Because it never got any replies/traction earlier and a similar concept just came up in-thread, I'm going to quote myself once to see what happens.
kyrt-ryder wrote: Ascalaphus wrote: We had the "making a new character to try some new build thing, every other week" once. If a game system has a lot of different things you can play, is it really all that wrong to want to experiment with a few things before settling down?
Admittedly, it was disruptive to the story, to have people join and leave the party all the time. But it was mostly the same players, so after a while some of the other players become the "core" party, who set the direction plot-wise, and the new guys didn't really have the "seniority".
It basically ended when as a group we decided this had to stop, because it was getting too disruptive story-wise. This wasn't done with hard rules; it was mostly through actual person to person communication.
Even then there are ways to handle that as a GM.
Once I played in a game where the DM had all the players as part of a 'Mercenary Guild' so to speak, something resembling the Mages Guilds in Fairy Tail, where people would party up to take on jobs of all sorts of different difficulty levels.
Each adventure might take 1-3 sessions, and players were welcome to use different characters for different adventures.
There was much fun to be had, developing relationships (both friendly and antagonistic) and teams and sideplots as the world expanded before our eyes and we rose in rank in the guild.
EDIT: now that I think about it, this perfectly solves the OP's problem about the verisimilitude about replacing lost party members. The entire guild is filled with characters of varying power levels, some of which are already stronger than the PC's and some of which are growing right alongside them.
kyrt-ryder: That's actually an extremely cool suggestion.
strayshift wrote: Depends. In principle I agree with you and I've been in campaigns where that has been the rule from the start, which we accepted.
Unfortunately once the bulk of the characters got to even third level, the first level characters really had a tough time of it. They were caught in a dilemma of playing safe and not contributing or contributing and getting knocked down a lot (thereby not contributing).
I also as a player (and I'm not alone in this in our group) that wants to 'earn' their character. So as a DM I would have to think very closely about the challenges the group faces and how best to 'ease' a low level character into the game in a survivable fashion.
Jeff's point about players investing in their characters (and the relative maturity of players) is an important one also and as a DM you should be encouraging this so that a death is an event with consequences for all the party.
Easy. You know how most of the time you roll your hp every level, except 1st? To help you stay alive, you get exactly average hp upon leveling until you get to the group level, and you get double the xp until you get to the average of the group. That is, since having average hp no matter what is such an advantage in the long run, it's nicer than rolling.
Second, no matter WHAT, even low level characters can contribute. Toss some alchemist fire, use a wand, etc. Stay in the back until you can get better. The rest of the party will give you MUCH better gear than a low level like you could ever afford anyway.
If a character dies, too bad. Either resurrect it and cough up the moolah, or make a new 1st level pc. Suck it up. You gotta EARN your chops, campers!
@kyrt-ryder: I have ran numerous campaigns like that. Even was planning a PbP Campaign like that. Didn't get any interest at all...
I am planning on retrying to recruit once I finish up my RotRL and AotG games.
I find the Guild or Organization Method is the easiest method to introduce new PC.
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Now i understand why all of Piccolos opinions on this forum are based on low level characters.
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You want to know how I earn my chops Piccolo?
By taking six hours out of my busy schedule every week to show up and give you one of the group of players necessary to have a campaign.
You do have a certain amount of authority as GM, but use it in a manner a player finds completely incompatible, and you won't have that player for long.
Piccolo wrote: Not good enough. Back when I started and continued playing, DEATH MEANT SOMETHING. Retire your PC? Your character croaked and couldn't be resurrected? Too bad, so sad. I can just hear the tiniest violin playing for the lot of you. I am SO sick and tired of these whining twits who expect all games to go wonderfully, that they should ALL be a walk in the bloody park.
Well, tough titties! You die, you retire your PC, make a new one, and you aren't going to get a high level replacement just BECAUSE. If that bothers you, pay up a feat for Leadership, and take over your cohort. But stop WHINING. I ain't gonna put up with it. This modern trend of damned easy video games has spoiled far too many of you. All obsessed with creating the perfect attack combination, or "optimizing" as you people put it, is total and utter nonsense! Every last one of you repeatedly creates glass cannons, and expects the DM to coddle you when you lose them!
HA!
Now, if someone is unhappy with how their PC turned out, have a chat with the DM, and see what can be worked out. But no "optimizing" to suit the current game setup. I am not going to sit there and give whiny baby players a "Get Out of Jail" card.
See its funny because if we put you in nightmare mode of dragon age 2 you probably wouldn't last through the first act :P
Oh and those old days you espouse so much encouraged munchkining and cheating far more than any system nowadays. Why would I bother giving a character that would likely last 3 hours a personality or name? At that point they are numbers and nothing more (though to be fair, the games I play now I view them as numbers and nothing more).
