Your thoughts on this.

[Throne12]

So you're a DM you tell your players. Hey guys this campaign is going to be about. Y'all are hired to go throught a portal to a new land explore it and help the city that being built around the portal. You give your players stats. For them to use and let them creature characters. So next week we can just straight into game.

So next week comes and you have a party that looks like this.

1. A young female Asamar blood cleric that has a demon living inside her blood. It give her the divine power. She don't have much personality but the demon can hangs out behind her. Like a puppet made of blood that's talking over her shoulder. (Think Crona from soul eater). He use the demon as meta Knowledge on any demon or devil ect.

2. Then you a small talking monkey adj wizard name Merlin. That was a wizards familiar but thought magic has became a real boy.

3. A STR based oath breaker paladin kobolt. The worships some drakolich.

4. Then we around out are party with a human Artificer named Hunter. He's trying to play ironman. He even uses a iron man mini.


Now I'm not complaining I'm just asking for advice to how to handle all this.

[Aett_Thorn]

What exactly are you looking for thoughts on? Party makeup? Seems odd and un-optimized, but it seems like you’ve got a fairly well-rounded party.

[Coffee_Dragon]

Maybe just jump straight into the game as intended, and later on intersperse some flashbacks to play out how these characters came to form a group and decide/agree/be conscripted/conspire to help out a portal town?

[Throne12]

Sorry my problem (for lack of a better word) is with the blood cleric. He using the demon for meta Knowledge. I last night game they were fighting a Devourer. So with out saying anything to me he looked up it stat block and told the party what it's Resistance are.

Then it might just be a me problem but what happen to just playing a elf wizard or a halfling fighter. No everyone wants to be a epic, Awesome most Legendary chosion one Senpai cool Mysteriousbad boy character.

Why do all characters be special snowflake Mary Sue. That has all this back story to were they know everything. Oh hey that's a blank and don't use blank on it. It Resistant to that.

[Coffee_Dragon]

Did you try talking?

[Coec]

The blood cleric is using player knowledge of characters knowledge. He's am assimar (has celestial blood coursing through his veins) with a demon who provides divine(?) magic for his spells? All that being questionable albeit creativeness aside, I would still have him roll for knowledge religion or arcane checks to see is thay demon really knows or remembers anything about particular devils or demons. Or possibly an insight check to believe him.

As to what happened to the elf wizard halfling rogue esq characters I would place that 90% blame on you as a DM. Nothing horribly wrong with your players choices mechanically so to speak butt of you had an expectation of humans and dwarves and elves then you should have expressed that to them. Sounds like after the stats you have them free rein to build their characters. The players could have been better att communicating what they wanted and could have asked your thoughts and would this be okay so they get the 10% blame.

[DarkKnightJin]

Even if I get free reign from a DM to make a character.. I always check with them to see if the idea I've come up with fits with what they had in mind for the campaign.

And I always ask which sources we can use, getting advance permission to use anything that isn't officially published WotC stuff.

[ImproperJustice]

Even if I get free reign from a DM to make a character.. I always check with them to see if the idea I've come up with fits with what they had in mind for the campaign.

And I always ask which sources we can use, getting advance permission to use anything that isn't officially published WotC stuff.

This.
Our GM is very permissive about character creation but he has the final say on what is and is not ok, and requests before we play to get a copy of our character sheets.
Most of us use a mobile app that keeps everything in line and easy for him to reference during play.

There is some Heavy Mary Sue/Snowflake business here which is odd since players usually check with a GM beforehand to bring that stuff in.

I also forsee this game going a different direction than what you intend as most of the PCs seem self serving and evil, and the tone sounds centered around benevolent exploration.

You may need to consider a “reset” and session 0.5 to try and get everyone on the same page.
GMing is a lot of work. You should get to have fun with the PCs too.

Also, whispering demon meta knowledge is cheating. Cut it out.

[Throne12]

The blood cleric is using player knowledge of characters knowledge. He's am assimar (has celestial blood coursing through his veins) with a demon who provides divine(?) magic for his spells? All that being questionable albeit creativeness aside, I would still have him roll for knowledge religion or arcane checks to see is thay demon really knows or remembers anything about particular devils or demons. Or possibly an insight check to believe him.

As to what happened to the elf wizard halfling rogue esq characters I would place that 90% blame on you as a DM. Nothing horribly wrong with your players choices mechanically so to speak butt of you had an expectation of humans and dwarves and elves then you should have expressed that to them. Sounds like after the stats you have them free rein to build their characters. The players could have been better att communicating what they wanted and could have asked your thoughts and would this be okay so they get the 10% blame.

