[DDv]

:)

I hope Drachnon comes back.

[dreamscaperx]

yeah true :)

[Drachnon]

Originally Posted by DDv

I'm curious, how did you handle that?

Well I have a couple of NPC's that are at the same level as the party one of them being a character I use when someone else wants to DM for a change. So I usually use that to bring the number up to 3 characters and then tweak the encounters slightly.

Note that my campaign is not a typical D&D campaign, it's a setting where there is pretty much no acces to magic (save for a few individuals there are no casters or magic items) so the party is really needs to work to win encounters because they can't solve everything with charging in while wielding magic swords +5 and throwing around fireballs.

Ofcourse at the same time most of their opponents are humanoids with an ECL of 4+ and usually showing up in groups of 4 to 10 depending on the nature of the encounter. If one or two players don't show up and I don't feel like using an NPC to even the odds I just scrap in the enemies numbers.

P.S. I'm trying to become more active

[dreamscaperx]

@Drachnon: when some of my players don't show up i cancel the sessions.
Well it's better to play with all of them.
But if one maximum says he can't play and it's ok to be played as "poof mode" ok xD

[DDv]

Originally Posted by Drachnon

Note that my campaign is not a typical D&D campaign, it's a setting where there is pretty much no acces to magic...

I'd like to try that once. There's almost always a spell that can ruin a whole quest.

In our early days of roleplaying when someone was absent the DM took control of his character. On such an occasion one of them got killed. Never ever did that DM (me) play instead of a player...

Drachnon, can you tell us about your campaign?

X, was the session skipped?

[dreamscaperx]

yeah D.
As a Dm i would never play a char of my players.
It's abuse.
And if he dies?
You will tell him. Hey guess what your dead ^^

[DDv]

That's exactly what happened. And this gave him a chance to start a cleric instead of a rogue. Now his favourite class is the cleric and all his characters are clerics. ^_^

[dreamscaperx]

lol well....i have a player, who uses clerics and rogues.
So he rolled a cleric of loki xD

[DDv]

Cleric of Loki... Ugh.

[Drachnon]

Originally Posted by DDv

I'd like to try that once. There's almost always a spell that can ruin a whole quest.

Drachnon, can you tell us about your campaign?

The setting:
Well the story about the setting is that at some point in history there was a big clash between mortals and gods and during that time a couple of gods decided to erase (most) magic from the world. Many casters lives were snuffed out while magic items simply lost their enchantments. The war between god and men escalated into a war between gods and eventually none of them had enough power to influence the world directly.

Time continued and all the gods except one are forgotten, this god, Zannar, instills the little power he has left in one of the mortals worshipping him making him a cleric (referred to as The Cleric and is pretty much the pope but with magical powers). Zannar is Lawfull Neutral and pretty much spends his time trying to prevent the other gods from comming back while spreading his own religion. The country of The Cleric and Zannar is called Veritas and is the biggest on the map having taken over many smaller nations in the process of 'spreading' it's faith.

In the south of Veritas there is a somewhat smaller nation called Egaris which is Lawful Good, this country houses a seer, who get's visions of future events. Whenever a seer dies a new one is born which allowed Veritas to keep countries such as Varitas away. Also they have the biggest concentration of paladins in the world.

Egaris is has it's own problems though, they are connected with the mountains where the dwarves live, and all dwarves in my campaign are pretty much evil (except Duergar those are neutral with a few good) and have an irrational hatred to anything that's not a dwarf. Also they have a small patch of land that connects with the halfling lands, halflings are Chaotic Evil and male dominated to the point where women are a commodity. The halflings do have casters in the form of a few hexblades.

There is an elven kingdom, Mir'nissgal, which is connected almost squeezed in between Egaris and the halflings. The elves don't all live there though. Many can be found all around the world living their lives seemingbly not involving themselves with other countries. The elves have more spies then the other countries combined even though their country is pretty small.
The forest where the elves life doesn't only have the elven kingdom but in another part of it lives a druid that no one has ever seen (actually there are a few druids and they're pixies :D).

