Wandering Monsters (D&D 3.5 Campaign)

Setting

This is a 15th level D&D 3.5 game with monsters as PC characters. This is intended as a dark but witty game, akin to Black Adder and some of the Terry Pratchet books. Character species and classes and other whatnot are from offical WoC D&D source books, unless otherwise stated.

• Interest Thread

The Players have been recruited by the newly reconstruct but still fragile Benzedone Combine to act as a fifth column and ensure the Combine runs smoothly. What that entiles remains to be seen. If not, well lets just say when it comes to methods of punishment, these "soft" humans could make the cruelest Drow inquistor turn white. What a deal.

Characters

• Edain Duskblossom- Aranea Illusionist Coelocanth
• Layla abd'al-Azrad 10th lv Bard/5th lv Ghoul Josh
• Haro the Green - 15th Level Lizardfolk Druid JeStor
• Krong - Rust Monster/psionic BulgeBroMike
• Cenncroith - PsuedoDragon (Necromancer?) Rolzup
• Iactus Deiis - Intellect Devourer GM Sdrawkcab
• One Open Slot

• The DM is Psychophant

History

It has been years since the Great Battle where the forces of good destroyed the entire army of darkness, and the Face Of Milspec was shattered when the Necklace of Five Sorrows was cast into the pit of Badab'om. You are the last few scattered remains of an army so vast that its campfires darkened the skies. An army from so far way you marched through twenty three portals to reach this isolated world. Maybe you believed in Milspec' and his cause. Maybe you wanted fame and fortune, and a chance to save the beautiful ogress from the bloodthirsty humans. Or maybe you were given the choice to join or or have your entrails removed with a blunt stick. In any event the Search of the Necklace was an unmitigated disaster. What was supposed to be an easy victory over the puny humans and reclaiming the Necklace of Five Sorrows was anything but easy. The divided human nations united under one banner, and even managed to recruit the usually reclusive elves and dwarves to aid in their battle.

Now all that left of a once proud army of darkness is few scattered forces. So things changed, that includes you. You are reduced to a rag tag team of mercenaries trying to survive in world filled with humans of all things. Humans honed by a generation of conflict into killing machines that want you and your kind dead. The Humans don't seem to care if you were Lord high General or you were just a cook forced to join at swordpoint. To them you are all just monsters.

But over time, you and your team began to become pragmatic, and learned to live among the humans in an uneasy truce. Some even tried to settle down and resume their lives as farmers and cobblers before being drafted in Milspec's Horde with varying degrees of success. The hardcore among you called this "going soft." By those who did not "go soft" soon "got dead." It turns out humans are not nearly as soft as they look.

The Whirld

The place where the adventure takes place is called the Whirld. The Whirld is so remote from the Nexus of All Things that it is almost impossible to find unless you know where it is and what pathways to take. In fact the Whirld is populated almost exclusively with humans. Elves and Dwarves are so rare they are stuff of legend. Also most of the Elves left the Whirld after the Great War. Those that remain became mortal. As for the dwarves, they returned to their massive underground cities, rarely to be seen. When the only non-humans they ever heard of were elves and dwarves you could imagine their reaction to the Army of Darkness.

The "Common" language still exists in a changed form called "Royal Cant" If you speak Common you can be understood in Royal but it is not pretty. Also some of the peasants in long isolated lands speak their own dialects. (Players with INT less than 15 speak heavily accented Cant.)

In the context of the game "Whirld", magic items are very unusual, and you are expected to turn over any magic items you find to your handler. (Speaking as DM, if any of you actually follow the rules on this, and return your treasure, I will be very very disappointed in you.)

Geography

TBA

The Combine

Almost one thousand years ago the nations of the world were united under the one flag of the Benzidone Combine by one man. The legendary ruler Kayzar Alzos - Sage, Wizard, King, and inventor of the waffle iron. Unfortunately in the hundreds of years of following his death, the greatest empire the world had ever seen crumbled due to incessant taxation, internecine squabbles, and no small amount of inbreeding. It took a foe of immeasurable horror to unite the Combine once again under the flag of a new Kayzar - Naisos the Unifier. His reign was long and he was well loved. His son, not so much, who ended up drowning in a royal fountain. Nor his second son who leapt to his death from the top of the tallest Spire of the Arpagian Temple. Or the third for that matter, who drowned, leapt from the top of the tallest Spire of the Arpageian Temple and then stabbed himself seven times. To make a long and repetitive story short, Naisos' eighth son, Guzulos the Rotund, is the current Kayzar. Guzulos is in precarious position and faces ruling a very fragile Combine. Granted he spends most of his time in a drunken stupor at his beach house in the city of Port Passat, but if were to ever to sober up, he would be quite disturbed.

