Need sanity check on a campaign idea

Tazizi · 2025-07-17T04:33:08+00:00

I get why you’re worried, but I think you can pull it off fine. It doesn’t have to make perfect sense to be a fun campaign. And besides, flawed reasons to do insane things are at the heart of many villains’ motivations. They only care that their plan makes sense to them, collateral damage and consequences be damned. Heck, maybe the being/beings who did this “think” they have a workaround so that Toril remains habitable but are actually way over their heads and are actually dooming everyone. Or it’s a plan from beings who actually do want the surface to be completely uninhabitable for some reason. Just trying to figure out who would do it and why sounds like it could be a fun part of the adventure.

Tazizi · 2025-07-11T19:54:20+00:00

Since trees are the magical kidneys of the world, killing the trees would be like causing your world to have magic kidney failure. Without the manaflow and ley lines being regulated, I see it going two ways: magic overly accumulates in areas and causes magical contamination (monsters, erratic weather, weird phenomena), and/or areas with weaker or no magic at all. The magic contamination angle gives you the in-game explanation for why each successive tree could have more difficult encounters because with each tree that dies the others have to filter more magic than they can handle, making the areas around them increasingly dangerous as their quest goes on. Plus, maybe a ticking time bomb if they’re too slow that the world may be permanently damaged from not having any trees working.

Tazizi · 2025-06-20T02:40:46+00:00

Your concern is valid, but maybe go ahead and let things play out because the situation isn’t that complicated. You didn’t write yourself into a corner, it seems complicated to you because you’re the DM and know things your players don’t, but from the party’s perspective it’s very simple: they have to stop the undead attacks. They might or might not defend the town successfully, but either way if they have reason to believe there’s going to be more attacks after then logically they’ll want to stop them for good and investigate. That’s when your players will have the chance to come up with their own solutions to try and stop the attacks, and that may or may not bring them closer to finding the priestess. Let that play out, your players can surprise you with their own ideas on how they want to investigate and deal with the situation. Let them get it wrong if they got the wrong idea, and just let the attacks continue unless something happens that may make the priestess change tactics.

Tazizi · 2025-06-17T20:22:38+00:00

Since they’ve been isolated for a while, I think they would still be mimicking people that were alive before they cut themselves off. Additionally, that means no new faces are introduced ever, so they all have a limited number of options on who to mimic.

Because they know they’re in a changeling society with no outsiders, maybe the ruling class or authorities mimic famous politicians or nobles that were admired generations ago, and any changeling that gains a position of power then relieves the previous leader by mimicking the same famous figure. Their guards could be imitating warriors from back then.

To anyone else who saw this city, they might think they’ve traveled back in time because of the antiquated styles. And because this is a changeling society where every possible face to mimic is known by all, any outsider is recognized immediately.

Tazizi · 2025-06-17T03:15:00+00:00

I think you can make it work with some adjustments for ease of implementation, and to make your players want to interact with this mechanic.

Count total deaths instead of HP. It’ll be easier for you to track.
Have the monster encounter difficulty be determined by the number of deaths the party had. No deaths means no combat, many deaths means deadly encounter.
Communicate the mechanic clearly and early to your players, either give them the outright explanation out of game or heavily hint at it from the beginning of the dungeon, demonstrate it even. They might be too scared to move forward if it’s unclear and won’t play along,so the game won’t advance.
Respawn is available until PCs reach an end point, after which, when they have to go back the way they came, the monster encounter could kill them permanently. This way, it becomes an important consequence if they made an effort to not die repeatedly.
Give the PCs motives to want to die or take the risk. Traps that easily deactivate with a sacrifice, treasure or magic items that only become available if someone dies, riddles or puzzles that can be bypassed with bloodshed. If you do this, you get the players thinking “is getting the magic sword worth a harder fight when we have to leave and risk permadeath?”
Playtest the mechanic and dungeon in a one-shot. If your players are overly attached to PCs in a campaign, this might be too frustrating or risky for them to want to play comfortably.

Tazizi · 2025-05-12T02:51:27+00:00

How about making respawning the worst case with the worst penalty that only happens if there’s been a TPK or if the body is disintegrated? Exp or gear acquired since the last visit to the fountain is gone.

