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Hello all.
I have a player in one of my current games. He's playing a LN Undead Master worshipping my Homebrew god of vengeance, justice, etc.
Now, prior to this player making this character, I gave him a general warning that being an undead focused PC would have drawbacks to it, I also provided my (100+ page long) world guide. He mostly brushed the warnings off.
What the player is now discovering is that he has 1.) Next to no sources for 'materials' and 2.) His 'followers' frequently encounter trouble.
Problem 1 mostly stems from how the dead are dealt with on my campaign setting. There are four primary methods. Burning, which is practiced only in times of absolute necessity as its associated with a destruction focused ce god. Burial, which is relatively uncommon. And burial at sea, which is intensely common, and its faith is wide-spread.
Burial in the ocean also adds an additional lovely 'cannot be reanimated by any means' benefit. High level clerics of the death goddess can also put a 'no raises, no resurrections, no animated dead, not even with a wish' whammy on corpses to assure they proceed on their merry way with no interruptions. (This one apparently succeeded in derailing someone who tried to run an epic level campaign in my setting back in 3.5. He expected his villain to come back only to have the cleric send him off to his next life).
The player therefore is left only with the carcasses of people who attempt to kill him as his materials, which I as the DM see as much more acceptable. But the relative prevalence of the goddess of death's faith (the lawful good ocean burial folks), results in a great deal of consecration fields, casual destruction of his followers, and him having to skulk a bit whenver they get to a major city (which almost always has a temple dedicated to the death goddess).
The idea that the people of my campaign world don't generally bury their dead has been around since the setting's 2e days, and wasn't just made up to screw him over.
Still, am I being a jerk, or is this just the freight this PC needs to pay for being a necromantic cleric?
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I won't say you're being a jerk but saying "There'll be some drawbacks" and then handing him a YA novel's worth of text to read over is a far cry from giving him the lowdown on what, exactly, is going to cause trouble here.
I would've told him flat out that corpses would be in short supply (and why) and other such difficulties instead of handing him the booklet and hoping he reads it all.
Has he played in your world before? Is this common knowledge for your players?
Is the player still having fun? Has he complained, or expressed regret for his choice?
Depending on the answers and the campaign's plot, I'd let him create a new character and find a story way for the characters to be switched out. Switching out characters can have some great potential for cool scenes so long as the player is in on it.
You did warn him in advance, and you gave him plenty of information on your setting - I presume these burial customs and the prevalence of the ocean faith were all detailed in that guide you provided. (Though 100+ pages is immense, and a bit much to expect a player to read. You might want to have given him a Cliff's Notes version....)
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Hundred pages? So how many in the PHB, UM, APG, Any other spell/feat/race resource book used to make that character? That was warned that Undead Master may have problems.
You wrote a 100 page campaign...and run the Game and WARNED HIM.
YOU'RE A MONSTER! Mr. Fishy salutes you.
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Yeah I spelled out why: Most folks aren't buried.
He's enjoying himself and has turned the situation into a sort of 'your pennance for attacking the representative of the god of vengeance is to serve for your offense in death!' sort of thing.
He has griped about the fact that he feels like he would have been better served with a more heroic character, and tends to grumble about being unable to amass more then one or two undead, or keep those undead operational (and quiet) for long. He's still just level four though, so...
And no, he's a newbie to the campaign setting. There's been a bit of a learning curve because the guide is a bit TL;DR. Usually when I've run the setting I've had at least one or two guys who were ina prior setting to help players acclimate. Its easier when it comes from their side of the screen.
I wouldn't say you were being a jerk, but it sounds like you could have been more helpful. You correctly anticipated that your campaign was different from his expectations, but by just handing him the setting guide you weren't exactly proactive in avoiding a misunderstanding.
Why?
For starters, everything comes with a manual, and most are useless from a practical standpoint. EULAs, common sense safety warnings, FCC warnings, warranty disclaimers, connection diagrams for 10 models instead of the one you purchased... IME, most people's default behavior is to ignore documentation unless they have a specific problem. When they do, they want a specific answer.
