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Lord.Sorasen
2010-12-04, 03:50 AM
Sometimes the characters in your party can get... Out of hand. If you have a laid back dm like I turned out to be, this chance increases. If you sort of encourage dumb things, it gets even worse (this is a bigger issue for me).

Currently, the campaign I am running features

- A human paladin, an innocent stubborn girl raised by the clergy after her parents were killed by fiends.
- An Ogre/Orc (half-ogre template on a half-orc with wild template also) psychic warrior, a supernatural psychic warrior with the intelligent of maybe a horse.
- A warforged Dragonfire Adept, a warforged freed from slavery by a copper dragon
- A Vanara (Oriental Adventures) "Sorceress" (Beguiler), who makes a living fooling the town into believing she can see the future.
- A Hadozee... Something (cleric? Fighter (sneak attack UA option)?), still sort of working on it...
- and a wild card, one more member still has to make a character.

What are some of your more obscure parties?

grimbold
2010-12-04, 03:53 AM
i have had one based off led zeppelin :)
that was funny

Ryu_Bonkosi
2010-12-04, 04:34 AM
A 'good' campaign where the only Evil aligned character had the highest Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Needless to say we all in-character did what he said because he was the most experienced and knowledgeable in most situations.

Vizzerdrix
2010-12-04, 04:51 AM
It was a big group. We had several gnomes, a ranger, a dwarf fighter, a wizard (he didn't cast much though) and an elf. At one point the party got split. One group got a plant thingy and the other found some sort of goblin. Strange game, that one. See what I did thar?

KillianHawkeye
2010-12-04, 04:59 AM
Well, the 4E Dark Sun game I'm running has a Minotaur Fighter, a Half-Giant Warden, a Dragonborn Infernal Warlock, a Thri-Kreen Fighter, a Human Swarm-Druid, and a Halfling Fey Warlock. The Halfling would be the most normal one of the bunch, but she's half crazy.

Halae
2010-12-04, 05:46 AM
In my current party, the loadout is as follows.

-Dwarven Nature Cleric, Boragor - The epitome of a dwarven cleric, the only difference being his worshp of a non-dwarven deity
-Half-red Dragon Beguiler, Aesthyr - ... kind of horny all the time. interestingly, not a bade interpretation by a male player, but a female one.
-Half-Red dragon Fighter, Daika - The somewhat angry stability of the group. infatuated with the other half-dragon
-Human Fighter, Lily - A girl who was ran out of her hometime because of her troll bloodline. Works as a mercenary under Bruce.
-Spellscale Sorcerer, Melankurian Abatha - Over the top completely, he's probably the most competent member of the group, matched only by Bruce
-Half-Ogre Dungeoncrasher, Bruce McWinchester - My character, and de facto party leader, as he is the leader of this merry merc band. he wields a Fullblade and wears Mechanus gear. with, equipment, he weighs a total of 766 Lbs., not a small amount of which is the two barrels of liquid he carries on his back, one containing Water and the other containing Orcish Kragg, a very, very dangerously strong spirit. And he drip feeds it through what is essentially a hose.

No, you're not alone in the odd party department

FelixG
2010-12-04, 05:57 AM
2 kobolds

1 Monk-break dance fighter
1 Bard- perform (Beat box)

Story: they were the left overs of a real adventuring party and no one wanted to hire them :smallbiggrin:

Aotrs Commander
2010-12-04, 06:14 AM
Well, let's see, there was the party with a Saiyan, a Romulan Archmage, a Vulcan scientist who didn't believe in magic, a drug-dealing stalker and a man who names his lazer rifles...

And then there's our favourite and most-long running party, whose bloated cast now has swelled over the year to consist of a jedi, an psychotic Irish criminal trench fighter with a potato obession, a half-Klingon Japanese ninja, a mysterious evil alien scoping out everywhere for his race's invasion, an X-Man-style mutant mall-rat, an alien cyborg engineer, a super-spy sniper, a ex-time-travelling female James-Bond-spy, an archmage spy, the Jedi's technician fiance, a guy who never leaves his Powered Armour, a guy with a booze and treasure obession with Dwarf ancestry, a criminal walking fish and the chainsaw/shotgun wielding manic who lairs in the brig.

Our Rolemaster games are somewhat...special...

Claudius Maximus
2010-12-04, 01:47 PM
I'm running one with:

A half-orc raised by halflings who just became a dragonborn. He serves the court of stars and two different gods. He has like 5 allegiances.

