Oko and Qailee
2015-09-17, 10:38 AM
Alright, so this is a bit of a long explanation.
I currently DM in a group on friday, it's an evil campaign where the players are all level 8 to 9. I'm relatively new to the group, but everyone has said nothing but good stuff about the campaign and I think the campaign is going pretty well minus a near TPK a session ago (it was odd). Currently the campaign has players (arbitrary labels inc):
A - Petal Warlock
B - Human Warblade
C - Orc Ubercharger
D - Kobold Rogue
Now, due to some scheduling issues and a bunch of other things, I'm going to moving to DMing on Sundays, and player A will be DMing a new campaign on Fridays (which I will most likely not be able to make time for). The thing is, my player group will consist of:
Player A
and 3 to 4 different players (E,F,G,H).
There is nothing wrong with this group, in fact I actually like them a bit more than the previous players (and I liked them quite a bit too, there's too many nice people here) honestly and I've already played in a campaign with all but one of them and we're also all friends on a competitive team. The complication comes with the nature of the new vs the old campaign.
Old campaign - levels 8,9 Evil Campaign. The party was following the orders of some BBEG in order to take out the DnD equivalent of the Justice League, eventually they would find out that half the Justice League was actually evil and that their employer was actually good, it's complicated, but it works out.
New Campaign - There are two problems here, the first is that the group would prefer a good campaign (I'm 99% sure of this) and the second is that player E is new to DnD completely. I could just start a brand new campaign, but player A reaaaaally likes his current character and my current setting, he said he is willing to in character justify his character working with good people.
Now the Evil to Good transition I have mostly figured out, basically I'm going to have an epic "fecal material hits the fan" session on Friday that ends up with Player A sort of fleeing the Justice League and finding out that half of them are corrupt and that the danger is far greater than he imagined. The other players will of course be in character separate from her by the end, but everyone will have a cool boss fight together first and the other characters story will be left open ended (I'm not gonna mess with their stories after unless they're ok with it). The start of the new campaign would involve Player A meeting Players E to F, and for some reason they are the only ones who can help. If you guys have any feedback on this general idea, let me know, you guys have been super helpful to me in the past. I think I have a solid idea and it just needs a bit of fleshing out.
The biggest question I have is "what should I do about starting wealth and level?", I'm really kinda opposed to a brand new player starting high level, since he is new he might not know or enjoy building a 9th level character. It's not that I doubt him figuring stuff out or anything, but I just don't want to overwhelm him, and a lot of stuff in DnD aren't always obvious as to how good they are. In the end, I don't want him to build a 9th level character, because I'm afraid he'll build something he wont have fun with in practice simply because he isn't familiar enough with the game to do a 9th level build.
Now I could put everyone at level 1-3, but then I have to tell Player A to de-level.... a lot, and he really likes that character (both for mechanics and personality) and I'm afraid that deleveling the character will make him feel like the feel of the character is somewhat gone. So if possible I'd like to keep Player A the same level. On the other hand, his character is fairly strong, being much stronger than the other players in the Evil campaign, let alone level 1 players in a new campaign, this means I'm afraid of him completely controlling the game for a while and making the other players get bored.
So currently I've thought of the following:
1) Delevel Player A (problems are above)
2) Start level 9 anyway (ditto)
3) Delevel player A to level 5 and make the others start level 3, or something to that effect.
4) Let Player A remain level 9, let other players start level 9, give player E "Level 9 experience" but start at level 1, he can then use that exp to "buy" a level whenever he feels ready to level up. Player E would receive Plot Importance and I would intentionally "split" him from fights.
Thoughts? I'm somewhat leaning between 3 + 4
I currently DM in a group on friday, it's an evil campaign where the players are all level 8 to 9. I'm relatively new to the group, but everyone has said nothing but good stuff about the campaign and I think the campaign is going pretty well minus a near TPK a session ago (it was odd). Currently the campaign has players (arbitrary labels inc):
A - Petal Warlock
B - Human Warblade
C - Orc Ubercharger
D - Kobold Rogue
Now, due to some scheduling issues and a bunch of other things, I'm going to moving to DMing on Sundays, and player A will be DMing a new campaign on Fridays (which I will most likely not be able to make time for). The thing is, my player group will consist of:
Player A
and 3 to 4 different players (E,F,G,H).
There is nothing wrong with this group, in fact I actually like them a bit more than the previous players (and I liked them quite a bit too, there's too many nice people here) honestly and I've already played in a campaign with all but one of them and we're also all friends on a competitive team. The complication comes with the nature of the new vs the old campaign.
Old campaign - levels 8,9 Evil Campaign. The party was following the orders of some BBEG in order to take out the DnD equivalent of the Justice League, eventually they would find out that half the Justice League was actually evil and that their employer was actually good, it's complicated, but it works out.
New Campaign - There are two problems here, the first is that the group would prefer a good campaign (I'm 99% sure of this) and the second is that player E is new to DnD completely. I could just start a brand new campaign, but player A reaaaaally likes his current character and my current setting, he said he is willing to in character justify his character working with good people.
Now the Evil to Good transition I have mostly figured out, basically I'm going to have an epic "fecal material hits the fan" session on Friday that ends up with Player A sort of fleeing the Justice League and finding out that half of them are corrupt and that the danger is far greater than he imagined. The other players will of course be in character separate from her by the end, but everyone will have a cool boss fight together first and the other characters story will be left open ended (I'm not gonna mess with their stories after unless they're ok with it). The start of the new campaign would involve Player A meeting Players E to F, and for some reason they are the only ones who can help. If you guys have any feedback on this general idea, let me know, you guys have been super helpful to me in the past. I think I have a solid idea and it just needs a bit of fleshing out.
The biggest question I have is "what should I do about starting wealth and level?", I'm really kinda opposed to a brand new player starting high level, since he is new he might not know or enjoy building a 9th level character. It's not that I doubt him figuring stuff out or anything, but I just don't want to overwhelm him, and a lot of stuff in DnD aren't always obvious as to how good they are. In the end, I don't want him to build a 9th level character, because I'm afraid he'll build something he wont have fun with in practice simply because he isn't familiar enough with the game to do a 9th level build.
Now I could put everyone at level 1-3, but then I have to tell Player A to de-level.... a lot, and he really likes that character (both for mechanics and personality) and I'm afraid that deleveling the character will make him feel like the feel of the character is somewhat gone. So if possible I'd like to keep Player A the same level. On the other hand, his character is fairly strong, being much stronger than the other players in the Evil campaign, let alone level 1 players in a new campaign, this means I'm afraid of him completely controlling the game for a while and making the other players get bored.
So currently I've thought of the following:
1) Delevel Player A (problems are above)
2) Start level 9 anyway (ditto)
3) Delevel player A to level 5 and make the others start level 3, or something to that effect.
4) Let Player A remain level 9, let other players start level 9, give player E "Level 9 experience" but start at level 1, he can then use that exp to "buy" a level whenever he feels ready to level up. Player E would receive Plot Importance and I would intentionally "split" him from fights.
Thoughts? I'm somewhat leaning between 3 + 4