So, I had an idea for a campaign, though its scale is obviously larger than i was hoping it to be due to its goal. Let me tell you about it then we can get to the main question.
Through the course of their lives each pc will have made a deal with a demon. This deal ill put limitations on, things from gaining wealth (and losing it at some point through whatever reason) Fame, women, or maybe eve returning the life of a loved one. This will become important first session as they are going to begin the game being chased by hell hounds. 1 per player. Im assuming 3 players at my table based on my usual group. Each player will start with the "umbral unmasking" drawback which does this: "Effect: You cast no shadow whatsoever, or the shadow you do have is monstrous. Under normal lighted conditions, this is not hard to observe—but uncommon to notice. Creatures that succeed at a DC 15 Wisdom check notice it plainly (an additional Perception check may be required based on environmental conditions). This telltale sign of wickedness cannot be concealed by misdirection, nondetection, or illusions, except those that also affect shadows (such as invisibility)."
This symbolizes their ties to a demon. The demon in question will either be an actual demon lord or a weaker demon that is slowly climbing the ranks and is attempting to become powerful enough to actually become/kill a demon lord themselves (so far this one seems like the better idea). The hell hounds after them are attacking to collect the souls of the pc characters for the demon. The goal of this campaign will be to break down the resources of the demon and eventually kill it, guaranteeing the natural continued life of the pc characters. The nation we will be playing in will be sort of lovecraftian in feel? Maybe more diablo-esc? Very gloomy, lots of rain, lots of rocks, weeds, water. The feel im going for is almost gothic fantasy? The nation is surrounded by a powerful magical bubble holding in all of the people this demon has made deals with, those with umbral unmasking cant escape the nation and must deal with the cause or have their souls taken eventually. The demon is not in the players plane but a colt is helping it gain power and will eventually try to bring it into their own realm. The general population wont be aware of this of course but certain npcs and the players will. I was hoping to lock out alignment classes unless archetypes make them able to change their alignments from Lawfulgood as this is the alignment im hoping to avoid.
I know this is kind of a jumbled mess of ideas but i still see it pretty clearly in my mind. So here is the question. What level should I start my players? This campaign could take a while and will have some tough enemies.
ViConstantine wrote: This will become important first session as they are going to begin the game being chased by hell hounds. Given this encounter, I'd say you want the party to be about 5th level; no lower than 3rd, no higher than 7th.
Exactly where in that level range you want to be depends on the theme your campaign is going for and how long you expect it to run for. For instance, is Plane Shift a problematic spell for you? If so you probably want to have the campaign wrapping up before 9th level, and so starting at 7th level could be very problematic. On the other hand, perhaps you want party with access to spells like these. Your campaign, your call. As I said, 3-7 seems reasonable given the combat encounter you described earlier and anything more specific is a matter of taste.
Dasrak wrote: ViConstantine wrote: This will become important first session as they are going to begin the game being chased by hell hounds. Given this encounter, I'd say you want the party to be about 5th level; no lower than 3rd, no higher than 7th.
Exactly where in that level range you want to be depends on the theme your campaign is going for and how long you expect it to run for. For instance, is Plane Shift a problematic spell for you? If so you probably want to have the campaign wrapping up before 9th level, and so starting at 7th level could be very problematic. On the other hand, perhaps you want party with access to spells like these. Your campaign, your call. As I said, 3-7 seems reasonable given the combat encounter you described earlier and anything more specific is a matter of taste. 5th level sounds like a decent place to start. If this goes campaign ends with a fight against a demon lord or a soon to be demon lord then it MUST be a level 20 campaign, though im hoping to have enough combat and out of combat experience for about 2 levels per session. Though im considering just dropping experience period and just telling them when to level up. I dont know if thats looked down upon or not. Im also struggling to decide what point buy we need. I was thinking epic but it might be too strong. I dont know. Anyway, planer shift could be a problem but ive considered it. The magic bubble around the country is suppose to be able to negate some magic and I was thinking that i could use it as a plot reason that they couldnt just walk out of the dimension.
i say about 5th level but that's usually from a high level if distain of low level campaigns as with any fewer levels the pcs don't have much to use in terms of class abilities, they die significantly easier and it takes forever to start being able to do anything remotely cool
Lady-J wrote: i say about 5th level but that's usually from a high level if distain of low level campaigns as with any fewer levels the pcs don't have much to use in terms of class abilities, they die significantly easier and it takes forever to start being able to do anything remotely cool Right, thats fair, though to be honest ive never felt that my characters werent cool even at level one. Ive never played a campaign ever, where I started past level 1. Ive played a lot of campaigns.
