I feel like the people who are PCs most of the time look to exploit things like this for an advantage and people who GM most of the time look to balance it. Precision damage for everyone in a cone does not make sense and it seems game breaking in certain situations. If any npc used this on your whole party you would be crying. A rouge that equals your 4 member party's CR who got the sneak attack off in the surprise round and then reloaded and did it again just did your entire party's HD in d6 plus the gun's dice, plus any bonus damage. Which realistic or not I am not liking for the game.
So the way the alchemist is gear out he has a lot of very breakable glass hanging off him all around to be ready to toss at any time. Do you as a GM ever have these items break due to impact, spell attacks, or falls? It seems like it makes sense but it s cruel to do to a player. There is a creature swarm that has a sonic attack that breaks all ceramic and glass that is non magical but I didn't have the heart to nuke all of my PCs potions then. But is this the risk the alchemist is taking?
I am running the Iron Kingdoms RPG and have been going full blow Pathfinder for a while now. I heard that 3.5 races with a level adjustment of +1 can just lose that +1 for pathfinder. This race gets a +2 level adjustment in 3.5 so please tell me how you would rate it for pathfinder. Satyxis +2 Str +4 Dex +2 Con +4 Cha Med. Size, 30 ft. speed Darkvision 30 ft. Gain bluff as a class skill Natural Weapon: Headbutt (1d6) With a Daze effect if 7 dmg is done Fort DC:11, con based SQ: Beguile: 1/ day charm, male only DC: 13, Cha based Level Adjustment +2 These large horned amazonian women are pretty hard core. Would you leave it at LA + 2 or move it up or down?
I am starting a new game due to problems in my old game of the characters tendencies to go evil, be unlikeable, and make me want to kill them (see thread). So I want to know some guidelines for character creation that will help me and possibly others set up the right type of characters for my game and hopefully others. 1. Characters must be heroic good aligned and have some connection to each other. (For my game anyway) 2. Characters must have some connection to the area around them be it family, good friends, a wife or other. I would like to add some more, please give me some advice!
Good news everyone I talked it over with everyone again and we are going I am going to be starting a new game with them and with some ground rules on character design. A friend even offered to start his own game so we can rotate GMs(it has been soooooo long since I have got to be a character)! Though he used to run over-powered disgusting bonuses and stat fueled messes, hopefully the low magic setting and my game as example will help this. We are brainstorming now and I put out some ground rules but I wanted to look to you guys for more. 1. Characters must be heroic good-aligned and have some type of connection to each other. 2. Characters must have some type of connection to the area around them be it family, good friends, wife, or other. Thank you for all the help again guys. Time to do this right. What else do I need to be weary of to make this work?
Let me say first thank you all for you help this makes me feel much better about this situation. I know that they are still having fun with their evil characters but as the GM if I am not having fun I do not want to time into the game. It makes no sense for me. For all the suggestions about changing the game to make it unfun for them again, I will not be having fun with that either. Although your suggestions are humorous. I agree about the consequences needing to be there, and if I pick this game up where we left off I will run the encounter with those 3 characters, one who has ran off to hack a lady and now the strongman has turned to fight them even though the encounter was created with them 4 working together in mind. Almost certain doom as the encounter would have been very challenging with the party of 4. I will look into joining other groups too. I have had one bad experience of joining a group of all 6-7th level characters and they had me start at level 1 and the other characters harassed mine. This makes me weary, but I know there are better groups out there. I talked to one of my players today, the one who dealt with the witch, he admitted that his character is now neutral evil and I reminded him that I didn't want evil characters because I do not enjoy running that kind of game. We'll see what come of it and I will keep you posted.
