Hi to all other dm's
Need advice on this one as I am an experienced Dm but one of players had made a point of severe displeasure against my Judgements.
Its no god noow thinking in retrospect I have made the decision now i have to channel it so the players do not feel mistreated.
Basically in my homebrew campaign we are playing Age of Worms and the parety are investigating The Spire of Longshadows on a remote Island in their world.
A new player wants to join but seeing how they are miles away he cannot just pop up in the middle of the temple.
He has to roll up a character and I decide 10th level .The rest are all higher. (I protested that we should start a new one at first level but my other players want to continue playing their high level characters)
So the players have fought one of the knights and the swords of Kyuss plus Kelvos and the Sword Archons so they have lots of armour and weapons spare to sell.
I decide the new character was a member of the Order of the Storm and captured during the attack linking it to a later adventure. He was stripped by Harbringer and petrified. The players zap him with a dispel magic and hey presto they have a character who has got some background information and who can fight (Hes a ranger so it ties in well with the druids of the order of the Storm)
Anyway they equip him with spare weapons and basic gear, The CN barbarian gives him a +1 keenblade.,The LG paladin has nothing to spare. ONe LN cleric gives him a +1 ring of protection.
(I will have more gear spare in the rwesst of the adventure)
THe other LN cleric gives him nothing.
The characters retreat to rest.
I feel the characters have some stuff that is spare that they could give the ranger to help him out , that they do not use and will only be sold.
Plus i feel alignmentwise Lawful Neutral and a lawful good character will make sure that each of the party is up to strength and not be a hindrance,
As they rest for spells i give the clerics a premontion that unless they help their new adventurer the age of worms will be upon them.
I decide one cleric who wears A cloak of protection and has a ring of invisibilty should give his spare cloak of elvinknid.
The other cleric has to give uyp 3 potions.
Well i was not prepared for the amount of hostility by these two players.
I feel they were a bit selfish and playing alignments especially with a Paladin in the party they should help out a party member weaker than themselves, especially since it will help them on their mission.
They feel thewir LN god would not let them donate any of their stuff.
(Even though i gave them xp for being generous)
What do you all think, and now its happened i can keep them sweet.
I think your players need to understand D&D is a game you play in group. The aim of the game is to cooperate to achieve certain goals. The challenges in the game have been written with that cooperation in mind.
Some people like making PCs with difficult characters. It's perfect to put all the blame of annoying roleplaying on that 'character'. But they should keep in mind that their PCs' character can only go so far. It still has to allow the PC to function in the group. Players can choose what their PC is like, of course, but they still have to choose a PC that has the right character to function in a group - because that is what the game is about. So everyone should at least have the right attitude, in and out of character, to form a good group. Selfishness has no place here.
As a DM I have had the experience of players who mess things up in game, or who cause trouble in the group - all because of "that's what my character is like". It spoils the fun for everyone and ultimately leads to the end of the group. In order to have fun, everyone should be on the same wavelength and everyone should be considerate towards other people, in and out of game.
Talk to your players about this, and try to convince them to adopt an attitude of cooperation. It serves everyone at the table and makes the entire game more fun.
1. If a player is to roll up on a higher starter level, I give them the appropriate amout of money to buy his equipment. No PC will reach 10th level without some magic stuff.. The DMG gives some advice on starting money for higher levels.
2. I let it totally up to the party to decide what their level of support for a new fellow might be. In fact: Who decides that they will LIKE the new guy? Or trust him? Would they give him tons of magic stuff if he was a NPC? Let the new PC first proove his loyality and then the players will start sharing their stuff.
Since the character started at 10th, let him pick his gear like you would normally. However, since he was a prisoner, you could have the gear stowed somewhere in a trunk that the party comes across in another chamber. I wouldn't just say "There's a trunk you missed. Oh, look, its the new guy's stuff!" Rather, you could have it as part of the treasure they find after defeating a baddie.
I used a similar setup to introduce a couple of new PCs to my group, but I had their gear all turned to stone with them (and the city came to an end soon enough thereafter that no one ever bothered to try and turn them back to flesh just to steal their stuff).
I understand both your frustration with the stinginess of your players, and with your players being put off at having to give up things they'd taken as their shares (or even had made for themselves) in the past.
One option would be to establish another person who was captured at the same time, or after, the new PC was turned to stone. Maybe an adventuring companion of the new PC, from back in the day? Then, assume this other person tried to recover both the petrified PC and his gear, but was stopped (and likewise petrified, or maybe just dumped into a Portable Hole to suffocate) after recovering the new PC's gear, but before rescuing the new PC. The result is that they can find this other fellow (or his mummified remains inside a Portable Hole), with all of the new PC's original gear, somewhere in the depths of the structure. There can be a note stuffed into one of Sruggut's books that explains about the second guy's capture. And that way, you can give the new guy the correct sort of equipment he should have had. Work on the selfishness later, some way that doesn't put this new PC's player smack in the middle of it.
