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Thursday, April 4, 2019

Fey Day

The Feywild is a dangerous place for adventurers. Luckily it's another plane, so it generally come up as an issue unless something goes seriously wrong.
Unfortunately, the usual went out the window 100 years ago when the Spellplague began. The veils separating the material plane from the Feywild grew even thinner, and holes were torn. There are more portals to the Feywild, and it is easier to open new ones.
As such, the annual holiday of Fey day has become wildly more dangerous. It is the day when the 2 planes are at their absolute closest, so anywhere that the veil between is particularly weak is liable to become a portal for the day. City dwellers treat it as a sort of Faewild themed Halloween, while in more rural communities do their best to avoid wild areas and leave small offerings to whatever fey creatures may appear.

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

On The Road

My adventurers are finally growing up and leaving town. They're planning a trip that will take them over a month if nothing bad happens, but it's Dungeons and Dragons, so something bad will happen to them.

However, this is still a new situation for me, what do I do? How do they travel? If I let them buy a flock of pegasi, is that actually faster?

Next session is really just going to be a couple weeks of travel. They might get as far as Boarskyr Bridge, depending on what they want to do about the events of Fey Day. My favorite Faerûnian holiday.

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Intrigue

Intrigue is hard.

I have a deposed noble, and he is on his way to take back his title.

Pretty sure there's supposed to be heaps of intrigue and talking to people.

But he's been a deposed noble for the past 8 years, the person who deposed him was looking forward to a confrontation that never happened. I'm struggling with what to do when he slides in pretending to be someone else. Especially since the person currently in control of his lands is his identical twin brother. I suspect he will just be recognized even when he puts on his terrible mask.

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Magic Items: The Golden Skins of the World Serpent part 2: The Chapters

There are 5 chapters.
  1. Foundations of Magic
  2. Spells of Creation
  3. Major Creation
  4. Planar Studies
  5. Creating Artifacts
Each chapter is ten pages long, and when a player completes a chapter they get a special bonus, related to the title.

  1. Foundations of Magic: grants a plus 2 bonus to arcane spellcasting bonuses, and through that to the arcane spell save DC.
  2. Spells of Creation: Halves the cost of magic item creation.
  3. Major Creation: The player can craft any construct with a DC under half their total arcane caster levels, costs determined by DM.
  4. Planar Studies: Plane Shift can be cast once per day without using a spell slot, the caster is immune to negative effects of planar travel. Grants advantage on knowledge checks relating to other planes.
  5. Creating Artifacts: A sacrifice is necessary to truly understand the teachings of this chapter. After which the reader can create Artifact level items for the cost of Legendary ones.
Most of this information will not come up until a lot of scrolls have been found and read. The magic is too much to get information from a base level casting of Identify.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Dungeoneering

My characters have already met 2 dragons, and they haven't been anywhere near a dungeon yet. So I'm setting up a cool dungeon where some of the Golden Skins of the World Serpent can be found.

I have been reading too much of the forgotten realms wiki. As such I now have some place names that already exist on my map to work with. Ss'thar'tiss'ssun was founded by the same race that created the Skins and was famous for its powerful magic before the city was destroyed by the Netherese, many thousands of years after the city's founders vanished.

And a little over a thousand years before the events of our current story.

After making decisions, I found some more information that says that my plan is not possible, but my plan is cooler and involves a legendary fountain. Supposedly, all that should be left of the temple at this point is the basement, but the rest of it is cooler.

It's a three story temple a little ways underground. There were once more floors, but they were destroyed in the Netherese attack 1400 years ago.

I don't know what goes in all of the rooms yet, other than cool magic stuff, but there is a fountain that existed in previous editions that would be in this temple. I have made it a central feature. It is absurdly magical, and still working thousands of years later.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Timekeeping

The Faerûnian calendar is extremely elaborate. I've been trying to keep track of when things are for my adventurers, and it's really hard!

It doesn't line up very well with our calendar and I can't figure out when the seasons should start to change.

The months are:
  • Hammer
  • Alturiak
  • Ches
  • Tarsakh
  • Mirtul
  • Kythorn
  • Flamerule
  • Eleasis
  • Eleint
  • Marpenoth
  • Uktar
  • Nightal
Great fantasy names. However, the solstices and equinoxes don't line up, they're all a month later than I want them to be. If Nightal is December, then the winter solstice should go between Nightal and Hammer, but it's between Hammer and Alturiak instead.
So, when does spring start? March is the third month, but it also has the vernal equinox in it. And the spring equinox is between Tarsakh and Mirtul.

It's annoying.

My players are in Ches now, I think I'm going to declare that spring is starting anyway though.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

The Curse of Distraction

I've had a lot on my mind this week, so I forgot that I was supposed to run a session until about 3 hours before our usual start time. Luckily this is a filler session, but I still need to have more things ready for a filler session than I have right now.

Post-Session
 I really didn't need all that much after all. All my goals were achieved, and everyone joked around about how they're going to leave town. The Stone of Golorr has been taken, all the seeds have been planted for future fun stuff, they asked Zelifarn to come along, and let all their allies know where they were going.