The snowflake thing is a Personal problem. I just don't find the hole special snowflake and Mary sue characters entertaining. I don't want to tell a player no if it's not breaking the game. But I personally have a hard time with special characters like that. And it what my players like. The player playing the monkey. He's last character was a blind arcane archer (daredevil) like character. The blood cleric last character was a lizardman that was a elf but was cursed to be a lizardman and he had a split personality. He should of been put into a crazy house. his personality was the Insane. The kobolt player makes normal characters. And the Artificer player is just a Imature high schooler but I can Handel him. Being as he's my brother.

So my quesstion is how do you Handel your self in A situation when I find myself in. They arnt breaking the game is just there characters that bother me.

[Coec]

The snowflake thing is a Personal problem. I just don't find the hole special snowflake and Mary sue characters entertaining. I don't want to tell a player no if it's not breaking the game. But I personally have a hard time with special characters like that. And it what my players like. The player playing the monkey. He's last character was a blind arcane archer (daredevil) like character. The blood cleric last character was a lizardman that was a elf but was cursed to be a lizardman and he had a split personality. He should of been put into a crazy house. his personality was the Insane. The kobolt player makes normal characters. And the Artificer player is just a Imature high schooler but I can Handel him. Being as he's my brother.

So my quesstion is how do you Handel your self in A situation when I find myself in. They arnt breaking the game is just there characters that bother me.

Imho it's breaking the game when a player uses player knowledge and not his characters knowledge. In the example you have of the demon telling the character all about the devourer without any knowledge checks to back them up becomes payer knowledge and breaks the fight because now everyone knows how to kill the beast.

If you want to fix that aspect, talk to the player. If it continues start changing the encounters maybe they come across trolls. Oh they're vulnerable to fire, use fire attacks. Sorry the trolls have a ring of fire resistance on or maybe they drank of potion of fire resistance.

Its not without saying that intelligent creatures can't try to reduce their weaknesses or even compensate for them. We do, we wear armor and buy magic items.

If the problem is the Mary-Sue snowflake then that should be discussed during character creation time. I would not have allowed the demon assamir combo without some penalties. Luke maybe the demon is trying to possess the person and it's because of the power of the divine within your blood that's holds him at bay. But there's still a chance he could take over at which point you control him like a demon until he reassert his control over his own body.

[zinycor]

So my quesstion is how do you Handel your self in A situation when I find myself in. They arnt breaking the game is just there characters that bother me.

If the aasimar player is looking at the monster stats and resistances, he is indeed breaking your game, unless you heavily change change your monster in such a way that they no longer are the monster on the books, which is always an option.

[LordEntrails]

The blood cleric is using player knowledge of characters knowledge. ...
Coec is right on this.

Besides, how did the player know what type of demon it was? Did you tell him? Don't, never give a racial name/type to an opponent, just describe it. 'it's a small reptile like humanoid' (kobold). And, if the player uses meta-knowledge, change it, describe it like one type of devil and use the stats of a different devil.

Of course, I would just start by talking to the players. "Hey, please don't look up monster stats or use your own knowledge. Character knowledge is defined by their background and skills, not by what you personally know. If you want to use such meta knowledge, I will do what I have to so your knowledge is useless or actually harmful to your characters."

Instead of vulnerability to fire, make them resistant to fire. Change their damage types etc. simple changes you can adapt on the fly.

[Foxhound438]

What exactly are you looking for thoughts on? Party makeup? Seems odd and un-optimized, but it seems like you’ve got a fairly well-rounded party.

it looks to me like a hodgepodge of characters that are ill-fitted to the campaign. Evil cleric, a monkey (just why?), evil paladin, and seemingly flat media rip-off arteficier. The monkey and iron man are a bit forgivable even if inherently annoying, but a bunch of characters that are apt to mess with the flow of the campaign by doing "vague evil stuff" in the middle of everything could throw a wrench in whatever plans the GM had ahead of time. Yes, you can kind of plan around it a bit, but when the characters seem so obviously evil as they do I wouldn't doubt that they do something to alienate the portal town in the first session, meaning the whole campaign's premise is ignored and the game is likely to become a train wreck. And no, that wouldn't be poor GM flexibility if that happened, it would be the players who undermined the premise.