The Local Thieves Guild

The Combine is one of the largest empires and accordingly it has one of the largest criminal organizations. Outsiders call it the "Thieves Guild" but amoung members and those in the know, it is usually referred by the document which delineates its rules, "The Charter." Ironically, and not unintentionally, the slang regarding the Guild is very legalistic. A new memeber is called a "co-signers" and someone who is highly placed is "a Charter member, with veto rights and fringe benefits, and twelve notarized co-signers under him." Instead of saying a memeber has "had his kneecaps broken for holding out on a big job" When someone has been attacked, they simply saw. He got "audited."

However, unlike legal and organizational documents, the Charter itself it is actually pretty straightforward, and is more of a series of "guidelines." Of course there are guidelines and then there are guidelines. The most important section by far is not much a traditional list of rules, but a list of executed members and why the Charter Members killed him. This explains why the phrase, "He got a rule named after him" means someone died in a particularly unpleasant way.

Language

Royal Chant is very similiar to "common" but is a bit simiplified. To simplify matters, Chant words are only used when a common word does not exist. FOr those who must know here are some basic rules of Chant Grammar

Suffixes

• -at Refer to a Proper Place Name
• -ed Refers to a noun
• -os Refers to a Proper Personal Name
• -oy Refers to a personal adjective or nationality

Verb Prefixes

• A-First person singular
• A'a First person plural
• I- Second person informal
• I'i Second person plural
• E-Second person
• E'e-Second person Plural
• O-Third person
• O'o-third person Plural
• U-Only used when speaking to the Kayzar.
• A grave accent ( ` ) is placed over the first letter when speaking down to soemone
• An acute accent ( ´ ) is placed over the first letter when speaking up to soemone for greater rank
• A breve accent ( ˘ ) is placed over the first letter deontse close family like bond.
• A macron accent ( ¯ ) is is placed over the first letter when you intentially want to piss soemone off.

Currency

TBA

The Unaffiliated Lands

TBA

People, places and objects of note

Objects

Blolobled - Royal Cant for sausage fritters. (See Hilrossat)

People

'Bocelholos Depends who you asks some he is if he "Bocelholos the Bandit" who robs from whoever he can outnumber. Other say he is "Bocelholos the Liberator", a Purple Pimplel like figure vowed to bring down the Combine restore the land of dethroned nobles. Most peope on teh street just think he an idiot who likes to run arouond in tights.

Jonos Alceptos - Spadones of the House of the Kazar (Summer Home). He is kind of a major domo to the Kayzar, and your taskmaster. Although youthful looking, baby faced and possessing perfect manners, he has a certain edge that make him more terrifing than a horde of rabid driders with the feral template.

Nestros - Handler for the team. his mission is to give the team a socially acceptable cover. Which is rather ironic because "socially acceptable" is not one of the word that come to mind when discussing Nestros. Some of the phrases that do come to mind to describe Nestoros are "unbeleivably profane,' "loud," "irratible," and "surprisingly pine-scented."

Places

Port Passat - Defacto capital of the Combine and your base of operations think of New Orleans on the Mediteranian and you are not far off.

Cornet Blat - Offical Capital of the Combine. However since the Kayzar has not been there in fifteen years, there is a power struggle between them and Port Passat.

Hilrossat - This small mountain town really has nothing to do your adventure, but they are famous for their fried sauage fritters, and are really worth a try.

The Deal

TBA

Gameplay

Running The Game

GM is Pyschophant. Most rolls will be by the GM on Invisible castle

Character Creation

There are no class restictions due to race, and no "favored" or "unfavored" classes. Of course races and classes must be approved. WoC D&D books and SRD are considered canonical.

Races are usually assigned a Level Adjustment (LA) score. This is added to the creature's hit dice to get its Effecive Character Level or ECL.

Determing Base Stats

Players can use the default stats from the applicable sourcebook, or they they can roll 4d6 and drop the lower die for each stat as the would for a normal humaniod character. The DM can assign plusses and penalities to stats.

Players get an additional +1 to distibute to stats for every 4 character levels.

Using LA- A Sample Character

For example lets say you are a 2HD monster with a +1LA due to species and +1 due to a template.

The base creature has 2HD this is the equivent of two levels. The +1LA repesents you have abilities not repesented by mere HD. Templates give you extar abilities, upgrade sthe TYPE of Hit Dice but not thier number, and grants other abilities and sometime stats, but do not usually give HD, BAB, skill or Saves. A +1LA costs one level Find Number of Player Levels Left Remaining PC classes are treated normally. So you have 15-2 (Due to Base Creature) -1 (Due to Species LA) -1 (Due to Template LA)= 12 That makes you a So you are a 13HD creature (2 from monster class and 11 from barbarian) But you are Effective Character Class is 15 (14HD+1LA) BAB and Saves are added to base monster BAB and Saves. (And template bonues if any) The "missing" HD went into the Level adjustment. Think of it as selling HIT DICE to gain abilities.

