Anyone have any good ideas for adjusting the competing teams or mosters in the Champions Games (the arena stuff) to make it feel more Eberron. Stuff like changing the Gnolls in the first match to become Shifters, throwing in some warforged, etc. Anyone got any new warbands constructed.
Thanks,
Shade325
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I haven't done so yet, but I'll eventually get around to statting up some new groups.
The ideas that are playing around in my mind at the moment:
*As you said, a group of Shifters; they'll likely replace the elven archers in the first round, be composed of the maximum allowable number of team members, and mostly be veterans of the rough-and-tumble Shifter games played in Sharn and beyond--the name escapes me at the moment, but it's a full-contact sport described in the "Sharn: City of Towers" sourcebook.
*A troop of Valenar irregulars seeking glory in the Arena; some of the elven archers will be ported here, but I'm going to replace the rest of the mounted Arabian-type team with Valenar cavalry.
*The nature-oriented characters will be affiliated with the Ashbound druidic sect, and have appropriate Feats.
*Pitch Blade will be a pair of Warforged rather than Dwarves. They'll likely have levels in the Juggernaut prestige class.
I'm not going to invest nearly as much time in tweaking the other groups, since they don't have splashy roles in the adventure. Just for flavor, though, I'm going to make mention of a group composed of kobolds from the southeastern mountains, gnome illusionists, Dhakaani chain warriors accompanied by a songstress, lightly-armored finesse fighters bearing badges of the Cyran army, and some gaudily-garbed Aundairian magic-users.
I also dislike the idea that the understructure of Hollow Tower was magically created to have the appearance of subterranean caverns, and am having trouble visualizing how the ghoul lair could be concealed by the towers and suspended streets of Sharn, so the area beneath and around the tower is likely to see extensive remapping.
Here's hoping that some of these ideas provide kernels of creativity for your own Eberron-izing of the adventure!
I also dislike the idea that the understructure of Hollow Tower was magically created to have the appearance of subterranean caverns, and am having trouble visualizing how the ghoul lair could be concealed by the towers and suspended streets of Sharn, so the area beneath and around the tower is likely to see extensive remapping.
I don't want to have to tweak the Hollow Tower any, but I can't quite get the description of the arena and how its laid out within the tower to make sense in my head. Would it just be that the tower walls rise behind the arena seating? Would there be buttressed/arched openings in the walls of the tower, or a clear dome up top to provide the open air feel? I'm not having as much difficulty with the understructure, but is the bottom of the Hollow Tower far enough down to have the lower levels in the Depths? Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I find that your suggestions are quite helpful in getting my brain on the right creative track.
I don't think the arena is low enough to drop into the depths of Sharn, although I don't have my books with me.
I think it is low enough, however, that many towers might abut one another. So, for the lower levels, I made sure to put rounded chambers and walls for odd shapes around the interior spaces, and it worked pretty well; sometimes I'd put a smaller rounded room that overlapped a larger circle of walls, as if the bigger tower had been built partly around the smaller one at some point in the past. I had also made it clear during HoHR that many sections of the towers are devoted to "utility" spaces - plumbing and waste management, access stairs for when repairs are needed - creating odd internal spaces when you need to move up or down past these sorts of areas. So the lower level (Ceonoby etc.) became a bit less natural-cavern-like, but had some odd solid protrusions blocking off spaces as if those solid areas had inaccessible utility spaces behind them. I hope that makes some sort of sense.
Oh, and for the arena itself, I had the tower walls rising behind the back rows of seating, and some higher windows up above. I also decided the reason for the height restriction on flying during the games is because the arena space has buttresses supporting the ceiling, but an illusion of open sky that makes the buttresses difficult to see (they're incorporated into the illusion) - so they don't want anyone flying too high and either damaging, or crashing into, the concealed buttresses etc.
I replaced pithblade with a w´forged fighter lvl 10 and a w´forged titan (he he). Because my group counts seven people I just added a w´forged artificer lvl 10 that was simply used to power up the titan and the fighter.
I changed Aurics warband a little. I made Auric dragonmarked (can´t remember which house by now) so he is able to use dimension door to jump nicely in the back of the players wizeard... Khellek remains a wizard but got a fey artificer levels as well. So is great to power up the leatherworkers a bit (so the constructs gets DR/adamant and such...)