Master Codex's page
24 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists.
|


For those of you who don't know or simply call it something different, a Level X is a character who does not actually have a de facto sheet with stats and everything filled out to the point that something can actually fight it. In the vein that "If it has hit points you can kill it", a level X is not supposed to be designed even far enough to have hit points. Sure some impossible thing like hundred handed ones or whatever may be able to kill it if you want, whatever the case, the point of a level X is that the players aren't meant to fight it in a physical sense. The Gods are made this way in Pathfinder for example. I've had mixed opinions on this, as I've had players who were just upset that when they slice at the floating demon prince, nothing happens, but on the opposite side, I've had roleplayers love outwitting the reality warper into making his own prison. Whenever I have a Level X, I always get at least one person who feels like they're useless because I always have at least one player who doesn't roleplay so much as "I swing my sword at it". In my current campaign, I have just such a player and I'd love it if they decided to not play a different game while their character stands there doing nothing. Sure there are things to fight, the godlike character may summon a creature to entertain itself while the players fight it, but ultimately it will come down to the group having to trick it or at the very least do something beyond attacking it. I don't really think any advice will help in this case because the player will literally not do anything beyond physical actions, otherwise they state their character starts drinking. So really this comes down to whether or not I should even do it. One character won't have a lot of fun, but not doing it, I feel will deprive many other players of enjoyment. I personally enjoy taking on Level X characters because they aren't so much a physical challenge as a mental one. But I can see why some players dislike them, believing them to be power hungry GM's inserting their OC's or feeling like a GM is lazy for not actually designing an encounter with stats. What I'd like to know is how you feel about these Level X characters or even hear any stories about any you may have encountered in the past, to help me make my decision about doing this or perhaps even bettering it.

The group was moving through a dangerous swamp, blah blah, one player fell in a dark chasm and was in trouble of being eaten by a creature. The character believes that the strong always win so he was weak and this was deserved. Another player goes down with a rope and a couple of cool rolls and rounds later they save him when the other 3 players, who are all nonstrength characters, manage to pull them up and the beast nat 1'd it's swallow whole and crashes into the cavern, sealing it away. Now this player becomes upset, he wanted his character to die. This is interesting to say the least, but when his character goes off towards the direction of the people chasing the party, the sorcerer casts charm person and wins. Now our player is upset and is threatening the party in character and deliberately trying to sabotage the party, such as talking loudly when the party tries to stealth and telling the sorcerer directly, who he is supposed to be friendly with, that he will murder him in his sleep. This is all rather annoying to me because it detracts from the game I think, because this is more of a player being upset rather than a character. How do you think this should be handled within confines of the spell, is this player right? Or do you think the group is right to be upset with the player.

This scenerio isn't necessarily abusing too much, but our group consists of a five people. One person is a skill monkey and can only really do anything with his poisons. One person is a sorcerer who can do a lot of fire spells, a barbarian that hits stuff, a paladin. Basic premises. Our Skill Monkey investigator and Paladin are both archers. The Fifth character comes in and brings another archer. These people are mythic 1 at this point in the game because various reasons, but mostly because they did a lot of cool stuff and this way I can throw some interesting things at them and have to not worry as hard about them dying because of auto stabilization and additional health, plus they all do some more damage and can do neat things. Our Ranger comes in with Mythic Deadly Aim and the ability to shoot a target from about 200+ Feet away. They haven't been using this too much, but I'd like to introduce a more threatening minion of the BBEG their fighting without having the Ranger deal 40 damage a round while it runs up to them. Protection against Arrows could be a solution, but I don't feel like it's enough. Is there anything else in the core rules against this type of damage that I missed or should I just look into third party/make a balanced spell for such a situation.
The evil minion in question is essentially a large sized Barbarian whose point is to try and drive them out of the plane their in, in an attempt to hide it's secrets for a bit longer.
Alternatively, there is a witch, a wizard and a goblin rogue the party is already aware of and having all four together could be threatening, but I don't want them to just try and fight them thinking they can suddenly take the wizard who was clearly a higher level then them when they first encountered it. (It didn't kill them because it had no offensive spells left prepared so it just made them scared).

This might seem like a more trivial matter compared to my earlier request, but this is slowly starting to bother me. One of my characters is a chaotic neutral Dhampir. That's fine. At some point he talks about how he's off to visit his parents and we all know that usually the mother dies giving birth to a Dhampir, but this isn't always the case, so we shrugged it off. Then we find out that his mother is the vampire, but this still isn't terrible. However, when the party is tricked into killing an innocent who was under mind control, he talks about how he doesn't want to be like his mother who has killed hundreds, maybe thousands. Now, this is where it starts to bug me that there is Vampire living in a mansion with a nobleman, who presumably have a staff of workers. This isn't impossible or even unheard of, but I certainly feel like that this much information warrents some sort of event to take place, perhaps the party has to go answer the players call from his parents who request his help, only to find out that a child whose parents were killed grew into a powerful paladin seeking revenge for all the innocents, but at the same time, I don't want to upset the player about this. This is also one of our only good backstories in the game at the moment because the other players backstories are "barbarian" "Sorcerer" and "Royal Guard sent from the godless lands to spy on the king of Arcadia but then had his life saved by our parties first paladin so he became a paladin in response, turning his life against his old ways". Which I think the last one also warrants it's own story, but that doesn't involve that players Parents. So what do you guys think is best? The Player would be fine if I had his parents around, but this sort of session could result in a punishing result if the party decides to just let the paladin kill his mom for example. Would it be best to just do nothing about it?
I typed up a whole post, but it appears to have been wiped from time and space, so in my unsettled disappointment, let me just ask this for now.
A player dies and comes back with more money than the party. I was going to award the party money later, but now how should it be handled so that it can be fluidly played/explained/whatever that the new guy won't be getting any of the money. The player shouldn't complain about not getting money, but it'd be a little weird story wise. They just fought constructs, which give no treasure usually, but they are fighting a villain that uses constructs to enforce his power. They're in a fast leveling campaign as well, so how could this be handled better so this isn't a reoccurring problem.
They've been getting items and money as rewards from the people they've been saving.
Sorry if this is poorly written, I originally wrote a couple of paragraphs explaining more details, but yeah.
|