A Different Way to D&D

[Deth Muncher]

I recently started a campaign to play with some folks over the summer, and I thought I'd do it a little differently than normal. The group of guys I've got playing are pretty well-known for being powergamers in our circles, or at least playing really ridiculous concepts, because the "normal" flow of D&D is too boring for them. (Personally, I think it's because most of them had gamed together in the same campaign for roughly 7 years, so going back to the normalcy of low-level D&D would have been the same as erasing your save data on a Final Fantasy game in terms of time wasted.)

So. Not wanting to deny them some high-leveled adventures, while still allowing for some lower leveled play (because I don't quite know what would challenge them), I proposed the following to them:

Your characters are former demigods. Former, because someone has stripped their powers - in this campaign, a gang of Ur-Priests who were up to no good started making trouble in the neighborhood and yoinked their divinity out from them. The former demigods, reasonably upset by this, are on a quest to regain their power, and stop the no-goodniks from misusing their power (i.e. taking over the world, etc). Character creation rules were as follows.

-Create a character at Level 8, 32 PB. No undead, no templates. (LA races okay.)
-Everyone has a D10 Hit Die, maxed, unless you're a Barbarian (which one guy is).
-Equipment is as follows: Plan a weapon with 200k of enhancements, plan armor with 200k of enhancements, and plan the rest of your (non-consumable) sundry items with another 200k. The 200k figure was picked because it's roughly what a +10 item costs. Also, we ended up using the MiC's rules for adding common enhancement bonuses onto other items to allow stat bonuses on top of equipment in random places.

(Now at this point, you're probably thinking "Whoa Deth Muncher, what are you smoking!?" But bear with me, it's not over.)

-Regardless of what +X to whatever stat bonus an item may give you, at the start of play, it is a +2. It increases by 1 up to its true value each time a character gains a level.
-Each weapon and armor starts play inert (sans stat bonuses), with the exception of one randomly determined property. Each time a level is gained, unlock another property on the item.
-Levels gained may be put toward templates or LA races - for example, one guy's original idea involved him being a half ogre. Instead of gaining class levels, he'd just put those levels into that race's LA. Also, in the event that a race or template has a LA higher than +1, that character may delay leveling up in order to gain the XP to reach that number (so if a race had a +2 LA, the player could save the level he would have gained and put it towards getting to that race). Also, I said undead races were okay at this point (I just didn't want anyone starting out undead, personal preference).

And that's it. If you're still confused, think of a videogame like God of War - you spend XP to learn different moves and such, as opposed to getting a static number of increases each level. It's the same sort of idea towards the weapons and things - each person KNOWS what their weapon can do, they just have to unlock its full potential. Thus far, it's worked beautifully - the only hiccup in the plan was a guy who wanted to do a VoP Monk, but spent his money on Skill Tomes. I allowed it, because I didn't want to be a jerk to the guy, and this is truly just for fun, so why not, and the way I worked it for him is that when he levels up, we'll roll randomly to see which skill gets its full bonus added to it, since he has no items.

I leave this here for you to try in your games, or if you have questions about it, feel free to ask me.

[limejuicepowder]

I recently started a campaign to play with some folks over the summer, and I thought I'd do it a little differently than normal. The group of guys I've got playing are pretty well-known for being powergamers in our circles, or at least playing really ridiculous concepts, because the "normal" flow of D&D is too boring for them. (Personally, I think it's because most of them had gamed together in the same campaign for roughly 7 years, so going back to the normalcy of low-level D&D would have been the same as erasing your save data on a Final Fantasy game in terms of time wasted.)

So. Not wanting to deny them some high-leveled adventures, while still allowing for some lower leveled play (because I don't quite know what would challenge them), I proposed the following to them:

Your characters are former demigods. Former, because someone has stripped their powers - in this campaign, a gang of Ur-Priests who were up to no good started making trouble in the neighborhood and yoinked their divinity out from them. The former demigods, reasonably upset by this, are on a quest to regain their power, and stop the no-goodniks from misusing their power (i.e. taking over the world, etc). Character creation rules were as follows.

-Create a character at Level 8, 32 PB. No undead, no templates. (LA races okay.)
-Everyone has a D10 Hit Die, maxed, unless you're a Barbarian (which one guy is).
-Equipment is as follows: Plan a weapon with 200k of enhancements, plan armor with 200k of enhancements, and plan the rest of your (non-consumable) sundry items with another 200k. The 200k figure was picked because it's roughly what a +10 item costs. Also, we ended up using the MiC's rules for adding common enhancement bonuses onto other items to allow stat bonuses on top of equipment in random places.

(Now at this point, you're probably thinking "Whoa Deth Muncher, what are you smoking!?" But bear with me, it's not over.)

-Regardless of what +X to whatever stat bonus an item may give you, at the start of play, it is a +2. It increases by 1 up to its true value each time a character gains a level.
-Each weapon and armor starts play inert (sans stat bonuses), with the exception of one randomly determined property. Each time a level is gained, unlock another property on the item.
-Levels gained may be put toward templates or LA races - for example, one guy's original idea involved him being a half ogre. Instead of gaining class levels, he'd just put those levels into that race's LA. Also, in the event that a race or template has a LA higher than +1, that character may delay leveling up in order to gain the XP to reach that number (so if a race had a +2 LA, the player could save the level he would have gained and put it towards getting to that race). Also, I said undead races were okay at this point (I just didn't want anyone starting out undead, personal preference).

And that's it. If you're still confused, think of a videogame like God of War - you spend XP to learn different moves and such, as opposed to getting a static number of increases each level. It's the same sort of idea towards the weapons and things - each person KNOWS what their weapon can do, they just have to unlock its full potential. Thus far, it's worked beautifully - the only hiccup in the plan was a guy who wanted to do a VoP Monk, but spent his money on Skill Tomes. I allowed it, because I didn't want to be a jerk to the guy, and this is truly just for fun, so why not, and the way I worked it for him is that when he levels up, we'll roll randomly to see which skill gets its full bonus added to it, since he has no items.