Erik: I like leaving things open and giving the PCs tough choices. I was hoping that the PC would see the right thing to do and turn on the witch making for an interesting character arc. It is my fault for giving them too much freedom I agree. Only one character is working for the witch secretly because she is a member of his countries military he works for. All the others are all too eager to follow his plans though. It seems they 'go evil' when a tough choice is laid out for them. They found a lost child in the woods once and were confronted by the same witch who wanted it. It was more convenient for they not to deal with the baby and trade it to the witch for favors. They were confronted by the blinded lost mother later in the woods and pretended to help her look for her baby. Perhaps having straight rail-roaded characters and plots that are good is the only way to work this. Also I am hoping that someone will step up and GM, but I have asked everyone and I am pessimistic. Kirstov: They like the setting, they are in complete love with their characters, and they also enjoy the story. Also I do not GM in a way where they get all the power and magic items they want and it keeps them hungry and wanting more where our other GMs in the past just lay on the Mounty Haul power levels and everyone gets bored when the game gets absurd. I have told them I want to start a new campaign in the same setting and set up the group better but they whine and moan about how much they love their characters. I would love for them to have to fight their old party as the bad guys, sounds like great fun! But I am pretty sure they will have a hard time giving up their beloved characters they have grew from level 1 to 8.
I wanted to point this out to people so they can try the idea that he was talking about. He gets into it on min. 24. Know Direction 16: Blame Bulmahn He says to change spell combat to a lvl. one ability, and change it to a minus 2 to attack and no concentration check penalty. You can also increase the attack penalty in order to give a bonus to the concentration check. (No specifics as to a limit on this) He said he is thinking about this, but is pretty sure this is what they will be doing.
Trainwreck: Ressurection does not happen in this setting (Iron Kingdoms) it is seen as an affront to the gods, maybe one or two major figures get resurected each year. Reincarnation does happen more often. Which makes me want to bring them back as a krill of trollkin, who are the only 100% no grey area good guys in the setting. I am sure killing them would have the players flip out and whine. Mikaze: I game with my group of friends. I could look for a game at a lgs but I have never tried that before.
I did just that Erik. I made a lawful good monk who is kind of like kung fu Jesus. He never will kill anyone, helps selflessly. After a village was destroyed he spent time making a graveyard for the dead and taking all of the loot in the city and dividing it up by location and which bodies it was found by to give it all to the next of kin. The other party member were selfish mercenary types who constantly pulled out their hair because of him. The others in my group have not been able to keep interest in their games because of poor GM style and stories or just refuse to because they know how much work it is to be done right. No one wants to play any other game except for this one. So I fear it is this or nothing.
I just wrote a long post, then an error in the board wipes it. So here it goes again. I want to know what to do in my situation with my PCs who have unlikeable characters who lean towards making evil decisions and justifying it hiding behind being neutral or chaotic. The game is not fun for me when I do not care about the PCs and I cannot root for them. I think that it is partly my fault for letting people play whatever background they want, we have a mercenary and a spy which I thought would be interesting, but they just play them like evil a-holes justified by BS. Things I have tried: - Talking about favorite characters they have in fiction. What makes that character interesting. Why would an outside observer like your character if they were reading this story? - Told them flat out that I do not want to run an evil campaign and again more whining about how they are not evil. - Inserting decidedly good NPCs into their travels, but when they flip out and do something evil they just decide to attack the NPC too if they object. The latest situation: They travel to a druidic hideout in the forest, they seek pieces of an artifact that has been destroyed that needs to be dispelled to remove the curse on the land of darkness and risen undead. Their good ally is a priest who is researching hot to dispel the evil. The druids want to remove the curse too and have a way to do it. The druids they ran into in the city wanted the pieces to dispel them but the ritual was time sensitive and they were in a hurry and this led to combat. One PC is an agent of an evil witch who wants the artifact pieces herself and has been subverting plans, even giving away the pieces to her and pretending like he had no choice. The PCs travel to the cave(the witch gave them these plans). They meet a simple but kindly mustachioed strongman monk who is lost and will help they if they help him get back to the city after (this is my decidedly good NPC I added because other PCs didn't show up). They meet two unarmed druids there who talk to them about the process of dispelling the shards and feed