Now I'm not saying to spoon-feed someone, but rather than just handing him the "user's manual" for your world, it might have been more helpful to call out the sections he should pay particular attention to. That's what I've always done in IT, and it's served me well in other areas too.
He has griped about the fact that he feels like he would have been better served with a more heroic character, and tends to grumble about being unable to amass more then one or two undead, or keep those undead operational (and quiet) for long. He's still just level four though, so...
Even without having read your 100+ page magnum opus of a player's guide to Spook205's campaign, I could have seen problems coming as an undead master. That really should constitute a "well, duh!" response. What normal person wants creepy walking dead, dangerous spirits, and energy drainers around? What kind of society tolerates that easily?
This may be a bit based on the style with which I run and play RPGs, but I generally expect the choices I make to have consequences - not all of which are good. I expect my unsavory or weird choices to be treated as such and draw attention. That's partly why I'm making them, because I want to see how they unfold in the campaign. But it's clear to me that a lot of players don't want to play that way. They want their concept to trump complications, sometimes explicitly and sometimes subconsciously. You may have one of those situations in front of you - your desire as GM to present a world that reacts in realistic ways to the PCs and what they do is in conflict with the player's desire to play out his concept without such hindrance.
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There is a loophole that he could exploit.
Who is paying for all those uber-"dont raise me bro" spells?
According to the rules, those things are expensive. Could he make money casting for the dearly departed?
Even without having read your 100+ page magnum opus of a player's guide to Spook205's campaign, I could have seen problems coming as an undead master. That really should constitute a "well, duh!" response. What normal person wants creepy walking dead, dangerous spirits, and energy drainers around? What kind of society tolerates that easily?
This may be a bit based on the style with which I run and play RPGs, but I generally expect the choices I make to have consequences - not all of which are good. I expect my unsavory or weird choices to be treated as such and draw attention. That's partly why I'm making them, because I want to see how they unfold in the campaign. But it's clear to me that a lot of players don't want to play that way. They want their concept to trump complications, sometimes explicitly and sometimes subconsciously. You may have one of those situations in front of you - your desire as GM to present a world that reacts in realistic ways to the PCs and what they do is in conflict with the player's desire to play out his concept without such hindrance.
You're not talking about the same sort of problem here.
You're talking character reactions.
He's talking difficulty of getting undead up and running in the first place.
The player hasn't grumbled about having to leave his pets outside when he goes into town, just the difficulty of getting said pets in the first place.
Though he really SHOULDN'T be having too much difficulty raising undead, he just needs to be smarter about it.
Humanoid corpses are crappy, and raise suspicion and all that jazz because of the funerary rites of this world.
Monster corpses are much more effective, and I'd be willing to bet nobody gives a s*~# what happens to the corpse of the Manticore that tried to eat them all.
Bonus points, he's basically providing a lower level version of the same service those high level priests of the Death god are. You can't raise something that's been turned into an undead.
Perhaps he could start shilling it as a service akin to that? He disposes of the bodies. He can be up front about it, draw up contracts.
"I'll give this person a funeral, free of charge. BUT, you have to let me have the service of his corpse for no less than 30 days barring destruction of the resultant undead, at which point I'll lay him to rest if something else has not already done so for me. Sound like a deal?"
They're free to say no, of course. I imagine he could get up quite a racket for disposing of executed criminal's bodies. They can't be resurrected, AND there's no chance of that serial killer spontaneously resurrecting as a Mohrg if he's already a (relatively) harmless Fast Zombie instead!
Win-win for everybody!
It's not possible for us to make a determination of your relative or absolute jerkiness based on the information here. We'd need to know more about the whole character creation process, what the player acknowledged to have understood, and how willing you have been to make any accommodations to the player to adjust the game to his chosen character.
