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slexlollar89
2008-09-29, 01:12 PM
Hey all. I have a problem with my players.

Firstly they are all atatched to their characters (and frankly so am I) because they are awesome and very flavorful.

Secondly all of them are some form of undead. As a DM I love undead, but only against my players, not when they play them.

One of my players started as a deathless fighter, the other as a lich, but as the campaign went he third guy has become incorporeal (semi ghost-esque like sorta) and the fourth guy retired his previous guy for a vampire.

I don't mind that they are playing such caracters, but I really have no idea how to challenge them anymore... I really didn't plan on these things happeneing (I run very loose games and... I don't wanna say rely, but generally play off my PCs to create the campaign) and the two original players have lost their peticular flavor (they were juxtaposed characters, often fighting with eacother... wonderful RPing) having had their niche as baddass immortals duking it out filled by a ghost and a bloodsucker.

So how can I challenge the undead party sufficiently, or better yet, somehow make them un-undead?

NEO|Phyte
2008-09-29, 01:16 PM
Radiant Servant of Pelor? They'll become un-undead REAL quick. Specifically, as nice little piles of dust.

Starbuck_II
2008-09-29, 01:16 PM
Hey all. I have a problem with my players.

Firstly they are all atatched to their characters (and frankly so am I) because they are awesome and very flavorful.

Secondly all of them are some form of undead. As a DM I love undead, but only against my players, not when they play them.

One of my players started as a deathless fighter, the other as a lich, but as the campaign went he third guy has become incorporeal (semi ghost-esque like sorta) and the fourth guy retired his previous guy for a vampire.

I don't mind that they are playing such caracters, but I really have no idea how to challenge them anymore... I really didn't plan on these things happeneing (I run very loose games and... I don't wanna say rely, but generally play off my PCs to create the campaign) and the two original players have lost their peticular flavor (they were juxtaposed characters, often fighting with eacother... wonderful RPing) having had their niche as baddass immortals duking it out filled by a ghost and a bloodsucker.

So how can I challenge the undead party sufficiently, or better yet, somehow make them un-undead?

Sadly, when I read the title I thought this was something about a party of living poop.

But back to your problem:
Wait, what level are you playing? Lich is level 15 at minimum I think (LA + Requirements).
Vampire is Level 5 HD + LA (4 HD and lower are just Vampire Spawn)

Maybe the problem has more to do with that it is a high level game than undead?
If not, how does a Deathless stand a Vampire/Lich; aren't the second two evil?

Lycan 01
2008-09-29, 01:19 PM
Perhaps an anti-party composed of Paladins and Crusaders and whatnot, intent on wiping out such vile abominations? The group is unfairly powerful, and the result will more than likely be a TPK. Any survivor(s) may keep playing as they are, but the dead must remake a new character who is, for all intents and purposes, alive.

Or perhaps one of them is kidnapped by a cult that worships the undead or something, and he thinks they want to worship him. But in reality, its a guise for a crazy sorcerer who is in need of a guinea pig for his test on what the effects of Resurrection are on the undead. :smallamused:


Or they start to decompose. :smallbiggrin:

slexlollar89
2008-09-29, 01:27 PM
I had already used an anti-party as antagonists so the crusader idea is out (plus the deathless fighter IS a crusader... he just refuses to let death stop him).

The party is compossed of four characters that are 6-7 HD characters that I gave a free 2LA to (I wanted to mix things up). My exact words were: anything you want to play, play it unless the rules forbid... and even then, we might work something out

The lich guy had such a great character design and his backstorry was flawlessy magnificent so I actually slapped a 4LA on it, and had the extra 2 cut into his class level.

The campaign is homebrewed setting and deathless don't decompose (being animated by the energy of life). The lich guy hides his scent with herbs and Alter Self, the vamp has alternate form. Magic is heressy in this setting (except divine magic, but even then it's pushing it). Other than having every baddy tote gravestrike swords, I'm stumt.

also, the party of poop idea is already in the works thanks to Starbuck_II :smallsmile:

ocato
2008-09-29, 01:28 PM
I'm going to have to agree with one of the above ideas. When your players make a party of good guys, you throw evil at them. If they're all undead monsters, throw a bunch of clerics and paladins at them. A few Sun and Good domain clerics backing up some smite-happy paladins will make them reconsider their actions-- just make sure you don't throw chumps at them.