A Varoot (Nerra) Shadowcaster who pretends to be a Sillit (another kind of Nerra).

A Mineral Warrior Varoot Samurai, bodyguard to the Shadowcaster.

A Mineral Warrior Tortle Drunken Master, student of the Samurai.

A Tiefling Sorceress who believes she is a 10 year old girl.

A Human Cleric of the war god who has become increasingly unhinged, trusting only his mule. He has put the party in mortal danger more than once to save it.

A Pixie Bard who is a fanboy of the half-orc and the human.

An Elf Duskblade. Probably the most normal of the bunch.

Zaq
2010-12-04, 02:11 PM
Let's see, for a while, we had:

–A blue thing that was the result of a wizard's experiments in combining dragons with elves in an attempt to build a better sorcerer (from whom to steal spell secrets). Often had butterfly wings with changing colors.

-A tree in heavy armor who never talked but only sang (that is, only spoke Buommi).

-A warforged who was a blatant ripoff of Inspector Gadget.

-A Deep Imaskar (dunno why) who rode around in an intelligent sandstorm named Dusty.

-This ridiculous half-fey thing (ALSO with butterfly wings) who existed basically solely to have more charisma than the sorcerer (and yet failed to do anything with it).

The group's actually gotten a lot more traditional as characters have swapped in and out, to a certain extent (I'm still playing a dwarf whose backstory combines Boatmurdered and "The Chrysanthemum Vow" from the Edo-period collection of ghost stories Tales of Moonlight and Rain, but hey, I just said more traditional).

Urpriest
2010-12-04, 02:41 PM
A Shadowrun game awhile back...

Troll Adept, a rising star in the world of underground fighting who collected TVs.
Caster-type with a specialty in turning various party members invisible, and the occasional sniping.
Japanese Elf, nominally the getaway driver but surprisingly was most active in seducing enemies with her feminine wiles. Inspired the catchphrase "nerf women" as a result.
Elemental Summoner with a tendency to go into debt to summon very big elementals inside office buildings that we're supposed to be infiltrating.
Drone Rigger who worshipped Dunkelzahn and believed that he would one day return to rule the world, and that he must prepare for his coming by making dragon-shaped drones as "Dunkelzahn's Children".

Moogleking
2010-12-04, 03:24 PM
It was a big group. We had several gnomes, a ranger, a dwarf fighter, a wizard (he didn't cast much though) and an elf. At one point the party got split. One group got a plant thingy and the other found some sort of goblin. Strange game, that one. See what I did thar?

Sure they weren't halflings :smalltongue:?

tahu88810
2010-12-04, 03:31 PM
Once upon a time I had plans for a fairly serious campaign set in a grim-dark steampunkish setting. The party consisted of...

Half-elf Rogue/Aristocrat who used a pistol that fired sunlight.
His Warforged Artificer Bodyguard, who was basically a mobile fortress covered in small constructs.
A former General for the side of Humanity turned Fighter/Ghoul who struggled with his urge to devour flesh and be evil.
An awakened sloth, the last of the world's druids, who cultivated mushrooms on his back, and owned a marijuana plantation, run by goblins, far to the south, where the necromantic-steam punk wars had yet to soil the land with profane magic.

DisgruntledDM
2010-12-04, 04:45 PM
1) Human dark jedi guardian, who was obsessed with the music of Dethklok

2) Minotaur fighter wielding two great falchions(?)

3) Bleach-esque dude with huge sword

4) Vampire assassin named "Simon Belmont"

5) Half-elf rogue named Bill.

CodeRed
2010-12-04, 04:46 PM
Worst offender:

14yr old kid in our group statted up a gay, pink bandaged wrapped Mummy using the level progression in Libris Mortis. The kid was straight so I don't understand what would possess him to play such a character but thats what he wanted so the DM let it happen, at least for two or three weeks. (In the end, the Mummy got retired as the kid playing him was clearly just using it as a way to gay-bash and enjoy terrible stereotypes.)

The Rose Dragon
2010-12-04, 04:50 PM
Well, there was:

A mortal swordsman.
A psychokinetic vortex of emotions.
Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.
A multibillionaire robotics expert with a power suit.
A shapeshifter who was forged from Pandora's Box.

That was one weird party.

Dr Bwaa
2010-12-04, 05:08 PM
[all 3.5]
I ran a plot-lite campaign for a party consisting of a scout and an Exalted (BoED kind) ninja. The scout spent all his time abusing his sizing longspear, and the ninja had maxed out the "skill" "smell evil".

