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View Full Version : You Want To Do What? A DM's Guide to manage a Homebrew



mabriss lethe
2006-12-25, 02:32 AM
You want to do what?
A DM's guide to managing power levels in homebrew games:

Nearly every DM/GM/Storyteller/Evil Garden Gnome has, at one point or another, let the power level of a game run wild. It's hard to know when to stop. After a while, There are so many magic items, custom spells and neat tricks that it gets difficult to find a proper challenge for your players. There are ways to circumvent this from the beginning, ways to drag a campaign back on track, and ways to keep your players stuck to their seats the entire time.

Set your ground rules
This is your world. You get final say in what you will or will not allow. A good way to find your threshold is to rummage through the homebrew forums. Look at posts from players to get a good idea what other people are trying to pull off. Find examples of a broad range of things. Imagine your players submitting these ideas to you for approval. You'll find yourself saying things like "Yeah, that's a good idea." "Hmm. I'm not so sure about that. maybe if I toned this down a bit over here." or "What!? Who in their right mind would allow a abomination like that into the game!?" After a few hours of browsing, you should have a pretty good idea where you draw your lines. Copy down a few examples for benchmarks when your players come a-knocking with a fist full of papers they want you to read.

TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
As a DM I'm pretty comfortable with a high power level game. I can generally keep things in line by remembering one rule: Power, whether temporal or mystical, has a price. The greater the power, the greater the price. The currency in question isn't just the Gold and Experience players will lay down for neat new toys. The price is every action and reaction taken because this new toy was introduced into the game. Let your players delve deep into unknown wells of magical power, let them broker alliances with foreign armies. Keep in mind that power attracts other powers like iron filings to a lodestone. Things will escalate when a new army or archmage enters the game. New alliances will be forged and old ones broken. Rivals and assassins will crawl out of the woodwork from those who were once friend and foe. Use this to your advantage. Make it abundantly clear to the players what can happen to a character who bites off more than he can chew. You just don't have to make it happen to them the first time. That's what those uppity NPCs are for.

Mechanical and Material Prices:
Simply put, these are the basic rules of commerce in the game. Widget A costs X amount of Gold to purchase outright, Y amount of experience to learn, or requires a Skill check of Z to build for yourself. Maintaining control here is pretty straightforward. Limit the availability of objects you don't want abused. Make it more difficult to afford in whatever currency needs to be paid. Limit access to facilities that players can use to produce items on their own. Make exotic spell books and material components scarce enough to price them into a sellers market.

Social Prices:
Social Prices are nonmaterial costs that characters pay for their new toys. Who will covet this new expression of power for themselves? Who will try to subvert it? Do the local authorities consider its possession contraband? What will religious institutions think of this new development? Sometimes possession of great power attracts more trouble than its worth. If players start abusing their power, you can reign them in using in games NPC factions like a City Watch, a Royal Army, a brotherhood of thieves, Temples and the like to keep a power hungry players grasp on things uncertain. Players tend to adopt subtler means when every Tom, "Rick", and Harry have an eye out for the new prize. Give your players enough rope to hang themselves. The more power they want, the more power they get. and the more powerful the enemies they acquire. This tactic is best done early in a game. Once they've slain all the dragons and rivaled the gods, then this tactic is usually a bit too late. Ed Greenwood's Spellfire novels are great examples of social and factional pressures used to control a runaway power.

Metaphysical Prices:
This mostly applies to the magical side of things. If a character bargains his soul for power, then he had better realize that at some point he'll have to pay up. Plague the character with nightmares for weeks after he torches a village. If the character wants some super powerful weapon or spell, give it to him. Then add some terrible side effect or curse commiserate to the value of the power he's gained. This will keep the more devastating powers limited to moments of dire need. It's hard to justify using a spell that will awaken a legion of the dead if it leaves you little more than a living zombie yourself after you cast it. This is the tack I've tried to use in my recent posts involving the Wer Loga PrC and the Accursed feats. Sure, my posts so far have been in pretty broad and vague strokes. They're in the form of unfinished ideas and they grant, lets face it, potentially unbalancing levels of power. In return, they make the character a social leper and as prone to harm a friend as an enemy in the process in the case of the Accursed and nervous about unleashing the full level of their power in the case of the Wer Loga. I've found that taking steps like these often brings things back into balance. It gives the players a healthy dose of respect for what would otherwise be a potential munchkin buffet.

Deferred Prices:
These are costs that the player has yet to pay for power currently in his posession. He might be indebted financially to someone for helping supply an army on the march. He might owe favors to someone important. This might be a curse on an item in his possession that has yet to manifest. This is where you give your players enough rope to hang themselves. Let them taste a little "too good to be true" and see what they do with it. If they're relatively responsible with it, then so be it, gradually let the cost be known. Be a little more free with relevant information and give them time to get accustomed to the power and its incumbent responsibilities. If they run wild with it, jerk them up short in a hurry. Throw the full cost of their new toy full into their teeth a crucial moment. If a character wakes up with hair falling out like a mangy dog and blisters on his hands the morning after using some powerful magical item, then he'll know that he might need to be more careful in the future.


Too Much of a Good Thing.
The trick is to be cruel in a kind way. If you do something bad as a "Price" do it in such a way as to make it fun for players. The "Too much of a good thing " approach can be much more fun for player and DM alike than many other techniques. I remember a good example from the old L5R core book. They were talking about curses. Say some NPC curses the half elven lady killer bard. You could curse him to be ugly, his face covered in lumpy boils. That's not much fun though. A more ironic curse would be to make him totally irresistible to the opposite gender. It gets to be pretty amusing when he's being swarmed by a horde of groupies every time he tries to sneak out of his room at the inn. Absurd and ironic should be your keywords here.


A parting example:
If you've seen the Neverwhere Miniseries, then think of the scene where the Marquis trades Bley's reel for a subway schedule. This is a perfect example of how a DM can control a potentially unbalancing Not only is this a good example of social and material prices,as it involves a direct trade of currency in the form of barter, it also goes a long way to illustrate differed prices, since the poor musician now owes the Marquis a favor in return because the knowledge of the reel is worth more than a copy of a train schedule. He learns that it's dangerous to use the reel excessively. (too much of a good thing) Where once it charmed the coins out of people's pockets, it now causes them to grab up their change and hurl it in his face. Talk about being nickled and dimed to death...

I hope this is a help to someone. It's helped me just by getting it all organized in some format other than my fuzzy head.