them. They scry on the Priest's work and send him a message, they say they are working with him. The priest says it is worth a shot and to try to help the druids because they want to remove the curse just as bad. The PC plot against them and decide to take out everyone in the room and remove the shards from the ritual. One pulls out a hidden weapon and blasts the druid as they sit at the campfire together. The female druid screams and runs and the scout PC who is fast chases her and hacks her with a sword every time he catches up, she keeps running. The strongman tells them to stop and grapples the PC who shot the druid. Another PC summons alligators to attack the strongman. I stopped the session here. The druids have strong defense and now the scout ran far away from the others to hack at the fleeing woman. Also the strongman monk is fighting them now too for obvious reasons. I feel the forces there in this situation will be able to take out the PCs and I feel like letting them. Reasons that I do not want to kill them off: - We have been playing with these characters in this campaign well over a year now on and off. - They are in love with their characters and power hungry and in this setting resurrection is not an option. - No other people in our gaming group have been able to GM a game that holds any interest and if this game dies off we will probably not be RPGing. - I have mentioned that I want to start a new campaign where the PCs all have common goals and are decidedly good and likable so that I will have an interest in them but they moan and groan about how in love with their characters they are. If I do not like the PCs I cannot have fun GMing a game, I have made this clear. Again I am not having fun and just want to let the chips fall and have the PCs get killed off for being evil. Please give me some advice.
It is more of a problem in Warmachine and Hordes for me than d20 because I want to have fun and set up some nice damage rolls and even if I roll under average on a really good set up I have to hear this guff. It takes away from the fun of really getting a good roll in because you have to hear all this crying about of course you would make that roll, and such when I was really stressing about making it.
Dice luck is pretty much a religion to some people. People who are atheist, think the whole man in the sky thing is preposterous, but pretty much worship imaginary dice gods. Can't let other people touch their dice, even if it would speed gameplay, do special dice rituals, punishing bad dice, ect. This does not bother me until I have to hear about it over and over from players who think that every die roll is out to get them because they are cursed somehow. After every roll that does not go their 100% their way is followed by sighing, groaning, and "Of course!!!". I see this with some players in d20 games as well as table top miniature games I play and it has been annoying the piss out of me lately. When your opponent laments your below average damage roll that you already do not like it really sucks something out of the game. That something is called fun. Try having it some times guys, you will live longer. Oh, respond if you want to, I really am just ranting.
This bad guy is in no means the BIG bad guy and essential to have live past this event. I would just as well see him taken down right now, I have soooo many plot tangents all running into this point of the cursed item destruction casting the mass empowered unhallow which raised the dead and caused super-natural darkness for 20 miles around the city. Iron Kingdoms RPG, check it out it is awesome. Anyway they made the exchange for prisoners. Th party tried to sabotage the boat but I had an inspector sent out by the terrorists to check things before anyone was released. They seemed to think it was reasonable to have the control room drenched in oil and barrels of coal next to it. After much diliberation they fixed things up in exchange for a hostage, then the others in the tower used a feather fall rod to float down, with the key noblewomen hostage to the boat. So the deal was once everyone was on the boat she gets let go. But of course I had to have the leader change the deal to where he is taking the woman to ensure no foul play is afoot, and agrees to drop her off on the docks on the end of the town as they leave the city. "That wasn't the deal!!!!!!" "I have altered the deal, pray that I do not alter it further!" (Corney yes, but too good to pass up!) One of my PCs loses his mind and has an angry freak out because of this twist (he apologized later for it but he gets really frusterated about nothing going easy for the party, which it doesn't, but hey, without conflict how much fun are we having?). One of my PCs has a fire bomb which he starts charging to the boat to toss at them. The other players talk him out of it saying they will kill the girl, (Damn that would have been awesome, then they could have tracked him down with the launch and had the awesome boat scene I wanted). So they have to fight their way through the city, where they do find the hostage dropped off as planned, but not for the reason they think. The hostage has a bonded magic item that it atracted unwanted attention fron the creatures the massive unhallow has summoned as well as the malicious raiding necromancers who are taking advantage ot the dire situation. So I guess everything worked out fine, I will have to save the awesome NPC character build I set up in case of a fight for another time, sigh.
