While i give my players free reign to do whatever they like in down time,just recently they are becoming quite a force within the political ins and outs of cauldrons running.
with one player establishing a church of heroneous which has noble backing due to some lucky diplomacy rolls and good roleplaying.
another setting things in motion to create a new thieves guild.
and 3 players taking leadership feat with good leadership scores,the players have a quite large force to draw upon,i was just wondering if other dm,s have had this problem and how they dealt with it?
While i give my players free reign to do whatever they like in down time,just recently they are becoming quite a force within the political ins and outs of cauldrons running.
with one player establishing a church of heroneous which has noble backing due to some lucky diplomacy rolls and good roleplaying.
another setting things in motion to create a new thieves guild.
and 3 players taking leadership feat with good leadership scores,the players have a quite large force to draw upon,i was just wondering if other dm,s have had this problem and how they dealt with it?
I'm not sure I'd classify that as a problem. I think it's an excellent opportunity to have the campaign become more than what's in the hardcover. All of these ties and connections do two things.
1. Give the characters additional resources and friends to draw on and enable creative solutions to problems
2. Give the characters additional resources and friends to protect and mourn when lost
I'd encourage allowing the players to get embroiled in the politics of Cauldron and to reap some rewards from that, but make sure that the events of the AP affect them, as well. The half-orc mercenaries are sure to have an impact, the revealing of a certain beholder will create waves, a disastrous "party" may leave a vacuum for other powermongers to fill, and, of course, Foundations of Flame will be epic.
Probably a lot more work for you, but in a good way.
One of my players established a security business. One of his first and best employees was Jil, that is of course until she assassinated his wife. Oh was that a shocker!
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My players quickly established themselves as a mercenary force in Cauldron, starting as no names who spent some of their hardearned gold on a shanty on the lakefront(their HQ), moving all the way up to developing some tracts of land at the base of the volcano and forming a genuine unit.
The players and their characters put enough effort into the task that I essentially gifted them with the leadership feat, slowly increasing the amount of people who joined them partially based on what was happening in the story at the time and partially based on how the players were willing to pay. As Cauldron fell more and more to troubling times the characters legion started to look better to guards disgruntled with the number of half-orcs causing trouble within the ranks.
About halfway through the adventure path I started to have their force start to turn a profit since until then it had essentially been a money pit, though I am sure even then they were losing money as they donated almost all of their lower end equipment to the men(We have 30 potions of bulls strength, will that help any of you? Well lets give it to the legion.)
Trying to avoid anything too direct in the way of spoilers, but by the end of the adventure path their headquarters had become a thriving community all its own. I'm going to run age of worms for the same group of players, set a few years in the future, and as a point of pride for them Cauldron will have been built up around the base of the volcano, out from the original legion headquarters and their men will still act as its elite protectors.
My characters have spent a large portion of their resources in the campaign toward setting up their church in the city and right now, immediately after they have collared the Tree of Shackled Souls, they are trying to supplant the city's existing rulership and establish a theocracy of Pholtus.
It's a lot of work for me as a DM, but I don't think of it as a problem, more as a challenge.
My party funded the Ebon Shield Society; for the defense of Cauldron, the agrandizement of themselves, and as a monument to how much better they are than the Stormblades. It's a clearinghouse for adventurers, which gives a nice backstory to any last minute replacement characters that might have to be introduced. The party's monk/rogue is also trying to start an informational network of shady types about town.
~Qualidar~