There is one more real nation called Cergon where the last magi live. They're pretty much the only ones on the north part of the map except Veritas.
Finally we have a few more factions in the world that are not actual countries, one of them are the pirates who have a rather large island in the middle of a sea that has a small connection to the ocean. The pirate island has a single city that is rumoured to have been around long before the pirates settled on the island. However they also have a lot of hidden bases around the island.
Then there is the other god that like Zannar has an emmisary in the world, this god is Xerias (CN) and his emmisary is a favoured soul. Most of his followers actually live inside Veritas and pretend to worship Zannar. They've even gone as far as establishing entire communities with solely Xerias worshippers. Zannars worshippers refer to them as heretics and cultists and they are trying to summon a avatar of Xerias to this plane (the avatar will be represented by a titan if they ever get to that point). Then there is a mountain where the Exiles live, mostly Drow and Duergar but also some other sub-races that didn't get along with their own kind. And another mountain where the minotaurs life (allignment any like most races in my setting).

NOTE: There are also some thing off the map but I'll leave those alone for now.

People of interest:
The Cleric - (reffered to above) named Derivan
Bard Guy- (there's one bard who's actually a crime boss I never worked him out since the party never got close to the city he lives)
The Mages of Cergon - One of two places with capability of making magical items though not very good at it.
Seer - Name: Rufus
Favoured Soul - Name: Limion actually disguises himself as a travelling merchant named Bob.
Artificer - Name: Beremund. I haven't actually decided where he lives but he's an artificer willing to make a single magic item for someone he deems worthy.
The living Legend - Name: Ferdinant???(I kinda lost his sheet I think) the most well know fighter in the land his heroics are known all through the lands having even singlehandedly killed a dragon. If we believe the legend all his stats would be around 25. Though in reality not that powerful he's still walks around with a artifact sword: The Sword of Heroes which if I remember is the equalivent of a +7 sword with a few added tricks and actually an intelligent item. However Ferdinant is already way past 70 years old

The Dragons: There are a few dragons around but they don't have magic (with most races I scrapped their spells and spell like abilities) however without magic to counter them a single adult dragon is capable of killing a small army.

The Party: (note I kinda forgot their names so I refer to them by their class or distinguishing feature)
The Commander - Lawful Neutral - Spellscale - Class from other D20 setting/Legendary Commander
Okay I hope this player won't read this. He's a good friend but not the best player (we once ran a Vampire the Masquerade campaign where the goal was keeping his character alive)
This character has a high charisma score and is kind of an asshole, he commands a small militairy force in the name of Zannar. The problem is that though the character should be awesome at social encounters the player is not always that tactful. In combat he just stands behind his level 1 troops shouting orders (which actually works pretty well a spear line can stop a lot of low level soldiers before it's broken).
However to avoid battles where there are 50 level 1 guys with spears standing around I try to make missions that makes him send the rest of the party to work it out.
Currently making a deal with a Devil to sacrifice people in order to summon devils that will start a killing spree inside the pirate city.

The Elfen Archer - Lawful Evil - Elf - Fighter/Ranger/Rogue (and trying to get into some prestige class from Ultimate prestige classes I think)
This elf works for an elven lord who is trying to learn magic for that several of his agents are trying to obtain magical items or documents for him to study. This one is trying to get in the good graces of the Veritas' cleric so he might access their historical records which are said to be largest in the world. However now he's learned that the Cleric is up to something that might be bad for the elves later on and is trying to prevent that.
He also tries to get his hands on whatever magical item possible even though they hardly find any.

The Monk - Lawfull Good/Neutral - Human - Monk/Tatooed Monk
This player has missed the most sessions so far I believe, however his character is the easiest to work with. He's trying to safe up money to start an orphanage. Not scheming anything.

The Psychopath - Lawful Evil - Human - Ninja/Fighter
A Zealous psychopath who believes that all those who don't believe in Zannar should have their heads cut off (somehow he's under the impression that cutting off someones head sends their soul to Zannar and spends time after each battle to cut the heads off whatever they just killed). My biggest problem is that he shows his oppinion as player too much, for some reason he hates allied NPC's so if has the oppertunity he feels like killing them even though in character there is hardly any reason too. Also he thinks every problem should be solvable by killing something.

The DM PC - Chaotic Good - Human with strong fey bloodline - Scout
The character I usually use in case someone doesn't show up. Is with the party for the money or until she finds a more worthy goal.