To all who have answered thanks very much.
Yes i plan on having the rest of the gear stuffed away.Perhaps with the wormcallers with the fountain in one of the chambers below.
What really bothers me however is players who play an alignment and class such as clerics or Paladins and are not thinking about sharing or the common good.
I see such characters as fantasy equivalents of real world figures such as the Dalai Lama or Mahatma Gandhi,Buddha or the disciples of Jesus. Noted for their lack of material possessions and idea of charity for the common good.
Is not Friar Tuck part of a band of merry men that "robed the rich to feed the poor?"
I am sure you can come up with a host of characters in history and fantasy literature.
We all have to pay our taxes sometimes for issues we do not personally believe in through our governments but we know without it we would be plunged in Anarchy.
If you do not wish to share , be noble or be religious then play fighters or barbarians, rogues and evil aligned clerics.
Even the druid would be a figure who thinks of the common good and natures balance , not hoarding treasure.
I don't have a problem with players playing self serving characters but its not really how i View Ln or Lawfulgood Clerics and Paladins.
What do others think.
I usually try not to be too directive with my players, and try not to tell them exactly what they need to do. In this case, I don't find it unusual that a party would be unwilling to share too much in terms of powerful magic with a brand new party member that they have just met. Trust logically would need to be established first. However, once that trust was established, which could vary depending on the group, there really is no excuse for a lawful good and lawful neutral party to be stingy with a junior party member. Those are alignments known for working and playing well with others, and teamwork should be what it is all about. If the hoarding persists, a DM would be well justified in giving various warnings, perhaps delivered as you did through dreams and visions, that involuntary alignment change could be coming, which can be disastrous for a cleric or paladin.
Another tactic to discourage greed and hoarding is to actually apply encumbrance rules and/or apply some logic to the situation. For example, if a character claims that he has two extra swords, 15 potions, an extra suit of armor, an extra cloak, etc. - make him specify exactly where he is keeping all this stuff and spell out for him any encumbrance penalties or penalties to move silently, jump, swim, climb, hide or listen checks (hard to hear with all those swords banging against each other and all that glass clinking together). If their answer, like many high-powered characters, is that it is in their portable hole or a bag of holding, make clear to them how long it takes rummaging through one of those to come up with exactly what they are looking for.
There are lots of players that love to hang on to extra stuff just in case they might need it some day. It's our job as DMs to point out the tradeoffs that come with that, be they godly disapproval or inconvenience.
I personally wouldn't have prodded the players to be more sharing, if the player character felt ill-prepared he might have made a case to the rest of the party before they moved on. Anyway, water under the bridge and all that.
Alignment isn't a replacement for personality...the trust issue is an important one, unless the party knew something about this character before stumbling across him, and at 10th level it isn't unreasonable that he would have some kind of reputation or noteriety.
The lawful nuetral character might have a survival-of-the-fitttest mindset...depends on how he's played, but still falls under LN.
Of course, you know your homebrew setting, and what passes for good in the dominant culture. In a medieval-ish setting a LG character would be capable of things that a more modern LG would view as quite mean.
Hi Guys just a recap on this situation,
this party is going through the Age of Worms and has been through the Hall of Harsh reflections
Got nobbled by a Player Character being a doppleganger
(They hated it , but me and the player who switched sides thought it was great)
So they are clued up on meeting new PCs
Paladin detects evil
Cleric casts Know alignment.
Near naked Pc with no amulet around his neck is Neutral Good
Tells them about the ordrer of the Storm and the battle in Kyuss temple
He tells Them Kelvos and sword Archons were on his side but perverted by evil as the Background.
I think thats pretty trustworthy.
I believe its mean for Lawful Goods and neutrals to not help more especially as the party are on a mission to halt an evil demigods rise to power - not on some line your own pockets treasure hunt.
3 potions and a cloak of Elvinkind are pretty small beer to my parties characters so sharing them to a newbie i consider a good and lawful thing to do.
Brian Bachman wrote:
Another tactic to discourage greed and hoarding is to actually apply encumbrance rules and/or apply some logic to the situation. For example, if a character claims that he has two extra swords, 15 potions, an extra suit of armor, an extra cloak, etc. - make him specify exactly where he is keeping all this stuff and spell out for him any encumbrance penalties or penalties to move silently, jump, swim, climb, hide or listen checks (hard to hear with all those swords banging against each other and all that glass clinking together). If their answer, like many high-powered characters, is that it is in their portable hole or a bag of holding, make clear to them how long it takes rummaging through one of those to come up with exactly what they are looking for.
