The Built World

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-23 01:15:10

The Built World is the name of a D&D setting I started working on about a year ago. Initially it was for Pathfinder but due to my recent interest in the mechanics, I'm converting it to 5th Edition as well as making some major overhauls along the way.

Currently everything about the setting is contained in two Google Docs.

The first is here, and the second, which I am currently working on, is here. The first is no longer canon, but I'm porting a number of the ideas over, as well as most of the significant characters (such as Calcipherox the Dragon) while adding many new ones. The second is incomplete, but the "source of canon" for the time being.

I'm posting this here cuz I need two things. One is people to read over the setting and make sure I'm communicating my ideas about it properly, and to also give me ideas about things they'd find fun in the setting. But more crucial is Two, people with more experience in 5th Edition's mechanics than I have, since I have next to none, and as such my abilities to craft interesting and unique areas are limited.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-23 02:42:36

Is there a Bear Layer??

I feel like there should be a Things You May See In the Dungeon guide, written by some scholar who disappeared into the rifts one day and came back two decades or so later, completely mad and carrying half a dozen journals of madness and wonder.

Also, the gearlings should have gotten their hands on the journals at some point, transforming journals of madness into spellbooks or magical paper shields or powerful bludgeon scrolls.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-23 03:00:52

These are good ideas.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-23 03:04:43

Even the bear layer?

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-23 03:14:38

No not that one.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-23 03:42:37

Breathe Creation: In addition to the gold dragon's ability to breathe a cone of fire, avatars of Sol'Ghaar may exhale a cone of creation energy--believed to be a small amount of the very same that Sol'Ghaar created Selaar itself with. This energy spawns 2d4 random creatures. Their total challenge rating must be less than or equal to 17, and no single creature may have a challenge rating more than 8. These creatures have the Draconic subtype in addition to their normal statistics. In addition, any creature that died within the past 24 hours whose corpse is caught in the cone is immediately affected by the equivalent of a Reincarnate spell, though they are quite likely to be confused.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-23 03:45:45

why cross out the Reincarnate bit tho

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-23 03:50:22

That's still valid. I just wanted to focus on the bit I changed.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 18:32:16

I have indeed been working on this. The link up top still works and a lot has changed but right now I'm proudest of Gelstar, (in the new "Notable Inhabitants" document) who is a demon lord and in my opinion a possible arc villain.

No idea how to stat something like that though.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 19:14:26

Aim for somewhere between Balor and Solar for ability scores, with a high WIS as his casting stat, give him two slam attacks with the big hands and a grab attack with the smaller ones per turn, and able to grab 5-10 creatures max. Anyone he's grabbing gets hit with a bite attack from one of his smaller mouths every round. As a bonus action, he can attempt to consume one person whom he's grabbing. a decent amount of fire damage every turn they're in his belly and they have to succeed in a dex roll or someone has to do a ton of damage in order to get him to spit them back out.

For legendary actions, let him cast one cleric spell for free; let him use a Kirby-style suction attack that lets him swallow everybody within 15 feet of him who doesn't make their dex save; and...I dunno, a teleport?

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 19:17:42

See you've described it to me but I meant more that I don't actually know how stat blocks work and are formatted in the first place. Never statted anything before in my life.

Also this is all to be 5e, which I assume you are describing but it is hard to know?

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 19:18:21

anyway what do you think of him

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 19:19:36

ah I need to build his as-deity portfolio and domains and such too.

I don't think I've explicated it in the main document yet, but anything that is sufficiently revered as a god or is godlike can grant cleric spells in this setting. Gelstar is in the (not at all unique, among demons) position of giving them to himself, as well as his followers.

Thinking of dropping the warlock thing though. Kills a bit of the mystery inherent in the class.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 19:25:34

And there are other things that need this treatment too

just off the top of my head, the lich outlined in the main doc (who is a dwarf, which I need to make clearer), a draconic necromancer also briefly mentioned, Calcipherox Bituminex (who has stats, but they're for Pathfinder).