The campaign so far:
They started off as a small force routing out cultists in the south eastern part of Veritas. The I as DM had a lot of fun with the cultists which was pretty much a sport about seeing how good the cultist were at misleading the party into killing faithful worshippers of Zannar. Which went pretty well when the party got a tip that a certain priest of Zannar was actually a cultist. They even found evidence condemming him in a secret compartment beneath the altar. Also plenty of villagers had seen him do suspicious things. Though actually the priest was the only non-cultist in town the party never found out. I also managed to almost kill the party using 7 cultist with NPC levels (they were around level 4 I think)
After a few sessions they got the oppertunity to join an invasion force aimed at the pirate island, a campaign supposedly in response to a resent attack of pirates against several of the coastal communities of Veritas.
After deciding to join their first mission was to create a safe drop point for the actual army. Which went pretty well, they killed some of the monsters living nearby as well as a tribe of Gnolls.
They now met up with the main force of the army while most of the party is of mapping the terrain around the city. They also found a pirate base and were actually smart enough not to assault it (they would have lost because in this campaign enemies capable of making their base hard to capture will do so. The elf archer got approached by an old elf who claims to be the guardian of a place on the island of mystical importance, he also says that the invasion is just an excuse to capture it and that if the cleric is succesful the elven race will be doomed. The old elf is actually a Couatl (without most of his Magic and Psionics) who guards a place that connects this realm with the realm of the dead.

The old elf was succesful in getting the elven archer to help him and the archer is now looking at ways to kill the army generals and impeding the army movement without arrousing suspicion (not going too well so far).

Meanwhile the commander has been visited by an Erinyes (though they don't know that it was an Erinyes) who offered the help of a demon lord in capturing the city. He only needs to sacrifice some pirates in the demons name :). The commander is however planning on letting the Psychopath do this for him.

Magic items so far:
A map with a red dot in the middle with the text "you are here" (in possession of the scout)
A dagger +2 returning that deals x2 damage when thrown and has a D6 damage die.(one of two magic weapons and the only one they ever used)(elven archer)
A bedroll that allows someone to get 8 hours of sleep in 2 hours (elven archer who's lent it too the scout)
A ring of healing 2/day for 2D8+5 HP (scout)
Neckless of good health, makes wearer immune to poisons and diseases (elven archer)
Bracelet of natural armour +3 (monk)
Cloak of Cha +3 (commander)
Rapier +1 (commander who uses a spear and has the sword in storage never ever going to use it)
Bag of Tricks (scout)
A tiara of undead detection/control - the elf hasn't figured out how it exactly works though (elf)
A rusty helmet - That isn't magical but the guy playing the commander thinks it is because I once mentioned it amongst the stuff they found, fun times. (commander)

DMing the campaign:
As a DM I'm pretty lenient with what's allowed in this campaign because a lot of options are already disallowed with the no magic premise, also keep in mind that the party will have more gold they they can spend on mundane equipment. If I gave them expected wealth levels they could each buy a warship with crew which is kinda not the point.

When making encounters I usually try not too look at CR too much since it's quite meaningless it's best too look at how much to hit a monster has compared to it's HP. Right now monster need to have over 100 HP (preferably more) without have a to hit of +20 because it's pretty hard for the party to get above AC 20 without enchanting their armour +3 and wearing rings of protection.
Also a good thing too look at is DR while in a normal campaign a monster with DR 10/magic against a party of level 4 or higher might just as well have no DR at all. With only one character actively using a magic weapon (and even then only if the situation calls for it) DR 10 now means being able to walk through the Commanders entire army without getting damage (except possibly a critical hit). I once scrapped a creature's DR and lowered anothers.

A few final things before my fingers fall off:
Healing: I have implented health packs that heal twice a characters level over a period of 30 minutes because otherwise after every battle they would be resting for a week.
Leveling: Not only did I start the campaign at level 6 because that's the point where PC can safely engage normal humans with a feeling of superiority (and then lose it when they get beaten by commoners throwing a net on top of them from the roof of a building) I also allow the party to level every 2 a 3 sessions because it's the only progress they make without the option of buying better equipment.