In other words, I would be inclined to believe you were far less of a "jerk" about this if the player in question had encountered some odd circumstance that was outside of the normal body burial practices just so he could utilize his class features. For example, perhaps there was an earthquake a century ago and a small village was completely destroyed, leaving the bodies buried only by the rubble of their buildings, giving him a few undead to play with.
If you have been willing to do that sort of thing to (almost literally) throw him a bone or two, then I'd say you haven't been a jerk at all. If you have insisted on sticking to a strict interpretation of your world's lack of bodies regardless of his character's features, then I'd say maybe you should give some thought to your general view of what the game is all about. Is it about telling your story, or is it about giving your players an opportunity to play the characters they want. Presumably it's some sort of mix, and how that mix is balanced is relevant here.
From your response, it sounds like the player is willing (perhaps even eager) to roleplay out the consequences. That's awesome!
It sounds like the main sticking point is that he's trying to raise humanoid bodies. At low levels that makes sense, but he'll probably find more value is raising monsters as he levels. I'd research threads and guides for tips on how to play a necromancer character, then get your player to do the same thing. He needs to know because it'll increase his system mastery and provide additional ways to work within your world. You need to know so you can prepare encounters and adventures accordingly.
Humanoid undead can wear armor and carry shields. A well equiped zombie is a pain to kill [DR 5/slashing + high AC] just slap some extra armor on it him won't complain. Not to mention the carrying capacity of an emptied rib cage...That's were Mr. Fishy keeps his imp...er bird.
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From your response, it sounds like the player is willing (perhaps even eager) to roleplay out the consequences. That's awesome!
It sounds like the main sticking point is that he's trying to raise humanoid bodies. At low levels that makes sense, but he'll probably find more value is raising monsters as he levels. I'd research threads and guides for tips on how to play a necromancer character, then get your player to do the same thing. He needs to know because it'll increase his system mastery and provide additional ways to work within your world. You need to know so you can prepare encounters and adventures accordingly.
Yeah he's a good player, its why I wanted to make sure I didn't like dick him over completely. He's in a very undead unfriendly portion of the world (especially since he's in the heartland of what's essentially good aligned communities atm).
His current companion is an undead skeleton who used to be a bandit, so he's currently carting around in good armor, and a body concealing robe. He uses him like a pin-cushion and arrow-magnet style lure at times, against small stabby opponents. He also wants to start figuring out a way to make his skeleton feign acting injured when people run daggers into him (DR 5 bludgeoning is huge at levels 1-3 where the party is). He's only gone through two of these companions. Its the little gribbly undead he can't hold onto as effectively.
He'd have an easier time half-way across the planet where morals are loser and the death goddess' worship isn't as extensive, but then the rest of the party would be knee-deep in other problems (police-state style governments, and nightshade haunted wastelands), and thats rough for a party starting at level 1.
As two side notes.
The 'stay dead' thing is a prestige class feature, not a spell, and has no cost, and no daily limit on usage.
And
Humanoids are considered citizens. They might be engaged in the crimes of insurrection or banditry, but are considered as humans, elves, gnomes and whatever for purposes of legal rights under the law. This was another learning curve issue in another game with other players when someone had a bit of a mental break when he found out a kobold owned, and legally operated a mine and the humans in the town looked up to the guy as a great merchant and a source of their jobs.
Getting corpses from bandits and outlaws is probably the closest to a 'legal' way for this guy currently, but the trick he runs into there is its hard to present evidence that the moldering bones following you around was a bandit (really, he was!)
All is solved with my solution!
You're not talking about the same sort of problem here.You're talking character reactions.
He's talking difficulty of getting undead up and running in the first place.
I don't think the problems are different at all. Notice that he's grumbling about his undead servitors being casually destroyed and having to skulk around - precisely the problems an unsavory character using unsavory methods should expect. There's the additional dimension of relying on a resource that is, by widespread custom, scarce, but those specific issues of grumbling are exactly what an undead master PC's player should reasonably expect to encounter.