I'm in a campaign where the party is a halfling chaos mage/barbarian (me), an aging green duskblade, and a contemplative who wants nothing more than to get into melee combat every encounter, but never stays conscious through the first round of it.

The party in another campaign is a pair of bounty hunters: one is a swashbuckler going into daring outlaw, and the other is a LE Paladin of Malar/Crusader going into RKV who specializes in fear effects. Our strategy in every situation consists of using diplomacy (swash) or intimidate (pally) to recruit as many NPC bodies as possible to throw at any problems we might encounter. It's very effective.

Flickerdart
2010-12-04, 05:14 PM
Ghost of a little girl focused on grappling and fear with ludicrous DC
Tauric Thri-kreen scorpion totemist with more natural attacks than fits on the sheet
Kyton swordsage that never failed a single Hide check
Half-dragon half-fey dinosaur
And so on and so forth

Best campaign ever.

Starbuck_II
2010-12-04, 05:29 PM
Half-dragon half-fey dinosaur
And so on and so forth

Best campaign ever.

Isn't that more like 1/3rd fey+ 1/3 Dragon? Otherwise it is 200% creature.

Incanur
2010-12-04, 05:31 PM
Wow. The groups I've DMed for seem reasonable by comparison. I prefer humans in general, though I can accept other races (even monstrous ones) with the right context.

Dr Bwaa
2010-12-04, 09:36 PM
Just remembered another funny party I DM'd for:

Mummified Half-Minotaur Goliath Monk (a specially-bred gladiator from eons long gone)
Twice-evolved Dark Shadow-walker Gravetouched Ghoul Harbinger with cannibalistic tendencies
Alcoholic Human Ghost Bard/Dirgesinger (with a cohort physically addicted to the presence of the undead)
Augmented Human (grown out of a tree) ex-druid Necromancer-type seeking to balance nature through the introduction of additional negative energy.

Note: all non-evil; mostly actually good-aligned.

Togo
2010-12-04, 09:51 PM
The most outrageous party I ever ran a game for was, by far and away, Adventuring Party plc.

The scene is set. The map has the dungeon in the forest clearly marked, the player have created first level characters. So, what do you do first?

"We want to find the land registry office."

??? Now I've heard horror stories about PCs in my time, but nothing comes close to sense of impending doom of a first level party starting off on their first real estate speculation deal.

"This is a medieval setting, it doesn't have government offices."

One player calmly pulls out a copy of an account of the land registration functions for 12th century King's Lynn (a small market town in England).

"It's fine if that kind of thing is just handled by the local lord's clerk or something, but if this is a feudal society, there has to be some means of establishing claim of freehold."

Ok, it turns out that they want to buy the dungeon. They figure that if they clean it out, the land will jump in value. I wanted to tell them they didn't have the money, but actually first level characters have quite a bit. Partcularly when they don't bother with 'useless' things like armour and weapons, and instead focus on important stuff. Like bribing local officials to help them out on a land deal. And priming the pump for what I later found out was basically a junk bond financing scheme.

"See anyone who contributes money to outfitting us now, gets a percentage of the profits we make on the expedition. Since they're also enabling the removal of a monster-infested menace from their own neighbourhood, they've got every reason to contribute a small amount."

but of course, they didn't use this money to outfit themselves properly. No, they used it to hire employees. Cooks, day labourers, carpenters, mule handlers.

Three weeks in, and they'd actually approached somewhere near the dungeon complex. They'd tried the junk bond financing, tried to register as much of the real estate rights as they could, and were now arguing about whether the employees should be included in the profit sharing scheme with a % bonus above the flat rate they were already paid if they were exposed to risk (i.e. didn't run away at the first sign of trouble). They'd settled their official incorporation as a high risk capital venture, sorted out the party voting rights to the corporation, appointed a secretary and CEO, and agreed on an AGM schedule.

I was getting scared, so I threw some random Kobolds at them.

Two of the six PCs had bothered with armour and weapons, but first the Kobolds had to survive something far worse. The Hard Sell.

"Are you happy with current employment as marauder/bandits? We'll give this free food and 10 silver apeice if you agree to listen to what we have to say. Don't worry, I'm unarmed, and you're more than wecolme to keep your weapons handy. Obviously, if anything violence should occur, my two heavily armoured colleagues there will have to become involved. Now, what would you say to an income several times greater than your current rate, at a greatly reduced risk?..."

