I was called out of town on business for 4 weeks recently and one of my players asked if it would be alright to run a short "side trek" type adventure for the others while I was gone. I figured, "What the hey!" This particular group has been playing together almost 5 years and most are veteran players.(Three of us go back to the first printing AD&D days)
This was our experimental group of characters all crafted using Savage Species monster classes. We were just completing an extended adventure and were on our way to establish a home base in a nearby city.
Imagine my surprise when I returned to discover the short side trek had resulted in THREE levels of character advancement(from 7 to 10!), a literal wagon load of gold and magic items far overpowered for the level of the group, and "random encounters" specially equipted to exploit the weaknesses of two members of the party resulting in the primary fighter of the group having his CON reduced to 6 with enough vile damage to make his maximum HP 4 and the arcane caster turned to stone.
I am now faced with several unappealing choices:
1) pretend the whole thing was a dream and reset the characters to their previous levels and gear.
2) try to bring them back in line by throwing out the entire story arc I had planned since they are now able to walk through the encounters without breaking a sweat and writing for the new levels.
3) Abandoning these characters to the sub DM and starting fresh with a new campaign.
I know I should have been more careful in allowing a sub. Any thoughts or suggestions as to where to go now?
I am now faced with several unappealing choices:
1) pretend the whole thing was a dream and reset the characters to their previous levels and gear.
2) try to bring them back in line by throwing out the entire story arc I had planned since they are now able to walk through the encounters without breaking a sweat and writing for the new levels.
3) Abandoning these characters to the sub DM and starting fresh with a new campaign.
My gaming group currently has 5 players, and 3 of us DM. However, each of the 3 of us have our own separate worlds, pantheons, etc. for this very reason. If I screw up as a DM, it's my problem in how to fix the power imbalance and it doesn't affect the characters and games in the other DMs worlds. It's actually very nice having rotating DMs, in that while one of us is working on a game someone else can be runnig something. Keeps a nice steady flow going.
As for your suggestions I would go with either 1 or 3: I would get your player reactions to what happened and give THEM a couple of options. Some of them made out like bandits but two others had their characters rendered useless if things stay as they are. The players themselves may say as group consensus to reverse everything.
Also, this is a good opportunity for one of your players to develop as a DM. If the group wants to keep what happened, them let the sub DM start developing games for these characters.... the first one being to fix the group's fighter and spell caster. If you go with this one, though, I would STRONGLY suggest having this person develop his OWN world for them to play in.
Finally, I wouldn't throw out all the work you've done on the campaign you've prepared. However, you can be very honest with your group in saying, "look, these chars are too powerful now for this campaign. So, if you opt to keep what happened on the sub game, you need to roll up new ones for mine." You're not doing any extra work on your end, and you're letting the players decide what they want to do.
Let us know how it turns out!
My guess is that the PCs character wasn't turned to stone or viled down to nothing. Just let them finish that campaign up and take over the DMs now uber character. That being said when you talk to them pretend it was an honest mistake and just say that the adventures you had planned won't work anymore and so you don't want to DM the group anymore.
I know people complain about it but multiple DM situations are why there is like 30 pages in the DMs guid on treasure and CR levels
Hmmmm... Without knowing all the specifics, here are my suggestions.
I had this happen to me once.
1. Make the gold fake. Gold painted lead or something.
2. Excess magical items could begin to deteriate. Or, They could be cursed with some sort of disease that spreads from one magical item to another, slowly draining the power. Thee was something like this in the Jankador 2ed campaign setting. This magical drain could begin to effect the spell casters in the party. You could make your own side quest where the PCs learn of the curse and then have to figure out how to destroy or bury the items to keep magic in the world safe.
3. The removal of the excess magical items could also restore the characters that got the raw end of the deal in that other adventure. Maybe their suffering was due to the curse.
4. Maybe to put the curse in stasus or destroy the magical items, the PCs have to sacrafice some of their power (levels). They might not want to do this, but knowing that this magical curse could destroy the world and thus anything they hope to gain, or everything they care about may be enough for them to do it. If not, there is always the lure of being the dude that saved the world. This should give Humanoids some clout and socal power over their peers.
Thoughts? Questions?
ASEO out
I once let my sister DM because my Dad made me. This soon resulted in numerous artifact stores (don't blame me I wasn't there), unlimited wishes at third level, and once there was a town with like five powerful magic item/artifact shops that always had everything in stock and half-price everything; once they got there she let them use an unlimited Time Stop spell (again, still third level) and take everything this town ghad to offer and then go on to raid the rest of the Earth while still under the single timestop spell.
If you have experienced the pain and permanent mental trauma from coming home to this, then you can complain, but not until then.
P.S. It's okay to feel sorry for me. : (