Go back to your bench and stop shaking your cane at me old man I'm not on your lawn :P
Piccolo wrote: Easy. You know how most of the time you roll your hp every level, except 1st? To help you stay alive, you get exactly average hp upon leveling until you get to the group level, and you get double the xp until you get to the average of the group. That is, since having average hp no matter what is such an advantage in the long run, it's nicer than rolling. In the long run, having exactly average hp is no advantage at all, since in the long run, your rolls will average out.
In the short run, rolling could be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on what you roll.
kyrt-ryder wrote: You want to know how I earn my chops Piccolo?
By taking six hours out of my busy schedule every week to show up and give you one of the group of players necessary to have a campaign.
You do have a certain amount of authority as GM, but use it in a manner a player finds completely incompatible, and you won't have that player for long.
My campaigns tend to last for years on end. I must be doing something right, eh? And most last until the double digits of character level. Nearly every session ends with my players very happy and excited for the next game. When they level, they feel they have earned it. And I make it a point to ask them what they want to see in game.
If you can't stand the heat, kids, stay out of the kitchen.
Thomas Long 175 wrote: Go back to your bench and stop shaking your cane at me old man I'm not on your lawn :P *slow clap*
Any time I see someone talking about how they've been playing for 30 years, I think of how we handle people who have been in the military for 30 years...
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Here's what it comes down to for me; I don't want the game to be easy, I want it to be fun. If it's not fun, I don't want to play. I don't want to be punished for something that happens in game.
I don't want to be punished. Punish my character, that's fine. That's fun (to me, at least). Torture my character, steal from him, cut off his hand and lobotomize him, as long as I can play and contribute, I'm having fun.
Making me start at level 1 for dying isn't punishing my character. It's punishing me.
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In general, it all depends on the level disparity. Bringing in a new character at 1st level when the rest of the party is 2nd or possibly even 3rd level isn't going to be awful.
Doing it when the party is 10th level is a bad idea. You're bringing in a hireling, not a PC.
The way to deal with players who come up with "sick builds" is simple: you tell them what rules they can and can't use. Some GMs are great at rolling with the punches, and can craft campaigns that are both fun and challenging for players no matter how mechanically optimized their characters are. Others don't have that strength, but they wield the one strength that all GMs wield: Rule Zero.
It puts rules lawyers in their place: "That doesn't work like that in my campaign."
It puts twinks in their place: "We aren't using that set of rules in my campaign."
It puts role players in their place: "How do you justify your tiefling having angel wings from the aasimar handbook?"
It's a loose tool that fits the situation.
Thomas Long 175 wrote:
See its funny because if we put you in nightmare mode of dragon age 2 you probably wouldn't last through the first act :P
Pfft, Dragon Age 2 was piss easy (comparatively). Nightmare Mode on Origins was freakin' impossible.
Of course you probably wouldn't make it through the first act because the game was SO GOD AWFUL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
...I'm sorry. It was an okay game, or would've been had it not been a sequel to DA:O.
Let's hope the upcoming third game makes up for it.
Rynjin wrote: Thomas Long 175 wrote:
See its funny because if we put you in nightmare mode of dragon age 2 you probably wouldn't last through the first act :P
Pfft, Dragon Age 2 was piss easy (comparatively). Nightmare Mode on Origins was freakin' impossible.
Of course you probably wouldn't make it through the first act because the game was SO GOD AWFUL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
...I'm sorry. It was an okay game, or would've been had it not been a sequel to DA:O.
Let's hope the upcoming third game makes up for it. 1 was a better game but was pathetically easy. Survival skill + grease + fireball+ earthquake+ blizzard+ lightning storm. Not in that order.
Survival skill let you know where creatures were even through closed doors. grease the floor at the door, cast blizzard on the door, they run to it and open it to attack while you cast lightning storm, you cast earthquake and they're all making 2 checks a turn to stand up and 1 to keep from freezing while moving at a quarter rate.
Rinse, wash, repeat. Doesn't matter how damaging the enemies are just stand around the corner and cast since you don't need to be able to see your target. Whole dang game was easy mode, especially if you had 2 aoe based casters. At that point you skipped through everything.
But then you got to the boss fights.
Flemeth on Nightmare...
I still have dreams about it...
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Piccolo wrote: kyrt-ryder wrote: You want to know how I earn my chops Piccolo?
By taking six hours out of my busy schedule every week to show up and give you one of the group of players necessary to have a campaign.