Eventually they got to the actual dungeon, and went in. But they brought new meaning to the phrase 'dungeon crawl'.

"We'll trying moving forward about 15 feet, to the first junction, and then stopping there for the week."

"For the week?!"

"Sure, we need to establish a perimeter, shake loose some of the hirlings now that we have a room to stay in which is more secure.... Are you sure we can't find any skilled crossbowman to the actual fighting?"

"Yes! I'm sure. You're adventurers! You're supposed to do it yourself. "

I suppose, but it's both risky and wasteful. We really want to recruit as much as we can in the early stages so we can guard our supply lines back to the city. We've already found.. sorry, did you say a 10 foot wide corridor?"

"Yes..."

"10 times 4 times 15 - 600 square feet of dressed stone, and it looks like there will be a lot more. We'll need to send someone back to establish a market and lines of distribution...."


They were reasonably good optimisers -certainly enough that they didn't have much trouble with the monsters, and they'd literally employ bricklayers to brick up rooms that looked too tough for them to get through. But the most dangerous thing about them was that they rejected the entire idea of a adventuring party lock stock and barrel. To them, the point was to defeat the scenario, and sending in a few commandos on a desperate mission to wipe out the monsters was clearly an inefficient use of reasources.

In short, they were absolutely terrifying.

Seerow
2010-12-04, 10:00 PM
-A cat rogue/ranger, with favored enemy: Human
-A goldfish Wizard with a Water Elemental Familiar. The Goldfish lives inside the Water Elemental.
-A Warforged Monk, with the feat that allows ranged unarmed strikes, flavored as a Rocket punch.

Dalek-K
2010-12-04, 10:11 PM
-A cat rogue/ranger, with favored enemy: Human
-A goldfish Wizard with a Water Elemental Familiar. The Goldfish lives inside the Water Elemental.
-A Warforged Monk, with the feat that allows ranged unarmed strikes, flavored as a Rocket punch.

Please please tell me the goldfish player RP'ed the 3 second memory!

Seerow
2010-12-04, 10:28 PM
Please please tell me the goldfish player RP'ed the 3 second memory!

Nah, the Goldfish had a ridiculous amount of intelligence, like any player character caster. Think it was someone who got cursed and turned into one or something like that. I don't remember the details.

Keinnicht
2010-12-04, 10:29 PM
The Tank - Male Half-Ogre Barbarian 3/Fighter 2/Frenzied Berzerker 10/War Hulk 10

Monkeygripped a huge fullblade. Had a strength score in the 50s. Truly, just beyond appalling.

The Caster - Male Human Psion 25

Don't think this is ridiculous? It is when you have Psicrystal Containment and Epic Psionic Focus.

You can manifest two quickened powers, both with one other metapsionic feat on them to, without even using up a moment of your turn.


The Backup Tank - Male Human Fighter 10/Ranger 10/Master Thrower 5

I think he felt a little left out.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-12-04, 10:35 PM
This sort of topic always brings back good memories. Reposting this from a similar thread:


Several campaigns ago, everyone wanted to play templated monstrosities, so every PC was ridiculous. Two parties of five, and everyone started with incarnate construct ice beast+incarnate construct elder eidolon+incarnate construct effigy for -6 LA to fill up with templates, and there were some special allowances on top of that. Let's see if I can remember the exact builds...

