Quest ideas

While waiting to see how much Liv's mod v 2.0 expands on the plot, quest and story material, I've been thinking about creating a small quest involving planescape: torment's The Nameless One and a select few of his followers (Ignus, Dakkon, the blind archer and possibly Vhailor).

I'm thinking the initial encounter with these gentlemen should take place either at Deklo grove or the burned farmhouse, provided the party has a certain item in their possession. TNO's interests would ultimately lie with Falrinth and the Orb of Golden Death, and the quest would take them through a new area.

Upon finishing the quest, the player would have the option to have one of TNO's followers join the party, provided that the party agrees to do one final task for him - which would vary depending on the party alignment. Of course, TNO wouldn't be a joinable character, as his stats and powers would be ungodly anyway.

They would, of course, all have a number of unique items and abilities. I see a problem with this though, because Dakkon's blade has bonuses that I don't think can be implemented in ToEE. Vhailor's axe and armour shouldn't be removable by any means from Vhailor's inventory. In fact, he shouldn't be able to wear any other armour or switch weapons either. I suppose I could make the items cursed, but then the player could simply cast remove curse on them.
Ignus shouldn't be able to wear anything at all, but should be able to at least use flaming and/or metal weapons. Anything wooden would just catch fire.

I haven't fleshed it out yet, but it would be a pretty "dark" part of the game, involving greater shadows, some really twisted characters and some relatively disturbing scenes. In conjunction with this, I would also spice up the temple in general to simply make it more EVIL. This isn't ravenloft, I know, but come on! There aren't enough live sacrifices, torture and slaughtering of the innocent, desecration and vileness. (ooh, prisoners get put in dungeons, big deal! we more gore! more blood! more death! more tentacles!@ Zuggy is supposed to be one mean ass bitch... evil enough to make Cthulhu proud! err... yeah. You get my point :transform ).

Anyway. What do you guys think? Would it be too far fetched a plot element and "atmosphere enhancement" to add into ToEE or what?

 

Well, it's a cool idea. For what it's worth;

It would probably be easiest to include one Good and one Evil quest goal, rather than one goal per alignment.

I'm not all that interested in an Uber NPC. I can already squish the game just fine with my current gangs, and every piece of new gear is pushing party power up just a little. I'd rather keep party power about where it is or growing slowly and carefully upgrade threats by-the-book(s). An XP award, or a useful but limited item (a Figurine of Salamaner Summonning or something) might be better.

On the other hand, if the new NPC is the point of the mod, then go for it; tastes vary.

As to Evilling up the Temple, groovy.

 

well imho the temple just doesn't have enough milldew, for a godess of fungi it's just not fungi enough.

 

And where are the hedonistic orgies! The whole point of joining an Evil cult is the hot cultist chicks, mind altering substances, and ritual group sex.

Man, who would want to join the Temple?

 

And thus, the need for beer.

 

LOL what's especially funny about this is that I actually run goth club!

Um, anyway
The purpose of the quest isn't so much the extra NPC choices as it is the neat story element it could potentially add, as well as making things in the temple more interesting and add some plot twists.
The extra NPCs could potentially be overpowered if not balanced right, so I intend on giving them all both strengths and weaknesses.

Ignus would have bad AC and be extra vulnerable to cold and water based attacks, as well as unable to learn anything but his own brand of firebased spells, as awesomely destructive as they would be. Not sure how to implement this though. He wouldn't be as powerful as he is in Torment, as this game (in my mind, at least) takes place before Torment does. He's also pretty scary to be around, so I doubt anyone would talk to you while he is in the party. Unless someone figures out how to make people not react to invisible NPCs.

Dakkon would be a good all-around fighter/mage, and offer an option to have another wizard NPC. Previously we only had Spuggy and Burne to choose from.
His weapon is, of course, very powerful, but his zerth armour isn't the best (equal to non-magical chain shirt, but no spell failure %), and should be permanent.

Vhailor would both be blessed and cursed by his plate armour and axe +3... it would mean that he could never use anything but these, unable to use rings, amulets, boots, shields, helmets, belts and cloaks. Like Ignus, he's not the nicest looking fella either, so forget about talking to anyone while he's in the party.
I'm thinking he should be a paladin as well, by virtue of him being a lawful good Mercykiller (as messed up as that may be). There are no paladin NPCs in the game as far as I know.
His low wisdom and charisma scores (both 10) would prevent him from getting paladin spells and using smite evil effectively as well, and since he is undead, he can only be healed by inflict damage spells.



hmm....
come to think of it, it would be cooler if i just invented my own characters for this quest. that would give me all the room i'd need to balance them properly without stepping on anyone's ideas of how those characters should be.

 

I think that might be best.

Note that Fighter/Mages are fairly crap in 3.5. Druids and Clerics are now a much better choice if you want to both cast spells and swing a sword. Even Bards have more raw power given similar experience point totals and equipment, which is saying something.

 

Well I was thinking, If these NPCs were followers, Like a charmed person or commanded undead and their gear was set to no loot. then you could "have" them in your party but not have access to their stuff and couldn't kill them to get it.

Just a thought

 

now that's a very interesting work-around that I think could work very well!
... must contemplate further...

 

Reading up on some greek mythology, I've come up with even more quest ideas... heh, i'm on a roll, gotta start writing!