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View Full Version : plot ideas for an Epic Level Adventure [D&D 3.5]



VarianArdell
2011-01-12, 12:44 AM
I'm DMing a campaign for a large group of friends (6-9 projected), and I need an idea for some epic plot ideas. so far, I have the following:

A mysterious disease threatens to eradicate the divine.
Each god and goddess's divinity is linked to a powerful dormant artifact, which awakens upon the deity's death.
An order of psionic monks break away from the main kingdom -- literally. The result is a monastic city-state floating a thousand feet above the capital city.
During an excavation in the north, a group of dwarven miners discover that the Genesis Core, the source of all new life on the planet, has been stolen.

As you can probably tell, I did draw some inspiration from the Epic Level Handbook. Overall, the campaign will focus a lot on divinity in general (and will feature a few of my own deities as well). I beseech you: help my campaign flourish!

blackjack217
2011-01-12, 12:49 AM
Find Big A's old imprisoned buddy (from the time he was an angel bonus points if he got imprisoned saving big A in some way) free him, have ultimate showdown between good and evil.

Correct WOTC's mistake and restore one of the gods destroyed in the conversion to 4th ed.

Kill Lolth

rye0006
2011-01-12, 08:52 AM
A mysterious disease threatens to eradicate the divine.
Each god and goddess's divinity is linked to a powerful dormant artifact, which awakens upon the deity's death.



Using these sort of ideas, it's always good to have a storyline where you find out that its one of the gods that has created/released this disease to kill competetion for sole control. but you dont know which one and there are several suspects - cue detective part of plot.

once youve worked out who, you then need to work out how they are planning to not be affected so as to benefit, and then how to stop it.

perhaps those dormant deity artifacts when combined offer another power that the person is desperate to get hold of.

and its always fun to drop in dead/ex-gods, wannabe-gods, children of the gods, and future gods.

edit: just thought - it'd be really nice if the god behind all of this managed to frame the epic level pcs so that whilst they are investigating to save the world, they are also trying to save their own lives whilst every other high level character, demi god etc is hunting them down!

Eldan
2011-01-12, 09:00 AM
There are a few old Planescape adventures you could draw inspiration from, dealing with Dead Gods (conveniently titled Dead Gods).

Dead Gods, in Planescape, become huge stone corpses floating on the Astral Plane. Their divine blood can be drained from them as a silvery liquid, but the god Anubis, of the formerly Egyptian pantheon, protects them.

There's all sorts of things you can do with that. Some cultists want to bring a dead god back. You mention dormant artefacts, this god's artefact has activated and is in some way integral for the world, but the cultists need it back. Bonus points if it's a good god and the PCs have to decide between bringing the god back or keeping the artefact alive.

Endarire
2011-01-12, 07:59 PM
In 3.X, gods of a certain rank just know the future up to a point, at least as it pertains to their portfolio. They just know all of your planning to stop or kill them. They just know what other deities will do.

Be careful with this.

AtlanteanTroll
2011-01-12, 08:03 PM
I'm DMing a campaign for a large group of friends (6-9 projected)

Get a smaller group. Big games take forever. We had a game with that many people and we wasted a half hour on a plan that didn't even need to be made.

Crow
2011-01-12, 08:11 PM
A Paragon Mind Flayer has called together the most talented and powerful beings in the universe for the ultimate Texas Hold 'Em tournament...

NichG
2011-01-12, 08:34 PM
It is the time of the death of prophecy. A great calamity was predicted that failed to come to pass. Those of the great nation of Asartha that were doomed to die in the great earthquake rejoiced, and all was good. But with the prophecy unfulfilled, there was unrest, and a loss of faith. The gods began to feel their strength waning just a little as all across the world, those things predicted failed to happen. Still, it was but a small thing, not to be concerned over.

Until the god of death was assassinated by a clever group of mortals secretly manipulated by his wife. How could the god of death not have seen his own demise, given his ascendancy over his own portfolio? Furthermore, inasmuch as he was arbiter of death, why had he been able to himself die? Why were mortals still dying each day, without his power. And where were their souls going? Without the god of death's hand, none could make it to the afterlife.

Background: The universe was gradually heading towards some horrible fate. The last survivors of this pooled all of their power and ingenuity and sent a single message millennia back in time, to whomever might chance to receive it. The message was simple, but the act of sending it changed things subtly, in a butterfly effect sort of manner.

The result of this is that all gods' portfolio senses are reading the wrong history, the history that was supposed to be, and as such are failing. As the gods represent the core ideas of that old history, new beings are ascending to take their place in the new history, yet these beings are not necessarily ones that anyone would want in that position.