Party the First
The Shadow. If there's an elemental template for it, he had it, plus paraelemental-ish ones like dustform. We nicknamed him the Shadow because he ended up with ridiculous Dex and could be really small and sneaky, so in-game the party didn't even know he was there half the time. Combat modus operandi? Using the smoke-elemental creature's "go into your lungs and kill you from the inside" abilities with his humongous claw damage.
The Achilles. He had wendigo, half-brass-golem, half-troll, and a few other templates that granted more immunities and resistances. It wasn't quite Emerald Legion-level invulnerability, but it was close. We called him Achilles because he had exactly one weakness that could be exploited occasionally without obvious DM fiat: a graymantle spell to suppress regeneration, made into a (Su) ability to bypass spell immunity (luckily one of the recurring villains was a dweomerkeeper, huh?). That didn't work often, but it struck fear into his heart when it did. Also, he wanted to ascend to become the God of Weasels; long story.
The Thrower. Tauric dire-something goliath with other brute-type templates on top. It was a basic hulking hurler build (the player was a fan of "Hulk smash!" barbarians) except that he counted as a Colossal quadruped with something like 60 Str and had levels in Bloodstorm Blade, so his weapon of choice was ricocheting houses.
The Zombipocalypse. This one was relatively straightforward: Greater Spawn of Kyuss and Half-Illithid, plus several applications of Evolved Undead. His mission was to voidmind-ify and spawn-of Kyuss-ify everything he came into contact with, and he had two spawnified elven children follow him around everywhere. Did I mention that this was an all-evil party?
The Arm-y. Phrenic Insectile Warforged with a thing for grafts. He'd cut the arms off every creature they killed and graft them onto himself, using generous interpretations of Multiweapon Fighting and Multiattack to get attacks with all of them.
Party the Second
The Host. A half-Daelkyr who went crazy with symbionts and the symbiotic creature template and then went into spellwarp sniper as a focused specialist evoker. He had fireball rays, lightning bolt rays, symbiont rays, beholder eye rays, and more.
The Pyro. Every fire-related template he could fit, he used. Half-red dragon, half-fire elemental, everything. He went focused specialist evoker/warlock/hellfire warlock/eldritch theurge and relied on hellfire blast and Searing Spell. Also had a Holocaust Disciple (Fire Avatar of Elemental Evil) cohort.
The Dragon. He had at least six half-dragon templates, one or two levels in every vaguely dragon-related class (he didn't take a second level in any class until 8th level), and was a dragonborn of Bahamut spellscale. He also acquired breath weapons from as many other places as he could. This party was very much the blasty type.
The Controller. Another multi-Evolved undead, this time a flaming frozen acidic skeleton. He went wizard/archivist/true necro with a few levels in sovereign speaker to pick up every domain that lets you rebuke creatures. He had enough minions to fill several monster manuals.
The Monk. Thri-kreen with every Cha-boosting template he could find, going into monk/wilder/fist of Zuoken, dipping sorcerer for Ascetic Mage, and ended up the party face. Ugliest sonofabitch you will ever meet, but every NPC forgot that once he opened his mouth mandibles.
So...yeah. :smallamused: Coming up with challenges for the parties (much less for the encounters for when they came together for a session) was...challenging.

Saint GoH
2010-12-04, 10:41 PM
Hrmmm... Strangest party?

Likely:


Elf beguiler DEAD-SET on convincing the party he was someone new everytime we started session. They believed him.
Dwarven drunken master played only after the player had multiple shots of alcohol.
Orc druid who forgot her animal companion EVERYWHERE.
Human Paladin of Tyranny taking levels in Blackguard while never actually telling the party. They didnt even question him. He said "I'm a paladin of..." and they said "doesnt matter lets go."
Human...ish Half Shade assassin who never spoke a word THE ENTIRE FREAKIN GAME.
And lastly, halfling rogue determined to get the assassin in bed.


Not so much "weird" as in race/class combinations, but holy heck I've never seen a party get in more trouble where ever they went.

Acanous
2010-12-04, 10:54 PM
The most outrageous party I ever ran a game for was, by far and away, Adventuring Party plc.

The scene is set. The map has the dungeon in the forest clearly marked, the player have created first level characters. So, what do you do first?

"We want to find the land registry office."

??? Now I've heard horror stories about PCs in my time, but nothing comes close to sense of impending doom of a first level party starting off on their first real estate speculation deal.

"This is a medieval setting, it doesn't have government offices."

One player calmly pulls out a copy of an account of the land registration functions for 12th century King's Lynn (a small market town in England).

"It's fine if that kind of thing is just handled by the local lord's clerk or something, but if this is a feudal society, there has to be some means of establishing claim of freehold."

Ok, it turns out that they want to buy the dungeon. They figure that if they clean it out, the land will jump in value. I wanted to tell them they didn't have the money, but actually first level characters have quite a bit. Partcularly when they don't bother with 'useless' things like armour and weapons, and instead focus on important stuff. Like bribing local officials to help them out on a land deal. And priming the pump for what I later found out was basically a junk bond financing scheme.

"See anyone who contributes money to outfitting us now, gets a percentage of the profits we make on the expedition. Since they're also enabling the removal of a monster-infested menace from their own neighbourhood, they've got every reason to contribute a small amount."

but of course, they didn't use this money to outfit themselves properly. No, they used it to hire employees. Cooks, day labourers, carpenters, mule handlers.

