| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Bluephoenix106 |
Posted - 01 Sep 2025 : 00:15:49
Hello. I was thinking about running a game in the Underdark near the Earthroot part and saw the Cold Sea on a map though can't seem to find anything on it. Anything that does show up is the Cold Ocean and Uliutu. Does anyone know anything about it.
P.S. This thread may have posted twice, I'm knew to the site. |
| 22 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Azar |
Posted - 30 Sep 2025 : 02:10:14
quote:
Originally posted by TBeholder
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
Individuals not only capable of crafting wonders (which, in times past, typically meant a minimum character level of 7)
Permanency is higher level than that.
You raise a fair point; Permanency requires a spellcaster level of 9. I may have been thinking of the minimum level limit for potions/scrolls. |
| TBeholder |
Posted - 29 Sep 2025 : 23:56:19
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
Individuals not only capable of crafting wonders (which, in times past, typically meant a minimum character level of 7)
Permanency is higher level than that. |
| Azar |
Posted - 28 Sep 2025 : 22:26:28
Individuals not only capable of crafting wonders (which, in times past, typically meant a minimum character level of 7) but willing to sacrifice time, spare material resources, experience and/or life-force in the process should be exceptional. Yes, those wonders should be rarities. Therefore, those monsters impervious to normal weaponry should be fearsome to the majority of citizens.
Otherwise, you are on the fast path to video game D&D where uniqueness is nominal. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 28 Sep 2025 : 21:42:12
quote:
Originally posted by Athreeren
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
Starting with 3e, Wizards essentially repealed TSR's hardline stance against "magic shops" (read the 2e DMG, if you are curious); 5e walked back the blatant encouragement of magical items-for-GP, yet the 5e DMG is still open to the idea. Overall, 5e is gash in regards to tone. If 4e is the MMORPG, then 5e is the Marvelesque superheroic romp.
Mystical artifacts should either be found or crafted by Player Characters who have rightly earned the knowledge and skill to attempt an enchantment.
I've never understood this. Adventurers are often going to be fighting other adventurers. If they are going to prove a challenge, they should have be similarly powerful, and probably equipped with a similar number of magical items. So as they grow in level, the number of magical items they possess is going to grow exponentially. They cannot wear more than one armour per person, yet the additional armour is clearly valuable, so it makes sense to sell it. And having established that a magical item can be sold, it makes sense that it could be bought.
There are ways around this of course: the adventurers only fight monsters, or hordes of low level enemies whose equipment is useless to them, or magical items are so rare that this exponential growth ends at only a few magical items for a given 20th level party, or the laws of magic are such that the magical item gets destroyed when their owner dies, or it can only be used by them... But by default, magical items would be traded, and if there are buyers and sellers, there will be middlemen specialising in that trade. What is wrong with this idea?
exactly. It doesn't mean that everyone can go around and purchase a +5 weapon (or a +3 weapon in 5e). But it gets to a point where a simple +1 weapon of any kind is not hard to find. +1 armor also, not hard to find. Basically, any item noted as uncommon should be relatively easy to find, and common items should be a staple. This would also mean that communities need not fear a creature that needs a magical item to hit them near as much. Also, of course, 5e has the attuning thing as well to limit how many items you can be tied to at a given time (which there should be ways to break through to allow for characters like Jarlaxle). |
| Azar |
Posted - 27 Sep 2025 : 02:59:10
Pre-2000 D&D: Arthur has his legendary Sword +5 bequeathed to him by an equally legendary nereid.
Post-2000 D&D: Arthur purchases his (useful, but not quite so legendary) Sword +5 with his considerable wealth.
It is no coincidence that Wizards of the Coast competed to win over a portion of the video game market from the start. |
| Scots Dragon |
Posted - 26 Sep 2025 : 23:53:10
I have a soft spot for 3rd edition, but I do think the ability to just purchase magic items was a potential misstep.