The cleric who begrudgingly gave the 3 potions to the New Ranger is the highest level character and has a hewards handy haversack, so that does not work.
The rest have bags of holding.
Your the DM and its your campaign so you can do what you want.
However in my opinion your out of line. Your job is to run everyone else in the world not the characters. Your players get to run the characters and having the DM hammer them and force them to run their characters as the DM sees fit is over the top. If your players want to rationalize keeping stuff they will surely find a way. If they want to rationalize giving a helping hand I have no doubt they could pull that off as well. Whether they help out or not is really none of your business and its none of your affair. I'd normally stay out of it and certainly would not have pulled a stunt where their Gods intervened.
Now there is a point where this does become your affair. Is this disrupting the game? I mean are the players being shafted more then annoyed but actually getting into out of game arguments and such? This is a judgement call on your part. Some of the time getting extra loot from the other players might be its own reward but if the situation is actually disrupting the game then you do need to intervene. However its still not your job to stick your nose into players business. In this case you work out a new house rule - when a character dies all his stuff goes poof and is gone with him. The rest of the players can't loot his body and keep the gear for themselves. New characters start off with level appropriate gear (DMG has a section on this) and voila - problem solved.
Jeremy from your post it seems as alignment does not matter.
Characters can do whatever they want?
If lawful and good characters decide to be stingy thats ok and up to them?
Hmmmm from what you say
"However its still not your job to stick your nose into players business".
means they could behave any way they wanted to each other.
How does that justify a Paladin on a quest to destroy evil not to act in a good way.
Alignments might as well go out the window if characters do what ever they want.
The alignment system has been part of d&d for over 30 years, I see its a way of keeping people together, working for a common goal encouraging teamwork.
Sure you can have the odd character be evil, (No good adve nturer wants to adventure with him) but in my near 25 years of playing, campaigns with self types don't last long, as players who are selfish or bicker with others cause more problems to the party than the monsters and traps.
As for house rules that magic items go poof! when a character dies - well I know d&d is a fantasy game but it must have some element of believability - You don't see things in a movie like Lord of the Rings or read it in a book so how would you sustain player immersion in your game with magical vanishing bodies?
You could suggest, perhaps, letting him borrow some things for the time being so as to use them for greater party survival-inducing effectiveness without transferring actual ownership? I should hate to think he'd have to lease it from them for gold, but if that's what it takes to get things going again...
remember, magic items sitting in a bag of holding do you significantly less good than magic items in the hands of a friend
Alignment's funny in that it's sometimes treated as a dirty word in D&D, and other times as a guiding hand. Wouldn't a Lawful Good character realize that an unarmed/unarmored stranger would be near-defenseless in the Spire of Long Shadows, and that outfitting him for survival would be "the right thing to do"? Probably. Or, the Lawful Neutral member might not have any faith in his capacity to survive, if he's been caught already, and thus would be better served taken into safety. It's all that a part of the ambiguity alignment possesses. For better or worse, though, I agree that alignment shouldn't get in the way of a few friends getting together for a few hours a week, to kick back and roll some dice. I've always said that the phrase, "but that's what my character would do," is the quintessential copout of roleplayers enslaved by their own "character concept".
Allow me to descend from my soapbox...
It seems to me that the most convienient way to remedy the situation would be to place some equipment of an appropriate value within a type of "treasure room" in the Spire--or near it--that has equipment solely usable by, say, a member of the Order of the Storm (i.e. the ranger). For anyone else, they might have to make perhaps a DC 40 Use Magic Device check. Y'know, something to say, "this stuff is special for the new guy." It might offset the overall amount of wealth the party has. But you could always compensate later by skimping on the treasure to be found in the future. The primary goal here is getting everyone into a comfortable gaming environment, where no one feels like they're the odd man out. Easier said than done, I know, but that's what being a good DM is about. Monte Cook's Dungeoncrafts are great resources for this kind of thing.
Jeremy from your post it seems as alignment does not matter.
Characters can do whatever they want?
If lawful and good characters decide to be stingy thats ok and up to them?
Hmmmm from what you say
"However its still not your job to stick your nose into players business".
means they could behave any way they wanted to each other.
How does that justify a Paladin on a quest to destroy evil not to act in a good way.
Alignments might as well go out the window if characters do what ever they want.