Boo

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 19:27:15

oh, and Sol'Ghaar

I am not naive enough to think that D&D players won't try to fight the sun

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 19:32:18

Everything I said works in 5e. Suffice to say that I've been looking into boss-level monsters for a while now, so I sort of know how it works. To break it down:

*Every boss-level monster gets multiple attacks every round. You have to explain exactly what those attacks are. For a red dragon, for instance, it'd be two claw attacks and a bite

*Boss-level monsters have stats just like PCs. Strength, Dex, Constitution and the rest. Only major difference is that they get a challenge rating instead of a level

*Stuff like the 'bonus action allows you to swallow someone whole' thing and the 'everyone getting grabbed gets 2d6 bite damage or whatever' would be where you'd normally put feats.

*Boss-level monsters get 3 legendary points per round, which can each be used at the end of any person's turn and are refreshed at the beginning of the monster's turn. Those points can be spent on one of three moves specific to that monster. For instance, a red dragon can use a powerful tail attack, a wing attack that lets it move 30 feet, or a free perception check. Depending on what you do, you may use up two or three of your legendary points. The wing attack, for instance, costs two points.

He's pretty cool

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:09:52

how does one do saving throws

right now I'm literally just moving the Balor's stats around

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 23:18:42

..you'll have to be more specific than that.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:19:49

Like I don't know what they actually are

like here's a Silver Dragon's stat block

I don't know where the listed throws are coming from

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 23:21:27

Basically, you roll a d20, add the modifier for that stat (and, if you're proficient, your proficiency bonus), and if it surpasses the difficulty check, whatever the enemy is using on you is less effective.

STR/DEX saves usually result in half-damage from an attack. CON/INT/WIS/CHA saves usually cure some debuff or break out of a charm spell

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:21:59

so how do I find out what they are, numerically?

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 23:22:25

So in the case of that dragon, they get to add +5 to any Dex save, +12 to any Con save, +6 to any Wis save and +10 to any Cha save when faced with any spell or technique that would force them to make such a save

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:23:37

ah dear I've gone crosseyed

Sredni Vashtar · 2016-11-28 23:28:03

I would personally just put a whole bunch of ??? under the stats with the Sun-Dragon because literally trying to fight the Sun is stupid enough that just putting down any character who tries in a remarkably creative way would be its own sort of fun.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:30:14

That goes against the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons as a game.

Also, there is precisely one character that I know of in the entire franchise who is unfightable to the extent of not being statted, that being The Lady of Pain from the Planescape setting, and I would not feel good about intruding on that territory, as a writer, designer, or a mortal that lives somewhere in the multiverse.

Sredni Vashtar · 2016-11-28 23:40:19

I dunno, I feel like these sorts of games tend to fail in the arena of divine/cosmic/existential awe precisely because everything has to be set in stone like that. Having an entity that exists but is fundamentally unknowable—except to you, as the DM—strikes me as a way of keeping certain aspects of the world open. To whit, there's nothing that can make a bigger mess of a setting than literally being able to end it with one dumbass killing God. I mean, you could go the Aztec route and have a different deity replace the Sun every time the Old Sun dies; or you could put the Sun in the position of "merely" being one of the Stars like in this world and save the really weird shit for stuff way up the food chain—"What eats Suns?"—and bring the sense of scope in that way. But never having the option of saying, "Fuck it, numbers don't matter here, narrative rules alone apply," seems like a massive cop-out.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:45:39

I on the other hand think that having that option is the cop-out in of itself.

D&D is not played adversarialy unless you're running Tomb of Horrors, it's a framework within which a story is told via a game, which has rules. It sits at a very unique intersection and I feel like veering too heavily into roleplay or rollplay can kill the fun.

Let's say someone attacks Sol'Ghaar, they'd have a lot to answer for, wouldn't they?

Aside from the fact that at a guess, Sol'Ghaar is probably deitic levels of powerful (not that that stops all characters, but it stops most), if someone somehow defeated it, the Sun would be gone. Which would have massive, massive consequences.

