The house on Ash Tree Lane (4e+) - WIP

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

[Premise]
This campaign borrows heavily from the novel House of Leaves and uses some elements of D&D 3rd/3.5rd edtion, but will primarily build on 4th.

[Setting]
Rural southeastern Virginia. The campaign will be set in primarily OUR world - the real world, if one wants to call it that.

[The plot]
The summer days were getting long, but the heat in this rural area of Hatcherson, VA, did not leave an impact on any of the residents. The town was bustling with tourists seeking refuge from the bustling Richmond area. Some move to the area just to get away from the stress.

The Navidson family, consisting of Will (40s), Karen (late 30s), Chad (5), and Daisy (3), have been living in Hatcherson for a few months. They called for assistance from "Navy's" brother, Tom, who worked in construction, to look through their new house on Ash Tree Lane. Navy, a professional and award-winning photographer, had said he noticed something off when a door appeared in the ground floor of the house and that, when he took measurements of the house, that the interior of the house had somehow grown 1/4 of an inch larger than the outside of the house. Tom and Navy borrowed tools from connections in the University of Virginia as well as out-of-state connections, and nothing could explain the discrepancy.

The family attempted to put this issue out of mind, until one day, Daisy went beyond the door. Karen panicked (severe case of claustrophobia and the dark) and couldn't go in. Navy went in to rescue the daughter.

When Tom installed four locks on the door, what unnerved everyone was the presence of a sonorous and lasting echo.

Days later, they made another test. The "foyer," as they call it now, had no echo now ...  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

[Sources to be used]
BY THE PC
PH1, PH2, PH3, Manual of the Planes, The Planes Above and Below, Divine Power, Arcane Power, Martial Power 1 and 2, Primal Power, Eberron, Adventurer's Vault 1 and 2

BY THE DM
Above mentioned, along with DM1 and 2, MM1/2/3 (planning this campaign to start late-June), Draconomicon books (with customized settings), elements of Dungeon Delve, elements of Thunderspire Labyrinth, Underdark, Open grave, Demonomicon

i will be borrowing from Exemplars of Evil, Elder Evils, Libris Mortis, Tomb of Horrors, Return to the Tomb of Horrors (using first edition for this), White Plume Mountain (using 3.5), Fiendish Codices, and Heroes of Horror

[THE BASIC PLAN]
The party to be formed will comprise of engineers, adventurers, survivalists, psychics, and analysts who will survey the house further. They will run checks, go through the story of the family, and eventually enter the "five-and-a-half minute hallway." Let's just say even having darkvision won't help - not that anyone would have it, because the only allowed race in this campaign is human. The goal of this campaign is to survive. Once you're in the foyer, you're going to have to fight your way through, but not always against monsters.

[CHARACTER GENERATION]
This is where it gets nuts - i'll be violating the general rules of character generation for this campaign.

Your stats rolls will be 9*4d6, best 6. On the very unlikely chance you get rather crappy rolls, you may use the point buy system, with a 28 point limit.
8–12 1 pt
13-15 2 pts
16 to 17 3 pts
17 to 18 4 pts
i will be adding an additional stat once you finish creating your character - SANITY. It will be based on intelligence, wisdom, and charisma and will play an essential part of the campaign.

Starting level to be determined.

You may only play as a HUMAN.
Classes are limited only to your available sources, because this "hallway" is quite unusual. You are granted powers which are rendered useless once outside of the hallway. The only exception to the rule will be any ability to shift - meaning druids and wardens are VERBOTEN.

No enchanted weapons. If you get weapons, it'll be a knife (dagger), handgun (repeating crossbow), composite bow (either long or short), a baseball bat (club), sickle, handaxe, sling, or a hammer (the thrown kind, for purposes of simplicity). Anything requiring ammunition will have only normal ammunition.

No enchanted armor. You only get the options of cloth/leather/hide/scale/plate armor, chainmail, and light or heavy shield. These will be impromptu.