I leave this here for you to try in your games, or if you have questions about it, feel free to ask me.

It seems to me this would take some of the fun out of adventuring, since items are determined at the start of the game. I'm guessing from the setting description that all of the items are unique to the character and perhaps the magical enhancements are actually the character's divine power....am I right? What if one character lends his weapon/armor/item to another person? Does it matter if they are a low level person?

Why the HP change? Reflection of divine power?

I'm also puzzled as to why you would allow the group of powergamers to choose their items at creation; this is absolutely going to increase their ability to power game, as they are now guaranteed to have the perfect item for their build. Again, was this intentional?

Still though, I love the flavor of it, especially if the "magic" items are actually a representation of returning divine power (i.e., only useable by the PC because the item isn't special; it's just the character being a Boss). I'd play xD

[Urpriest]

You've got characters with 200k worth of items at level 8, and they're somewhat inclined to powergame. The only items you've put limits on are weapons, armor, and stat bonus items. Anything that gives a character access to high level spells will make 8th level challenges meaningless, which largely negates the point of starting at 8th level in the first place.

[Deth Muncher]

It seems to me this would take some of the fun out of adventuring, since items are determined at the start of the game. I'm guessing from the setting description that all of the items are unique to the character and perhaps the magical enhancements are actually the character's divine power....am I right? What if one character lends his weapon/armor/item to another person? Does it matter if they are a low level person?

Why the HP change? Reflection of divine power?

I'm also puzzled as to why you would allow the group of powergamers to choose their items at creation; this is absolutely going to increase their ability to power game, as they are now guaranteed to have the perfect item for their build. Again, was this intentional?

Still though, I love the flavor of it, especially if the "magic" items are actually a representation of returning divine power (i.e., only useable by the PC because the item isn't special; it's just the character being a Boss). I'd play xD

I don't forsee any of these guys lending their shiny things to anyone else, but I suppose in the event that they did, I'd let it work - if they did it willingly. If someone rolled up and stole their stuff, it probably wouldn't - they're tied to the essence of the PC, and so if they don't want some schmo using their ax, then said schmo isn't going to be able to use its full powers.

Yep, the HP change was because the characters were former demigods, and furthermore, without access to healing of basically any sort for the first few levels. I did kind of a Diablo III to them - divine characters, plummeting from Heaven with nothing on them but their clothes and weapon (they'd just better be glad I didn't say the weapon broke into three parts and you'd have to spend all of Act I finding them :P).

I let them choose, but then completely limited it. I mean, don't get me wrong, the weapons they have are nothing to sneeze at even right off the bat, but consider that for each of them, they only currently have one magic power active - each weapon is effectively a +1 weapon (one guy has a flaming pick, for example). Now, their power will obviously ratchet up each level as more abilities on their weapons unlock, but it was designed as a way to let them have what they want, at a pace I was okay with.

Also, given that this was supposed to fit roughly over a summer, I did design it as a way to kind of way to play the "Speed Chess" version of D&D - you know what you want, you know what your weapons do, it's just a matter of time before you make the moves that allow more options to you.


You've got characters with 200k worth of items at level 8, and they're somewhat inclined to powergame. The only items you've put limits on are weapons, armor, and stat bonus items. Anything that gives a character access to high level spells will make 8th level challenges meaningless, which largely negates the point of starting at 8th level in the first place.

See above. Also, none of them actually have access to high level spells - the caster of the group is still just a level 8 caster (Beguiler/Sandshaper), so while he does have access to a good deal of spells, he's not whipping out Meteor Storm. Or even Polymorph, honestly. None of them actually took any items that would let them use higher level spells - I think of the sundry items, the caster has a Staff of Power (which not all of the spells work on yet), the barbarian basically only has his ax and some strength boosting gear, the VoP monk has nothing except for stat tomes, and the weird guy might have a ring or two, but even so it's probably nothing more than an Invisibility ring.

EDIT: Just for clarification's sake, NONE of their items work until they get activated by a level up, so even if they had something that granted them access to a spell or what have you, it'd have to come back online first. Now, of course, a 9th level character having access to high level spells is no better than an 8th level character, but it just wasn't a problem that came up with us. If someone else were to use this method, they'd probably want to cap the spells, or have them scale with the character so that they couldn't activate a spell ability on an item that was more than half of their character level (i.e. a level 10 character could activate a level 5 spell, much like a sorceror).

[Arbane]

I have no idea how well it will be balanced in play, but it sounds like a fun idea. Let us know how it goes!

[SowZ]

I mean, things like this sound fun when the DM wants to do it. Just sounds like too much extra work to do it myself. I try and keep calculations and bookkeeping to a minimum but if it works for ya'll, great! I imagine it could be a fun way to do things.

[Deth Muncher]

I mean, things like this sound fun when the DM wants to do it. Just sounds like too much extra work to do it myself. I try and keep calculations and bookkeeping to a minimum but if it works for ya'll, great! I imagine it could be a fun way to do things.
Bookkeeping: It's less likely than you think! I actually do 0% of the bookkeeping - I had each of the players write their full arsenals out on their character sheets on the back, so that all I have to do is roll some dice, and then they add whatever unlocked to the front of their character sheet where it goes.


I have no idea how well it will be balanced in play, but it sounds like a fun idea. Let us know how it goes!

So far? Not too shabbily. I threw a bunch of ogre zombies at them, they did fine. Threw some fairly heavily optimized constructs at them, and...well, they crumpled like tin-foil. Still finding the balance here.