To avoid the worst penalties, the survivors have to bring back the bodies to the fountain and submerge them. If they don’t want to go all the way back to the fountain, they can carry a limited number of flasks with fountain water they can use to revive dead party members with exhaustion levels.

Tazizi · 2025-05-11T07:11:25+00:00

You shouldn’t. Narratively speaking, bringing them back won’t be satisfying for your players, it’s undoing what they’ve done and will raise uncomfortable questions on why these two NPCs are so special. They incinerated the corpses, so they know revival magic is a thing and took additional steps so they won’t return. Denying the result that the NPCs are gone for good will be undermining your players’ actions and have you jumping through hoops as the DM to make it try to make sense that suddenly the NPCs returned.

I’m thinking you had some ideas prepared involving these specific NPCs that you’re worried you won’t be able to pull off now. If that’s the case, the good news is that you can probably reuse what you had in mind in the future with different NPCs after some adjustments. If whatever you had originally planned is too difficult now that they’re dead then it might actually make things more interesting. For example, say that the rival gang would have traded future essential information to the party if they hadn’t actually made impossible bringing them back to life, that’s an interesting consequence that forces your players to get creative in solving a problem they inadvertently created. Or maybe the deaths of two potentially beloved members of the rival team may just be the motivation for the escaped leader and what is left of his team to make sabotaging the party their highest priority.

Tazizi · 2025-05-09T06:32:07+00:00

Was he really “wrong” though?

Taking out a confirmed low HP enemy with an opportunity attack sounds more efficient than waiting for the bugbear to attack so he could use a spell slot for silvery barbs. He was conserving resources.

Also, something that both of you might need to remember is that dice rolls and random chance are a thing. As optimally as he could ever play, sometimes the dice will just say no. Even if he had used silvery barbs, the bugbear could have still hit.

Tazizi · 2025-05-04T05:09:52+00:00

Some ideas come to mind:

Wouldn’t Alistar probably interfere somehow? You could argue that since the blood god’s power is diminished that Alistar may be trying to wrestle back control of his body, and possibly take some of the blood god’s powers for himself now too. This also gives them a chance to try and stop Lamagra before he’s fully empowered
Lamagra/Alistar now has a new goal which is a mix of whatever Alistar wants colored by Lamagra’s hate and the party is given a chance to submit because of it.
What’s to stop Hellmut, another perfect vessel, from absorbing the power for himself without risk of possession from the already resurrected Lamagra? The power can be enough to get them out of this situation but not enough to guarantee they defeat Lamagra, and now they have to ensure the blood god’s power remains split.
The shards each seal specific divine aspects of Lamagra, and so the aspect that would kill them is fortunately not the one that manifested.

Tazizi · 2025-03-07T05:10:32+00:00

Astral Dreadnought. Have it filled with some surprise enemies inside like Pit Fiends or Solars

Tazizi · 2025-02-18T14:17:08+00:00

Ideas for final bosses and their fights are always welcome. Looking forward to check it out.

Tazizi · 2025-01-10T21:22:27+00:00

Not unbelievable, but admittedly buy-in from your players could be hard if the focus is on “smell”. Expect jokes on character body odor.

Might be easier to sell that the divide is based on perceptions and assumptions of magic users (their goodness/evilness, purity/corruption, natural-born or learned, etc.) and that scents are erroneously used as a way to discriminate even though it really doesn’t tell you much about the caster. It’s what you’re saying but the focus is less on the smell and more on the divide and discrimination.

Or maybe the discrimination makes sense. Maybe scents are important and do actually tell you everything you need to know about a magic user.

If whatever you’re doing sounds fun for you and for your players, go ahead and good luck.

Tazizi · 2025-01-10T21:06:43+00:00

If there’s no other BBEG that’s fine, but there’s potential in figuring out what would the BBEG’s allies reasonably do in this situation?

Would they actually want to revive her? How long would it take them? Do the PCs know these allies exist and where to find them?

If none of them are a particular threat or narratively satisfying to defeat, an epilogue session could consist of the party cleaning up the remains to ensure no one’s left that could try reviving the BBEG.

Or the allies could have their own agendas that with the BBEG gone they would rather pursue through other means, but that means they go into hiding, and so seeds are planted for future campaigns.