You do have a certain amount of authority as GM, but use it in a manner a player finds completely incompatible, and you won't have that player for long.
My campaigns tend to last for years on end. I must be doing something right, eh? And most last until the double digits of character level. Nearly every session ends with my players very happy and excited for the next game. When they level, they feel they have earned it. And I make it a point to ask them what they want to see in game.
Hey, if your players enjoy it and you're all having fun, that's great.
I've played in plenty of games that lasted for years, with happy and excited players. And with very low deaths and no nonsense about starting over from 1st level or "earning your levels". We must be doing something right too, eh?
I'm not objecting to how you run your game. That's your business. It's the entitlement involved in telling those who don't play that way that they're doing it wrong.
Quote: If you can't stand the heat, kids, stay out of the kitchen. And what does this even mean in this context? I shouldn't be allowed to play if I don't meet your standards?
Rynjin wrote: But then you got to the boss fights.
Flemeth on Nightmare...
I still have dreams about it...
haha yeah, flemeth was comparable in power to the archdemon I felt :P. The other great dragon was a wuss though. Fully beefed up fighter in heaviest armor possible, archer, 2 casters with the heal spell (basic spell). Just rotate the interval of heal for them to keep him up. then autoattack away till it goes down. Mostly you just needed one very beefy character with a couple with heal.
Magetank was fun though :P
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Good luck making an AP workable with the 1st level rule.
inb4 "Adventure Paths are for entitled narrativist storytelling hippie communist tweens that are ruining Ameri...D&D!"
Mikaze wrote: Good luck making an AP workable with the 1st level rule.
Looking at the latest AP last night, I noticed this bit: Quote: In any case, the fact that some players might have to roll up new characters to replace ones who died should not penalize them in certain situations or preclude them from finishing the campaign. It dealt with a specific plot device, not with levels, but the general principle applies.
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TriOmegaZero wrote: Thomas Long 175 wrote: Go back to your bench and stop shaking your cane at me old man I'm not on your lawn :P *slow clap*
Any time I see someone talking about how they've been playing for 30 years, I think of how we handle people who have been in the military for 30 years... Except, that’s not how we played back then. Raise dead has been part of the game since it’s inception. And so was coming into the party at more or less the parties level. So for those that claim “that’s how *WE* did it back in the old days” I can say “No, that’s how *YOU* did it back in the old days” (if you indeed were around back then).
Sure we had a few DM’s back then that insisted a PC come in a 1st level when the rest of the party was 12th- and you know what? We ridiculed them for being bad DM’s then, too.
And playing for a mere 30 years? Pfft. Newbie. 39 years here. ;-)
But I, being a true Grognard <g> can tell when someone is just being a poseur and is actually such a newb that they think 3.5 is “Old Skool”. And, that is clearly happening here. Neither the poster you’re responding to or the Op has been around since the real old days, too many little errors have crept into their stories.
DrDeth wrote: Except, that’s not how we played back then. Raise dead has been part of the game since it’s inception. And so was coming into the party at more or less the parties level. So for those that claim “that’s how *WE* did it back in the old days” I can say “No, that’s how *YOU* did it back in the old days” (if you indeed were around back then).
Sure we had a few DM’s back then that insisted a PC come in a 1st level when the rest of the party was 12th- and you know what? We ridiculed them for being bad DM’s then, too.
And playing for a mere 30 years? Pfft. Newbie. 39 years here. ;-)
But I, being a true Grognard <g> can tell when someone is just being a poseur and is actually such a newb that they think 3.5 is “Old Skool”. And, that is clearly happening here. Neither the poster you’re responding to or the Op has been around since the real old days, too many little errors have crept into their stories.
Hey I've played 1E, I never claimed to be from that era :P
You're quite right that I haven't been around since the old days, I'm 23. If I'm correct 2E is older than me.
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The very concept of "earning your chops" and "standing the heat" in a pen and paper rpg is just silly.
You are not a special forces veteran of 20 years who's been on a hundred dangerous missions. Anyone who actually thinks that harsh rules in Pathfinder makes them badass really needs a serious reality check.
DrDeth wrote:
And playing for a mere 30 years? Pfft. Newbie. 39 years here. ;-)
But I, being a true Grognard <g> can tell when someone is just being a poseur and is actually such a newb that they think 3.5 is “Old Skool”. And, that is clearly happening here. Neither the poster you’re responding to or the Op has been around since the real old days, too many little errors have crept into their stories.
I've been playing for about 33 years, with some breaks and I'm proud to say I've never been a Grognard. :)
Git yer nards outta mah grog!
lousy rotten goodfernuttin land lubbers t'aint got no respect fer the grog.