AstralFire
2008-09-29, 01:29 PM
Rather than destroying them with paladins, here's an option: you sit them down and say "hey guys, you know, since you turned undead I've had a hard time both challenging you and coming up with plothooks. Can we try a new campaign and give your old guys a fun send-off?"

Or you find another way to challenge and interest them, I just really don't advocate suddenly upping the ante on your party and potentially TPKing them just to change the composition.

slexlollar89
2008-09-29, 01:32 PM
AstralFire is right on, but the campaign isn't even half over... and all of us love the story (which is very rare for my group).

Oh yeah... only the lich is evil

AstralFire
2008-09-29, 01:38 PM
Can you say a bit more about your campaign? That might help us come up with ideas for challenges.

valadil
2008-09-29, 01:56 PM
Have you had someone try to resurrect them? I know that rez usually offers the soul a choice of whether or not they want to return, but you could write around that with plot. Maybe someone who they saved or worked for previously wants to rehire them again. I'm not sure where you'd go with this, but it could be a fun way to irritate them.

Dannoth
2008-09-29, 02:53 PM
When all else fails .... fight a god.
If they win ... immortalize them.

Allow them to worship their previous characters as gods in the next campaign you roll (one with maybe not so overpowered characters).

slexlollar89
2008-09-29, 03:33 PM
I should mention that they aren't really overpowered, they all just have special things that make them a cut above the average, and all of their "overpowerdness" has weaknesses for example the lich guy has a phylactery... he can't protect it very well he he he.

Okay the basic premise is that they (and many many others) are hunting an international fugitive wanted for unknown crimes. the person/group that brings him back gets 2 million gold and some kind of legal/economic benifit from the monarchy (this was purposefully loosly defined so it could work with any charatcer's story). The Fugitive's name is Arvis Vale.

The world is extremely religiously based off my homebrewed gods (all like the greek gods and most actively meddling with the material plane). A few gods were bound away in mythical ages because they either threatened to upset the divine plan, or tried to kill or harm another god (only mortals can be affected by the gods, direct action is very bad).

The party consist of:

1. LN deathless human fighter, worships the god of crusades and mission, died hunting the fugitive, but continued to live. his only memories are that he has a familly, woships the goddess Avar, and was killed by the Vale. His only ambition is to find and kill Vale, even to the piont of killing other party members.

2. NE elvish lich, worships the god of death, was a major and powerful noble, (OOC he was 11th lvl before campaign started, but lost levels after his lich ritual was interrupted), hunted heretics and made a huge name for himself, he has since lost all land and holdings, and barely has enough money to live on although his name carries a lot of weight. Vale is in possession of phylactery but there are several fake ones made to trick him.

3. CN human deathless vampire, 800 years old, angry at the gods for not stopping his transformation into vamp hood. seeks to end the god's dominion on earth by freeing a bound god

4. NE dark template elf shade (monsters of faeruhn) assassin. worships the god of trickery and disguise, was killed by a cursed weapon to disperse his soul, but his god allowed him to live on as a ghost-like version of himself.

As of now they are undead/deathless creatures so they all get these crazy immunities. I really don't like killing players, but the lich has died several times and might die and realize his phylactery was broke...

The deathless fighter really carries a lot of the RPing and motivates the other people into action...

the vamp player just started this character, his old one was a goliath monk pimp with rediculous stats and like a 28 str score. He hasn't really impacted the story much with his new guy and I'm loathe to off him seeing as ho he just started a new guy...

the assassin is trying to gethis body back by passing a god given test, and he has died a lot already...

Draken
2008-09-29, 04:45 PM
Throw Ragnorra at them.

Elder Evil of corrupt life, beautiful.

Devils_Advocate
2008-09-29, 05:09 PM
Okay, so you've got a bunch of super duper badass characters on your hands. Guys who are super hard to kill, and will come back from the dead even if you do kill them. So they can beat up pretty much anybody and take their stuff. Does that summarize the situation? I'm going to assume so, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Important question: Does this make them functionally omnipotent? Can they do absolutely anything they want to? Or are there still limits to their abilities? Are there things which they would like to accomplish, but which remain difficult for them to achieve?

The popular assumption, I gather, is that Player Characters function as superheroes. They go around beating up bad guys and foiling their nefarious schemes. The really powerful ones fight really powerful bad guys, because watching them beat up non-powerful bad guys would be boring, since it would be too easy for them. Their job is to react to and deal with threats; and that's pretty much all that they do.

