The Campaign – Page 4

I want to provide context for my posts on rules and campaign setting, and I’m writing brief overviews of each session for my players anyway, so I’ve decided to post the chronicles of my campaign on this blog. With my Warhammer campaign coming to a close at around 90 sessions, where I have a few paragraphs on each session, I can see it is also a pretty cool thing to have when looking back at all the great fun we had.

Campaign setup

My campaign is fundamentally an exploration campaign. The realms of the East have been warring for 30 years against a dark empire named the Hrran Hegemony. The war is in a deadlock and the ‘good’ realms need resources, allies or some kind of joker to break the deadlock. Fortunately, the half-elves of the Isles of Finrod have found a new continent across the ocean. The largest human kingdom therefore sets up an outpost and has sent settlers there to establish a new realm, and to explore the lands for riches, magic and potential allies. The characters are among the second group of settlers sent there.

Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington — The land where they settle is covered in deep forest. This is from a Washington state rain forest.

The Group

All members of the adventuring group come from the realms in the East, which have a geography and technology roughly equal to early medieval Europe. They decided at the beginning to form a accredited Adventuring Company, which provides some advantages, but cost them resources.

The dwarf bard use a bagpipe as his instrument. Fun, and great for attracting random encounters!

After 3 sessions the line-up is:

Sir Jarn Ashford, Human paladin 1/ranger 2

Arak, half-orc fighter 2/war cleric 1

Welk Del’mantanrese, human abjurer 3

Weylyn Cullain, half-elf moon druid 3

Horziver Xalybyr, gnome arcane trickster 3

Abbott, human warlock 3

Korrick the Lorekeeper, dwarf fighter 1/bard 1

The first 3 Sessions:

Session 1:

The members of the adventuring group has various ties to each other, both are mostly not close friends. They embark on their journey at the Isles of Finrod, and sail across the ocean on one of three vessels (of course). After a few weeks they make a stop at Hope’s Pinnacle, which is a lone island with a huge abandoned castle built by giants, where a garrison and port has been built by the good nations. They stay a couple of days before continuing their journey.

Close to land the ships are thrown into a storm and attacked by Kuo-Toa. The party fights them off, but after the storm dies down one of the three ships are missing.

Meta: They drew random questions I had created, which they answered to create more backstory for their characters.

christopher-columbus-ships — The ships of my campaign are similar to the far left ship, however sleeker, with more of a norse longboat element, and more elaborate elven carvings – and no cross on the sails.

Session 2

They arrive at the small settlement, which lies in a cove, next to a river, surrounded by a vast forest, and with a couple of gleaming white towers reaching above the canopy in the distance. They are greeted warmly, and introduced to some of the people living there, including the governor Erin de Vrin. But with a missing ship, the mood has a somber undertone. Next morning, the two adventuring parties available to the settlement are sent out to find the missing ship. The characters are sent north, while their ‘rivals’ are sent south.

The group treks through the forest and at night are assaulted by a Displacer Beast, which they manage to slay. The following day they come upon a group of goblins, throwing stones and taunting a wounded elf captured in one of their pit traps. They drive off the goblins and rescue the elf. The elf has tattooed camouflage on his skin and he almost only use sign language.

Session 3:

With some difficulty the druid Weylyn begins to communicate in the elven tongue with the tattooed barbarian, and recognizes that he speaks some kind of dialect of the elven language. They learn that a big winged beast roams to the north, and that he finds it very important to stay hidden. The next morning the elf has sneaked out of the camp.

Using the wizard’s seagull familiar, they do spot the winged creature, which turns out to be a wyvern, and see its nest in a ruined tower. They decide to explore the tower while the wyvern is hunting at dusk. At the top of the tower in the nest of flotsam and bones, they find a couple of scrolls and a kuo-toa body. Welk and Horziver figure out how to destabilize the nest, and make a plan for attacking the wyvern when it lands, and hopefully drop to the bottom of the ruined tower. The plan succeeds and the party manages to overcome the wyvern without getting hit.

At night, the carrion crawler that had hidden in the tower came out to feast on the wyvern. It was discovered, and the group killed it.

Trekking further north they finally come upon a cove, where the lost ship is stuck on a reef. The cliffsides have many cave entrances, and they begin to explore. They find a body of a sailor, after chasing away two giant crabs, and in one of the caves they are attacked by many crabs, but rescue an exhausted guard from the ship, who hid in the cave.

