My friend (We'll call him "T") is constantly changing characters and it's exhausting to have to act out my character welcoming him in the group. Not only does he do this but so does his brother.
Along with that my dragon obsessed friend "C" is currently playing a dragonborn character and against everyone's wishes he is working on a campain to let his character actually turn into a dragon.
I think it's (content removed) that the DM will even allow him to do this. "C" says "Dnd is about having fun!" and he also claims that the whole group ruins the game for him. I usualy reply saying that the game is mostly about roleplaying and having an adventure, but in his mind I'm wrong and am against having fun.
I find this incredibley irritating and I was wondering if I should propose that there is only one more character swap for everyone, along with that makeing your own quest to make your character more powerful is complete bull and the Dnd community won't stand for it. Of course we all have are opinions and thats why I've posted this thread. I need to see if I'm a fun ruining rules lawer or a roleplayer who has a valid stance on his own opinions.
P.S.
How mush would a dead salt golum's body sell for?
And if your friend wants to play a Dragonborn who turns into a Dragon, then yeah that's fun and it should be allowed. It'll only be a problem if he's drawing the whole campaign around his character, I do think most of it should be focussed on everyone, but in the background with the occasional little adventure for his quest it should be fine.
(Also if he's designing a campaign shouldn't that mean he'd need to be DMing it? Otherwise it doesn't really make a lot of sense)
But really, if people have fun doing certain things, try to accomodate them. What're you specifically trying to get out of the game? It shouldn't be impossible to find a way so that everyone can have fun.
From a DM point of view i expect more commitment from my players in a long term campaign and would be seriously unimpressed if players constantly wanted to change characters over the campaign.
If that sort of thing's a problem for you, you aren't going to like epic much at all if your game gets that far. The "retirement benfits" of many EDs make becoming a dragon seem pretty tame. One of them has the character vaporizing themself to trigger a Big Bang that starts his own personal universe to play with. Another has you launching a successful one-man assault on the Far Realm, driving it away from the World forever. Compared to that, dragons aren't such a big deal - although reincarnating Io (which requires both Bahamut and Tiamat to either die or agree to your plans) is a still a fair trick even in that league.
Your character-changer friends, OTOH, need to stop. Impermanent PCs are death on serious campaigns, and the habit is very hard to discourage without simply booting them out. You could try treating each new PC like a complete stranger for a few weeks - don't trust them with anything valuable, reserve healing for other PCs that you actually call friends, don't discuss secrets around them, and generally make them prove themselves before they get upgraded from "possible enemy doppleganger assassin-spies in the party" status. If that keeps happening every time they swap out, they'll either stop swapping fairly quickly or quit altogether. The former is better, but even the latter is preferable to playing pseudo-Encounters with a rotating PC pool each week.
My friend (We'll call him "T") is constantly changing characters and it's exhausting to have to act out my character welcoming him in the group. Not only does he do this but so does his brother.
Then don't waste the time and energy to do it. Do all the introduction and welcome to the group stuff "off camera." Do you roleplay every night in every inn? If not, then it is likely that you have some time spent "off camera" in or in between every session. Have one character leave and the new character join during that time.
When we started our campaign, one of my friends took a bit of time to find the character he clicked with. He started as a Wizard, switched to Warlock, and finally settled on a Sorcerer. Each time, the previous character made a graceful exit, and the new character came in pretty seamlessly. We simply tied the new character into one of the other party member's backstory, and assumed that the introductions had been made before the action began again. The process is only as arduous as you make it.
Along with that my dragon obsessed friend "C" is currently playing a dragonborn character and against everyone's wishes he is working on a campain to let his character actually turn into a dragon.
I think it's bullshit that the DM will even allow him to do this. "C" says "Dnd is about having fun!" and he also claims that the whole group ruins the game for him. I usualy reply saying that the game is mostly about roleplaying and having an adventure, but in his mind I'm wrong and am against having fun.
It sounds to me like he has a goal in mind for his character, and that "becoming" a dragon will be the end of his story (at least, the end of his story with the rest of the party). There are a number of epic destinies that will allow him to do this, and they are all prefectly legitimate and relatively balanced. The DM moving him along this path is not the DM pandering to a power gamer (unless he does actually give him the ability to turn into a dragon before level 21). What is more likely, if the path to dragonhood seems to be dominating the story right now, is that he is playing the only character for whom the DM knows which way they want to go in Epic tier.
In my campaign, one of the characters is taking the Legendary Sovereign Epic Destiny. In order to make this happen, I need to develop a storyline by which he could become a ruler of his own kingdom or empire. His was the first Epic Destny I knew about, so I began laying the groundwork for it in early Paragon.
If you want equal screentime, maybe you should give the DM some idea where you want your character to end up, and be willing to help him with the development of that story by providing plot hooks and other ideas.
