Vigil on 25/1/2006 at 18:52
RayvnousHunter, it honestly sounds like you have a hammer and now everything looks like a nail. Epic is not the right power level for the sort of game you want to run; in fact it's not even close. Epic level characters have almost unlimited wealth and resources and get into the realms of directly challenging, and even becoming, demigods. (And no, the fact that Garrett had a role in killing a god does not mean he is this powerful.) Characters not only save the world, but change the entire face of the world. If you are still thinking this sounds like Thief, then you really don't understand the kind of power level this entails as far as the game system is concerned.
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w/ an Epic, things may not be a whole lot FASTER perse, but you dont die as easily and my campaign is about people who are already elites in thier fields, attempting to reach legendary power...
This sounds like what you are after is a mid-level (6-13) campaign; characters at those levels *are* elites in their fields, and are strong and resourceful enough to face many challenges (and escape the ones they can't, alive), but not too powerful that you have to go to ridiculous lengths to accomodate them, challenge them or put them in real peril - which you will, believe me, with a high-level or epic-level campaign. A mid-level campaign can easily run for months. How fast or slow it moves is entirely up to you the gamemaster; but it will move a hell of a lot faster than a high-level or epic campaign. More levels means slower progress, not faster.
And finally, no, Garrett is not a Paragon human. In a regular D&D campaign characters can expect to save the world several times over, with the resources and power level of the standard game races, and be able to do exactly the same things (and more) that Garrett does.
My advice: relax, run a regular campaign and get some experience under your belt. Everyone loves to use new material, but the epic-level stuff is not the place to start. Save it until you have an appreciation of the power-levels involved.
Foolsie_Mansie on 25/1/2006 at 22:01
I remember i saw a mod once for realilstic D&D. The same rules only minor hitpoint and damage changes. That could be fine for a Thief campaign.
dracflamloc on 26/1/2006 at 20:17
Why not just play.... without the official rules?
But yea I used to play ADnD , forgot which version back as a kid, and that was fun until they kept changing the rules. it got to the point where we just made up our own rules so we wouldnt need to buy some new $30 rulebook every 2 weeks.
dlw6 on 27/1/2006 at 01:01
If you want to incorporate more thief stuff in a campaign, then play the Thief games and take notes of what you like. The hard part will be designing rules that are balanced, i.e. don't kill the players instantly or give them unfair advantages. My solution to this was always that the players and NPCs have to follow the same rules. For example, if a particular trap could only have been created with a Wish (rather than mechanically or with lower-level spells) or godlike powers, I don't use it unless it's protecting something worthy of that kind of protection. If a sorceror the players are going up against has a special spell that's not in the book, then he has the resources to have invented it within the spell creation rules and they *might* get to steal it from his spellbook. The fact that the players don't always know all the rules and have to figure them out, and the NPCs have a long head start, is where the fun comes in. :sly:
I don't know what they've done to the game system now, but back in the '90s before the 2nd Edition new rule set came out and changed everything, epic campaigns were entirely possible. During college I started a group at 4th level and 3 years later (real and game time) they stopped a war, investigated the events around the region, and saved the world from the bad guy who was behind most of the bad stuff happening. By that time they were around 14th level. Most of the characters died in the final battle, but they didn't care since it was a week before graduation and, up to that point,none of the characters in the campaign had permanently died except the ones who did really stupid things (more on that below).
Having said that, I hated DMing with thieves in the group, because they inevitably want to sneak off by themselves. While there's a place for reconaissance, diversions, and other team tactics that use their special skills, my thief players usually wandered off without permission from the group and caused problems for themselves and everyone else. So it will be hard to devise an epic theives-only campaign.
Okay, that was a bit long. I'll make up for it with this: (
http://www.ttlg.com/donate/) Donate to TTLG!
Don
Vigil on 27/1/2006 at 11:04
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Having said that, I hated DMing with thieves in the group, because they inevitably want to sneak off by themselves. While there's a place for reconaissance, diversions, and other team tactics that use their special skills, my thief players usually wandered off without permission from the group and caused problems for themselves and everyone else. So it will be hard to devise an epic theives-only campaign.
Not at all: the problem comes from having
other characters than thieves around, because they cannot participate (or indeed even tag along) in the same challenges as the thieves are tackling. That's what makes thiefy thieves usually so frustrating, as in order for them to make full use of their talents (in a non-dungeon environment) they have to wander off on their own and everybody else has to sit there and be bored.