The alignment system has been part of d&d for over 30 years, I see its a way of keeping people together, working for a common goal encouraging teamwork.
Sure you can have the odd character be evil, (No good adve nturer wants to adventure with him) but in my near 25 years of playing, campaigns with self types don't last long, as players who are selfish or bicker with others cause more problems to the party than the monsters and traps.
As for house rules that magic items go poof! when a character dies - well I know d&d is a fantasy game but it must have some element of believability - You don't see things in a movie like Lord of the Rings or read it in a book so how would you sustain player immersion in your game with magical vanishing bodies?
An alternative to the magical vanishing bodies would be to reduce the treasure they find in the next few sessions to keep the situation in line with the money by level system and then have new players come in with the correct amount of equipment for their level.
As to alignment - I don't see it as the DMs job to play the players characters for them even to force them to act in accordance to their alignment. They have alignments and if they fail to adhere to them then they suffer alignment shifts. In fact a few alignment shifts might just get your characters looking closely at the Players Hand book in order to make sure that this sort of thing does not keep happening. For a character that suffers extreme penalties from alignment shifts there should be some kind of a warning. If the player is failing to follow his or her alignment make several stern warning that you will be tracking the characters actions and they had better be Lawful and Good. Constant failure will result in the Paladin becoming an Ex Paladin and the player should act accordingly.
After that its again out of your hands. The players should be able to play their characters - its not your job to make them act like you want them to and having their Gods act as Nannies is way over the top. Run the adventure impartially and if there are consequences for the characters actions, even dire consequences, well so be it.
D&D, especially an adventure path as tough as the Age of Worms requires good play and co-operation, that much is true but they won't learn this if your running their characters for them. The take home message is not that we have to co-operate in this set of circumstances but that the DM is forcing us to do things we don't want to do. That's what they will remember. If you let them run their characters and play the adventure impartially then they learn from their mistakes in large part because they are their mistakes and they trust you to run the adventure impartially so that its their actions that are affecting the outcome. Not only does this ultimately encourage them to be better players but its also more fun for them, no player likes being hammered by the DM, I mean why even show up at the gaming table if the DM is just going to run your character for you? Its the DMs job to adjudicate the consequences of the players actions not decide what those actions should be.
As to what I have to say about meeting new players in the middle of a dungeon;
"You seem trustworthy. Would you care to join us on our noble quest?"
"Yes...yes, I would!"
*Joins marching order*
Well, in my case it would be simple...
I would let the party find a crate somewhere with his 'old' gear in it. I'd make it one step better than theirs and I'd somehow make it 'aligned' to him. There, problem solved.
Then, I'd hit the old group with a Mordenkainen's Disjunction when the new guy was not in the AoE of it. Let em eat crow.
Yeah yeah, I know...free will...blah blah blah. Roleplay it out for an hour and give the new guy decent gear for the run. Heck, almost KILL him and let him join.
If after all the detect 'X' spells the group has at their disposal and other resources, share your toys and play nice or find another game.
I guess after 30 years of playing I'm a grumpy ol DM who just wants to keep the game moving and not have any drama. New players to my games learn the 'Play Well With Others' Rule fast or just seem to get forgotten on the next games invite. Shucks.
Hope it all works out for you, hate to see someone go the effort to buy, read, prepare all the stuff for a game and have players sorta ruin your fun.
Hi Guys,
Thanks for all your advice.
I thought I had better fill you in on what happened after.
During the week before we next met up for our weekly games session, I got many email from one of the cleric players who donated three potions and thought I was being heavy handed saying his god gave him a vision that he was too greedy.
After much emailing back and forth where it got quite heated we settled down to play the next week.
The players kept exploring and ran into the 3 wormcallers in the fountain room.I stashed the new players stuff from his character in a watertight chest in the fountain of worms, he h he he)
Obviously the players got there after dealing with the worm nagas insect plaguing the worm swarms and talking and kind of befriending Sruggut.
So after a battle and the wormcallers slaughtered they had to drag the chest out of the fountain.One character failed his will saving throw and drank the worms.But after a cure disease and vomiting up of wormds ( I made it as graphic as possible to give my players the chills) New Player gets his stuff all players happy and filled with a sense of achievement.
(They have not run into the overworm,The knights of Kyuss or the Harbringer, big fireworks next week)
But the best bit was when the new ranger charged into the room to hack up the wormcallers,
One of my greedy players who played the cleric and lent him the cloak of Elvenkind shouted in his best pompous voice,
"Be careful with that cloak, its very high quality , don't get it damaged!"
We cracked up and following on another thread here we had to award that gasmer the roleplyer of the evening award and bonus xps