They bring her back to their camp, to give her rest and hear her story. At night kuo-toa emerges at high tide from one of caves and sacrifice a human to some kind of snake creature that emerges from the sea.

Meta and Mechanics note:

Fighting the wyvern, the damage output of 6 players was very high, with above average rolls, and it was a short

The Wyvern monster manual illustration from 3rd edition of D&D by the way.

encounter. But the danger of getting hit by the poison stinger of the wyvern made it a tense encounter. It certainly displays the weakness in D&D 5^th if you have large groups against single enemies. However, in this case, a hit by the wyvern on almost anyone of the 2^nd level characters would either drop or kill them. I think it was fun, and when the PC’s dare something dangerous, the player’s feel great when they succeed.

I am trying to avoid adding complexity and sub-systems to my game, but for my campaign world to be thematically coherent I did decide to make a system for weapon materials, so there is a difference between bronze and steel. As the group is in a remote land, as part of the first settlement in this “undiscovered” realm, I try to enhance the need to be self-sufficient, add incentive to explore and find new things, and that when exploring you need to be selective in what you bring with you on your travels (I know, that consideration disappears when they get a big bag of holding…)

6-krigsscene-farve-stor (1) — Imagined scene from the early Iron Age, done in connection with the bog body of the Danish Tollund Man. Image by Niels Bach. Read more at: http://www.tollundman.dk

I’ve tried not to make it too punitive to the characters, but it should push them to carry alternate weapons, rest after encounters and take down-time to craft their own items and so on.

As magic weapons and armour slowly will become available, I don’t foresee this to still be a very relevant rule-set after level 10. But as mentioned, the rules are meant to create mood and atmosphere.

Weapon quality and material
As not all cultures have the same level of technology within manufacturing of arms and armour, different enemies will have weapons and armours made from various materials with various properties, strengths and weaknesses. As to not skew the combat rules overly, most of the materials have their most significant impact on weight, price and production time, which can be important far from civilization.

Damaging and breaking weapons and armour
Whenever a combatant rolls a natural 1 in combat with a weapon, not made from steel, he has to roll a DC 10 DEX ability check to avoid the weapon breaking. If he succeeds using the weapon still confers disadvantage until it has been serviced during a short rest.

Whenever a combatant is hit with a natural 20, his non-steel armour gets damaged and he loses 1 point of AC, until he spends a short rest mending the damage.

Steel
Steel can in the old world (almost) only be crafted by dwarves, who knows its secrets and can create the temperatures necessary to forge it. Their arms and armours are highly prized, also among its enemies, and can easily fetch several times the price of regular iron forged weapons.

Steel weapons don’t need to roll for damage or breakage, unless fighting against a foe with magical weapons or armour.
Medium and heavy steel armour weighs 10% less than iron armour, as it needs less material for the same level of protection.

Rapiers are a new type of weapon used by the wealthy in the City-States, and it can only be made from steel.
Steel weapons and armor costs around 5 times the listed price in the Player’s Handbook.

Half-Plate and Full Plate are always made from steel and cost the price listed in the PHB.

Bronze spear heads

Iron
Iron weapons are the default weapons in the Player’s Handbook. They comply with the breaking and damaging rules above.
Half-Plate and Full plates cannot be made from iron.

Copper & Bronze

Both materials are weaker than iron, and when fighting against steel weapons they automatically suffer the effects of damage on a roll of a natural 1 or natural 20 (for armor). If fighting against iron weapons the normal rules for breaking apply.

Stone & bone
Stone weapons suffer a -1 damage penalty against iron and steel armour. However, some cultures have processes that make the stone hard as iron or steel. The weight is still greater than comparable iron or steel weapons.

Bone breast plate: Made from mighty beasts, these breastplates function as regular breastplates, due to the high level of craftsmanship and density of the bone used. They would be highly prized in their culture.

Scale Armour: scale made from regular scales of beasts or from thick bone chips work as a hide armour, but scales or bones from truly dangerous beasts or magically treated can work as a scale mail or splint mail, depending on the construction. The scales of these beasts are equivalent of iron, but can be broken by steel.

Magical weapons:
Magical weapons or armour cannot be broken through regular combat. Special significant events have to occur to endanger them, such as Elder Dragon fire, volcanos and epic level magic.

mindlands

Where the mind meets dice and paper

Category: The Campaign

My Dungeons and Dragons Homebrew 1

Weapon materials in D&D 5ed

Earthdawn and D&D