Earth Elementals are disturbed by the shaping and enriching of the land, and Small Earth Elementals rise up to the surface to attack the settlers.
The insects that live in the region are also affected by the magic, and giant insects and insect swarms start to show up.
Uncontrolled Skeletons from the war are drawn by the magic, and begin to arrive in small groups and attack anyone they see.
The flow of magic grows stronger around the region. All spellcasters who spend at least a week attuning themselves to the currents around them can add +1 to the Save DCs of their spells.
A colony of minor Fey is attracted to the sudden increase of magic and has a neutral opinion of the players. Their actions will decide if these Fey become enemies or allies.
The rampant use of magic has attracted a number of Monstrosities to the region.
A colony of Flumps have arrived and insist on helping the players out, often getting in wildly over their heads.
A semi-permanent portal big enough for tiny or small creatures from a random Plane opens up somewhere within the region. Roll 1d6, 1-Celestial 2-Fiendish 3-Demonic 4-Fey 5-Undead 6-roll twice, discarding duplicate rolls.
The players attract the attention of a powerful Draconic entity who feels drawn to the magical influence they have created, and insists that the region now belongs to them.
Fertility Problems. Flip a coin. If it is heads, the livestock and people cannot have children for one year in the region. If tails, the livestock have multiple births, and pregnant individuals may find themselves carrying twins or even triplets.
Divine meddling. The slight wearing of the barrier between the Material Plane and the other Planes has allowed the servants of the Gods to take notice of the players and their successes. Acolytes of various rival Gods will show up and demand to become the primary faith of the region, and attempt to whip up the local NPCs into religious conflict if the players do not intercede.
Mother Nature disapproves. The region is visited by a powerful Druid who chastises the players for recklessly trying to restore the land beyond what nature intended and tasks them with restoring the balance with more natural means. How the players do this is up to them, but it cannot involve more magical interventions.
A magically-inclined Bandit Captain, with their troupe of Bandits and Thugs to lay claim to the territory and try to become a new power in the region.
Crops and Fruits will randomly produce fruits or vegetables that function as Common or Uncommon Potions.
Magically-created structures attract supernatural 'guests'. Neutral-aligned Ghosts who lost their lives in the region had a tendency to show up around the conjured towers and can potentially be recruited to help protect the village. If destroyed, the Ghosts vanish for good, but will be replaced with different Ghosts in 1d4+4 weeks.
The local well-water starts to taste like wine. It still functions like water, but it tastes like wine.
The local bee population gains sentience and demands to be involved in the region's politics. The local bee-keeper becomes a Swarmkeeper Ranger, and becomes possessed by several Sentient Queen Bees, speaking for the Hives and demanding that several fields be converted to provide flowering plants for the hives to sustain themselves.
A baby Treant is found in the fields and immediately latches onto the community, insisting on following the players or any friendly NPC around and is absolutely fascinated with how 'Mortals' live
The abundance of magic has transmuted a natural vein of metal under the town into a precious metal. If the players can find this vein, they can, over a period of 2d4 months, add 5,000 gold to the town's coffers.
The abundance of magic has worn at the barriers between the Planes and has attracted the Calamity. Within 1d10 months, a Least Chaos Storm will head in their general direction.
Am I being too harsh on my players, or does this sound like fun shenanigans for them to deal with after pushing a bit too hard to get this settlement up and running?
We had a home-brew Conan-esque game for quite a while (we re-skinned the current Star Wars RPG, which is a great system), and in that, anything beyond minor hedge magic is NPC stuff only. It's a very low to no magic world... and all magic tends to be a corruptive force.
Casting a spell of any sort inflicts either stun or wounds - the equivalent of a HP hit per spell level in D&D. Those wounds can either be absorbed by the caster, or inflicted on a sacrifice. A high level spell (think level 8 or 9) will flat out kill a normal spell caster without serious preparation, and likely some human sacrifice.
We instituted a corruption system that all magic inflicts, on both caster and recipient... and the only way to get rid of it is downtime between adventures (it's also a gold sink, to reflect the various things that the character is doing - Living large and carousing, meditating over expensive incense, reading exotic tomes, etc....). The flip side is that more corruption makes it easier to cast magic, which gets you more corruption, etc... but also brings you to the attention of extremely dangerous entities. Too much corruption will eventually either take its toll, or get you into NPC status.
The long and the short of it is - magic is a costly and dangerous enterprise. As it should be in that kind of world.
I say - if the players are in to it... ramp it up to 11.
I'm still in the process of fine-tuning the setting so I haven't introduced a Corruption mechanic yet because I'm still balancing a double-background system and some tweaks to the races, namely a race will just have their physical abilities (stats, darkvision, flight etc) and the armor/weapon/spell will be built around their nation or origin, without making some race/region combinations so mechanically powerful that you have to pick them.
