Character Creation Options (GM Perspective)


Reign of Winter


I'm about to start running this campaign and my group is having a session 0 this weekend for character creation.

I was wondering if there are any races, classes which people feel stand out as meshing well with this campaign?

I don't plan to limit my players on their choices but wanted to go to them with a list of things which they might get the most out of during this campaign.

Shadow Lodge

First of all, have you read the free Reign of Winter Player's Guide? That should give you a bunch of options. From my experience there's nothing that stands out in meshing better with this campaign than anything else, just a few cases where they mesh less well:

- Characters who plan on having a majority of their contribution be through dealing cold damage will not do well.
- Characters with a predilection for going off the rails will not do well.
- Characters unable to perform dubious actions will have trouble, although they can work around it.

Note that the campaign assumes that the PCs are unaware of what is happening in Irrisen, especially with the default starting location being so far away (so as to provide a stark contrast when moving between the two areas). I find it strained verisimilitude to have the majority of PCs coming from LotLK/Irrisen/RotML.


Thanks for the reply.

I've read over the Players Guide as have my players and will start reading the modules over in full during the next couple of weeks.

I don't believe any of my players will be playing races which are tied to the winter areas, most seen to be playing very open races and classes from the ideas I have heard so far.


They will be travelling a lot to distant places and there will not be many ongoing NPCs, so I'd make sure they invest more background in each other than the starting village.


A red-scaled kobold, follower of Daralathyxl, who happens to be a flames oracle with the chilled curse would be a beautiful character for this campaign.


I played through ROW with a Sylph Bard.

She came in very handy in many areas, especially the Knowledge skills and the languages.

She also picked up the Cloud gazer racial feat and a Horn of fog for battlefield antics,

DBH


Erik Ingersen wrote:
They will be travelling a lot to distant places and there will not be many ongoing NPCs, so I'd make sure they invest more background in each other than the starting village.

They've started work on this already with some random "how you know each other" rolls to add to the fun. Thanks for the feedback I will make sure to convey it.


I decided against them all coming from that village, so they all worked on reasons why they knew each other and why they were heading down there.

Silver Crusade

I regret that I don't have a witch in my game. I've got a horizon walker and a shaman, both of whom are working out very well. But there are easter eggs that make much more sense for witches and I'm regretting that I don't have one in my game.


I haven't finished my campaign but a few observations from the sections I have run (through the first two books in full):

- if you need to add PC's later resolve how you will handle the mantle (I made it something which every new PC also got and used the story of how it was given to them to get them to the players). In my campaign this also meant that most new players added after the first sessions typically had more local ties (to one of the northern areas in the case of book 2 - so I had some Ulfen PCs for example)

- I generally considered Reign of Winter to be very much the "Pathfinder Dr. Who AP" and thus let my players pick nearly any race as long as they had some justification

- while unfortunately the player's real life schedule didn't let him continue I had a wonderful Paladin in the early parts of my campaign who was clearly on the road to falling and likely antipaladin status (which the player and I were ok with running - he was a great character just kept making some bad decisions)

- the core conflict is very much a lesser of two evils scenario with a lot of room for shades of grey in the final decisions of the players. That said some of the plot points from the first book don't get much treatment in the later books (specifically the mantle) - but there is ample opportunity for a GM to expand upon them

If I were to run this again (and I hope to do that) I'll probably incorporate some Mythic rules into my game - allowing me some greater leeway in the future. I'll also likely expand on the many opportunities to involve the Fey etc as a force in the equation - and may even look at ways to incorporate that interactions into the next batch of player characters.

More so than many other campaigns however I would tend to be fairly generous with the players in terms of what races they can play - though they start out in Taldor the adventure will take them all over the place and the theme is a good one for less traditional races.

(and I wouldn't have problems with any class actually - though a paladin etc may have issues over the course of the adventure there are a lot of really fun RP opportunities that could result)

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