For some reason they still seem to be walking all over these NPCs with the point buy system. That's why when I looked at the stat build in the book I though sheesh, imagine what they would do to these guys. The plain stat build seems fine for normal people, but elite villain organization members getting the point buy seems fair. I see that the 25 point build is epic and all. I had a horrible inflated stat system which unbalanced the game in place before this and switched to this and oh boy you should have heard the belly aching. Sheesh. They act like the 25 point system is like making their characters compete in a hula hoop competition with one leg lopped off.
I have a hostage situation, at first I thought they would fight there way in and battle it out. I set up a moderatly difficult enounter if they chose to do so. They opted to make a deal and give them a way out of town in the form of a boat for the hostages. On the way to get the boat in the undead risen mess that is now the city they came across several smaller groups of undead. One of my players says, "Well we are not going to have to fight the hostage takers now so go ahead a blow all your spells". They fireball and blast away the whole parties spells per day on sub-par enemies. Now they are going to deliver the boat and I have a surprise in mind for them. Before releasing the most important noblewoman the badguy is going to instead at the last minute take her with them as insurance that they will be able to leave the town unharmed. "I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further." This will lead to an awesome boat chase and combat between the groups no doubt. Now because of the great advice of my player they will have pretty much no spells to do this challenge, which would have been moderately difficult at full power. I am really not a fan of fudging numbers or dice rolls, it must be the table top gamer in me. Would you change the encounter to make it easier because of the party's dumb tactical error in judgment, or would you just let lay in the bed they made? They could always run away if things get really bad I guess.
My PCs all used the 25 point buy for their stats. When I create NPCs that they may face in battle I use the same point buy system. The enounter level system assures that they are most of the time going against a party with less levels and or people then their own. I came across the suggested stats for NPCs in the GM section of the pathfinder book which are much less impressive. Is the EL system for class based enemies based on these lackluster stats? Do you point buy your NPCs or do you use the baseline duddy stats in the book? How does this work out in terms of balance in your encounters?
Beckett wrote: Squabbling Brothers? Old friends that haven't really seen each other since being accepted into their version of magic school. Hehe, and the players are brothers too! So what kinds of goals would they actually agree upon reaching together? "I want to destroy the strip mining facility" "I'll help but I get to loot all of the ore !" Hrmmm with the greed of the players in mind, this just might work.
So I am starting up this side campaign for a few of my players who actually make an effort to show up all of the time so we are not held back by those who don't. We are throwing around ideas, one character really likes the Druid to Blackclad idea. The other character like the idea of an arcane mechanik. Now how they heck would they be friends? One hates technology, cities and industry in general the other thrives on it. Cue the odd couple theme song and throw out some ideas to help us make this work!