House rules

Definition of monster

A monster is defined as anything that would cause a normal human to run away shrieking, "Ahhh! Monster! Run away!"

Hit Pionts

Characters get max hit pionts for first level.

Posting Frequency

I hope everyone would be able to post once a day. If not I would be forced to unleash my team of drow assassins to hunt you down and force you write a post with your character doing emarassing things with sheep.

Magic Items

Because high powered magic items can over power a campaign, and some monsters are incapable or limitied in magic items, I've decide dto keep a tight reign on magic items.

• Everyone can have one item that provides up to +5 total in stat boosts and up to +5 in AC and Save bonus and one magical weapon either +5 or +4 or 3 with special abilities.
• They also get one miselanous useful item and two marginally useful items. People forget for every +5 Sword of Awesome Awesomeness, there are dozens of Bag of Tricks, Marvoeus Pigments and eveful Spoons out there. So I urge charcters to take a couple. Both for realism's sake, and it helps round out characters. That and a really ingenious player could come up with great uses for these things.
• If a player wants to forgo magic equipment they get a +3 or 4 Level bonus. GM always has the final say.

Walking Arsenal Option

This campaign is all about parody. If a player wants to parody those "monty haul" pc characters who have multiple vorpal swords, he can. There are a couple ways to do this.

• He can take level penalties to get those [B]extra powerful[/B] magic items beyond equipment limits. The GM has final say on level penality and extra equipment. (Does 3 levels for 300,000 GP of magic items sound fair, given the above equipement restictions?)
• Artifacts could be treated as template. I like the idea of a lowly 3th level kobold who found a artifact with enough power to let him challenge 15th level characters.

Familiars

If you want to tweak your familar, you have two options

• Pick another 1HD creature as your familair and then pick a species from the "Familiars" list it resembles in function. Then use the stats from that. For example, a tarantula is like a snake, in that both are small sneaky and have poison. A bat is like an owl, in that both fly and are nocturnal.
• If you want something more exotic take the "Improved Famailar" Feat and offer suggestion to the GM. Bribes help. He likes Nachos.

Skill Pionts, Feats, And Stat Bonuses

Some creature come with predermined skills. If this is the case use those skills and award skill point for PC classes. If no skills are listed for monster type give it 2pt+Int Bonus per monster level. You get oen feat per 4 PC class Character also get +1 to one attribute for every 4 levels in a PC class. Feats are awarded on basis of character levels Monsters with +0LA are treated as regular PC for skills and stats.

Size

Charcter can be large but I am willing to go something larger if you can justify a way, by ability/spell/item, how you fit in a house or tight squeeze dungeon.

"Hey Fritz, any idea how did this ancient red dragon ended up in 10x10 room a mile underground?"

Alighnment and Tone

"It's fun to be "evil" if you're constantly making a mockery of the concept."-Rolzup

Someone could run a evil game where monsters rape pilage and revel in their evilness, with occassional bouts of agnst. But thats not my style as a GM. (That style tends to attract wanna-be who take pride in calling themselves "evil" and "anarchists" and thinking they are tough, but in reality would not last ten minutes in prison much less a truely anarachistic society.) It seems that just about everyone is on the same wavelenght here. I am leaning toward a "Dark and Witty" and "Mocking Evil" but a combination of the "post LOTR" background and being recruited by a political mastermind. There are plenty of ideas at TV tropes for "evil but not necessarily compent" vein to keep the game going for decades, and provide moments of seriousness as well. I was going to suggest the oft mentioned "Blackadder" for evil and slapsticky and add in "House, MD" for darkly witty. (They seem an odd pair but then I remembered that Hugh Laurie played several roles in Blackadder.) Other examples "Tales from the Crypt" "Monsters" (not to be confused with "The Munsters") and one of my favorites and a holloween classic "Arsenic and Old Lace."

I am not sure this actually clarifies anything but this is my thought process

Remeber an increase of one level gives BAB bonus of +1 and +2 to various saves and one minor special ability/spell.

• One AC level is similar to +1 BAB
• +2 BAB is worth about one major special ability/spell.
• To put it in perspective, and this is not a perfect analogy, that it means characters should be able to have a 50% chancee of defeating a young (13d12) red dragon single handedly (ECL 18), and conversely that means they would also have a 50% of getting defeated.

"Don't worry about the paladin, boss. I tied him up to a rope and Fritz hung him over a pit with filled spikes. Then we left him alone with a candle to burn through the rope. NO WAY he could get out of that alive"