Spoilers Modifications or possible redesign for the Queen of thousand breaths Spoilers

[Ronin_Knight]

Hello Folks

I'm currently in the early stages of customising content for a kingmaker I'm looking to run in the, hopefully, not too distant future and one of the first things I wanted to modify was of course our main villain.

Most recently I looked back at the Horror adventure books and thought that making Nyrissa a Cursed lord who can only truly die when slain with Briar. Her domain would be her realm Thousand breaths but the anchor would be the castle of Knives, so she believes if she traps the anchor in one of her bottles that she will be free to roam the planes once more.

Beyond the probable use of the cursed lord template I've had a few other ideas for modifying or outright redesigning our main villain, I'm hoping to get some feedback:

1: use existing templates, possibly including Orthos' Half-jabberwock template from the 'I don't believe in Fairies' thread or the Tome of Horror 'Debased fey' template. it doesn't get me exactly what I'm looking for but it's the least work and guarantees it remains a balanced challenge.

2: I create custom templates, some rough drafts of which I'll post here later, this let's me get closer to concept I have in mind while also making me a bit more reliant on feedback to ensure the end result is fun for my players to face.

3: my original plan, before i started considering balance, take a leaf out of the fellnight queen's playbook and rebuild Nyrissa as a unique fey warped by the influence Count Ranalc, the eldest who removed her ability to love and her own ritual involving the blood of the Jabberwock.

So can I get thoughts on these ideas so far?

[pennywit]

Quote:

Most recently I looked back at the Horror adventure books and thought that making Nyrissa a Cursed lord who can only truly die when slain with Briar. Her domain would be her realm Thousand breaths but the anchor would be the castle of Knives, so she believes if she traps the anchor in one of her bottles that she will be free to roam the planes once more.

This is a pretty good idea, although you'll have to justify why she doesn't just bottle the Castle of Knives and ignore the rest of the Stolen Lands.

Thematically, though, you might want to look to alter the template subtly. The Cursed Lord is an evil entity linked to a domain. Vanilla Nyrissa, meanwhile, is more chaotic than evil.

[Ronin_Knight]

pennywit wrote:

This is a pretty good idea, although you'll have to justify why she doesn't just bottle the Castle of Knives and ignore the rest of the Stolen Lands.

Thematically, though, you might want to look to alter the template subtly. The Cursed Lord is an evil entity linked to a domain. Vanilla Nyrissa, meanwhile, is more chaotic than evil.

Fair point, I might have some sort of protection worked in to the castle of knives which means she can only capture it by capturing a significant chunk of the surrounding territory and due to the constraints of the ritual this becomes the entirety of the stolen lands.

In regards to the altering the Cursed Lord template I'm not so sure, because Nyrissa's binding would be tied in to the removal of her ability to love, and I'd argue that removal of her most positive emotions and the change that brought about in her personality could have shunted her alignment to Evil.

However if I do go with altering the cursed Lord template to fit Nyrissa, do you have any suggestions to make it seem more chaos aligned? Because I'm honestly not sure where to start with that apart from maybe changing the damage reduction to 'cold iron or lawful'.

[pennywit]

Some thoughts:

* The Cursed Lord has all of the abilities of the Dread Lord. I'd take away the "evil" requirement change her DR (as you noted) to DR 10/cold iron and good or even DR 15/cold iron and good. She's a major villain. She ought to have some high DR.

* I think you can flavor Nyrissa by selecting appropriate SLAs from the Dread Lord template. I like Plant Affinity and Dream Dominion, personally. These a nice fey-ish feel to her.

* The "dread fog" has some potential, I think. I'd say surround the Thousand Voices forest with the dread fog, then use something like the wardstones from Fellnight Queen. Each bloom could consist of creatures placing wardstones within the Stolen Lands. When the wardstones are in place in a hex, the area is surrounded by dread fog and officially becomes part of Nyrissa's domain, allowing Nyrissa to act within that hex as if it is part of her domain. Or better yet, the creatures within each bloom, the critters are actually a distraction for something else placing Wardstones.

By the way, you've given me some really awesome ideas for how I'm going ot run my Nyrissa, and you've sort of filled in the final bit I was missing.

[Ronin_Knight]

Glad my exploration helped you out, please let me know how your Nyrissa plays out, your modifications sound solid.

I may also have to work on a secondary method to remove the curse, because knowing some of my players they may want to try and restore Nyrissa's ability to love and see if that changes how she acts.

[pennywit]

If they do, then go with it.

My players have twice now come up with solutions to NPCs I hadn't thought of.

[Tarondor]

Ronin_Knight wrote:

I may also have to work on a secondary method to remove the curse, because knowing some of my players they may want to try and restore Nyrissa's ability to love and see if that changes how she acts.

Man, that would be an awesome ending! Especially if it turned out she loved someone or something that propelled the story forward even more. Maybe Count Ranalc? Perhaps the PC's need to go find him. Or Choral the Conqueror, for some reason.