Whether the message succeeded or failed at preventing that eventual fate of the universe is unclear (and in part up to the PCs, who must figure out that it was sent and why, in order to react to the coming threat), but at the very least it has thrown the cosmology into a chaos that is as threatening as the future that will no longer be.

TaintedLight
2011-01-13, 02:00 AM
Respectfully, the plotlines that are being put forward here are just scaled up versions of the kinds of things that 18th level characters do.

When I think of an epic challenge, I think about things that only a hero of unmatched skill could ever possibly hope to do. Like, say, eradicating a negative aspect of human nature. Watch the look on your players' faces when you tell them that their mission is to make all mortals live in peace with one another somehow.

rye0006
2011-01-13, 06:17 AM
Respectfully, the plotlines that are being put forward here are just scaled up versions of the kinds of things that 18th level characters do.

When I think of an epic challenge, I think about things that only a hero of unmatched skill could ever possibly hope to do. Like, say, eradicating a negative aspect of human nature. Watch the look on your players' faces when you tell them that their mission is to make all mortals live in peace with one another somehow.

i agree that, in principle, these suggestions are merely scaled up adventures and that ideally you want an epic encounter to be purely epic on scale such as you have suggested.
the problem is, as a player - how the hell do you play and carry out those actions. as a dm - how the hell do you organise and maintain such a storyline?

HyperionSanctum
2011-01-13, 06:28 AM
A godess of creation seeks to completely destroy the negative energy plane
And while this seems like a good idea on paper, it starts to throw off the balance of power the planes provided and life starts to become chaotic; forests grow out of control, animals are being born bigger/faster/stronger

In time, the forests become semi-sentient/carnivorous and people being healed by clerics can't handle the sudden surge of positive energy and it actually starts harming them

to fix this, the PCs must actually side with the darkness and try to repair the damage... or lend power to the negative energy plane

TakeABow
2011-01-13, 06:35 AM
Get a smaller group. Big games take forever. We had a game with that many people and we wasted a half hour on a plan that didn't even need to be made.

Diligent players can overcome the slow factor of large groups, as can competent DMing.

Yeah, it might be slower than a game with 4PCs, but sometimes you want to entertain 6-9 people with one story and not leave anyone out. And how often do you really get to play epic games? Once your are doing silly stuff, why not do it in a large group?

HyperionSanctum
2011-01-13, 06:42 AM
Get a smaller group. Big games take forever. We had a game with that many people and we wasted a half hour on a plan that didn't even need to be made.

big games are also fun and goofy and if you really have issues with people taking time with making plans and strategies, no matter how weird or ridiculous, then you're probably not very fun to play with

maybe your char is the grump who hates lengthy planning and strategy and just wants to hack things to bits and thats fine... but if you actually get pissed in real life about that kind of thing, and everyone else is happy and content, then you should probably go play some Diablo 2

please just clarify your stance and ill change mine

Crow
2011-01-13, 11:20 AM
Respectfully, the plotlines that are being put forward here are just scaled up versions of the kinds of things that 18th level characters do.

When I think of an epic challenge, I think about things that only a hero of unmatched skill could ever possibly hope to do. Like, say, eradicating a negative aspect of human nature. Watch the look on your players' faces when you tell them that their mission is to make all mortals live in peace with one another somehow.

That sounds wonderful, but the problem with things like this is that it fundamentally changes your campaign world forever. Sure, it's great for one campaign, but it generally makes it pretty boring when you want to play new characters in your world and everything loves one another.

Sometimes you want to make changes like this. It's what epic level characters do. But it shouldn't be all the time. Just because the characters are level 21 doesn't mean that every activity now needs to be OMFG crazy epic. Scaled-up works fine. 3 levels is a difference of Skeletons to Wights, Not skeletons to Nerull.

NichG
2011-01-13, 02:15 PM
I dunno, the fundamentally change the nature of mankind thing seems pretty awesome if you can pull it off. The trick with that kind of thing is that D&D doesn't support it mechanically, so you need to have a rich enough setting that it can be accomplished by interacting with setting elements the players are or can become aware of.

E.g. if mortals have conflict because of the construction of their souls in your setting, then the party could attempt to rewrite the nature of souls, create artificially modified souls that don't have that property, etc.

If mortals have conflict primarily because of resource limitations, the party could try to set up resources for all at all scales of life.

If mortals have conflict because the universe is composed of diametrically opposed cosmic forces (good vs evil, law vs chaos), then the party could try to move the planes themselves to resolve it.

But if mortals have conflict just because they do, and all you've got to interact with that is the D&D rules, it's going to turn into some mass casting of dominate person or equivalent epic spell and not be all that interesting.

Nobilis is good inspiration for this sorta thing.