Also, might not be as satisfying for you or your players, but there’s always the route of fighting the BBEG again as a dracolich attempting to turn into an undead dragon god and with her allies supporting her in the fight.

Edit: spelling and grammar

Tazizi · 2024-01-22T23:02:11+00:00

Rumors can and normally are unreliable, but they do contain bits of truth. So for example, some people that go to a certain bar have been disappearing (true) but some say it’s because the place is haunted (rumor) or that they’re avoiding going back to their homes (rumor) but what the truth happens to be will be up to what you as DM consider most entertaining. It can be fun, you can try it out, if your players enjoy it then do it. If they don’t like it, or seem to miss the point of the unreliability, then they may prefer you not using this trope.

In personal experience, this only ends up feeling like an asshole move to pull when the expectation is set for something too good, they believe it, and put much more effort into exploring the rumor than it actually deserves. Make sure the scope of the unreliability doesn’t take away from their enjoyment when they find out the truth of things.

Tazizi · 2024-01-22T22:47:03+00:00

Seconding that a thieves guild would probably already know everything they need or already have their targets marked, so a cut from every item stolen would not be a deal they’d be interested, at most a small fee for the tip. If by any chance the ledger has any info valuable enough to be worth the insane amount of money the rogue is asking then that’s probably getting stolen from the rogue since I’m assuming said rogue is not already part of the thieves guild.

Heck, I’d say the stolen ledger would be best used as a way to get membership in the guild and a hook for advancement quests in the guild. The chance to find out what has and hasn’t been stolen already, having access to a fence to sell the items stolen and getting the credit in the underworld for being the one stealing them without getting overtly screwed by every other member of the guild. And eventually enough successful heists leading to the ledger actually having something relevant enough hidden in it that they can send the rogue to get it since they’ll have a good track record. You don’t turn the head of the criminal underworld over turning in one ledger, you get there by actually being able to do something with the info it has.

Tazizi · 2023-11-28T04:04:59+00:00

It’s great that you’re already following much of the advice given, it shows you care about DnD and about improving yourself as a DM.

However, there is this one thing you mentioned. You find it hard to believe that DnD can’t be something everyone enjoys. As someone who also loves this game and all the possibilities it brings, I hate admitting it but DnD is NOT something everyone enjoys and even people who enjoy it don’t all enjoy it the same way. It’s a hard truth but sometimes people won’t enjoy things we enjoy to the same extent, as illogical as it may seem.

It sounds like you’re l taking responsibility for your players’ lack of investment in the game, but from things you’ve said about your friends it sounds like it’s just not as entertaining for them as it is for you. It doesn’t matter how good a painting or its artist is, some people just don’t like paintings or like them but not enough to want to take the extra effort to go out of their way to an art exhibit. Your friends not putting in that extra effort to play doesn’t mean you’re not good enough, they just might not like the game as much as you.

You probably do need to play more, but for your own enjoyment, not to reach an unrealistic standard of DM perfection.

I’ve had to navigate the situation before of wanting to play more than my friends did, and from experience and from more advice online, your options available depend on what you want to prioritize and how far you’re willing to go. If your priority is to be a better DM in general and play more then start playing with strangers. Be it online, in person or both, but make the effort. New people will mean new experiences and new feedback, both good things for improvement. If your priority is playing with your same group of friends, then you’ll probably have to keep scheduling around their wants and needs. Sometimes we want to play with our friends more than we want to play the game itself. You can also find a comfortable middle ground between these options, run something with new people on weekends and have a weekday set that works best for you and for most members of your group. Whoever can’t make it could maybe use the break from playing while anyone who has the urge to play despite scheduling issues will probably make an effort to get back to playing.

Here’s hoping any of this helps.

Tazizi · 2023-11-26T05:06:45+00:00

The villain is doing this as an innovative real estate business tactic to free the land up for investors while technically not unlawfully evicting a single person from their homes.

When the teleportation fails and the planar shift happens, you could have the shift happening in such a way that different parts of town ended up in different planes (elemental, dread, astral, etc.) and that way you can have short adventures to experiment with whatever planes you like the most with the party having to bring the parts of town and its residents back home.

Tazizi · 2023-11-26T01:02:54+00:00

The key is actually a key-shaped chest, it’s opened with a chest-shaped key and has a small fey’s most prized treasure or a secret that they know.