ViConstantine wrote: Lady-J wrote: i say about 5th level but that's usually from a high level if distain of low level campaigns as with any fewer levels the pcs don't have much to use in terms of class abilities, they die significantly easier and it takes forever to start being able to do anything remotely cool Right, thats fair, though to be honest ive never felt that my characters werent cool even at level one. Ive never played a campaign ever, where I started past level 1. Ive played a lot of campaigns. i've probably had a hundred more times were we've had a near tpk more times at level 1-3 than the entirety of the rest my entire d&d life time and most of those were simply from each enemy hit doing like half our hitpoints cuz we only had like 3 hit die(even worse at level one as most attacks that hit could knock some one unconscious in one attack since we only had 1 hit die) by level 5 its much more stable and only gets more stable as you go up in levels until the levels were failing saves vs spells becomes much more of a problem than what it was at lower levels usually about level 9 ish and then hitpoints become less important and saves become significantly more important
Lady-J wrote: ViConstantine wrote: Lady-J wrote: i say about 5th level but that's usually from a high level if distain of low level campaigns as with any fewer levels the pcs don't have much to use in terms of class abilities, they die significantly easier and it takes forever to start being able to do anything remotely cool Right, thats fair, though to be honest ive never felt that my characters werent cool even at level one. Ive never played a campaign ever, where I started past level 1. Ive played a lot of campaigns. i've probably had a hundred more times were we've had a near tpk more times at level 1-3 than the entirety of the rest my entire d&d life time and most of those were simply from each enemy hit doing like half our hitpoints cuz we only had like 3 hit die(even worse at level one as most attacks that hit could knock some one unconscious in one attack since we only had 1 hit die) by level 5 its much more stable and only gets more stable as you go up in levels until the levels were failing saves vs spells becomes much more of a problem than what it was at lower levels usually about level 9 ish and then hitpoints become less important and saves become significantly more important I get what you are saying though we dont typically have those problems. Our party is typically the same players and even when we dont work together, we still work together pretty well. No one usually dies except maybe once every god....idk blue moon. We fight things our levels or higher at lvl 1 and usually work through it pretty well. Ive never had a full party whipe or even close to one, not even at low levels. (well there was that one time when we were all playing magic but i pulled through in the end and saved our butts.)
the info you need is here - 3 Hell Hounds is CR 6, your party equivalent APL will be APL-1 due to 3 PCs, the standard range of difficulties is easy at eAPL-1 to Epic at eAPL+3 so the eAPL should range from 3 to 7, which means the PCs should be in the range lvl 4-8, it all depends on how difficult you want this 1st encounter to be
ViConstantine wrote: Though im considering just dropping experience period and just telling them when to level up. I dont know if thats looked down upon or not. I've tried it. It tends to work well when you've got a very structured narrative with clear milestones. Some players also like to have an intuitive sense of when they expect to level up, and XP helps with this. If things are going to be more fluid then it can be harder to get well-spaced milestones and XP is preferable.
ViConstantine wrote: Im also struggling to decide what point buy we need. I was thinking epic but it might be too strong. Eh, you can always make things slightly more challenging if you feel it's a problem. I personally prefer higher point buy since I feel it frees up more build options. It also helps with class balance is high PB can be used as a crutch for weaker classes like the Monk, but for a class like a Wizard it'll probably just go into constitution for more HP (which isn't going to be a huge change in their effectiveness).
I will make one argument in favor of starting at a lower level, in this case 3 or 4. Personally, I enjoy getting to play through being an under gunned scrub out of their depth who claws their way to actually being the hero we're all building our characters to be. I think that experience is particularly appropriate in a lovecraftian horror kind of game.
If I may use an anecdote to help illustrate my point, I'm playing Reign of Winter now and we got the crap kicked out of us for the entire first book but that's a big part of what makes our characters, now level 5, feel like heroes to me. It's also something that has seeped in to our characters personality. As a party we've sort of adopted a "get a load of this guy" mentality (that will surely get us killed) when facing threats now because of what we've been able to survive so far.
Your millage may vary of course, thats just my 2 copper.
Also, if you want to flavor this horror style, may I suggest you give this book a look. It has some cool stuff about creeping corruption and some other horror flavor you can sprinkle in.
pocsaclypse wrote: I will make one argument in favor of starting at a lower level, in this case 3 or 4. Personally, I enjoy getting to play through being an under gunned scrub out of their depth who claws their way to actually being the hero we're all building our characters to be. I think that experience is particularly appropriate in a lovecraftian horror kind of game.
If I may use an anecdote to help illustrate my point, I'm playing Reign of Winter now and we got the crap kicked out of us for the entire first book but that's a big part of what makes our characters, now level 5, feel like heroes to me. It's also something that has seeped in to our characters personality. As a party we've sort of adopted a "get a load of this guy" mentality (that will surely get us killed) when facing threats now because of what we've been able to survive so far.
Your millage may vary of course, thats just my 2 copper.
Also, if you want to flavor this horror style, may I suggest you give this book a look. It has some cool stuff about creeping corruption and some other horror flavor you can sprinkle in.
The book is a descent suggestion though I wouldnt call what im going for "horror" its......gloomy, dark and gritty, thats what i want. Somewhere between Lovecraft, bloodborne(which i guess is still lovecraftian), Supernatural (the series) and diablo.
ViConstantine wrote: gloomy, dark and gritty, thats what i want. Somewhere between Lovecraft, bloodborne(which i guess is still lovecraftian), Supernatural (the series) and diablo. Horror Adventures still fits that pretty well. Things like the Curse Terrain spell line are in that book, which just ooze dark and gloomy flavor even if you aren't running a strictly horror adventure.
I would agree with 3 or 4 depending on how rough you want the first encounter. It is Lovecraft horror after all. Also I would look at what level you want to wrap things up at. IE: if your final boss is lv16 then maybe wrap things up at lv 12 or 13. Meanwhile if its lv20 and the players end at lv16 then start a bit higher or give bonus XP
Dastis wrote: I would agree with 3 or 4 depending on how rough you want the first encounter. It is Lovecraft horror after all. Also I would look at what level you want to wrap things up at. IE: if your final boss is lv16 then maybe wrap things up at lv 12 or 13. Meanwhile if its lv20 and the players end at lv16 then start a bit higher or give bonus XP The campaign will run for high levels as the final boss by itself should be around cr 20, I also like adding mooks to boss fights though, and the occasional trap to deal with.
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