But realistically, the effects of superpowerful good guys and bad guys do not exactly cancel each other out with little effect on the average man on the street. At very high levels of power, fights between beings capable of tossing planets around are likely to cause significant collateral damage. At lower levels, collateral damage will be lower. But that's just side-effects of interactions between the superpowered; their deliberate attempts to influence the populace will be even more potent. Given the resources needed to found one's own nation, some people will go ahead and do just that. Threatened by a world-domination-seeking supervillain, beings of lesser power will not plausibly just sit on their hands until someone of the villain's power level steps up to stop him. They'll try to organize some sort of defense. The most powerful amongst them will likely play important roles in both the organization and the defending. And so on.

And realistically, in the absence of supervillians, superheroes will not just sit around. They'll try to leverage their powers to try to correct problems like the existence of lots of lesser villains, or hunger and poverty, or injustice, or whatever. Possibly by getting lots of less powerful people to do what they say. Really high-level characters truly are godlike, in every sense of the term. The have superhuman abilities, to the point that it's easy for them to set up a power hierarchy with a bunch of followers underneath them. Depending on how they treat their inferiors, they may be admired and revered, or feared and avoided, but their power is unquestionable. They don't have to set up a power hierarchy, but they can. And if they're outright impressive enough, they may attract worshipers even if they don't try to.

In short, in a world where some beings have Phenomenal Cosmic Power, such beings are inevitably going to run things. This is not a problem that needs to be corrected. (Really, it isn't! You shouldn't give the town guard a bunch more levels to keep them on par with the PCs! A level 20 character ought to be able to slaughter his way through a town if he wants to. High-level characters aren't just supposed to roll a bunch more d6es and add way bigger numbers to things than low-level characters, they're actually supposed to be more powerful within the game world! That's not a glitch!) It is the natural way of things that as they advance in power, superpeople drift away from the roles of vigilante and crook and towards the role of ruler. If characters have advanced to the top tier of the local power hierarchy, it's very likely that they'll find themselves in something like a ruler role. Heck, in the real world, philanthropists found organizations to try change the world to their liking. There are people with enough power in the form of wealth that they do that as a hobby. There's no reason that the same basic principle wouldn't apply to people with power in the form of nigh-invulnerability, teleportation, laser eye beams, etc.

Of course, as you rise in power, you can search greater and greater regions for others of comparable power to your own. So you can do that, and possibly beat them up and take their stuff, because the most powerful beings do tend to have the best stuff. (Though note that at some point, "stuff" is likely to include things like rule over an empire.) And even if the PCs don't do this themselves, they might come into conflict with someone else who does. But that's not the only direction the story can go in. It can in fact progress to Man vs. Society or Man vs. Nature type stuff, if there aren't any antagonists who it isn't trivial to deal with on an individual level.

My understanding is that the game was originally designed with this sort of progression in mind. It was assumed that a character who kept rising in power without getting killed off would advance along the lines of warrior -> hero -> noble -> king -> emperor -> immortal, or something along those lines. I'm probably leaving out some steps. :smalltongue: Anyway, that makes more sense as a default assumption than the idea that the PCs just keep fighting tougher monsters.

TL;DR: You don't have to come up with opponents that they'd have a hard time beating up for PCs to have interesting things to do. Different forms of power can be exchanged for each other, especially in a free market economy. This opens up many new and exciting opportunities.

Magnor Criol
2008-09-29, 05:09 PM
This is an out-there idea, but it could work.

Get to a point in the plot where it makes sense to "pause" with those characters, and shift to another party. Have your players roll up some new characters (who aren't undead) and play as these guys for a while.

This party doesn't directly interact or maybe even know about the other party, and vice versa; in fact, it's probably better if they don't, so they can distance themselves that much further.

The actions of this party will have some sort of effect on the campaign, still, that will sort of "unlock" something for the main party to continue on hunting Vale. This way it's not just some random fling of a arc, it's gotta have an actual connection or else it'll feel wrong.

Doing this lets everyone shake things up a bit. They'll all roll new characters and get to try out differenc concepts or personas for a bit. You'll get to have a whole new party to challenge for a while. And when you're done with the little arc, when you go back to the old party, it'll seem fresher for the diversion, and maybe everyone (including you) will have new ideas.

As an added bonus, involving other, distant parties like this gives the whole story a more epic feel - people all over the world are involved, not just this one party of four. A much broader scope for a much more epic feel.

xPANCAKEx
2008-09-29, 05:17 PM
theres nothing wrong with chucking challenges at them that are 3 or 4 CR ahead of them if it keeps them on their toes

Vizen
2008-09-29, 05:41 PM
2 million gold is a pretty big reward, and its offered to anyone who gets him right? Perhaps you might want to play on that. Like Magnor Criol suggested, you could get them to roll up another party and have a new, but needed, story arc.

