I was thinking in an incredibly boring meeting this morning about how an organization like the Lotus Dragons could get so far along towards controlling the city when they are just a bunch of rogues for the most part. Wouldn't such a powerful organization have specialists for certain things? I mean, perhaps they have an alchemist in the group, and a cleric, what about some stealthy assassin types? So I decided to come up with a unique list of the 22 members of the Lotus Dragons, albeit many are still just rogues, they do have a couple monks, warriors, scouts, assassins, and even a couple bards. Also, there is some diversity, they are not all humans, some are halflings, dwarves, half orc, orc, and even a lizardfolk and a kobold (married to the cook).
I gave each member a name, gender, race, class and "tick", and printed them out on separate character sheets. When I need an encounter with some of them, I can randomly pull from the pile and that is who they will meet.
I wanted the organization to feel more alive than just "3 more thieves being thrown at you, use the same tactics you did for the last 3" syndrome.
Does anyone think this horribly unbalancing? I do have a slightly larger party, so I don't think it's a huge problem.
As long as you are keeping them in the same CR range, it doesn't really matter if its 11 CR 1 rogues, or 1 CR 1 of everything from the PHB. It will mean that you'll have to consider what the individual tactics of the group in question are, because each combination will interact differently based on their abilities, to say nothing of personality.
In the end, as long as the CR benchmarks arn't messed with, this should do nothing more than make more work for you, and a more interesting encounter for your players. If you are ok with the former, then you get to enjoy the latter.
Creative Director
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The original draft of "There is no Honor," did have variations on the Lotus Dragons. Some were rangers, some were sorcerers, etc. There were several different stat blocks involved.
The original draft of "There is no Honor" was also like 9,000 words too long. So they had to go. I took them out to the water and threw them to the ixitxachitls.
I've made the occasional Lotus Dragon a swordsage from Tome of Battle. Just think what that Island of Blades stance does when used in conjunction with sneak attack...
Yes...excellent... (taps fingertips together)