Three weeks in, and they'd actually approached somewhere near the dungeon complex. They'd tried the junk bond financing, tried to register as much of the real estate rights as they could, and were now arguing about whether the employees should be included in the profit sharing scheme with a % bonus above the flat rate they were already paid if they were exposed to risk (i.e. didn't run away at the first sign of trouble). They'd settled their official incorporation as a high risk capital venture, sorted out the party voting rights to the corporation, appointed a secretary and CEO, and agreed on an AGM schedule.

I was getting scared, so I threw some random Kobolds at them.

Two of the six PCs had bothered with armour and weapons, but first the Kobolds had to survive something far worse. The Hard Sell.

"Are you happy with current employment as marauder/bandits? We'll give this free food and 10 silver apeice if you agree to listen to what we have to say. Don't worry, I'm unarmed, and you're more than wecolme to keep your weapons handy. Obviously, if anything violence should occur, my two heavily armoured colleagues there will have to become involved. Now, what would you say to an income several times greater than your current rate, at a greatly reduced risk?..."

Eventually they got to the actual dungeon, and went in. But they brought new meaning to the phrase 'dungeon crawl'.

"We'll trying moving forward about 15 feet, to the first junction, and then stopping there for the week."

"For the week?!"

"Sure, we need to establish a perimeter, shake loose some of the hirlings now that we have a room to stay in which is more secure.... Are you sure we can't find any skilled crossbowman to the actual fighting?"

"Yes! I'm sure. You're adventurers! You're supposed to do it yourself. "

I suppose, but it's both risky and wasteful. We really want to recruit as much as we can in the early stages so we can guard our supply lines back to the city. We've already found.. sorry, did you say a 10 foot wide corridor?"

"Yes..."

"10 times 4 times 15 - 600 square feet of dressed stone, and it looks like there will be a lot more. We'll need to send someone back to establish a market and lines of distribution...."


They were reasonably good optimisers -certainly enough that they didn't have much trouble with the monsters, and they'd literally employ bricklayers to brick up rooms that looked too tough for them to get through. But the most dangerous thing about them was that they rejected the entire idea of a adventuring party lock stock and barrel. To them, the point was to defeat the scenario, and sending in a few commandos on a desperate mission to wipe out the monsters was clearly an inefficient use of reasources.

In short, they were absolutely terrifying.

This has to be made into a short on Youtube.

bannable
2010-12-04, 11:23 PM
This has to be made into a short on Youtube.

I can see it now. Title: The Party That Wasn't.

Yukitsu
2010-12-04, 11:41 PM
A little girl who was way older than she seems, who was an evil necromancer, a young woman who was a neutral necromancer, and an old necromancer, who was good. And a talking duck.

WeeFreeMen
2010-12-05, 12:17 AM
4 Anthropomorphic Man-Turtles and their Ratkin teacher
Was a 5 shot campaign for a d20 modern

Balain
2010-12-05, 12:36 AM
Once we had an entire party of Halfling pirates.

Enix18
2010-12-05, 01:09 AM
One absurd (but still very fun) party that I DM'd for focused heavily on the Book of Exalted Deeds:

— Augustus, the Human vow-of-poverty Monk. He was a 1000-year-old warrior from the sun sent down to save the Earth, and was overall very Dragon Ball Z-esque: he could burst into flames and fire blasts of energy from his hands, as well as jump insanely far and move insanely fast.

— Morgan Feng, the young Human Wizard. He was the official arch-mage of the Kingdom, serving as advisor to the king and head of the Arcane University. All this success had been achieved because he had a hat of disguise, which he used to look like the stereotypical old wizard and thus gain respect in the magical/academic community. He had plenty of other great magic items too: he replaced two of his fingers with a wand of fireball and a rod of wonder in the form of prosthetic digits. His last name came from the fact that he was orphaned at a young age and raised by an Orc couple who first trained him in the art of magic.

— Martel, the Sanctified Human Binder. He used to be a high ranking general of the BBEG's evil army, but he was redeems by a Cleric of Pelor and now lead the guards of the Imperial City. His signature weapon was an adamantine hammer about two times larger than he was.

— Ratsworth Xavier, the Human Wererat Cleric. No one knew what deity he worshiped, but he used the Spell Thematics feat (I believe that's what it was called) to make all of his spells darkness-based. Thus did he use the power of darkness to further the cause of good. Despite being chaotic good he acted very suspiciously, and he basically drove the Wizard paranoid.

