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Golarion Today reports that the long time DM has lost control of his faculties and needs help. This "Brain Freeze" is casuing him difficulties in forming ideas for an up coming adventure.
- Hey guys... in a few days from now i will be DMing a short game. My idea was based on The Elemental planes being fed up with all the enslaved summoning taking place by the material plane world of Golarion. They decided enough was enough. The only idea that struck me was that anyone using summoning (conjuration) would have to make a caster level check or get their spell subverted and summon an uncontrolled Elemental. After that i am drawing a blank...
- I have not come up with any good ideas involving encounters or a serious plot that has not been done to death. The group has seen and done it all so looking for something a bit more unheard of? I like them to have to discover what is happening and find an answer to the problem.
Premise:
A group of hard core gamers with over 7 years exp in 3.5/pathfinder gaming... so no novices.
Pathfinder core + APG + UM
Base races
9th. level start going to 14/15th level.
5 person party
--- 20 point buy in
Good aligned PC's
Half starting wealth of level 9.
--- + 2 free magical minor items
1. Need help with Plot ideas / plot reveal ideas
2. Encounter ideas
3. Some insight into the Elementals way of think towards the Golarion and summoners in general
4. Any idea to shake up a group of gamers who pretty much dared me to come up with something they have not seen?
Thanks in advance for all your help.
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How about the elementals have developed a summoning spell to summon humanoids to their plane to force them to fight other elemental factions? And who better to summon than the PCs?
What are the motives of these elementals? What is the goal of fire, wanton destruction? When I think of elementals, I think of them as having very primal motives.
I think pobbles has a great idea for that plot line, seems like a total eureka moment.
Secondly, the way elementals think. Say you have a fire elemental, from the domain/realm/homeland of 'fire,' or whatever hot name you want it to have. He would come to Golarion and go, "gosh it's cold." And light it all on fire to try and warm it up. Humans would be scared out of their minds, but he'd be super happy.
At least, that's the way my brain wants it to be. I like when things are super happy.
If you want to go for something completely different:
At 10th level each of your players could play as a genie race. Maybe the Powers that are have put aside their differences long enough to form a task force to stop the incessant summoning by uncovering the mystic connection that links Golarion with the inner plains and rework it. Therefore the PCs are send to Golarion and told that they have to work together to this end.
To make it work you need to figure out how to balance the genies to Level 10/11 (is a 3rd Level Shaitan Ranger = a 1st Level Marid Druid?).
Hows this...?
A storyline political character dies like a Baron or Duke. The clerics go to rez him and instead of the noble soul coming back...an elemental lord comes. So said political figure starts making all kinds of changes like spending domain funds for permanent portals to the Plane of Fire, etc. The real reason is to get an invasion force from the plane of fire to come to the domain and destroy/enslave them.
Can the characters figure this out and make a change before it happens? Maybe even if they do everything right, in the final moments the invasion starts happening. So room for large scale battles or strike team featuring the PCs.
Or, expanding on Taason's idea, someone has decided that the plight of summoned creatures must be addressed. He/she is like a crazy PETA member but for outsiders. They start opening permanent portals to the elemental realms and the Abyss.
This individual (or organization) is conscientious of where they open the portals though. Plane of water portals are opened in water, fire in volcanic areas and deserts, earth and air pretty much anywhere there is earth or clean air.
Demons, Devils, Angels, etc are pretty much ok anywhere so random portals bringing these beings into the world. The good outsiders would come through just to stop the evil ones and you could end up with a 3-way war going on in Golarion with Evil, Neutral and Good all fighting each other. Evil just trying to destroy, Neutral just making a place for itself, Good trying to destroy the Evil and stop the Neutral from destroying the natural world.
The PCs might have to help the Good outsiders close the portals while the Good outsiders try to fend off the other outsiders.
Also, as long as these portals are open, summoned creatures are uncontrollable and will often turn on their summoner (although some might just ignore the summoner and wander away).
How many sessions is this supposed to take?
If you've read The Great Beyond, there are a lot of cool places you could send the PCs on their errand.
There's the City of Brass on the plane of fire, there are cities on the plane of air and water. There are demiplanes and wacky things going on all over the multiverse.
You could have all summoning spells in the world stop working, and then, suddenly, the PCs are summoned into a battle between two groups of enemies in the City of Brass. Now, people from the material are being summoned into the planes.
Obviously, it's some kind of wizard who flipped some kind of switch. Now that the PCs are in the City of Brass, though, they're going to have to find out exactly who this guy is and how to stop him. Maybe he's a big shot hero in the elemental planes for "ending the slavery of summoning once and for all".