I think if magic items are purchased, it should be like illicit art dealings and such rather than just having a magic shop you can wander into between delves into Undermountain. So you could have evil nobles who've used their wealth to acquire certain magical items for their own purposes, but they're well outside the scope of a standard adventurer. |
| Azar |
Posted - 26 Sep 2025 : 21:46:03
It is the distinction between Forgotten Realms and Eberron. In The Forgotten Realms, powerful magical items exist yet these wonders - by and large - are consolidated in the hands of the few exceptional individuals; in Eberron, "mundane" magical items and spells are prevalent throughout most societies (some would call the setting "magic integrated"). Regardless, one of the quickest ways a Dungeon Master can kill the magic is to allow enchanted equipment to be obtainable (regularly, at the very least) by plunking down a sack of coins. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 26 Sep 2025 : 19:39:38
The proliferation of magical items is really a dnd rules thing and not a setting thing.
Ed has always said that the realms is high fantasy, which means magic is super powerful, but the actual number of magical items is rather low.
In the early novels only one member of an entire group might have a magic weapon or supposed magic suit of armour.
Most of the magic items in an Ed novel were wands or scrolls or other charged items held by zhents or red wizards that are often predatory in acquiring them.
If you ever do acquire multiple magic items, you will almost certainly attract the predatory advances of groups like the Zhents and Red Wizards, as well as regular thieves and other nefarious individuals. You cannot wear armour all day, nor carry a sword all day. So quite often these things will go missing.
As for selling and buying them. There are no magic item vendors, and the price a genuine magic item would fetch will be far more than any but the richest of merchants can afford, and these people can be just as nefarious and predatory as the zhents. By signalling that you wish to sell a magic item, you are putting a huge bullseye upon your back with a large neon sign above you advertising your desire to be robbed.
The only buyers will be incredibly rich or specialist merchants that have contacts amongst the ultra elite.
If an adventurer were trying to buy a magic item, they absolutely would not be able to approach these specialist merchants, as they only deal with special clientele, not upstart country bumpkins or city gutter trash with delusions of grandeur. Instead the adventurer will have to visit a curio shop, where the item in question is just as likely to be a fake or cursed item.
This is of course assuming a realistic economic model and setting to match, not the magic item factory world that 3rd edition and later became so that magic items could provide the necessary modifiers for the rules to work, thus requiring that an adventurer had +1 increments of weapons, armour, and trinkets every 4 levels. |
| Athreeren |
Posted - 26 Sep 2025 : 18:38:04
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
Starting with 3e, Wizards essentially repealed TSR's hardline stance against "magic shops" (read the 2e DMG, if you are curious); 5e walked back the blatant encouragement of magical items-for-GP, yet the 5e DMG is still open to the idea. Overall, 5e is gash in regards to tone. If 4e is the MMORPG, then 5e is the Marvelesque superheroic romp.
Mystical artifacts should either be found or crafted by Player Characters who have rightly earned the knowledge and skill to attempt an enchantment.
I've never understood this. Adventurers are often going to be fighting other adventurers. If they are going to prove a challenge, they should have be similarly powerful, and probably equipped with a similar number of magical items. So as they grow in level, the number of magical items they possess is going to grow exponentially. They cannot wear more than one armour per person, yet the additional armour is clearly valuable, so it makes sense to sell it. And having established that a magical item can be sold, it makes sense that it could be bought.
There are ways around this of course: the adventurers only fight monsters, or hordes of low level enemies whose equipment is useless to them, or magical items are so rare that this exponential growth ends at only a few magical items for a given 20th level party, or the laws of magic are such that the magical item gets destroyed when their owner dies, or it can only be used by them... But by default, magical items would be traded, and if there are buyers and sellers, there will be middlemen specialising in that trade. What is wrong with this idea? |
| Azar |
Posted - 26 Sep 2025 : 14:53:43
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
decanters of endless water
Owning a Decanter of Endless Water is a measure of prestige. Owning enough land to hold a spacious pool is a measure of wealth. Owning both the magical artifact and the property in a realm where everyone is jockeying for everything is a measure of power  .