Or you can roll up a party of NPC's as well, consisting of basically anything (though it might be preferred if they have some advantages over your players, just for the challenge, right? :smallwink:) and invent a backstory for them, and a reason why they could want to get Vale, or the reward. The money offered makes a pretty big driving force to get Vale, no matter what. There's gotta be plenty of rivals for your PC's to overcome with the reward offered.

slexlollar89
2008-09-29, 07:51 PM
Mr. Devils_advocate, you are partly correct in your idea. I routinely throw opponents/encounters that are 3-4 above normal even when I don't give my players cool powers... I guess I'm just evil. However I usually don't do one on one fights, prefereing to use lots of weak enemies (I find that it gives a very cinematic feel, like zorro beating up Raphael's men or the LoTR gang beating up some orc mooks).

Escalating power is not something I tend to have in my games because I manage it well on both sides...

having said that, the PCs just are too... tough or immune to most things to pose a fun and exciting challenge. Traps and Sneak Attack is out... so is most fortitude...

Giving this more thought I keep coming back to casters, but I really don't doo that many casters (see my above posts). Other than using lots of clerical goodness/badness/neutralness, or just wizard my way out of it, do you guy at the playground have any ideas? I do have an opposed party lined up, but do you guys have any suggestions (not like builds or anything but just general ideas for classes or hathaveyou)?

And yeah 2mil is a lot, but frankly by the time the show is over and the curtain falls, the money won't matter :smallwink:

Mushroom Ninja
2008-09-29, 08:27 PM
Party poopers? Send in the Batmen!

Calinero
2008-09-29, 08:58 PM
I see three options.

1. Honesty with your players. If these characters are hard to work with, maybe you should tell them so.
If that doesn't work, then you want the game to be more challenging. That leaves you with two options.
2. You make what the players are up against harder to face. Clerics, paladins, things that are good against undead.
3. You weaken the players somehow. More likely to annoy them, but it might be feasible.

Thrawn183
2008-09-30, 07:32 AM
Disintegrate. You don't even need to use it. Just the threat of it should make the undeadies be substantially more cautious and circumspect. Just make sure that they know about it ahead of time, that some sorceror who's signature spell is disintegrate is in town.

The real question you need to ask yourself is, just how prepared is your world for this kind of thing. This affects individual preparation and societal. Do individual monster's/npc's know the PC's are coming and what they are? There are a lot of things individual mob's can do to protect themselves against undead if they know they are coming.

Divine intervention appears to happen frequently, but does it do so frequently in this manner? If so, I'd expect that somebody out there would be prepared for just this. Heck, there might even be international agreements that overrule petty squables.

Of course, then there's divine intervention from other gods (maybe whoever the BBEG worships).

The real key is secrecy. Its hard to counter an undead party because they are resistant to most of the strategies commonly used by NPC's. Once that secrecy is lost however... the NPC's should react accordingly.

sapphail
2008-09-30, 11:51 AM
Un-undeadification:

1. One or more of the party members manages to seriously annoy/offend the God of Death. The party (guilt by association) is given an option - lose their undead status, rendering them human/mortal until such time as they regain the god's favour (by completing an appropriately epic quest) or be ground to dust.

2. An NPC adventuring party has got their hands on an artifact/relic and uses it on the PCs, un-undeadifying them. Party must now hunt down the NPC party and attempt to reverse the process.

The advantage of both these scenarios is that they a) use Greater Powers to effect the change, meaning your plans aren't going to be nerfed by party spellcaster with a limited wish, b) they at least appear to present the PCs with a means of restoring their status, even if you've got no intention of letting that happen (underhanded, perhaps, but c'est la guerre), and c) you've got a plot/adventure hook to work off.

Nitpick: how the hell did an 11th level character attain lich status?

Edit: Nitpicking.

slexlollar89
2008-09-30, 05:16 PM
Well Sapphail, I said the players were 3rd level with 2LA. I like to have lotsa options for my players and I really get tired of what is in the books, so personally I love to homebrew stuff. Wanna play a demon at level 1? we'll work something out. Wanna be a lich? okay, but...

thats kind of the idea here, and the guy had such a neat story and character. I won't write it here in case my players read it, but if you really want to know it just PM me and I'll give to ya.

And offending he god of death is very...likely... thanks a lot.