Rules are made to be broken
Rules are made to be broken
From Perdition’s monster entry for Skeleton:
The dead do not walk in Perdition. Those who bind and raise the dead have either made a deal with a demon for the use of his many souls, or worse, has bound the spirit of a fiend themselves into the skeleton.
Paraphrased from Perdition’s Magus class description:
Specialization: Magi select from the schools of Arcana, Enchantment, Fleshcrafting, Illusion, Law, or Shadow. (notice anything missing?)
From a section of Perdition titled Where does a devil come from?:
When a person dies, they leave behind a soul…If they die corrupted or on a conquered plane like Perdition, they immediately find themselves on the banks of the river Lethe. After experiencing unimaginable torment…what is left is reborn as a Lemure. They are used as fodder in the blood war.
From these (and other) parts of the text we see that a couple of staples of D&D are missing. Magi have no necromantic spells. There are no intelligent undead listed as monsters. All souls from the plane of Perdition belong to the devils and are needed for their constant war against demons and chaos.
This is instant conflict. And it happened to fit with the old 2nd edition box set, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, where necromancy, souls, and intelligent undead are the point of the whole thing. Of course in a world like Perdition some ambitious mage would seek a way to keep their soul from the devils and to use others souls for themselves instead of letting them increase the power of the devils. And because two of my PCs serve fiendish patrons with death portfolios, including the undead for one, they are hooked. With the motivations they have, no railroading is necessary.
Paul Vermeren You were wondering how the adventure is. Super rail-roady at the beginning. There is almost no reason for the PCs to get involved in the plot beyond being busy-bodies and spontaneously deciding to investigate. There are three NPCs to visit before finding out almost anything about the plot, including “the PCs could hire a sage.” I skipped all that by putting the journal that the PCs find half-way through the adventure after visiting all these NPCs into the belongings of a skeleton they found in another dungeon. Reading the journal gets you all the info you find out from the what would probably be several sessions of play. Through their own research, the PCs found a likely place for the location of the Tomb of Horrors and travelled there, directly to the meat of the adventure, which is more location based.
ReplyDeleteBeloch Shrike rolling “Wizard” on my encounter tables based on your system provided so much entertainment. This poor wizard introduced the party to necromancy, got charmed, gave up a bunch of useful information, got murdered, and his blood attracted a bunch of mosquito women who gave the party a bad time. Glorious.
Casey G. I am so glad other people are using that method. =D
ReplyDeleteIt's a great system I'll use in every game.
ReplyDeleteYeah I love it Beloch it has resulted in some fun times so far. I need to fill out more actual tables instead of just making it up all the time. Your template helps me improv a lot though.
ReplyDeleteWell dang, thank you, guys.
ReplyDelete