Some Advice for an Upcoming Game and a New DM

[Elric VIII]

I'm going to DM a game soon and I would like some advice on setup. In general, I want my players to play what they want, but I don't want to be put in the position of DMing for a party that is internally unbalaced.

Here's the scenario so far:


1.) I have one player that might play an Artificer. I will limit the amount of cost reducers that he will be able to take, but I'm not sure what to expect in terms of actual play. Can I expect an Artificer to break the WBL guidelines?

2.) Another player wants to play a Jermlaine Druid. The biggest downside of the Jermlaine is its large penalty to Str and Cha. This being the case, I will be enforcing weight limitations. However, I have a feeling that between packs on his AC and Wildshape that there will be no downsides. Is this a valid concern?

3.) I plan to allow a point-buy with more points avalable builds based mostly on lower tiers (Tier 1: 30, 2: 32, 3: 36, 4: 42). Would this be enough of a boost to make a difference?

4.) I will allow my players to have a +1 LA race/template, barring Feral, Mineral Warrior, Lolth Touched, Half Minotaur, Half Ogre, and Incarnate Construct. Are there any others about which I should worry?


Naturally, since I will be allowing my players as much freedom as I can when compiling their builds I will reserve the right to make modifications on the fly, if they become too unbalanced.

I will also be operating under the rule that I will be able to use anything they use (most likely at a higher level due to the extra RP exp that those NPCs will receive if I am forced to use them).

[Endarire]

See my sig.

[Elric VIII]

See my sig.

Well, that does help with general DM-ing, so thank you.

However, that does not really help my specific questions.

[Amnestic]

1) WBL is just that: A guideline. If you feel he's advancing too high in front of the party with his maaaaaad crafting skills, tone it down a bit, start throwing items people want to use (and not give to the Artificer to turn into crafting). I wouldn't worry too much about your first outing though. Play it as it goes.

2) My advice is to pretty much avoid encumberance rules unless it gets silly (no, you can't carry 45 sets of full plate). While, yes, with his Wildshaping his encumberance becomes negligible (valid) I wouldn't say it's a concern. Once they get a few levels they'll all likely pick up a Haversack for storage, so encumberance becomes even less of a big deal.

3) I dislike this sort of thinking, since the Tier system - as written - relies on all classes being played to "similar" levels of optimisation as I recall. That's all well and good for talking about classes in the abstract, but players at a table don't tend to do that. Even if they know how to make a class better (race choice, feat choice, whatever) they might simply not want those options preferring to play something more flavourful or fun to them.

The lower tiers (5/6 especially) will still likely suffer somewhat, but honestly I don't get what the big harrangue is about using ability score restrictions to 'level' the playing field unless you're playing in a confirmed group who always optimise their characters to the same degree - something I would consider, in my experience, more of a rarity than not.

4) None off the top of my head, except that Incarnate Construct is -2, not +1 o.O

[Elric VIII]

1) WBL is just that: A guideline. If you feel he's advancing too high in front of the party with his maaaaaad crafting skills, tone it down a bit, start throwing items people want to use (and not give to the Artificer to turn into crafting). I wouldn't worry too much about your first outing though. Play it as it goes.

2) My advice is to pretty much avoid encumberance rules unless it gets silly (no, you can't carry 45 sets of full plate). While, yes, with his Wildshaping his encumberance becomes negligible (valid) I wouldn't say it's a concern. Once they get a few levels they'll all likely pick up a Haversack for storage, so encumberance becomes even less of a big deal.

Are you advising me to trust my players? Is that safe?

3) I dislike this sort of thinking, since the Tier system - as written - relies on all classes being played to "similar" levels of optimisation as I recall. That's all well and good for talking about classes in the abstract, but players at a table don't tend to do that. Even if they know how to make a class better (race choice, feat choice, whatever) they might simply not want those options preferring to play something more flavourful or fun to them.

The lower tiers (5/6 especially) will still likely suffer somewhat, but honestly I don't get what the big harrangue is about using ability score restrictions to 'level' the playing field unless you're playing in a confirmed group who always optimise their characters to the same degree - something I would consider, in my experience, more of a rarity than not.

I would like to use point-buy, since my latest character has had abysmal stats thanks to rolling and I don't want to deal with that. However, I would like to help accomodate the classes that rely on multiple stats. I just figured that spelcasters only need one high stat, whereas melee and half-casters need 2-3.

4) None off the top of my head, except that Incarnate Construct is -2, not +1 o.O

Oh, you're right. I guess I should let them use it then.