— Smith Black, a Crusader and a powerful angel with swords for hands. He lived in the Kingdom under the guise of a blacksmith but revealed his true form and joined with the party when the evil army invaded. He also had the power to disintegrate people by flying into the air and diving directly into them.

Vizzerdrix
2010-12-05, 01:33 AM
Sure they weren't halflings :smalltongue:?

Halflings look and fluff isn't as close to "Hobbit" as the gnomes are.
Halfling=/=Hobbit. Gnome=Hobbit

EvilJames
2010-12-05, 01:43 AM
2nd ed Planescape game where everyone is from the prime.

Centaur fighter
Gnoll tribal shaman using modified rules from the shaman book (if you use this book you have to modify the rules otherwise all 3 shaman classes are virtually unplayable.)
Human specialty priest of an air goddess
Mongrelman rogue/mage using a modified optional chart from dragon mag to determine his racial makeup.

The mongrelman and the gnoll like to eat people. The other two party members like to not know that.

Psyren
2010-12-05, 01:52 AM
The most outrageous party I ever ran a game for was, by far and away, Adventuring Party plc.


The scene is set. The map has the dungeon in the forest clearly marked, the player have created first level characters. So, what do you do first?

"We want to find the land registry office."

??? Now I've heard horror stories about PCs in my time, but nothing comes close to sense of impending doom of a first level party starting off on their first real estate speculation deal.

"This is a medieval setting, it doesn't have government offices."

One player calmly pulls out a copy of an account of the land registration functions for 12th century King's Lynn (a small market town in England).

"It's fine if that kind of thing is just handled by the local lord's clerk or something, but if this is a feudal society, there has to be some means of establishing claim of freehold."

Ok, it turns out that they want to buy the dungeon. They figure that if they clean it out, the land will jump in value. I wanted to tell them they didn't have the money, but actually first level characters have quite a bit. Partcularly when they don't bother with 'useless' things like armour and weapons, and instead focus on important stuff. Like bribing local officials to help them out on a land deal. And priming the pump for what I later found out was basically a junk bond financing scheme.

"See anyone who contributes money to outfitting us now, gets a percentage of the profits we make on the expedition. Since they're also enabling the removal of a monster-infested menace from their own neighbourhood, they've got every reason to contribute a small amount."

but of course, they didn't use this money to outfit themselves properly. No, they used it to hire employees. Cooks, day labourers, carpenters, mule handlers.

Three weeks in, and they'd actually approached somewhere near the dungeon complex. They'd tried the junk bond financing, tried to register as much of the real estate rights as they could, and were now arguing about whether the employees should be included in the profit sharing scheme with a % bonus above the flat rate they were already paid if they were exposed to risk (i.e. didn't run away at the first sign of trouble). They'd settled their official incorporation as a high risk capital venture, sorted out the party voting rights to the corporation, appointed a secretary and CEO, and agreed on an AGM schedule.

I was getting scared, so I threw some random Kobolds at them.

Two of the six PCs had bothered with armour and weapons, but first the Kobolds had to survive something far worse. The Hard Sell.

"Are you happy with current employment as marauder/bandits? We'll give this free food and 10 silver apeice if you agree to listen to what we have to say. Don't worry, I'm unarmed, and you're more than wecolme to keep your weapons handy. Obviously, if anything violence should occur, my two heavily armoured colleagues there will have to become involved. Now, what would you say to an income several times greater than your current rate, at a greatly reduced risk?..."

Eventually they got to the actual dungeon, and went in. But they brought new meaning to the phrase 'dungeon crawl'.

"We'll trying moving forward about 15 feet, to the first junction, and then stopping there for the week."

"For the week?!"

"Sure, we need to establish a perimeter, shake loose some of the hirlings now that we have a room to stay in which is more secure.... Are you sure we can't find any skilled crossbowman to the actual fighting?"

"Yes! I'm sure. You're adventurers! You're supposed to do it yourself. "

I suppose, but it's both risky and wasteful. We really want to recruit as much as we can in the early stages so we can guard our supply lines back to the city. We've already found.. sorry, did you say a 10 foot wide corridor?"

"Yes..."

"10 times 4 times 15 - 600 square feet of dressed stone, and it looks like there will be a lot more. We'll need to send someone back to establish a market and lines of distribution...."


