lsfreak
2009-07-01, 06:15 PM
First, walloftextcritsyoufordead. Thanks to anyone who spends the time to read and respond. Also, this is 3.5e, and every source is open, including homebrew if I okay it.
I'm going to start DM'ing my first game some time in the next month, most likely. To preface, I joined this group about 6 months ago, while they've known each other for... 10 or 15 years, so I'm the newbie. I frequent the boards and hold to the mindset that good roleplaying means good optimization, and that you start with a concept and build your classes around that, and if you end up with 10 classes over 20 levels, great, you've hopefully got a powerful character and unavoidably have some excellent background. I never make a character without building it to level 20, adjusting if needed as the campaign goes on.
The other players... do not. One of the characters I'm playing currently is a rogue4/fighter1/assassin5/swordsage1, which I'm pretty sure is more classes than they've ever seen on a single character. My warblade smashes encounters (well, at least individual enemies) with the simple combination of Power Attack and a 15-20 crit range, and the group seems reluctant to accept that's normal melee stuff and not "overpowered warblade stuff." I'm probably going to have to threshold myself so that the guys they come up against don't smash them.
I don't want to push them into too much because I already convinced them to accept 4 pages of houserules (mostly to bring melee up; shields are better, TWF'ing is one feat, etc). They like leveling a lot ("if you're making everything more powerful, why not just start us at 10 so we can do all kinds of cool stuff?"), and for the most part tend to be pretty unattached to their characters (oh well he died, pull out another sheet). They also seem to like to build classes, rather than concepts, though one the guys is definitely excused because he lacks any books except the PHB and lacks the internet to obtain them by... other means :shiftyeyes: On the other hand, I've read almost every non-setting book cover-to-cover since I picked up D&D again 6 months ago and can remember much of it, and I absorb the knowledge of the Playgrounds like a hungry, hungry leech.
So my first thing is, any advice for this kind of situation. I can hopefully get them a bit more attached to their characters because I'm going to see if I can push roleplay more than we do in our current campaign, and leveling is going to be a lot slower (we currently level every other encounter, usually one huge encounter/battle per week), and balance slower leveling by letting them get more loots than normal to minimize any boredom.
I also want to help them to see my perspective a bit more, with building characters rather than classes. I'm hoping one way of pulling this off is making all kinds of crazy characters for them to go up against so that when they're done they go, "What the hell was that?" and I can respond, "Bard/sorcerer/swordsage/jade phoenix mage/sacred exorcist with dragonfire inspiration."
Shifting topics, one of the players wants to play a monk/paladin. I convinced him to go into onewingedangel's rebalanced paladin, but he didn't like Fax's monk or unarmed swordsage (he's determined to play martial arts more like it really is). He does at least have good stats - iirc his lowest stat was 12 (in Cha, maybe?) the rest were over 15, with 18's in Str and Dex. He's going either Denying Stance or Undying Way from UA, I can't remember which, and wants to use a ranseur and unarmed attacks so that he can attack anyone within 10 feet of him (speaking of which, can he make a full attack using his unarmed attacks while holding the ranseur? What about TWF'ing with unarmed while holding it? I'm going to let him either way, just like to know RAW, ignoring the RAWness of TWF'ing). He wants the 6th level bonus from taking the variant monk, and he wants a special paladin mount that he wouldn't be able to get until about 16th level anyways, though he might take leadership and get it as his cohort. I've considered just giving the monk full BAB and working up a paladin/monk prestige class that advanced all the main stuff (including mount, probably), but I'd like other options as well if anyone has any.
I think that's all for now, I'd welcome any advice, and again thanks for putting up with my habit of being waaay too verbose. I'll probably remember more questions later tonight.
I'm going to start DM'ing my first game some time in the next month, most likely. To preface, I joined this group about 6 months ago, while they've known each other for... 10 or 15 years, so I'm the newbie. I frequent the boards and hold to the mindset that good roleplaying means good optimization, and that you start with a concept and build your classes around that, and if you end up with 10 classes over 20 levels, great, you've hopefully got a powerful character and unavoidably have some excellent background. I never make a character without building it to level 20, adjusting if needed as the campaign goes on.
The other players... do not. One of the characters I'm playing currently is a rogue4/fighter1/assassin5/swordsage1, which I'm pretty sure is more classes than they've ever seen on a single character. My warblade smashes encounters (well, at least individual enemies) with the simple combination of Power Attack and a 15-20 crit range, and the group seems reluctant to accept that's normal melee stuff and not "overpowered warblade stuff." I'm probably going to have to threshold myself so that the guys they come up against don't smash them.
I don't want to push them into too much because I already convinced them to accept 4 pages of houserules (mostly to bring melee up; shields are better, TWF'ing is one feat, etc). They like leveling a lot ("if you're making everything more powerful, why not just start us at 10 so we can do all kinds of cool stuff?"), and for the most part tend to be pretty unattached to their characters (oh well he died, pull out another sheet). They also seem to like to build classes, rather than concepts, though one the guys is definitely excused because he lacks any books except the PHB and lacks the internet to obtain them by... other means :shiftyeyes: On the other hand, I've read almost every non-setting book cover-to-cover since I picked up D&D again 6 months ago and can remember much of it, and I absorb the knowledge of the Playgrounds like a hungry, hungry leech.
So my first thing is, any advice for this kind of situation. I can hopefully get them a bit more attached to their characters because I'm going to see if I can push roleplay more than we do in our current campaign, and leveling is going to be a lot slower (we currently level every other encounter, usually one huge encounter/battle per week), and balance slower leveling by letting them get more loots than normal to minimize any boredom.
I also want to help them to see my perspective a bit more, with building characters rather than classes. I'm hoping one way of pulling this off is making all kinds of crazy characters for them to go up against so that when they're done they go, "What the hell was that?" and I can respond, "Bard/sorcerer/swordsage/jade phoenix mage/sacred exorcist with dragonfire inspiration."
Shifting topics, one of the players wants to play a monk/paladin. I convinced him to go into onewingedangel's rebalanced paladin, but he didn't like Fax's monk or unarmed swordsage (he's determined to play martial arts more like it really is). He does at least have good stats - iirc his lowest stat was 12 (in Cha, maybe?) the rest were over 15, with 18's in Str and Dex. He's going either Denying Stance or Undying Way from UA, I can't remember which, and wants to use a ranseur and unarmed attacks so that he can attack anyone within 10 feet of him (speaking of which, can he make a full attack using his unarmed attacks while holding the ranseur? What about TWF'ing with unarmed while holding it? I'm going to let him either way, just like to know RAW, ignoring the RAWness of TWF'ing). He wants the 6th level bonus from taking the variant monk, and he wants a special paladin mount that he wouldn't be able to get until about 16th level anyways, though he might take leadership and get it as his cohort. I've considered just giving the monk full BAB and working up a paladin/monk prestige class that advanced all the main stuff (including mount, probably), but I'd like other options as well if anyone has any.
I think that's all for now, I'd welcome any advice, and again thanks for putting up with my habit of being waaay too verbose. I'll probably remember more questions later tonight.