CoE and Mistways

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Rereading the stuff about Mistways, I forgot how reliable even "moderate" reliability was. I feel like someone in the church would set up shrines at all the two-way Mistways they could find, staffed by clerics who would offer to guide weary travelers, for the appropriate donation. It only takes a 6th-level AoM to turn 70% (moderate reliability) into a 100% sure-thing, and there ought to be spells and magic items created by the faith to make it even easier. I feel like this would give an interesting alternative to the Vistani, because they are always moving around, while these shrines would be stationary and would be dedicated to just this one road.

I especially feel like the Boritsi Trading Company would help invest in something like this. Not only do they have the tacit support of the Home Faith through the Boritsi family, but the Vistani are just not suitable for large-scale shipping like this would be.

What do all of you think? It's still easy enough to have this fail the PC's when the plot calls for it. Just say the ranking cleric is unavailable, either already committed to a group coming later, or away leading a group that has yet to return. The settle for the 4th level who makes it only 90% reliable, you roll the dice in secret, of all the luck. Or they just can't get to the shrine with those monsters on their heels, and have to brave the Mistway without a guide.

Lately I've been of a very mercantile bent, and it's occurred to me that it's not just nature that abhors a vacuum, it's economics. This seems like a money-maker for the church just waiting to happen. Someone would have figured it out by now.

[Mischief]

I think the mistways should be more mystical and subjective. Some of that ethos shows up in my revisions: the mists as the draft-horses of the Dark Powers. Like horses, each mistway has a unique 'personality'. They play favorites, or anti-favorites. Routine commerce may be reliable, but adventuring caravans are not. Or maybe the inverse is true, adventurers can nearly always find passage but any merchant trying to bring more than they can carry on their own back is dumped elsewhere. Maybe people associated with certain groups get the better of it than outsiders do.

To avoid yet another dead and dull spreadsheet of numbers that adds very little life to the setting, each Mistway should have its own rules. Maybe clerics can pin down a few, but a few taunt them. The clergy, greedy eyes on the merchants' gold, keep requesting adventurers gather rare stone and ingredients for even more bizarre and elaborate shrines and sacrifices. Maybe only those of one type of faithful can stabilize the mistway and it is causing friction with the other sects. Perhaps the druids can open the path, but are making demands about land usage in exchange for their services. Maybe the merchants desperately want to "draft" on traveling adventurers because they have the best chance and pay the tavern owners to offer requests to wandering oddball groups.

In short, mistways are probably better served by a "roll a d100 to determine what the rules of the mistway are" mechanic like a wild magic table than a flat percentage with one rule fits all.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

To avoid yet another dead and dull spreadsheet of numbers that adds very little life to the setting, each Mistway should have its own rules. Maybe clerics can pin down a few, but a few taunt them. The clergy, greedy eyes on the merchants' gold, keep requesting adventurers gather rare stone and ingredients for even more bizarre and elaborate shrines and sacrifices.

I like this a lot. I understand that prestige classes with Mistwalking are hard to come by, and high enough levels in those prestige classes even more so. The real dearth to me is in the area of ritual magic, group faith, and physical foci. The Vistani have had their wagons for centuries, where's the CoE equivalent?

Different shrines would have different foci: maybe one has a pair of huge stone statues you have to walk between while the congregation chants, while another has discovered the Mistway never drifts as long as you go through blindfolded. We already know some Mistways only operate upon certain conditions, why not say that the others are more or less reliable based on similar rules?

And again, this leaves the room open for the Mistway to drift when the DM sees fit. Sorry guys, this one only goes to 90% reliable when the moon is new, and that's when they can improve on it with spells. Right now, it's only 75%, and no one at the shrine can improve on that.

[Nathan of the FoS]

There's the Captain of the Mists prestige class, from the Zherisia Gazetteer, too. Not that that speaks directly to what the Church of Ezra does, but it does offer a way for PCs to avail themselves of others' expertise for Mist-travel (and is especially relevant for active trade routes).

I was under the impression that there was a flat minimum of 5% "drift" for any Mistway, no matter who (non-full-blooded Vistani division) was guiding you; but the Mists are so explicitly DM tools for misdirecting travelers that it often hardly seems worthwhile to roll dice for this kind of thing. It's more of an atmospheric element--no matter how well-traveled the way, sometimes things just go wrong.

It's also relevant that many Mistways (by no means all) are very, very expansive, offering many miles of territory that could conceivably be covered by the Mistway.

I really like the flavor ideas mentioned (traveler identity/motivation, rituals, Ezran support centers)--you could do some fun stuff with that.

[Mistmaster]

Iuse the Mists as a dangerous shorcut; there are plenty of safer way to move but Mists are fast, and those who can navigate them, like the Mist Anchorites, the Vistani and the Mist Captains, are rare and charge hight prices.

[Five]

As much as I like most of the ideas in this thread so far (I too find myself in a mercantile/trading company mode lately, in part due to DeepShadow's thread on Borcan bankers), in that change usually leads to living, breathing campaign worlds (though Ravenloft may be somewhat different because it's, arguably, a prison for all and a certain amount of stagnation/sloow change only makes sense in-world), I can't help myself but play Devil's Advocate.

If you open up the Mistways like that then you risk, potentially, taking some (a lot) of the mystique from the Vistani. Personally, I think too much focus is put on the Vistani (and Azalin, Strahd, van Richten), but will the Vistani then take one too many steps from the stage? Will they then just become "Strahd's cronies", or "that crowd with the stinkeye"?