taltamir
2010-03-28, 05:21 PM
I was always bothered by the way the XP and leveling system works (not to mention inter class balance). For some reason a wizard gains massive godlike power from sitting in the back of the party and throwing a single spell once per day and shooting bolts at the rest, instead of years in the academy. Learning new spells, finding ancient tomes, draining the lifeforce of innocent villages, forging an item with a link to an elemental plane as a power source, consuming an ancient power source, etc etc... all are found in stories but will utterly ruin any attempt to balance a party of diverse characters.
This gave me the idea of having games with only 1 class available to the players. 3 players who are all druids, or all wizards, or all paladins. I think the biggest inspiration was the neverwinter nights 1 module called twilight:
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=2686
And a few other modules which limited you to only one class. I noticed that when you know what class the player is going to play, you can do a lot of cool things. In the paladin example, you could use turning and blessings to destroy altars to evil gods (and increase the enchantment of an item of your choice every time), you could receive blessings from temples (giving new cool enchantments), all items were custom, there was a lot of cool stuff going on.
Back to the party idea, a big advantage here is that you don't have to worry about inter party balance as much... 3 wizards or 3 druids could actually act sensibly and play their alignment without overshadowing the other players, you simply scale the encounters. there is also more reason for them to be together and they can have more appropriate adventures (ex: wizard college, druid grove, paladins traveling to crypts and ONLY fighting undead and demons).
I decided to enter the world of DMing with a bang, this will be my first time to DM. I intent to start with a wizard only campaign which begins in a wizard college, with 3 players.
If you run such a game yourself, post here and I will link to it in the title. I intent to make a seperate thread for the "3 wizards in a college" game with info specific to that game (such as exact XP values for everything, etc).
This thread is to discuss the idea as a whole, and general ideas on how it will apply specificy to every class. Feedback is welcome.
My "3 wizards in a college" game setting: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8172711#post8172711
This gave me the idea of having games with only 1 class available to the players. 3 players who are all druids, or all wizards, or all paladins. I think the biggest inspiration was the neverwinter nights 1 module called twilight:
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=2686
And a few other modules which limited you to only one class. I noticed that when you know what class the player is going to play, you can do a lot of cool things. In the paladin example, you could use turning and blessings to destroy altars to evil gods (and increase the enchantment of an item of your choice every time), you could receive blessings from temples (giving new cool enchantments), all items were custom, there was a lot of cool stuff going on.
Back to the party idea, a big advantage here is that you don't have to worry about inter party balance as much... 3 wizards or 3 druids could actually act sensibly and play their alignment without overshadowing the other players, you simply scale the encounters. there is also more reason for them to be together and they can have more appropriate adventures (ex: wizard college, druid grove, paladins traveling to crypts and ONLY fighting undead and demons).
I decided to enter the world of DMing with a bang, this will be my first time to DM. I intent to start with a wizard only campaign which begins in a wizard college, with 3 players.
If you run such a game yourself, post here and I will link to it in the title. I intent to make a seperate thread for the "3 wizards in a college" game with info specific to that game (such as exact XP values for everything, etc).
This thread is to discuss the idea as a whole, and general ideas on how it will apply specificy to every class. Feedback is welcome.
My "3 wizards in a college" game setting: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8172711#post8172711