If you have
all thieves though, then they can tackle the same challenge together as a team; or split up but work towards the same goal simultaneously, rather than having to wait on the sidelines lest they fuck something up for the thief. This allows for richer challenges tailored specifically to thieves with the idea that all of them can participate; and because they can work together, each thief can also afford to specialise in a particular area. Think Mission Impossible.
Mr.Teatime on 27/1/2006 at 12:47
You know it's not hard to accomodate very different characters in a campaign, even if they need to split up every now and then.
If you're DMing try to ensure the non-thief part of the team have something productive to do and then when the thief wanders off on his or her assigned task just be sure to cut back every five or ten minutes or so to the other team and have them in the spotlight for a roughly equal amount of time.
This is can create some pretty cool cliff-hangers if done correcty actually.
This way you can run a whole session with a fragmented party and nobody feeling left out.
Don't blame it on the players if you can't do your DMing job well enough to accomodate diverse parties.
Lurox on 27/1/2006 at 12:55
My cousins and I play a thief influenced D&D. We use the second version of D&D and we never had any problems... we just put a cap on the hiding in shadows/walk silently ability to make the game not too easy...
We also made a second quest, which is very thieveryUT/thief-influenced but a little different... this time, WE are the guards. The satisfaction you get from raping thieves is absolutely marvelous.
RavynousHunter on 27/1/2006 at 14:14
well, i have this nasty habit of getting the jist of a game about 3-5 mins into it. i got a large chunk of D+D in the first quarter of the Player's Handbook. I dont even have a DM's guide, and i could run a campaign almost completely w/o one. i am rethinking the idea of starting it off @ lvl 20, maybe lvl 10-15, something kinda high, but no too high as to where it will make the characters stupidly powerful, even though it WILL be an epic campaign. besides, im going to try to get some balance in the group (ie: some rogues/assassins/Keepers, some fighters/barbarians, and DEFINATELY some sorcerers/wizards/warlocks etc..), at the players' consent of course. and i do agree that D+D did go thru a time where they did update overly often (or so some of my more XP'ed D+D homies tell me), but i think theyre fairly well planted in v 3.5, and the books are expensive as hell. (i had to pay $40 for the Epic Handbook.. and the entire set [all the necessary books for running a nice, long campaign] cost around $100 to $135, way too damn much for most of 'em [the Epic Handbook is smaller than the Player's Handbook, but @ the same price].) so i do PRAY they don't go around changing the rules any time soon, but if they do, im just gonna say, "eeh, go screw yerself, i like 3.5 just fine, jackasses." 'sides, im not gonna spend $50 - $100 for new books if all they did was add 2 spells and some moronic changes to the rules that are completely superferolous, and call THAT a big addition... of course, i do like some of the other WoTC products, especially Magic: The Gathering, the ONLY trading card game ill ever play. well, this took way too damn much space, so im gonna stop right here and shut the hell up, @ least in this reply, so you guys can get a word in. i like starting little discussions like this, gives me some reason to wake up at 4:30 in the morning so i can get to school b4 7:40am for EAST Lab... thanx guys, you give me a reason to wake up early and miss about 3 hours of much-needed sleep. lol ;) :rolleyes:
dlw6 on 30/1/2006 at 02:24
Vigil, you make a good point. An all-thief party could do well if they were willing to work together.
Teatime, the time-slicing wasn't the problem because there were no assigned tasks for the theif. Allow me to illustrate: party is exploring and suddenly notice that the thief is gone. Where did he go? What is he doing? Why didn't he tell anyone? Is he stealing treasure we could be earning as a group? Their reactions (if he returned) varied according to alignment, but it killed the teamwork and fun for the non-thieves and occasionally killed the thieves.
As a DM, I didn't assign tasks to the party or anyone in it. I gave them a world to explore, complete with news and rumors to investigate or ignore, and they had to decide what to do.
Don
RavynousHunter on 3/3/2006 at 16:27
thx u guys for all ur suggestions, and i want yall to keep em comin! post any classes, races, creatures, or whatever u can create w/ D+D, or have already created, and ill take em into consideration in the forging of my campaign. they dont even have to be thief related, they could b anything! i wanna make this campaign as good as possible, and something memorable for me any my players, cuz all u guys helped in my creation. so keep those ideas comin in!