Now, assuming that you can't find anyone that'd reanimate the golem, its worth is pretty much its weight in salt. I reckon a salt golem'd weigh about 1,000 pounds, right? That's about as heavy as a horse, so it sounds good. Finally, I assume it costs about a copper piece per ounce of salt. That's a figure I got from a 3.0 book, so it might be slightly inaccurate. Anyway, 1,000 pounds is 16,000 ounces, so the salt out of a salt golem would be worth 16,000 copper pieces, or 160 gold pieces.
If the DM says that the salt golem can be reanimated, like if it has an intact "power core" or something, that's outside the scope of any rulebook I can think of. Let the DM have the final say on that. If it were me, I'd slap an arbitary "1000g" pricetag on it if it were level-appropriate.
I say let a person change their character, but in order to keep it controllable; maybe tell them that you'll allow them to change but only once every 4-6 sessions. Some players' style leads them to want to explore different roles often. That's just how they enjoy the game. Allow them to do it, but within a reasonable frame. As someone suggested let them play a different companion that comes and goes. Maybe every time they go in and out of town they get help from a local mercenary, merchant, thieves' guild or whatever. This works as sort of a halfway point. They get to change their characters and the party gets a little bit more stability to the table.
Who knows after a while one night you'll say "Who are you playing tonight?" And they'll say "You know what, I kinda liked that bladesinger I was last week, I think I might play as him from now on."
As far as creating a campaign so a player can become a dragon, well... hell... Like was mentioned before, epic destinies can lead to dragonhood. But as long as the DM is willing to give fair treatment to every other person at the table nobody should worry about one character getting special treatment for a period.
From what I cacn tell I am not being fair with letting my from turn into a dragon. The only thing is that he is a level 6 and he wants to make a level 7 quest that lets him turn into a dragon. I'm pretty sure that that will deffinately change some of your opinions on the matter.
I have talked to my character changing freinds and we are currently working it out.
From what I cacn tell I am not being fair with letting my from turn into a dragon. The only thing is that he is a level 6 and he wants to make a level 7 quest that lets him turn into a dragon. I'm pretty sure that that will deffinately change some of your opinions on the matter.
Um, yeah. At level 7 maybe, if the DM is being generous, he can achieve something that lets him change into a fire lizard. Use Pixie stats, and give him a breath weapon that is a close blast 1 as his level-7 power. But (being a refluffed Pixie) he can fly.
For a dragon, level 21+.
Heroic tier PC dragon, that's idiotic powergaming. Or a trap. Is your DM clever enough to plan on shafting the guy seven ways to Sunday and using his "quest" as part of a villain master plan? Let him learn to transform to a dragon, but only randomly, and while he's dracomorphed he's an NPC under control of the DM, rampaging around and wrecking stuff that his humanoid form will be blamed for later. Kind of like lycanthropy, with scales and a breath weapon. The curse mechanics from Vile Darkness would handle that well. Instant plot hook for the party to find a cure for him, and quick.
Somehow, I'm not confident your GM is that sneaky.
Someone should explain to him that the heroic range of levels, 1-10 is all about a character discovering and coming into their powers and roles in the world and the Paragon and Epic tiers are for the refinement and final evolution of those powers.
That being said, it wouldn't be that hard to allow him to have a dragon form at level 7. It would be easy enough to just use a monster template for the form. Like the "Young Red Dragon" a level 7 monster. Only adjust the template so that his HP, AC, Will, Refl, Fort, etc and other defenses are the same as the character. And adjust the damage to be more in line with player damage models instead of monster ones. You could limit this to a "weekly" transformation. Stating that it is so taxing on the player's body that he needs 7 extended rests between each transformation. This gives it a lot more of a uniqueness than making it a "daily". And will probably limit it to "boss" battles instead of pumping it out just because the day is coming to an end.
The powers for example, a Young Red's "Bite" attack is a melee 2, +12 vs. AC 2d10 + 6 damage. Let's say the dragonborn normally uses a longsword. Allow him to make the bite attack but drop the proficiency bonus from the sword and drop his strength bonus from the attack damage. So his attack in dragon-form could be something like +7 vs AC, 2d8 damage. This is just a quick thought, not really an in depth insight in how best to handle such a thing.
Personally though, I like RorinKrakarok's suggestion that it becomes a curse, he turns into a berserking dragon the party must find a way to cure. That sounds way more hilarious and something quite troublesome (in a good way) for a party to deal with.
Because a level 7 character achieving such a power is reaching far beyond their station. It shouldn't be of their own power that allows such a transformation, rather an artifact or a curse that comes at a very high price. Something that should make a player think "do I really want this in this way?"
