New Game: The Mind's Eye

[TheyCallMeTomu]

An homage to the popular Wizards DnD website article series, The Mind's Eye is a campaign designed to make heavy use of material from the Complete Psion and Expanded Psionics Handbook.

The world as the characters know it is the Psionic Empire, a collection of six floating countries, which serve as the cultural center for the rest of the empire, which is located on the ground. While the floating cities are something of a utopia, the ground is riddled with monsters and other entities with agendas contrary to those of the empire. The party, in this case, are agents of the empire, sent on a variety of quests in the name of the empire, to promote its agendas, and to protect the surface dwellers.

This is, of course, just the setup for the campaign; the campaign involves a continuing plot that will eventually take the characters outside the empire.

I'm searching for one (yes, only one as of this moment) player who is familiar enough with the combat rules in order to be able to play with relatively little delay on their turn; don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to ask questions of how to do things and development, but that should be taken care of before and after the sessions; during the sessions, I'm trying to minimize delays (some of the dungeons are particuarly long, and I prefer to get through as much material as possible).

All characters begin as Gestalt 10th level characters, and are treated as if having an ECL 2. Each character needs to level up two seperate XP pools (each gaining XP as per a 12th level character) to level up. Characters begin with 12th level starting gear (88,000) but are only allowed to purchase items explicitly found in the Expanded Psionics Handbook, the Complete Psion, or Magic of Incarnum, though characters willing to shell out the 27,500 can purchase the ability enhancing books at their own discretion.

All characters must have one "Manifesting level" and one non-manifesting level. The manifesting level includes any class that manifests psionic powers as its primary ability, including psions, erudites, psychic warriors, lurks (though I don't sugguest the class for a number of reasons) and Wilders. Soulknives do not fit into this category, and may be taken as one's non-manifesting level progression. Characters can take two manifesting levels only at DM's option.

So far, I already have two PCs, and a party NPC. The PCs already in the campaign fulfill a heavy armor role (psionic samurai stylized), and the Swashbuckler role; the heavy armor role is an Ardent, and has an array of recovery based powers, so he's essentially a high AC Cleric. The Swashbuckler is also a nomad, and focuses mostly on self-buff powers along with some ubiquitos transportation based effects. The NPC is designed for direct damage and to a lesser extent mental domination; his focus is purely on psionics, modified with just a bit of Incarnum.

Therefore remaining roles include a psionic Monk (it's possible to make a DBZ stylized build if you know what you're doing), Archer, Lurk, or some other combination. In addition, while the Paladin is barred (for an assortment of reasons defined below), a two weapon fighter (such as a ranger) or a Soulborn are not yet present within the party.

The party is predominantly good, with as much or more lawful than chaos; neutral characters are certainly allowed, but no evil characters are permitted, because that'll make the campaign a great deal bumpier. While chaotic characters are allowed (and in some cases prefered), don't forget that the original pretense is that the characters work for an Empire.

Characters cannot take casting classes. This includes the obvious ones, such as cleric, wizard, sorcerer, but also it includes Paladin, and any spellcasting class from another source. The reason for this will be explained later, but the Psionic Empire is bereft of spellcasting. Rangers use the non-spellcasting ranger variant found in the Complete Warrior. Characters are fully welcome to take Incarnum classes, including the Incarnate, Soulborn, and Totemist. If you've looked into Incarnum before, you've probably found that it sucks, but that is partially dependent on the very fact that Incarnum augments currently existing abilities rather than giving new ones, so it works best in a Gestalt situation.

As long as you're familiar with the rules and how they work for your character, that's just fine. I highly encourage a certain amount of power gaming (The "Samurai" has an AC in the mid 30s, all of it also applying to touch AC: Races of Stone has some good heavy armor feats), and if any character feels they're "significantly behind the power curve" I'll take that into account to figure out how to balance things. Characters are expected to level up about once every adventure, though the level progression should begin to lower after the first few quests.

The times for the campaign are as of yet unknown, but current estimates sugguest the campaign will be run starting at either 6:00 or 8:00 EST. The campaign will be run on one (or more) of the following days, once player participation can be assured: Thursday, Friday, Sunday.

If you're interested in the campaign, and think you can make one of the three listed days, send me an email message to TheyCallMeTomu@comcast.net . I'm also online as Sirius occasionally on Mondays and Tuesdays, though I'm usually not in any non-private channels at the time.

The campaign consists of a very large amount of combat, and just as much Dungeon Delving. The plot is somewhat linear, all things considered, which can be a good or a bad thing. I look forwards to hearing from someone.