Eeeewww!
I may never be able to drink grog again.
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Woah. Don't read this thread on cold medicine. That being said, I'm pretty sure that the consensus lying just beneath the Stygian depths of the last five pages is:
Some people will eat a bowl of cereal with a knife.
Some go looking for a spoon.
The ven diagram overlap consists of people who eat the bowl of cereal with a knife while looking for a spoon.
OR...I need a nap and some more fluids, since attempting to derive meaning is for madmen.
Piccolo wrote:
Not good enough. Back when I started and continued playing, DEATH MEANT SOMETHING.
You mean back in first edition, back when it was actually easier to get a character raised from the dead?
Thomas Long 175 wrote: DrDeth wrote: Except, that’s not how we played back then. Raise dead has been part of the game since it’s inception. And so was coming into the party at more or less the parties level. So for those that claim “that’s how *WE* did it back in the old days” I can say “No, that’s how *YOU* did it back in the old days” (if you indeed were around back then).
Sure we had a few DM’s back then that insisted a PC come in a 1st level when the rest of the party was 12th- and you know what? We ridiculed them for being bad DM’s then, too.
And playing for a mere 30 years? Pfft. Newbie. 39 years here. ;-)
But I, being a true Grognard <g> can tell when someone is just being a poseur and is actually such a newb that they think 3.5 is “Old Skool”. And, that is clearly happening here. Neither the poster you’re responding to or the Op has been around since the real old days, too many little errors have crept into their stories.
Hey I've played 1E, I never claimed to be from that era :P
You're quite right that I haven't been around since the old days, I'm 23. If I'm correct 2E is older than me. Wasn’t talking about you. Sorry if you thought so. The Op and that orange sandworm.
DrDeth wrote: The Op and that orange sandworm. He's certainly not a musical instrument, nor an alien.
DrDeth wrote: Hey I've played 1E, I never claimed to be from that era :P
You're quite right that I haven't been around since the old days, I'm 23. If I'm correct 2E is older than me.
Wasn’t talking about you. Sorry if you thought so. The Op and that orange sandworm.
I'm not sure, am I correct? Is 2E older than me?
Thomas Long 175 wrote: DrDeth wrote: Hey I've played 1E, I never claimed to be from that era :P
You're quite right that I haven't been around since the old days, I'm 23. If I'm correct 2E is older than me.
Wasn’t talking about you. Sorry if you thought so. The Op and that orange sandworm.
I'm not sure, am I correct? Is 2E older than me? My 2E PHB is copyright 1989, which I think puts it just older than you.
Now, I feel ancient.
personally i have issue in games that punish people for having lives and cant make it to every session
i also have issue with games that reward selfishness and players who only care about their own characters and act like its their show and everyone else is their entourage
these two factors lead to uncooperative play and often create scenarios where some players get more XP than others, sometimes even while the other players are sitting at the same table and just didnt get a turn with the spotlight
players being selfish and not cooperating only promotes the mindset of punishing players for not liking their characters because they dont get to play them enough, or dont mesh well with the group
the best systems imo keep all the players at the same level, giving them a negative level for being rezzed is different, but they should not have to start over
if a campaign is going to be long and there will be no options for variance with the characters, you're players should know it beforehand and not be allowed to switch characters, but they should know it before they try it, dont spring up rules on them at the last second screwing the player out of a good time
the only handicap a PC should be punished with is hitting their WBL to be significantly lower than the rest of the PCs, when we did it before in my group, we gave tehm what the 3.5 DMG had listed for an NPC of that class, or some equivalent of wealth, usually they end up with like, one +1 weapon, +1 ring, and +1 armor
not garbage for a mid-level character, but definitely nothing OP either
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Rynjin wrote: Thomas Long 175 wrote:
See its funny because if we put you in nightmare mode of dragon age 2 you probably wouldn't last through the first act :P
Pfft, Dragon Age 2 was piss easy (comparatively). Nightmare Mode on Origins was freakin' impossible.
Of course you probably wouldn't make it through the first act because the game was SO GOD AWFUL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAA
...I'm sorry. It was an okay game, or would've been had it not been a sequel to DA:O.
Let's hope the upcoming third game makes up for it. Or you could play Dark Souls, where you are guaranteed death every time you play.
shallowsoul wrote: Or you could play Dark Souls, where you are guaranteed death every time you play. Yeah but then you just pop back up as a zombie.
It's definitely a hard game but I never liked it much. Probably because my controller's left stick lists a bit so that makes it pretty much impossible to play (can't dodge well, or in the right direction sometimes).
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