So the PCs would have to have some reason to do it. Not necessarily a good reason mind you, maybe they're evil PCs and just want to plunge the world into slowly-freezing chaos, but there'd have to be a reason, and as a DM you can just say "are you sure you want to do that?" many, many times.

And if they really do, well, now there's no Sun. Good going, assholes.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 23:46:11

>_<

Okay, let's try an example.

So suppose an adventuring party is fighting that dragon, and the cleric tries to cast Hold Monster on the dragon. The dragon will be paralyzed unless it succeeds in making a Wisdom saving throw that's higher than the cleric's Spell Save DC (which, for all casters, is 8+proficiency modifier+the modifier for their spellcaster stat). Let's say it's 18. So the dragon rolls, and in addition to the +1 it gets from its Wis modifier, it gets +6 from its saving throw boost. So if it rolls an 11 or higher, then it beats the Spell Save DC and it doesn't get paralyzed.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 23:47:50

And yes, DnD players should never, ever, be prevented from doing terrible ideas.

It is the inherent nature of DnD for players to get so ludicrously overpowered that anything short of DM fiat is like throwing twigs at them. At that level, the only thing that can defeat them is their own hubris, and in order for that to trigger, they have to be able to throttle the sun itself.

Sredni Vashtar · 2016-11-28 23:50:06

Yeah, I was thinking that, alternately, it could be entertaining to have it open for all the failsafes to, well, fail. But to that end, do you have a plan for what happens when some asshole murders the Sun? Assuming that they don't get giga-murdered themselves.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:52:02

Sredni Vashtar said:
Yeah, I was thinking that, alternately, it could be entertaining to have it open for all the failsafes to, well, fail. But to that end, do you have a plan for what happens when some asshole murders the Sun? Assuming that they don't get giga-murdered themselves.

you end the session and come back next week with a very different setting in terms of tone and worldbuilding

Sredni Vashtar · 2016-11-28 23:54:21

But see, *not* ending the story there seems like fun to me. The Sun is kind of important, obviously, and the consequences of that absence could be fascinating.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-28 23:59:30

That is what I meant.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-28 23:59:46

Okay, what I said before was a bit of an overstatement. There are definitely scenarios that will effectively ruin the chances of the game ever being fun again, and those should be subject to either DM fiat or going "okay, if you do this, the game is over and we're doing a new campaign". But one of the inherent bits of DnD is that you can, with enough effort, kill just about everything. The only thing separating mortals from the gods is XP points and feats.

So yes. If the sun is sentient, you should 100% be able to kill the sun. But you should have a plan in place to either somehow replace the sun or to deal with literally everyone on the plane coming down on you to kick your ass.

Or even...maybe let the BBEG of the campaign kill the sun, or capture it, or make a ludicrous persuasion check and seduce it. Then the player characters get to be the ones taking him to task and restoring the sun or helping people evacuate to another plane or something.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-29 00:02:15

Anyway I got like a third of the table done before giving up >_>

perhaps I'll try again tomorrow.

I should probably not be statting demon lords if I have trouble with concepts introduced in the Player's Handbook.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-11-29 00:03:01

also

killing Sol'Ghaar probably wouldn't even be that hard compared to say, killing Pelor or a comparable actual sun deity. Sol'Ghaar isn't a "true" god (there are none on this plane), just an extremely powerful creature that might as well be one.

Yarrun XIX · 2016-11-29 00:12:48

Honestly, I'd probably check to see if I could kill the sun at some point. It's just common courtesy.

Salix Babylonika · 2016-12-03 02:37:19

did A Thing on Dwarves and Another Thing on Beholders

you should read the first cuz it's neato, and the second because there's an aside about a character named Yaz(l6o/r6o)hurnanyaz(l6s)nalnoplu-Zedzikahurzam(r3)-Xylarhurzam(l3l)anyazn-Dur(ao), which is not a typo.

The Built World

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