On your person, you may carry only a basic holy symbol. That means the basic accurate, astral, holy, warding, or wrathful symbol. NO ENCHANTMENTS. When you employ this, you may have it depicting whatever belief system you follow - the effects remain the same. Totems follow the same rule - accurate, farseeing, icicle, storm, and normal only.

The ONLY exception to the no enchantments rule are tattoos. Once you enter into the unknown, you gain tattoo effects. I suggest you have similar inks.  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

[Characters]  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

[History]  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

[NEWS]  

[Stella Meowris]

Dibs on a heavily tattooed medium covered in magic symbols and crawling with totems.  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

well, dear, here's where things are a bit sad - you can only wear one holy symbol at a time. (crap)  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

sources updated. Now to get an expert mapmaker who is willing to disqualify him- or herself from the campaign to help with my map concept.  

[Rain Yupa]

Wolfram Asher Davidson

sources updated. Now to get an expert mapmaker who is willing to disqualify him- or herself from the campaign to help with my map concept.

... crud.  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

i think i can get help from a friend outside of the guild, actually.  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

Okay. Given that i plan on using some Lovecraftian elements, guys, i'm going to start asking what level we should do this. i have a monster builder, so we can mess around here for encounters, but we're talking about humans with a wide range of education and experience levels, though, given their occupations, they are either skilled or renowned. i don't want to make this go into paragon tier too quickly, but i at least want to give the players a chance to boost their stats SOME thanks to their ages.

Assume character age is at least 35. i propose we start level 8.  

[Rain Yupa]

How long do you plan on doing this? It sounds like a one-shot to me. So, you have to keep in mind that advancement in of itself isn't likely, unless this is something to be run long-term.

With that said, aberrants will be your monsters of choice, so look at some of those, probably followed by demons (which you could very easily change the keyword "Demon" to "Aberrant" if you wanted, and remove the variance resistance). See what monsters in the MMs strike your fancy and choose your level based on that, I'd say.

If this is a prolonged one-shot, without opportunity to rest, choose the level of the party slightly above the median of the chosen monsters. Monsters of lower levels aren't as threatening in terms of doing large amounts of damage to a player, but they whittle them down and use up their resources over time.

If need be, you can always level up or down a monster, as per the DMG, to match the rest.

Also, if you've never played any Call of Cthulhu games, Sanity is typically based off Wisdom (I think typically, 5x Wis Score = Sanity, and a d100 roll is made at every insanity-inducing event; if you roll higher than your sanity, you lose some. So the more sanity you lose, the easier it is to lose more. I think the cap is 95). You don't have to change your mechanics for it, I'm just letting you know about tried&true alternatives :3  

[Mokumegane]

This looks interesting and if done right/have plenty of stuff to explore or do, it can last a while.  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

what i was thinking was doing something far less traditional - base score + mod + half level of intelligence PLUS the same for charisma, but now that you mention wisdom, i'm thinking of doing that as well. d100 for the rolls would make sense, but in this case, getting HIGHER than your base score would be good.

Example - level 8 human archer/ranger. using the typical 22 point array as well as bonus to wisdom, he has 11 str, 12 con, 17 dex, 10 int, 16 wis, and 10 cha. At levels 4 and 8, he boosts both int and cha so that the following is true
str = 11 / con = 12 / dex = 17 / int = 12 / wis = 16 / cha = 12
With the 1/2 level mod being 4, the mods each of these get are, respectively, 4 - 5 - 7 - 5 - 7 - 5
So the archer's SANITY bonus would be 12+5 + 16+7 + 12+5 (17+23+17) - 57. Any roll they make for sanity will be d100 + their bonus - however, i won't spoil the game and say what the DC is xD  

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

also, it's going to be a 4-part campaign. Part one being talking to the family, looking around the house, roleplaying. Part 2 being a brief look into the new room. Part 3 and 4 being the rest of the encounters.