Thinking I might just have to make some races unavailable just because they've got too many physical advantages, or make those physical advantages have equally powerful physical drawbacks, such as Aarakroa flight comes with vulnerability to bludgeoning damage due to hollow bones, etc etc.
Regardless, I was hoping I wasn't being overly punishing with the players' decisions to over-use magic for this part of the campaign. Cheers for the feedback, Bishop, and does anyone else wanna jump in. This is very much 'please test the campaign before I roll it out for you guys' and I really would like some uninvolved feedback from other Forever-DMs.
You'll need the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game to make any sense of the rules, but here's a link to the homebrew manual we use for our Conan inspired game:
(and again - I love the table you made... but if it's Conan inspired, and everyone is on board... I'd make it a bit darker, and a lot more dangerous...)
Well, Team Dumbass managed to trigger no less than eight rolls of the list and proceeded to:
Adopted thirty-or-so Flumphs as the Village Mascots, with the Flumphs feeding off of the ambient psionic energies of the villagers, the players and the other creatures in the region.
A Sorcerous Bandit-Chief and his team of degenerates showed up, got waffle-stomped and ran away. Twice. Covered in Flumph ink both times.
Attracted a colony of Assassin Bugs that were only defeated because the players also found and were able to befriend and semi-train a mated pair of Basilisks and are now rearing the Basilisk hatchlings themselves since the mated pair got murked by the Assassin Bug Queen.
A rival Sorcerous Bandit-Chief and her crew who were talked into becoming part of the village over a pint and thrashing the Sorcerous Bandit-Chief and his team a third time.
Managed to roll the Fertility option twice and got the Tails option twice. Everybody is giving the Kobold Player a dirty look because she's the Laura Bailey of the crew and I live in fear of her losing all control at the table someday. So many calves, piglets, kids and children ...
Managed to convince a tribe Pixies to stop turning people into livestock and livestock into people, and now have a colony of alcoholic-because-of-the-PCs-actions Pixies living in and around the local tavern run by aforementioned rival Sorcerous Bandit-Chief and her crew.
Attracted a young Brass Dragon who absolutely insisted that he was supposed to be in charge and that the players had mis-read or misunderstood their orders, and only managed to avoid losing their territory by insisting in turn the Brass Dragon go talk to their 'superiors' back in the City-State about the matter as while they were grateful for the Dragon to live in the region, they didn't have the authority to make it a permanent arrangement and he'd better go talk to the 'people in charge'. I plan on having the Dragon's parents show up to cause chaos later, but I fully intend to have K'thizz the Loquacious show up as a friendly rival/annoyance/plot-hook to the players in the future once the players decide to start roaming out and away from their 'home base' in the next few sessions.
I am confiscating all their D20's and giving them new ones at the start of the next session ...
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Something I've always enjoyed injecting into the campaigns that I run is that magic is powerful, but dangerous. Magic that alters reality in particular, either creating matter from energy, drawing entities from other Planes, raising the Undead, spells that focus heavily on peering into other planes or parts of the world used in one location for a long time, stuff like that all has repercussions, be it wearing thin the barriers between the Planes and allowing Outsiders to slip through, corrupting the land and creating Aberrations and Monstrosities, creating places where magical based on the rituals and effects over-used in that area happen of their own accord, creating Living Spells or uncontrolled visions of other places, times or different Planes.
I'm running a homebrew based on a setting where a few things are happening that's a bit unusual.
So when we've got spells like the Galder's Tower spell, or other spells that can create physical objects out of thin air, or the various other spells that, if cast over a year or for long periods of time, can remain in the material world long after the spell has been cast. With such spells, the players generally describe the spell either transmuting the ground or nearby objects into the material needed for the construction, or in the case of Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum, pulling energy from the surroundings to create the effect, how much of a 'drain' on the surrounding region should I be hitting them with?
Players know that over-use of summoning in an area that isn't properly warded and/or 'cleansed' of the magical after-effects of repeated summonings can allow smaller Fiendish, Fey or Celestial spirits to slip through, and in turn if this is allowed to continue, eventually you'll end up with a semi-permanent 'hole' in reality where the Higher and Lower Planes can more easily access the mundane world, but we've never really had a situation where the players have had to deal with using magic to build their own fortress.
Given how the setting can be quite volatile in settling down given the Warp Storms can have a variety of effects, ranging from Least Storms whose effects will mostly fade in a few weeks to Legendary Storms that will permanently alter the world with their massage, the players both want to create a Home Base that is defensible against an enemy army (They've been fighting a Human-centric city-state that reduces all other races to slaves or battle-fodder, and they bumped up from level 3-6 in the space of a few sessions because they just wrecked house, well above what I was expecting due to some amazing rolls and flat out 'Mad Bastard' strategies), can provide protection against the Warp Storms and serve as a both refuge and trading post for the soldiers and civilians who are going to be helping them create a fortress to help curb any further slave-raiding efforts against their home by the Humanists, and they pulled up Galder's Tower spell.