Few more points: Yeah my PCs haven't stooped to rape so that is pretty irrelevant. If you need a clearly evil act to talk about see the whole baby thing. If you do evil things to promote good does this balance out and make you neutral??? Resurrection is not available in this setting. If you petition the church which many people do about a handful of people get resurrected each year supervised by the respective religious organizations. It is seen as uncool to mess with the god's soul flow. So the dead will be staying dead. I have been looking into the pain of healing again and I see that I was a little off is my presumptions of who Dhunian clerics could heal without divine punishment. They can heal anyone within one step of the deity's alignment, which is neutral. So this includes chaotic, good and eve neutral characters, which frees up a lot of room for leeway. If you heal someone who is directly opposed to your god's alignment, punishment is brought down. So I am thinking directly opposed is 2 steps away? It is not very clear what directly opposed means when true nuetral is the starting point. Would the Lawful good paladin count as directly opposed. I had an infernal visit one of my PCs (Not the spy) and make a contract for his soul in exchange for some weapon plans he has been drooling over and an unspecified bonus to strength. He jumped all over this opportunity and also agreed to kill people in a horrific way to send their souls to the infernal. Now that wouldn't be an evil act would it????? (Sarcasm)
In the Iron Kingdoms there are not that many gods like in most standard settings so finding a new god isn't as easy as it seems. And again the IK system has the 'pain of healing' where if you heal someone of an opposed alignment of your god you both get punished. It is a random roll but some of them can really mess you up for long periods of time. This is why alignment is important here. Also the cleric of the party, worships the neutral earth goddess Dhunia, saw what they were doing and told them, you do what you have to do pretty much. He aided in stabilizing the dying foes and bringing the to consciousness. Should he be punished for this? I have another player who didn't make it last session who is a Lawful Good Dwarven paladin who would have righted the moral compass of the group. Wait until he gets back and sees the evil auras on them. (side not I do not NPC PCs whose players are not there, they get sucked up into a cursed magic item bound to the party and spit out next time they show up).
Wow a lot of responses, still reading them all. I wanted to make one point clear that keeps coming up. This was a hostage situation in the city hall. There were town guards down 2 flights of stairs. There was the town prison 100 ft across the bridge. The PCs mentality is that once you work against them your life is forfeit. The deposed king's people did do very bad things to take control of the city and maintain their hold out of fear and intimidation. But again their perspective is that this is the rightful king and they will do what it takes to make things right (sounds familiar?). As far as why ask this question I need some input on where to draw the line because of the very strict 'you heal evil people and I smite you' policy of the gods. I'll get back to reading all of these responses now, thanks for the input.
I am not sure what portfolio you are referring to. He worships a good deity, Marrow, though extremely loosely. Like saying I worship Jesus because I might say his name when I slip and fall. I am just wondering how the other deities would feel about his actions and their divine magic healing him, when healing evil people is extremely punished by the gods.
They had a total choice in the baby situation. It would have just been easier to save the city with the witch's help they felt. They saved the day fine without her, I didn't have her do anything to aid them until after they had turned the tide and thwarted the invasion, and then the witch did a few things to speed up the mopping up. They thought she would be more helpful though and more people would be saved with her help. That's what you get for making deals with witches! Anyway there was defiantly a choice, and no threats made by her, unless her creepy presence and lore surrounding her are considered threats. You be the judge, here she is, this is the character and her model: http://www.wargamesheaven.co.uk/images/warmachine/33033.jpg Scrapjack was not with her at the time.
Sooooooo, he is chaotic good. His greater cause is his motherland and advancing his position in order to infiltrate this country before a war breaks out so he can be useful to the motherland. So lying and deceiving people are okay to reach his goal. Killing an enemy agent is okay (although his method was not honorable). This advances his greater god cause. Killing the prisoners out of frustration of their loyalties was not needed in any way to advance his cause so this is an evil act. (Though if it would have gotten him the info he thought the guy had that he thought would help him would it be okay then to torture and kill helpless prisoners for the greater good and remain chaotic good??) Trading the baby was not an act to further the goals to for the motherland. (Unless the help of the witch would have helped him enough to place him in a position of power after saving the city thus furthering his greater good?) YOU see what I am getting at here? You can justify a lot and remain 'chaotic good' if you twist your perspective enough. The character can think whatever he wants about himself, that is no the part I need help on. I need help on the god's perspective. Your neutral good follower gets punished if he heals the wrong alignment person. Where do you draw the line, is this how the good earth goddes would see his alignment? Sheesh this is complicated.
