My campaign has an evil 5th level cleric with uber stats (straight 18's) and plenty of magical items, so I'm estimating him at CR8. He runs a small army including a pack of ghouls. He has the command undead feat and magic items to supplement his ability but tends not to need them as he keeps the ghouls regularly fed and they appreciate the easy meals, healing etc.
A day's travel away there is an abandoned copper mine, which is the home of a wraith.
When the (large low level) party encounter the cleric I expect them to win but I also expect the cleric and few of his followers to escape. I'm tempted to have them head to the wraith's lair and seek refuge there but I'm not sure whether this is in-game realistic.
Would the wraith tolerate or cooperate with an evil cleric or would its hatred of all living things override any form of willing cohabitation? If it did willingly cooperate what sort of bargain would need to be struck? My thought was that the cleric would have to provide many sacrifices, but this would in turn produce many wraithspawn and suddenly my campaign is overrun by wraiths (which is highly undesirable). If it didn't willingly cooperate the evil cleric could command undead it with about a 50% success rate (DC16 v Will+6), which would be a somewhat risky proposition (and I don't fudge rolls for plot convenience).
What are your views?
|
Wraiths are quite powerful, but also quite insane. Although they can travel, they tend to remain in their present area. So even though that area may end up overrun with wraithspawn, that doesn't mean it has to overflow into the rest of the campaign.
As for the rolls the evil cleric makes to control the wraith while the PCs are nowhere near: go with what makes a good story. If you think it'd be nice for the cleric to have the wraith, make it so; invent some explanation about a dark ritual the cleric used (time-consuming, expensive) to make it a Sure Thing.
* Alternatively, the original wraith kills the cleric, and now there's a cleric wraithspawn to deal with... ouch...
* If that area gets overrun by wraiths, that mostly means no sane person will go in. But a couple of levels later, the party needs one from a set of four MacGuffins, and one of them is in Wraith Central; the others are also in difficult destinations. Tough choice; which danger do we prefer? Will any rival NPC party dare the wraiths?
If you say they do, they do. Maybe this wraith isn't so 'hate-all-living-things'-y.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not so keen on the wraith being atypical and the problem with the guaranteed success is that the cleric would have added the wraith to his forces if he had guaranteed control.
I like the idea that the wraith is a less than ideal backup plan, otherwise it would have been the primary base. The difficult part is trying to find a better solution than what I have thought of that makes it reliable but undesirable. The two solutions I have are commanding it or having a pre-existing agreement. As the command undead is unreliable, I'm not terribly keen on that idea but I'm also not keen on the pre-existing ongoing sacrifice idea as there will be too many wraithspawn.
Perhaps there's an entrance fee - the cleric has to sacrifice two of his followers for every mortal that seeks shelter and beyond that the cleric has to provide some service to the wraith. Does anybody have any idea on the amount of life force required to progress from Wraith to Dread Wraith? Is there a way to transform into a wraithspawn and retain class abilities? This template seems reasonable. I can see the wraith being interested in gaining transformation and the willing self-sacrifice of the cleric as the penalty for failure as being acceptable. But I can't see any way of enforcing the deal as Geas/Quest etc are not readily available.
Apply in reverse. Maybe this cleric knows of/knew the person this wraith used to be. If they have items with great importance to the wraith it might give them enough of a bonus to use Command Undead. Maybe they've even gone to the extent of unearthing the body of deceased lover/spouse? Thus giving them an edge with this particular wraith, but not others.
This could even be a fantastic RP oppportunity for your PC's to break the control your cleric has, re-santify the bones/destory the keepsake, etc - after a knowledge(local) or spellcraft check or what have you.
Thank you, I really like the idea of concentrating on restoring its connection to its former life rather than its hatred of living things. It could be a blackmail type scenario, where the bones are revealed and threatened to be destroyed to gain initial cooperation. From there progress to preserving them to gain a recognition that keeping the cleric around is beneficial, particularly if he helps the wraith destroy other living things.
From the cleric's perspective this becomes a knife edge where he retains the cooperation of the wraith and his swelling legion of wraithspawn but the cleric has to keep providing more connections to the wraith's past and providing with more foci for its hatred. If he loses control or the master wraith dies he's had it because he couldn't hope to control all those wraithspawn.
From the PCs perspective this becomes a difficult conundrum. If they wait the area will be overrun with wraithspawn and so they must break the cleric's control of the wraith and hope the wraith strikes back in vengeance or if they've waited too long *somehow* get it to agree to stop the wraithspawn.
Having thought about it for a while, a spectre seems a better choice as they have more connection with their past. Problem is, I really don't want to drop an energy draining creature on the party. The nearest cleric who can cast 4th level spells is some 100 miles away and the adventure has a fairly tight timeframe and the party will really need the levels to survive. Restoring the party could easily add 3 weeks or more to the timeline, which isn't good.