Except in 5e
Starting with 3e, Wizards essentially repealed TSR's hardline stance against "magic shops" (read the 2e DMG, if you are curious); 5e walked back the blatant encouragement of magical items-for-GP, yet the 5e DMG is still open to the idea. Overall, 5e is gash in regards to tone. If 4e is the MMORPG, then 5e is the Marvelesque superheroic romp.
Mystical artifacts should either be found or crafted by Player Characters who have rightly earned the knowledge and skill to attempt an enchantment. |
| Athreeren |
Posted - 26 Sep 2025 : 13:39:58
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
But, like I said before.... I could see drow communities with no access to a lake having dozens of modest income drow standing on pedestals on street corners doing exactly this. Now, the one standing there likely isn't the owner. The owner is standing there collecting coppers to control who can walk over with a couple buckets and fill them with water. Meanwhile, there are 30 other drow doing the same thing, so if one of them gets it in their head to charge more... people seeking water just go to the next guys who offers a cheaper rate. If someone gets it in their head to make a monopoly by killing the other owners and hiring people to collect the money, well, they'll just get killed themselves by someone else who wants an easy monopoly
Now someone who needs access to vast quantities of water (example, a mushroom farmer) may buy a decanter of endless water and use his child as labor just getting water to his field or for the troughs that his rothe, cave lizards, and other "livestock" may feed from.
That's one thing I really think people need to look at is "how do edition changes in how things work significantly change the world and how societies would work". One thing I've constantly pointed out is how cantrips and low level rituals would change societies like Faerun. Then various spell changes would seriously change things as well. For instance, with cloning enabling a person to make a younger version of themselves under original 5e rules (haven't looked at the latest, but betting they didn't change), what's the draw of lichdom? I mean there are SOME niceties of lichdom, but most people would look on it and see the losses of it. At the same time, what's the bonuses of making extremely rare potions of longevity when an 80 year old warrior can just have his mage friend give him a 20 year old body in a flash.
Are you familiar with this channel? He has many such examples, about sending, the work implication of necromancy, the terror of creatures that are protected from non-magical weapons, magic mouth, goodberry, plant growth, unseen servant and many others. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 26 Sep 2025 : 13:14:35
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
decanters of endless water
Owning a Decanter of Endless Water is a measure of prestige. Owning enough land to hold a spacious pool is a measure of wealth. Owning both the magical artifact and the property in a realm where everyone is jockeying for everything is a measure of power .
Except in 5e, making a decanter of endless water is an uncommon item, so a total value of between 100 and 500 gold. Of course, every single round of use in 5e requires using a command word action (so every what 6 seconds? 10 seconds? Forget what a round is in 5e)..... so I picture someone using a decanter of endless water as having to stand there and continually speak. So, if someone wanted to act as a communal fountain, they'd be standing their literally all day going hoarse saying "gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush, gush". Not exactly prestigious anymore in 5e versus prior editions where it would have been just saying "gush" and then leaving the decanter in the fountain and walking away.... maybe coming back at end of day to say "stop" so that you don't accidentally flood the cavern.
But, like I said before.... I could see drow communities with no access to a lake having dozens of modest income drow standing on pedestals on street corners doing exactly this. Now, the one standing there likely isn't the owner. The owner is standing there collecting coppers to control who can walk over with a couple buckets and fill them with water. Meanwhile, there are 30 other drow doing the same thing, so if one of them gets it in their head to charge more... people seeking water just go to the next guys who offers a cheaper rate. If someone gets it in their head to make a monopoly by killing the other owners and hiring people to collect the money, well, they'll just get killed themselves by someone else who wants an easy monopoly
Now someone who needs access to vast quantities of water (example, a mushroom farmer) may buy a decanter of endless water and use his child as labor just getting water to his field or for the troughs that his rothe, cave lizards, and other "livestock" may feed from.
