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View Full Version : Balancing the start of a low equipment adventure



dob
2010-02-14, 07:06 PM
I'm planning on running a low equipment adventure for 7-8th level characters. That is to say, I'd like to start the characters with minimal equipment, and will hand out a good bit of equipment in the course of the adventure, hopefully encouraging them to improvise and make use of equipment we'd never normally purchase.

I'm curious how I should balance the characters' needs though. Obviously wizards need to start with their spell books; what should other characters get that would be similar in value? +1 weapon and armor of their choice for everyone?

Sinfire Titan
2010-02-14, 07:17 PM
The problems with low treasure campaigns is you're hurting the classes that rely on equipment 24-7 just to contribute. If the Fighter doesn't have some means of obtaining flight, he's going to be more useless than normal when the enemy takes off and forces the fight into a 3D encounter. If the Fighter isn't able to overcome the DR of a creature, or isn't able to charge/trip/Bull Rush them into oblivion, the Fighter gets stuck praying for an item that will overcome this weakness because he lacks the feats (items are much easier to come by than feats).

If the casters feel useless, it means someone screwed up in the character creation process. Casters need very few items to function properly.


In short, don't take items away from the players. The CR system was supposed to take magic items into account when designing encounters. They neglected optimization, but they made sure to include items.

dob
2010-02-14, 07:54 PM
That's why I'm trying to figure out how to balance the low initial wealth such that I'm not screwing the martial characters.

I'm aware that I'll have to scale down the CR of encounters, at least until the characters end up with appropriate WBL.

Sophismata
2010-02-14, 09:25 PM
It will really depend on the players. I've seen ECL7 - 8 characters do fine with minimal equipment available. They had magical weapons and that was about it. The martial characters were really solidly built, though, IIRC.

If you throw in nothing but flying enemies, then there might be a problem, but I assume you know not to do that (I hate flying encounters under D20, anyway). I'd recommend people avoid the Fighter / Monk / etc in favour of Warblade / Crusader / Swordsage.

sonofzeal
2010-02-14, 09:42 PM
Hmmmmm....

1) Remove the whole DR mechanic. That'll allow melee characters a bit better chance to contribute without special weapons.

2) Offer occasional ability score boosts instead of treasure. I recommend something like the following scheme - at major checkpoints, allow them to either boost their highest score by 1, or their second and third highest both by 1, or boost their bottom three scores by 1 each. If there's a tie, they have to boost the higher category before they can have the lower one catch up. This sort of scheme will make SAD and MAD classes happy, and give them a way to progress without equipment.

3) Offer occasional feats instead of treasure. Again, this gives a way to progress without equipment. Also, just like equipment is good for everyone but more important for weaker classes, the same usually goes for feats. The possible exception is CoDzillas, who are massively powerful but also get everything out of feats that martial characters would, and more.

Sinfire Titan
2010-02-15, 12:57 AM
Gestalt the non-casters with Incarnate or Totemist then?

Runestar
2010-02-15, 02:39 AM
You may not even need to change anything, depending on how willing the casters are to use spells to buff the others instead of whatever they could be doing.

Superglucose
2010-02-15, 02:47 AM
I'd say ban all forms of flight other than, you know, having wings.

Also ban polymorph.

Gnaeus
2010-02-15, 08:54 AM
I'm curious how I should balance the characters' needs though. Obviously wizards need to start with their spell books; what should other characters get that would be similar in value? +1 weapon and armor of their choice for everyone?

Wizards get their spell books for free at first level, and 2 free spells per level, so giving them their spellbooks isn't a gift unless you are filling them with bonus spells.

+1 weapon/armor of choice is much better for some characters than others. For monk and druid it is positively awful, not much better for sorcerer and wizard. Why not set a low GP limit, like 5000 gp. Either approve what they buy, or make them buy off a restricted list including things like 1st level wands, minor defensive items, that kind of stuff.


I'd say ban all forms of flight other than, you know, having wings.

Also ban polymorph.

Nothing OP has suggested requires banning anything. It sounds like he is going to be giving appropriate gear to the characters, just making them work for it. Banning polymorph is at least as nasty to the fighters as anyone else, and really isn't called for here, unless he wants to ban polymorph on general principle.

Lysander
2010-02-15, 09:50 AM
Just pick your encounters carefully I suppose, and don't throw in any creatures with special abilities that they have no realistic way of overcoming. Maybe make it less of a monster hunt and make a story about battling enemy soldiers with comparable abilities.

Parra
2010-02-15, 10:01 AM
In the very short term, one way of limiting (some) casters is to initially restrict the quantity of material components for there spells.

Sure that doesn't effect all casters (and is negated by a feat), but depending on the early stages of your game they may not have access to a town to re-supply nor want to waste a feat when they know it will be (mostly) worthless later on

potatocubed
2010-02-15, 10:45 AM
Just pick your encounters carefully I suppose, and don't throw in any creatures with special abilities that they have no realistic way of overcoming. Maybe make it less of a monster hunt and make a story about battling enemy soldiers with comparable abilities.

Yeah, I'd say avoid flight and DR as special abilities. If you put the characters up against intelligent, equipment-using enemies they'll very quickly get back up to WBL just by looting the bad guys for usable stuff.

I once ran a brief game where the PCs started out as slaves - all they owned were the clothes on their backs and the manacles that bound them together (which I added as a group in-joke about not splitting the party). One of the first things they did after escaping was knock over a local criminal enterprise and swipe their weapons and armour.

(Although that was in a slightly different version of d20 called Arcana Evolved.)

ericgrau
2010-02-15, 11:07 AM
My sig would help, except you're going to give them equipment later to make up for it right? At level 7-8 you're looking at +4 AC, +1 AB, +5.5 damage and +1 to saves. That's huge. The wizard OTOH gets a few minor extra spells that he could already cast anyway, just now he gets more. And a +1 to his save DCs.

I'd suggest starting casters at 1 or 2 levels behind the rest of the party and having them catch up through increased xp. By the time the party gets lots of loot the casters should be caught up to everyone else.