As of late, I've seen a lot of talk concerning so-called "monster campaigns", where people have Player Characters like Succubi, Ogre Magi and other such things instead of the usual "Core Rulebook" race such as Elf. How common would you guys say these are, and how many of you here are willing to try such things out with your group? I only tried one once with one of my gaming groups. It was a lot of fun, even though we were playing 4th edition D&D and not Pathfinder for said campaign. I've actually gotten a few ideas for such campaigns in the future, but I have no idea which side of the table I'll be sitting at when such a thing occurs.
Our group has done this before as well, though only one time in the last ~15 years of playing together.
We did 2 random draws from a pool of monster characters and were able to choose between the two. Since we started at level 1, it took some time before being able to add class levels for some of the characters, like my Ogre Inquisitor. Overall, it was pretty fun.
Pretty rare as D&D never has handled monster PCs well in my opinion. The pixie one guy had was a real glass cannon whose ECL really slowed down her overall class progression, and I think the medusa PC one of my players had only worked because he had a fairly good sense of restraint. I haven't really found any rules in PF that really struck me as worth trying to use yet.
As of late, I've seen a lot of talk concerning so-called "monster campaigns", where people have Player Characters like Succubi, Ogre Magi and other such things instead of the usual "Core Rulebook" race such as Elf. How common would you guys say these are, and how many of you here are willing to try such things out with your group? I only tried one once with one of my gaming groups. It was a lot of fun, even though we were playing 4th edition D&D and not Pathfinder for said campaign. I've actually gotten a few ideas for such campaigns in the future, but I have no idea which side of the table I'll be sitting at when such a thing occurs.
I was setting up to run an all goblinoid party for the Mummy Mask adventure path, but couldn't get the normal crews schedules to mesh. They would have run as a party right along side the normal humans & such so wouldn't have been evil.
The party was to include:A hobgoblin cavalier as the party leader
A bugbear barbarian as the enforcer
A goblin swashbuckler
A goblin sorcerer (fire elemental bloodline, of course)
A goblin alchemist
A goblin cleric of Sarenrae
They all were the result of interactions with humans; sort of like the result of feeding wild animals they became habituated with human society and no longer fit into their own.
Morag
As a GM, I always allow my players to go beyond the standard races if they want to do so.
As a player, I would love to be able to do the same, but I have rarely encountered GMs who will allow it.
It always feels awkward to me to see a Medusa, Troll, Ogre Mage and Mummy all tromping around together. If the races are carefully selected and the party comes up with a good story explaining themselves the concept can be acceptable. I was in a monster game once, decided to be an evil human cleric, just to contrast the minotaurs and such I was playing with.
Anyone else ever play Monsters! Monsters! It was based on the Old Tunnel and Trolls system where you where a monster out to attack the good guys for sacking your dungeon. The monsters, at least when I played was given out randomly So you could be a Goblin or a Dragon.
I got the goblin and a friend got a basilisk . So the basilisk went into a bag(T&T basilisk are small lizards) and my Goblin carried the bag around and when ever we woud meet some human fighters I would cower and say, its mine, its mine please dont take it. And of course when the Guards look into the bag, there was another statue for the nearest fountain.
I've run games that were like this both from the start, and one where it happened in game (an artifact transformed the PCs into monster races). I enjoyed both approaches.
I'm currently running a game where all the players are mixed-breeds of some variety. Half-Elves/Orcs, skinwalkers, dhampirs, tieflings, aasimar, and any of the genie-kin.
The story is that they're part of a country's equivalent to a foreign legion.
Due to Reincarnate shenanigans, the Kingmaker campaign I am running currently has sort of a monster party.
The Ranger is a Ratfolk (he also has Gunslinger levels), our Wizard was Human but ended up as a Bugbear (the Reincarnate I mentioned), we have a Hobgoblin Ninja and finally, a Tiefling Magus.
Any player can play any species in my games, as long as we can work out the rough power levels. A person playing one of the really powerful species (like dragons) might have to play a juvenile member of that species or accept some disadvantages of some sort, but if we can work it out, I'm all for it. If there is any possible way to adjust things and get within the ballpark of the general power level, I don't use species restrictions at all.
The same goes for classes. I let players make up their own classes or use any third party ones, as long as they can work within the setting involved and a reasonably well balanced. When I disallow one, it's usually because it doesn't fit the setting (ex. gunslingers in a standard fantasy campaign).
As of late, I've seen a lot of talk concerning so-called "monster campaigns", where people have Player Characters like Succubi, Ogre Magi and other such things instead of the usual "Core Rulebook" race such as Elf. How common would you guys say these are, and how many of you here are willing to try such things out with your group? I only tried one once with one of my gaming groups. It was a lot of fun, even though we were playing 4th edition D&D and not Pathfinder for said campaign. I've actually gotten a few ideas for such campaigns in the future, but I have no idea which side of the table I'll be sitting at when such a thing occurs.I was setting up to run an all goblinoid party for the Mummy Mask adventure path, but couldn't get the normal crews schedules to mesh. They would have run as a party right along side the normal humans & such so wouldn't have been evil.
The party was to include:
A hobgoblin cavalier as the party leader
A bugbear barbarian as the enforcer
A goblin swashbuckler
A goblin sorcerer (fire elemental bloodline, of course)
A goblin alchemist
A goblin cleric of SarenraeThey all were the result of interactions with humans; sort of like the result of feeding wild animals they became habituated with human society and no longer fit into their own.
Morag
A barghest druid FTW!
i actually don't mind writing monster conversions for things like small awakened elementals, half nymphs or even pixies. as long as the chosen races aren't chosen to game the system. such as advanced ogre barbarians who deal lots of damage with a fuachard from like 35 feet away. the monster conversions i create, don't really follow the race builder and are generally toned down compared to the parent monster, being comparable to aasimaars or fetchlings.