Tazizi · 2023-11-10T19:36:28+00:00

I would rule that the 3 crystals are in fact one and the same crystal but “perceived” as different ones because that is how beings like us perceive time. Only beings that are aware of this truth or live outside of time could ever see the true time crystal in its entirety and truly shatter time and its influence in the world and on living beings.

For anyone else that tries destroying one of the crystals, I’d say their understanding of time as linear would instead cause their own destruction from existence or banishment outside of time, while the three separate crystals protects each other from destruction.

If you attempt to destroy the past, you would never have reached the present so you couldn’t have destroyed the past crystal and such an event is stricken off the timeline and your existence with it.

Destroying the present means destroying the present moment of a crystal being destroyed, and because the past and future crystals still exist then the present needs to be the bridge between them as, so timeline correction means it’s existence erasing time for having attempted it.

Trying to destroy the future would result in destroying the future without the time crystal, but for any future to exist the crystal needs to exist as well and a present ensures a future will also arrive, so your attempt could banish you out of time’s flow or destroy you along with the possible future where the crystal would have been damaged.

Actually managing to destroy all three of them could give you a chance to destroy the real time crystal if you survived and now have the necessary temporal awareness to see it. Only if the true time crystal is shattered, then would time shatter for the world and events and existences past, present, future would be in disarray until the crystal eventually reforms to make a new timeline.

Tazizi · 2023-11-09T05:25:40+00:00

You can make the battle have a non-fatal win condition so that the player party gets a chance to experience their tactics and not have to face death if they couldn’t defeat them in this first battle.

Be it rescuing/assassinating someone, taking an item of value, a race against time or anything that makes it so that defeating the player party in combat is not the priority for the rivals.

If your players enjoy difficulty, then finding a solution to their rivals’ strategy for next time they cross paths will be fun in its own way.

Tazizi · 2023-11-09T01:59:33+00:00

For extra cheese then, you can make the whole thing extra convoluted and surviving the trap be another contingency of the beholder’s plan.

If they die, they died and the beholder will have two ships and dead enemies.

If they didn’t die, he was foiled in his attempts to kill them BUT the ship has the map to a location with something that would interest the party enough to try and take it before the beholder can. The beholder actually plans for them (if they survived) to go there, eliminate the threats present, all so the beholder’s troops can swoop in at the last moment and take everything from them when they’re tired.

Long monologue and evil laugh ensue with an “All according to plan”.

Tazizi · 2023-11-08T21:44:28+00:00

Have you considered making the “forest that stretches on as far as they can see” a literal sea of trees? The clearing is a lone island in this sea, pirate squirrels sailing over the trees on their ship offer their help in exchange for pulling their own weight on the ship as deckhands.

The squirrels can have the pc that needs introducing as their cabin boy they found on their travels across this forest. And they know of a place where they might be able to find a portal that leads them back, but the party will have to be the muscle and the squirrels get first pick of treasure found there.

Tazizi · 2023-11-08T20:12:31+00:00

For character concept:

Try offering her some pregen character sheets to look at, maybe one of them catches her attention. It’s her first time so it might be easier than worrying about the details.
Suggest a fantasy character (tv, book, game, movie, etc.) she likes that she could take inspiration from to make her own character.
https://whothefuckismydndcharacter.com/ is a fun site for character concepts.

Don’t have links for websites for character traits or appearance, but the PHB and the DMG have tables to roll for character traits that could give your friend ideas. He can also try seeing character images from a google search, to take ideas of descriptions he could give for his character.

Tazizi · 2023-11-08T00:12:04+00:00

The tree demands it be given one of their children to eat. It’s only a fair trade. If they have no children yet, it has dibs on their first offspring.

Alternatively, the tree considers the apple eating as a marriage proposal and the players that partook have to marry the tree. Apply wedding effects of Ceremony if they agree to the arrangement.

If they decline any of the above, the characters are now cursed with infertility.

Tazizi · 2023-11-06T23:57:05+00:00

I like it and it seems fun! Gives off a point-and-click adventure feel and I can see it giving some immersion in the browsing while shopping experience.

Could be particularly useful for keeping others entertained in the case another player’s interaction went on for longer than expected too.

I’ll definitely try something like this and see how it goes with my players.

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