If you want this to be a tour of the planes, you could have the PCs go to each of the elemental planes and essentially run them through a pair of adventures there. Maybe there's some kind of ritual and strange thing on each plane-- maybe this wizard, when he did this ritual, didn't expect the planes to begin to collapse, and now the entire multiverse is in danger of popping and reforming. If you're bringing in the aligned planes, this is what Asmodeus wants-- so maybe now devils and high-ranking devils are trying to stop the PCs or exacerbate the planes into collapsing.
Each point of impact would be a dungeon in and of itself. A salamander guards the obsidian chain that binds the plane of fire, a crystal dragon keeps watch over the crystal chain that binds the plane of earth, a gargantuan kraken keeps watch over the salt chain, a gargantuan wind elemental keeps watch over the smoke chain.
If you want to get some WoW into it, there are elemental lords in WoW that have been fleshed out into similar dungeons and you could probe those for ideas. ie, the PCs go into the dungeon on the plane of water, fight sahuagin, are constantly attacked by the kraken trying to reach into the dungeon, free the king of the Marid who is being kept hostage by the bad guys, fight off the sahuagin, and fight the kraken with the Marid lord's blessings. Now, that's pretty straightforwardly adapted, but you could easily add a lot of D&D flair to the undersea palace to make it memorable... and to kind of obfuscate that idea.
As for encounter variation, so that the plane of fire doesn't = fire and water doesn't = water... Maybe this guy has acolytes or a network of minions? He's probably a wizard. Give him a good network of eeeeeevil bad guys with their own lieutenants and then drop some into each of the elemental dungeons. And like I said, devils would be entirely interested in letting the universe pop. So would proteans. Aeons would be trying to stop the bad guys-- by obliterating time and space. Angels, Azata and Agathion might be trying to aid the PCs in little ways. Planar dragons could easily become a nuisance or a boon. Mortals also plane shift, and like I said, there are a TON of cities on the planes where mortals, elementals and other planetouched creatures live. Not each plane is JUST water, or JUST earth.
You could also have the PCs have to die to go to the Boneyard so they could wander the Graveyard to try to find a MacGuffin that would give them a significant bonus? (maybe the wizard's true name, maybe an ancient king has the key to the aforementioned undersea palace). Maybe planar travel is now completely locked down, so Pharasma is entirely backed up, and the entire multiverse is kind of crashing down?
Oh, and... plane of air = flying castle. You know it to be true.
I recommend you read up on the Summoning details in the Ultimate Magic book.. it gives motivations and details to all summonings. When it comes to most Elementals it states that as long as you can prove you have an edge over them and don't show weakness to them, you should have no problems getting their aid. Most summoned things are true to their word, and can be bargained with if you can communicate with them. When it comes to Elementals, if you offer to let them do something that they enjoy and wouldn't normally get then you may have a bargaining chip on your side.
Ex:
Letting an Air Elemental fly around freely on the material plane for a short time..
Letting a Water Elemental experience some moderately temperate water, possibly play with some of the Material Plane's marine life.
Bribing an Earth Elemental with a rare earth material as food/gift.
Giving a promise of burning lots of stuff to a Fire Elemental.
That's at least how I run it in my games. :)
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Rachel Caine has a series of books known as the Weather Warden series. In this series certain humans can control certain elements. Added to the mix are Djinn's who, at one point, become free and every time someone tried to summon one it would turn on them or do nothing (which resulted in deaths, maimings, etc). You might want to read through a couple of the books for a few ideas.
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2) Do please at some point post what you decide to do.
First off thank you all for taking the time to suggest some idea for me. I am taking little bits and pieces from almost everyone who posted.
I am starting off with a bang! Kinda "Nature gone wild" with the PC's (starting level 9th) at Sandpoint or similar coastal location and the PC do not know each other. Mid day market and they hear a roaring sound off in the distance... The town is hit by a tsunami and they have to jump into action to save themselves and commoner/tradesmen NPC's.
All around Golarion they soon learn similar events are happening. Earthquakes destroy a small hamlet, Volcanoes erupt in the steaming isles, Tornados devastate a path through certain countries and so on...
Trying not to Rail Road them, let them pick what they want to investigate and what clues they get.
Diplomatic relations with other elemental planes on the decline. Barriers between the realms have been weakened by Planar Sheperds rallying to the call of their specific plane.
Definitely going with
Summon PC spell to drag them unexpectedly to a realm to do battle for the planes.
Leading to a break down in the barriers of all planes and creatures leaking through who have not been summoned. Also sommoning spell will have a percentage (along with a caster level check) or get subverted to summon an uncontrolled elemental.