So, I’m currently working on creating a new campaign world for the players. The world's details are unimportant all I am looking for is a critique of the campaign's "plot":
Roughly twenty years ago a hedge wizard was found attempting to create undead and was then beaten and hung by an angry mob of villagers. His sorceress wife, convinced of his innocence was driven mad by the death of her beloved husband. Using stealth, her murderous rage, and her husbands stock of magic items she soon killed every man, woman, and child within the village raising them as undead out of her twisted sense of irony.
Unsatisfied with slaughter and still vengeful she then turned her rage towards the destruction of the entire human race and the resurrection of her husband. Despite the capture and torture of many powerful clerics she has so-far failed in the resurrection of her husband (his soul is appalled at her actions and refuses) and now turns to an ancient artifact in an attempt to bring him back. This artifact is known simply as the soul-stone and has the ability to harness the power of sentient souls which are collected soon after the creature’s death and stored within the stone's magical matrix.
This is when the character's enter the story.
Fast-foreward into the future of the plot; characters discover plot, attempt to stop her, fail, entire city is destroyed and harvested (think full metal alchemist. She then uses the stones power to create a new body for her husband forged around and protected by the souls-tone before forcibly dragging her husband's soul back from beyond the grave. This forceful action twists his soul however and he returns as a malevolent mirror of her own thirst for revenge coupled with his long-standing grudge against other mages who looked down upon him when he was a hedge-wizard. The wife, seeing what her husband has become as a result of her actions is distraught, the shock gives her a moment of clarity in her madness, she confesses sincere repentance for her actions and kills herself. Now the characters must, piecing together bits of prophesy and old lore face an insane being of god-like power protected by the energy of, by now, a nation's worth of souls.
The stat out I have for him is thus:
Souls protect against all physical attacks, require successful turn undead and mordenkainens disjunction cast nearly simultaneously (readied action). Then he must be "poisoned" with the blood of his mortal form (cue, rogue sneak-attack to overcome massive dodge bonuses and dex bonuses to AC). After that he will finally be brought down to a power-level suitable to the characters and the death-blow must be using an old holy-weapon. The quests for all respective aspects of this will occur; I simply have not planned them out yet.
I made that overly-complicated layering of weaknesses on my BBEG for the reason that I want every class to feel necessary in his defeat with none excluded or given an "inferior" roll (I have a very balanced party of 4 players).
Anyway... what do you all think of the plot?
and please tell me I used the correct section of the forums.
Yes, this is a good place for this thread. I think it's a rather interesting plot. Have you read the Death Gate Cycle by Wies and Hickman? One of the books in there (the one set in the earth-themed world) might be of interest to you. There's a bit of forced reanimation and twisting of souls and such.
Anyway, here are some alternate thoughts, all just my personal preferences. When the sorceress reanimates her husband, he's actually nearly mindless, almost like an undead construct bound to her will. This drives her even crazier, as she blames the rest of the world for "making" her do that to her one true love. She controls this monstrosity, but the party manages to catch up with her and slay her, perhaps with the repentence scene coming when she dies at their hands. Anyway, hubby is now an uncontrolled engine of mindless grief and rage which threatens the whole city/kingdom/world. Then go into your big, multilayered end game scene.
Whether you take that path or not, make sure the steps needed to take down the thing's defenses aren't too complex, or the players may feel railroaded, or even cheated (there wasn't real challenge because you basically just narrated them through the fight). If you avoid that, however, it sounds like an excellent idea.
Perhaps the creature has insane AC, SR, energy resistance, etc.; something to foil each of the major classes' main "thing." Then, they have to have a series of artifacts that only they can hold which overcome that defense (perhaps only partially, but enough to have a chance). Then, you give them more freedom in the encounter without losing that sense of each one being important.
Good luck!
EDIT- Really should have looked at the other thread with a near identical name, and many more posts listed, first. Ah, well.... Perhaps the threads could be merged, or my post moved, Mr. Postmonster?