Hi everyone,
I was considering running the Savage Tide adventure path and allowing my group to choose monstrous characters, such as orcs, aquatic elves, or even minotaurs and medusas. Basically, using the stuff from Savage Species.
Can anybody think of any monsters that would unbalance any of the adventures or basically ruin certain parts of the adventure path? I realize its still early in the AP as the first adventure has yet to come out but I just wanna be prepared and allow my group to make their characters ASAP so they can properly flesh them out.
Cheers
Hi everyone,
I was considering running the Savage Tide adventure path and allowing my group to choose monstrous characters, such as orcs, aquatic elves, or even minotaurs and medusas.
While I am not a fan of Savage Species, I gotta say that the thought has crossed my mind as well. I honestly feel that having a truely motley crew would help make this an awesome campaign. I fully expect folks to take all kinds of wacky beasties for this STAP. What better chance will there be?
Yeah, I have one player who is thinking of playing a kobold Spelltheif and another that is thinking Minotuar who will then take rogue and switch into either Dread Pirate or Scarlet Corsair PrC. It should be interesting.
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I agree that the STAP might be a nice playground for exotic PCs. I can imagine a lot of monstrous characters fitting into the adventures, but there are limits (at least for me). I wouldn't allow creatures like medusas, centaurs or similar things because these may cause more difficulties than they add to the game. As I understand after reading through the preview, the PCs will be part of a crew, at least until they reach the Isle of Dread, so having a Medusa on board will most certainly lead to problems. But I can imagine most of the monstrous humanoids as PC races. As the STAP doesn't focus on civilized locations like the previous two did, I expect to see many unusual adventure groups join together for the fight against the Savage Tide and I'm looking forward to read what kind of characters the DMs running this AP have to deal with.
Hi everyone,
I was considering running the Savage Tide adventure path and allowing my group to choose monstrous characters, such as orcs, aquatic elves, or even minotaurs and medusas. Basically, using the stuff from Savage Species.
Can anybody think of any monsters that would unbalance any of the adventures or basically ruin certain parts of the adventure path? I realize its still early in the AP as the first adventure has yet to come out but I just wanna be prepared and allow my group to make their characters ASAP so they can properly flesh them out.
Cheers
Pop'N'Fresh, PCs that have natural flight (ie, wings) might screw things up a bit when they reach the Isle of Dread, by virtue of simply flying over all of the cool stuff to encounter and missing most of it. However, if the rest of the party is landbound that would take care of the issue.
That's all that comes to mind at the moment.
Pop'N'Fresh, PCs that have natural flight (ie, wings) might screw things up a bit when they reach the Isle of Dread, by virtue of simply flying over all of the cool stuff to encounter and missing most of it. However, if the rest of the party is landbound that would take care of the issue.That's all that comes to mind at the moment.
Yeah ok. That makes sense. The chances of my group all taking flying races is pretty rare I'd say. Most will probably just stick with offshoots of the humanoid races. I'm not expecting any centaurs or beholders :P
Yeah ok. That makes sense. The chances of my group all taking flying races is pretty rare I'd say. Most will probably just stick with offshoots of the humanoid races. I'm not expecting any centaurs or beholders :P
In addition to flyers, some races (like centaurs) can have severe difficulty getting around on ships and in dungeons. Also, if all the PCs have racial hit dice and/or level adjustments, the party's arcane and divine casters may be outclassed by opponents, and overburdened trying to complete party-support roles with lower class levels than anticipated by modules. These are all things you'll need to consider when you're tweaking the modules.
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I have found anything with a level adjustment is either overbalanced and too powerful, or ends up not being worth it to the player in the long run.
If you allow non-standard races, just be prepared to do lots of fidgeting with the encounters to make them challenging.
Remember these AP's are written to take in account the core races and classes abilities and skill.
I'll take that into consideration, thanks. So far only one player has mentioned a lycanthrope, maybe a were-shark, which could be cool.
Beholders?
Every wizard should have their own Beholder simulcra as a pet :)
I have found anything with a level adjustment is either overbalanced and too powerful, or ends up not being worth it to the player in the long run.
Or both - ie Too powerfull by a half in the lower levels and boring and weak in the high levels.
I tell my players this though, and they never beleive me.....
Personally, I am a fan of Savage Species, and we'll often have a (single) savage humanoid in our group's parties -- a half-ogre right now.
I think isolated examples are OK, but the adventure path has all kinds of scenarios, which means social interaction comes up a lot. A pure-monster party (IMO) just can't reasonably cope with those situations.
As far as ECL goes, we typically don't exceed ECL +1, though I'm not immune to a little arm twisting on that. I'm prone to agree that the ECL system is imperfect, and things tend to fall apart at higher adjustments.
My two cents. Good luck.
Jack
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My party is makeing up secondary pc s .and they are going to use for sure a half ogre merrow and may be a half dragon as back ups and replacements if they die. there could be an aquadic elf maybe .Thats all they have said so far. next week they make up there back ups and get them ready.I say go for it , as long as the lvl of the monstrous pc is nt higher than the adventure there shouldnt be to much of a problem.