Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lady Maedhros 02-04-05, 03:54 AM	My PCs have conflicting character concepts- i'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on ways to make them all feel useful? The party is as follows: Half silver dragon Fighter/Frozen Berserker (hates orcs, likes his fullblade) Half celestial Paladin (atypical - into med/light armor and mounted archery) Kender "handler" (hides during most battles, has God's Own reflex save) Half-elf Cleric (no turning/rebuking variant, perfers damage spells) Human ranger (favored enemies undead, dragons, evil outsiders) Human bard (new player, fairly generic at the moment) The big problem is, the ranger and paladin are both specialized classes - without a lot of the same kind of enemy, they're kind of nerfed. For both of them, the more undead they fight, the more effective they are. But the cleric has no turning, and her damage spells are wussy against evil outsiders with spell resistance - and the bard shines against humanoids and is fairly useless otherwise. And the rogue? Fighting piles of sneak-attack proof undead isn't going to please her. I have a temple crawl planned out - devils have taken over an old catacomb and undead are pouring out onto the city above. The clerics, losing ground, are hiring adventurers to deal with the infestation. Thus ranger and paladin are taken care of (and the fighter is always okay - his one level of barbarian and draconic heritage come out to a 30 str when raging, he smashes just about everything just fine). Catacombs are always lousy with traps, so that's something for the rogue to do (although generally, i suck at traps), and the cleric is just going to have to learn to start using her buff spells. So that's fine. But this isn't a one-shot game, it's a whole campaign.... so, any ideas what i can do with them (that gives them all something to do) when they get back out? :thinks:
Mrdeathclaw 02-04-05, 11:42 AM	Man are you jokeing or what :eek: sweet nector I wish we had Girls in our group ITs one big sousage fest well on to your problem First dump all characters wayyyyyyyy to powerfull half-dragon then just a regular ranger Its like america diverse make them all first lvl basic classes then let them go from there (if you need more info my e-mail is Mrdeathclaw@hotmail.com)
On_the_wings_of_TPK 02-04-05, 12:02 PM	Please lets not go down this path again.... girls do play D&D. In the group i play in: DM=female Player1 ranger=female player2 ranger=female player3 wizard=male player4 rogue=male player5 druid=me (male) Now can we get over this please. You'd think gamers have never seen a woman before. back to the OP, yaa i agree your party is being to take on traits of the munchkin circus, maybe start over. But if you like high power or think that sort of stuff is cool then I have fallowing: Cleric, show him the Devine metamagic feats in the complete devine, he'll like them, and well it does make turn really useful. (theres some really nice goodies in there for the pally as well.) The church idea is good, just continue it. Perhaps an evil cult is behind the investation? The next clue to finding them could be in a Drow invest mine. And from there whenn thats up to you. You don't have to please everyone in every adventure. Maybeone could centure around the pally, while the next one centures around the kender. Alternatively the making new characters is a good idea. Just have everyone make them togther and add in-put to each others characters, I find it usually builds party unity. cheers
Saiph 02-04-05, 12:06 PM	1) They made their characters, they can deal with the consequences. If they over specialized without any prior knowledge given out by you (i.e. you said this was an undead heavy campaign, and they made anti-undead PCs) then they can suffer for it. 2) Specialization in general: Say they made a melee character, but the enemies tended to be ranged and mobile (say they were messing with a group of elves). would you worry about it then? Or wizards that ran into a group of golems used by an enemy spellcaster (or wizard hunter). Sometimes the players will suck. 3) Over specialization: So they're really, really good at killing undead, or orcs, or whatever. Odds are they won't run into tons of them during a typical campaign. As such the player needs to keep that in mind. Specializing is good. But if you go overboard you don't have the versatility to deal with the huge amount of issues PC's normally face. 4) Fix #1: Remind the PC's that over-specialization is a dangerous road, and that you aren't going to make any special allowances for them. 5) Fix #2: While you don't make any special allowances for them (or not big ones), make sure your encounters and enemies are varied. D&D is a rich and varied world. A lot of enemies will be alive, a lot dead, a lot human, a lot not.