Hehe, I think that I am chaotic evil for putting them in that baby situation to test them and sitting here giggling about the outcome. They were on a time sensitive mission back to the city and they hear a baby crying in the woods. Then they had to waste more time with the mother helping her look around. They didn't know what to do so I fixed it up for them with a random encounter, and adding the mother to the casualties in their wake. He is also not working in his native country, but working to infiltrate the country he is in and gain high standing before the impending war breaks out between them. Infernals being mentioned is an interesting aspect of this setting. Evil outsiders tempt mortals to sell their souls in trade for boons in this setting. Perhaps these characters need a visit and to be made a deal that they cannot refuse.
If you do evil things you are still evil alignment, doesn't mean everyone doesn't like you. You have a cruel empire you kill prisoners women and children but you are good to your people and they live good lives. Your people will see you as a hero, but your alignment should still reflect what you have done. Shades of gray indeed, but this game calls for the boarders to be clearly marked, that's what I am having a hard time dealing with, because if a PC went over the line to evil it would be a major hinderence when the cleric channels positive energy and they are both divinely punished for it.
The baby trading thing they were very non-nonchalant about at the time of the deal(cracking jokes about how they need space the space in their backpack and shrugging), but looking back on it they blame the fact that they were afraid of this witch who they have hear rumor and legends of so they gave her the baby. Maybe you guys can help me come up with some difficult moral scenarios that will better show their true character that I can put them through. This character is not a cleric, but the cleric did watch this all happen, the neutral cleric of the earth goddess Dhunia. Would condoning such acts be an evil? How and when would you change the alignment? I am sure these PCs would flip out if they became evil thinking it was unfair, similar to the 1000 babies argument. Killing 1000 babies to save 2000 babies is not a good act even though you do have a net gain.
He does do good things, if only to give himself a better image so that he can be a better spy or perhaps because he cares about people. Hrmmmm, other boarder line actions include: He oversaw the selling of a lost orphan baby he found to an evil witch wearing cloths made of human skin in exchange for her aid in helping a city under attack. "I don't know that baby" was their reply. Of course they had to come across a blind lost mother of the baby frantically searching later, which they fail to tell anything about the baby to and pretend to help her look. He shot a member of the army of the nation he is pretending to work with in the back pretty much because he really liked his awesome pistol. This man had done some bad wartime things and had captured an agent of the PC's nation so this is a fuzzy line, but not a good action. Good actions: Saved many people, including orphans from burning buildings, hostages, and others. Took charge of leading an expedition to save the city the deposed king took back (even if the only way to do this was to help raise an army of the dead and give an evil artifact to an evil sorceress so she can lead them to defeat the invading force. Which led the sorceress to sate her vendetta by banishing her nemesis' soul breaking the artifact and creating a mass super unhallow spell on the city raising the dead). So if a character saves 3 lives, but then kills 3 prisoners in cold blood that would make him neutral because it balances out? I need help on knowing when you alter a PCs alignment.
One of my players tried got frustrated with the a prisoner's unyielding loyalty to his now deposed king (even though he was a hardcore loyalist since the king was deposed 5 years previous) and decided to hack him to pieces to show prove something to the other prisoner they had. They laid out torture implements and mutilated a corpse in order to intimidate him, but really they didn't ask him any questions the demands of the NPCs group was a boat in exchange of the hostages still held and they did not waver. Before they got around to torturing the other prisoner I DM magiced a cyanide pill tooth just to move on from that mess. He says he is Chaotic Good, and I shouldn't try to pigeon hole him into an alignment. I told him that it is defiantly an evil act. He says he would do anything for the good of his country, whatever it takes. Here is a little of the background about the setting. We are running the Iron Kingdoms RPG it is a steam punk setting, one of the factions is a Stalinist-like empire which this character works for. If you heal someone in this world who is of opposed alignment your gods instantly punish you in horrible ways, so alignment in the group is pretty important. Where do you draw the line? Do you move him one step towards evil? How would you DM a character who makes these choices? |