They were reasonably good optimisers -certainly enough that they didn't have much trouble with the monsters, and they'd literally employ bricklayers to brick up rooms that looked too tough for them to get through. But the most dangerous thing about them was that they rejected the entire idea of a adventuring party lock stock and barrel. To them, the point was to defeat the scenario, and sending in a few commandos on a desperate mission to wipe out the monsters was clearly an inefficient use of reasources.

In short, they were absolutely terrifying.

I lol'ed hard at this whole thing.

Stocks Fall, Everyone Buys?

mint
2010-12-05, 06:47 AM
The most outrageous party I ever ran a game for was, by far and away, Adventuring Party plc.

The scene is set. The map has the dungeon in the forest clearly marked, the player have created first level characters. So, what do you do first?

"We want to find the land registry office."

??? Now I've heard horror stories about PCs in my time, but nothing comes close to sense of impending doom of a first level party starting off on their first real estate speculation deal.

"This is a medieval setting, it doesn't have government offices."

One player calmly pulls out a copy of an account of the land registration functions for 12th century King's Lynn (a small market town in England).

"It's fine if that kind of thing is just handled by the local lord's clerk or something, but if this is a feudal society, there has to be some means of establishing claim of freehold."

Ok, it turns out that they want to buy the dungeon. They figure that if they clean it out, the land will jump in value. I wanted to tell them they didn't have the money, but actually first level characters have quite a bit. Partcularly when they don't bother with 'useless' things like armour and weapons, and instead focus on important stuff. Like bribing local officials to help them out on a land deal. And priming the pump for what I later found out was basically a junk bond financing scheme.

"See anyone who contributes money to outfitting us now, gets a percentage of the profits we make on the expedition. Since they're also enabling the removal of a monster-infested menace from their own neighbourhood, they've got every reason to contribute a small amount."

but of course, they didn't use this money to outfit themselves properly. No, they used it to hire employees. Cooks, day labourers, carpenters, mule handlers.

Three weeks in, and they'd actually approached somewhere near the dungeon complex. They'd tried the junk bond financing, tried to register as much of the real estate rights as they could, and were now arguing about whether the employees should be included in the profit sharing scheme with a % bonus above the flat rate they were already paid if they were exposed to risk (i.e. didn't run away at the first sign of trouble). They'd settled their official incorporation as a high risk capital venture, sorted out the party voting rights to the corporation, appointed a secretary and CEO, and agreed on an AGM schedule.

I was getting scared, so I threw some random Kobolds at them.

Two of the six PCs had bothered with armour and weapons, but first the Kobolds had to survive something far worse. The Hard Sell.

"Are you happy with current employment as marauder/bandits? We'll give this free food and 10 silver apeice if you agree to listen to what we have to say. Don't worry, I'm unarmed, and you're more than wecolme to keep your weapons handy. Obviously, if anything violence should occur, my two heavily armoured colleagues there will have to become involved. Now, what would you say to an income several times greater than your current rate, at a greatly reduced risk?..."

Eventually they got to the actual dungeon, and went in. But they brought new meaning to the phrase 'dungeon crawl'.

"We'll trying moving forward about 15 feet, to the first junction, and then stopping there for the week."

"For the week?!"

"Sure, we need to establish a perimeter, shake loose some of the hirlings now that we have a room to stay in which is more secure.... Are you sure we can't find any skilled crossbowman to the actual fighting?"

"Yes! I'm sure. You're adventurers! You're supposed to do it yourself. "

I suppose, but it's both risky and wasteful. We really want to recruit as much as we can in the early stages so we can guard our supply lines back to the city. We've already found.. sorry, did you say a 10 foot wide corridor?"

"Yes..."

"10 times 4 times 15 - 600 square feet of dressed stone, and it looks like there will be a lot more. We'll need to send someone back to establish a market and lines of distribution...."


They were reasonably good optimisers -certainly enough that they didn't have much trouble with the monsters, and they'd literally employ bricklayers to brick up rooms that looked too tough for them to get through. But the most dangerous thing about them was that they rejected the entire idea of a adventuring party lock stock and barrel. To them, the point was to defeat the scenario, and sending in a few commandos on a desperate mission to wipe out the monsters was clearly an inefficient use of reasources.

In short, they were absolutely terrifying.


omigoshomisgosh, was this a regular party or did you sit down to play some d&d with investment bankers?
i loved it.



An awakened sloth, the last of the world's druids, who cultivated mushrooms on his back, and owned a marijuana plantation, run by goblins, far to the south, where the necromantic-steam punk wars had yet to soil the land with profane magic.

want!