TroubleWolf 02-04-05, 01:26 PM	Honestly, there's a lot of truth behind the old phrase "You can't please all of the people all of the time." If you could give everyone in that group equal time in the spotlight in every session, well, then you'd be one heck of a DM. That said, we're here to help, so here're my ideas: Evil outsiders - Ranger's favored enemy; natural enemy of paladins/good clerics; fullblade-whackable; and if I remember correctly, sneak attack and Charm effects both work on them, making the rogue and bard useful. Vampires - Technically they're undead, so ranger and paladin will be pleased as punch. Also fullblade-whackable, to an extent. Toss a bunch of follower/cohorts in there who are alive, but follow the vampire around like groupies (ARGH! SLAY THE GOTH KIDS!), and you've got plenty of fodder for bard and rogue, and cleric if he uses area of effect spells. "Goonies" - Put them in a situation where they each have to perform to the best of their abilities, or something terrible will happen. For instance; they're in a room that's filling with water, and the only way to get out is by opening the trap-door "plug" in the floor, but it takes a Strength check of DC 30 to do it. After they escape that, the big rolling rock from Indiana Jones is chasing them, and their only escape is through a locked door, so the kender has about 15 seconds to pick a DC 30 lock. The paladin (as an archer) could trigger a lever across a chasm by shooting it (AC 30). Bard needs to play just the right notes in order to open a door (Perform check 30)... you get the idea. I'm tapped out for now. Hope it helps!
Lady Maedhros 02-05-05, 03:27 PM	Thanks guys, especially TroubleWolf. I love the vamp idea. Minions! Piles and piles of disposable minions! :evillaugh: The party's not munchkin-y, just overpowered. I plan their encounters as though their ECL were one to two levels higher, and dock their XP accordingly. It works fine and we all have fun. I try to give them pretty varied encounters, and i've done a handful of "goonies"-style trap/encounters, but those take a while to plan out and only ten or fifteen minutes of game time to get through. I like 'em, but stuff like evil outsiders, evil dragons, and vampires (with minions) allow for broader encounters and are more what i'm after. So thanks for the ideas! :bow:
TroubleWolf 02-07-05, 06:24 PM	Glad I could help! I had an epiphany Friday night (okay, so I was a little drunk, sue me) about the game I was going to run on Saturday. I'm going to recount it here in case anyone wants to use it in their campaign. The party comes upon a closed door that's warm to the touch. Upon opening it, they find a room completely full of steam... so completely full that visibility is 5 feet. If they wait a moment, they'll here a sharp outburst of steam somewhere inside the room. This happens on a rhythm, about every 6 seconds, and always from different places in the room. Spaced (seemingly) randomly around the room are monsters (I used bugbears for my low-level party) who do not move and strive to remain silent. Each monster has an action readied so that whenever someone stumbles out of the mist into their line of sight, they'll attack. The reason they don't move from their squares is that those squares (and only those squares) are immune from the jets of steam. Imagine a party of level 3 adventurers stumbling blindly through a steam-filled room only to suddenly come face to face with the morningstar of a bugbear. That encounter lasted nearly three hours of real time, and the party was on the edge of their seats the entire time. Everyone was biting their nails, wondering how big the room was, how much damage the steam did, how many bugbears were in the room... the clerics in the party were making Listen checks and running toward the sounds of screams from downed party members, until one cleric hollered, "Shout if you need help!" at which point the bugbears all started screaming to throw off the senses of the party. Now, imagine your party, at higher levels. Perhaps they have to cross a room that's directly over an active volcano, which fills the room with an acrid smoke, and occasionally a jet of molten rock will completely obliterate one of the sections of the floor. How would you like to be standing next to that square? The only real downside to this type of encounter is that it takes careful bookkeeping. For example, I had a chart of the room in my notebook (just a 10x10 grid) with the "safe" squares marked off. I rolled percentile once a round and counted down and then over, kind of like Battleship. So if I rolled a 60 and a 7, I'd go 6 down and 7 across, and the steam would shoot out of that square. I only hit a party member once, but it was a Cleric/Wizard with a 6 Con, and it took her into unconsciousness. I'm telling you, it's a blast!