I've told the players they're going to have a year of 'Down Time', where they'll be going from level 4 (their current level) to level 6 (what they earned from causing such chaos on the battlefield that the Humanists F.U.B.A.R'd themselves and let two of their Champions get murked, which in turn freed hundreds of slave-soldiers from their magical bindings and causing thousands of Undead to become uncontrolled and start attacking the nearest living creatures ... which were their former 'handlers'.) and due to their 'heroic' efforts, they've been granted lands by the City-State they are acting on the behalf of to create a village that can sustain and support the nearby fortress that the City-State is building nearby.
Players are Drow Diviner Wizard, Kobold Alchemist Artificer, Minotaur Shepherd Druid, Lizardfolk Totem Barbarian, A Tiefling Cleric of Knowledge and an Asimar Cleric of Arcana, and they're ... a trip.
Never force Chaotic people to work together for your agenda, because they might get the job done, but by the Gods, you'll pray for death before they're done.
Long story short, the Wizard wants to use the Galder's spell to build two towers to serve as the watch-towers for the small community they're building, and the Druid and Barbarian are on farm/ranch duty, with the Druid planning on spamming Plant Growth to try and super-charge the fields, which have been the site of a bloody conflict spanning nearly a hundred and fifty years of bloody slaughter, into something that can provide a ton of food and fodder for the community, and the Artificer and Clerics want to build a Vault for the civilians to run into for safety in case of another invasion and/or a Warp Storm.
With all this magic shenanigans going on, and the players are well aware that over-using magic can have side-effects but they feel that getting this place built up and prepared for trouble in a year is worth the potential risk, what should I be rolling for potential shenangans?
I was thinking of the following lists, rolling on a D20:
Am I being too harsh on my players, or does this sound like fun shenanigans for them to deal with after pushing a bit too hard to get this settlement up and running?
I dig it all... entirely.
We had a home-brew Conan-esque game for quite a while (we re-skinned the current Star Wars RPG, which is a great system), and in that, anything beyond minor hedge magic is NPC stuff only. It's a very low to no magic world... and all magic tends to be a corruptive force.
Casting a spell of any sort inflicts either stun or wounds - the equivalent of a HP hit per spell level in D&D. Those wounds can either be absorbed by the caster, or inflicted on a sacrifice. A high level spell (think level 8 or 9) will flat out kill a normal spell caster without serious preparation, and likely some human sacrifice.
We instituted a corruption system that all magic inflicts, on both caster and recipient... and the only way to get rid of it is downtime between adventures (it's also a gold sink, to reflect the various things that the character is doing - Living large and carousing, meditating over expensive incense, reading exotic tomes, etc....). The flip side is that more corruption makes it easier to cast magic, which gets you more corruption, etc... but also brings you to the attention of extremely dangerous entities. Too much corruption will eventually either take its toll, or get you into NPC status.
The long and the short of it is - magic is a costly and dangerous enterprise. As it should be in that kind of world.
I say - if the players are in to it... ramp it up to 11.
I'm still in the process of fine-tuning the setting so I haven't introduced a Corruption mechanic yet because I'm still balancing a double-background system and some tweaks to the races, namely a race will just have their physical abilities (stats, darkvision, flight etc) and the armor/weapon/spell will be built around their nation or origin, without making some race/region combinations so mechanically powerful that you have to pick them.
Thinking I might just have to make some races unavailable just because they've got too many physical advantages, or make those physical advantages have equally powerful physical drawbacks, such as Aarakroa flight comes with vulnerability to bludgeoning damage due to hollow bones, etc etc.
Regardless, I was hoping I wasn't being overly punishing with the players' decisions to over-use magic for this part of the campaign. Cheers for the feedback, Bishop, and does anyone else wanna jump in. This is very much 'please test the campaign before I roll it out for you guys' and I really would like some uninvolved feedback from other Forever-DMs.
You'll need the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game to make any sense of the rules, but here's a link to the homebrew manual we use for our Conan inspired game:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l5mxnkv541hp9ow/The Edge of the Aquilonian Empire v3.5.pdf?dl=0
I hope you get some inspiration...
(and again - I love the table you made... but if it's Conan inspired, and everyone is on board... I'd make it a bit darker, and a lot more dangerous...)
*rubs face in hands*
Well, Team Dumbass managed to trigger no less than eight rolls of the list and proceeded to:
I am confiscating all their D20's and giving them new ones at the start of the next session ...