Dramiscius
2014-02-19, 03:17 AM
So im relatively new to dming (though i've been playing on and off for years) the long and the short of it is I recently begun the group on Rappan Athuk, after they got tpk'd near the end of book 3 Way of the Wicked (great AP).
Anyway, in RA there's not really any cities close by to use for aquiring magic items outside of what you come across while adventuring in the area. So one of my players want's to start building a settlement. I'm still debating on it as I haven't gotten into tackling that stuff (and frankly, im not really excited about the book keeping involved in it).
RP wise, there's a good reason why there's no cities near this place, the nearby outpost is a hole in the wall with probably less then 30-40 people.
Also, I kinda think the scarcity of magic gear is supposed to be part of this particular mega dungeons challenge.
So im still weighing telling them flat out no to the whole settlement building thing (at least on a large scale, if they want to turn a gnoll fort they conquered into a base of operations and hire some mercs to protect it that's perfectly fine). I think what's really going on (knowing the particular player/dm for a long time) is that he wants to get around having to take magic item creation feats. So im thinking outpost, ok, kingdom (unless they conquer the dungeon in its entirety, by which point the game would be over anyway).
Any opinions on the matter are welcome, I'd like to see how other people handle these (or might handle) these kinda situations.
On another note, slightly off topic but in relation to the same group, I think they learned that it's OK to run away from overwhelming odds after two of them got killed tangling with a dire bear at level 2, (a couple lucky x3 2h crits from the late barb allowed the druid who remained standing and wasn't out of spells yet to barely drop the thing, though she was none to happy about the whole debacle. She was the one who told them to run away before they went and woke it up :P).
I plan to deal with death into new characters as such, upon dying new characters come in with half your dead characters total xp. Originally I was contemplating having everyone come back in at level 1 if they died and couldn't get a rez, but realized that was going to turn into more of a headache for me (not to mention the dead players :P) as time progressed.
It's still harsh, but I feel it's a good middle ground.
Also trying to get the group to exercise a little more caution and use their heads a little more (as the dire bear incident above illustrates).
I did give them one dm fiat or magic wand wave if you will, which got used during the first combat, the party warpriest charged a gnoll with the bard, they both missed their attacks, and the gnoll critted the poor warpriest with a spear knocking him directly down to -17 I think.
Getting killed on one of the first combat rolls of a new game on a new character is imo pretty ****ty, so I felt fine about hand waving him not having got knocked quite to the point of death.
However the bear incident, was pure stupid, the druid said multiple times "guys, we need to run" before they engaged it, so I feel like letting the barbarian come back (even if the players are ok with it) sets the kind of precedent im trying to avoid.
This is supposed to be a challenging adventure / dungeon crawl. Not what they've been used to in the past "oh my guy died, that's ok ill just roll a new character the same level, but this time make sure he can handle what got me killed last time".
Anyway, in RA there's not really any cities close by to use for aquiring magic items outside of what you come across while adventuring in the area. So one of my players want's to start building a settlement. I'm still debating on it as I haven't gotten into tackling that stuff (and frankly, im not really excited about the book keeping involved in it).
RP wise, there's a good reason why there's no cities near this place, the nearby outpost is a hole in the wall with probably less then 30-40 people.
Also, I kinda think the scarcity of magic gear is supposed to be part of this particular mega dungeons challenge.
So im still weighing telling them flat out no to the whole settlement building thing (at least on a large scale, if they want to turn a gnoll fort they conquered into a base of operations and hire some mercs to protect it that's perfectly fine). I think what's really going on (knowing the particular player/dm for a long time) is that he wants to get around having to take magic item creation feats. So im thinking outpost, ok, kingdom (unless they conquer the dungeon in its entirety, by which point the game would be over anyway).
Any opinions on the matter are welcome, I'd like to see how other people handle these (or might handle) these kinda situations.
On another note, slightly off topic but in relation to the same group, I think they learned that it's OK to run away from overwhelming odds after two of them got killed tangling with a dire bear at level 2, (a couple lucky x3 2h crits from the late barb allowed the druid who remained standing and wasn't out of spells yet to barely drop the thing, though she was none to happy about the whole debacle. She was the one who told them to run away before they went and woke it up :P).
I plan to deal with death into new characters as such, upon dying new characters come in with half your dead characters total xp. Originally I was contemplating having everyone come back in at level 1 if they died and couldn't get a rez, but realized that was going to turn into more of a headache for me (not to mention the dead players :P) as time progressed.
It's still harsh, but I feel it's a good middle ground.
Also trying to get the group to exercise a little more caution and use their heads a little more (as the dire bear incident above illustrates).
I did give them one dm fiat or magic wand wave if you will, which got used during the first combat, the party warpriest charged a gnoll with the bard, they both missed their attacks, and the gnoll critted the poor warpriest with a spear knocking him directly down to -17 I think.
Getting killed on one of the first combat rolls of a new game on a new character is imo pretty ****ty, so I felt fine about hand waving him not having got knocked quite to the point of death.
However the bear incident, was pure stupid, the druid said multiple times "guys, we need to run" before they engaged it, so I feel like letting the barbarian come back (even if the players are ok with it) sets the kind of precedent im trying to avoid.
This is supposed to be a challenging adventure / dungeon crawl. Not what they've been used to in the past "oh my guy died, that's ok ill just roll a new character the same level, but this time make sure he can handle what got me killed last time".