That's one thing I really think people need to look at is "how do edition changes in how things work significantly change the world and how societies would work". One thing I've constantly pointed out is how cantrips and low level rituals would change societies like Faerun. Then various spell changes would seriously change things as well. For instance, with cloning enabling a person to make a younger version of themselves under original 5e rules (haven't looked at the latest, but betting they didn't change), what's the draw of lichdom? I mean there are SOME niceties of lichdom, but most people would look on it and see the losses of it. At the same time, what's the bonuses of making extremely rare potions of longevity when an 80 year old warrior can just have his mage friend give him a 20 year old body in a flash. |
| Azar |
Posted - 24 Sep 2025 : 15:04:02
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
decanters of endless water
Owning a Decanter of Endless Water is a measure of prestige. Owning enough land to hold a spacious pool is a measure of wealth. Owning both the magical artifact and the property in a realm where everyone is jockeying for everything is a measure of power . |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 24 Sep 2025 : 12:36:29
I'd agree with Azar's statement about swimming for pleasure. There are too many underdark aquatic species for it to not be that any significant body of water wouldn't be inhabited by something that "swims" because it has to. Having and holding access to a lake is likely to be very prestigious and fought over.
Meanwhile, I can see some drow with access to decanters of endless water making a modest income just by standing all day and activating the passphrase repeatedly (under 5e rulesets, as opposed to earlier rulesets which would have allowed them to be turned on and left). I say "modest income", because if they made good money doing it, they'd likely be slain and their decanter taken by the next person that wants to make money.... which not saying that doesn't happen. |
| Azar |
Posted - 18 Sep 2025 : 06:50:00
With all manner of monster inhabiting that vast subterranean expanse, a desired dip in the wild is oftentimes a risky endeavor (to say nothing of attendant natural hazards); the Underdark does not respect vulnerability. |
| AJA |
Posted - 18 Sep 2025 : 05:59:34
The drow do not seem to be a culture that fears "fiercely contested territory". If anything, I would add 'swimming for pleasure' in such dark waters as just another rite of passage that all drow warriors and priestesses use to prove themselves just so superior in.
But then, that may depend on your definition of "for pleasure". With the drow, you never can tell.
|
| Azar |
Posted - 18 Sep 2025 : 00:55:53
quote:
Originally posted by TomCosta
Why would you say that? I can't believe all Underdark bodies of water are dangerous any more than the surface. That said, it's a fantasy world and everything seems to be more dangerous than the real world.
In much the same way waterways and bodies of water become fiercely contested territory in arid climates, I imagine those resources would be equally contested in a realm without the possibility of rainfall. Anyone capable of creating their own water on an appreciable scale is well off indeed. |
| TomCosta |
Posted - 17 Sep 2025 : 20:22:22
Why would you say that? I can't believe all Underdark bodies of water are dangerous any more than the surface. That said, it's a fantasy world and everything seems to be more dangerous than the real world. |
| Azar |
Posted - 17 Sep 2025 : 01:46:41
Is it safe to say that one does not (or, more precisely, cannot) swim for pleasure in the Underdark? |
| TBeholder |
Posted - 02 Sep 2025 : 03:23:10
On the 3e map it’s a "E" shaped body of water in Northern end of Earthroot region. NE of Glimmersea and N of Thay and Undrek'thoz. |
| TomCosta |
Posted - 01 Sep 2025 : 15:12:15
The Cold Sea gets a paragraph of lore on p 222 of the 4E FRCG. It's beneath Lake Ashane, has strong ties to the Feywild. Fey creatures inhabit its waters and fomorian holds are on its western side.
And I believe that's all we know. |
| Dalor Darden |
Posted - 01 Sep 2025 : 01:14:52
The Cold Sea lay deep beneath the lands of Rasheman in the area of the Earthroot.
You may find more information about it if you look up information about the Earthroot region of the underdark.
That's about all I have.
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