As for the player that wants to be a dragon. Some people thrive on the attention and shock and awe of "look at me im a *****" dragons and vampires being by far the most common (even people that never heard of D&D can tell you what the heck a dragon or vampire is). A simple solution is to see if he wants the sheer power of being a dragon or just the appearance.
We had one guy that wanted to be one and always begged to be one, we nerfed it down to a reasonable thing for lvl 5 (very little natural ac, can only fly for 1 hour per con mod, breath weapon was once a day for lvl in dice damage, ect) But that person wanted more and more power and was not happy with it, he failed the test. Had another guy that wanted to be a mindflayer, same thing nerfed it down to being barely over one of the default psion races and he was thrilled with it.
Personally though, I like RorinKrakarok's suggestion that it becomes a curse, he turns into a berserking dragon the party must find a way to cure. That sounds way more hilarious and something quite troublesome (in a good way) for a party to deal with.Because a level 7 character achieving such a power is reaching far beyond their station. It shouldn't be of their own power that allows such a transformation, rather an artifact or a curse that comes at a very high price. Something that should make a player think "do I really want this in this way?"
I've had several DMs over the years who were inordinately fond of giving you what you wanted in the very worst way possible. Anything that seemed too good to be true was going to have some hidden drawback. Wonderful for instilling a healthy degree of paranoia.
Had another guy that wanted to be a mindflayer, same thing nerfed it down to being barely over one of the default psion races and he was thrilled with it.
You could do a pretty fair approximation of a mind flayer with a reskin of a kalashtar psion, methinks. Tricky finding an RP explanation for why it's with the party, but the racial features and class powers would let you emulate a brain-sucker well enough.
Hmmm...maybe postulate a mutant whose unique brain patterns could overwrite the mind flayer's when it was ingested? Flayers normally get some memories and info from dinner, but this guy's personality came through being eaten mostly intact and suppressed the mind flayer ego entirely? That could explain a heroic mindflayer, maybe with some fragmented memories of their past. Bit like being a revenant with facial tentacles. Not so hard after all.
Personally though, I like RorinKrakarok's suggestion that it becomes a curse, he turns into a berserking dragon the party must find a way to cure. That sounds way more hilarious and something quite troublesome (in a good way) for a party to deal with.Because a level 7 character achieving such a power is reaching far beyond their station. It shouldn't be of their own power that allows such a transformation, rather an artifact or a curse that comes at a very high price. Something that should make a player think "do I really want this in this way?"
I've had several DMs over the years who were inordinately fond of giving you what you wanted in the very worst way possible. Anything that seemed too good to be true was going to have some hidden drawback. Wonderful for instilling a healthy degree of paranoia.Had another guy that wanted to be a mindflayer, same thing nerfed it down to being barely over one of the default psion races and he was thrilled with it.
You could do a pretty fair approximation of a mind flayer with a reskin of a kalashtar psion, methinks. Tricky finding an RP explanation for why it's with the party, but the racial features and class powers would let you emulate a brain-sucker well enough.
Hmmm...maybe postulate a mutant whose unique brain patterns could overwrite the mind flayer's when it was ingested? Flayers normally get some memories and info from dinner, but this guy's personality came through being eaten mostly intact and suppressed the mind flayer ego entirely? That could explain a heroic mindflayer, maybe with some fragmented memories of their past. Bit like being a revenant with facial tentacles. Not so hard after all.
3.5 had a heritage feat tree that turned a PC into a Mindflayer in Complete Psionic. There were feats to gain face tentacles and then extract brains. There was one for a mind blast, and one to gain a natural AC bonus.
I am part of group that plays 2E AD&D, for various reasons, the main one being that between myself and the other main DM, we own every Adventure for Basic, 1E and 2E ever written, including Judges Guild adventures. We take turns running campaigns. Most of our campaigns run approx 2-3 years in real time.
We discuss with the group about the new campaign and we get their buy in as to what kind of characters they want to play. That way everyone knows ahead of time what is going to be played. During our campaigns the only way anyone gets to change is by Dual classing (I know, that's old D&D type stuff, sorry we're old farts. I mean I played with Gary Gygax a couple of times at conventions). The only other way is for a PC to die, which happens from time to time. Somehow I have a rep of killing off more characters than any of the other DM's, don't know how that came about. Bwahahahaha.
Anyway, try to see if the idea of other stepping up into the DM role, maybe even just for one adventure from time to time. It could help the party as a whole. New blood with new ideas might make it a more enjoyble gaming party overall. Also the DM gets a chance to be just a player instead of always having to run the game. Believe me this is real nice break from time to time. I ran my first game in 1978 while I was stationed in Guam, and I have run many adventures through the years. I've alway liked it when someone else stepped up for a little while to run the game, so that I can just relax and play.