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We’ve talked before about my oddball megadungeon, right? It’s got seven players, but there are a total of 14 PCs. Every time the group climbs out of the dungeon and heads back to town, each player gets to select which of their intrepid heroes to bring along for the next delve. This has led to all kinds of repercussions in the game, and not all of them are positive. (Balancing loot distribution for example has turned out to be a ridiculous pain in the ass.) But there is one thing that I absolutely love about the setup: I get to watch an endless procession of bizarre character combinations.
There’s “tactical mind-whammy squad,” with multiple debuffers and summoned critters for muscle. There’s “team holy bro” with nothing but clerics and paladins on board. We’ve got “the brute squad” with its big hit dice and high Strength scores. We’ve got “the squishies” with a stupid amount of spell power. Depending on who shows up to game we might have “adventurer classic,” “the sneaky ones,” and even “two frightened support casters and their band of underleveled NPC cohorts.” That last one is especially entertaining for me as the GM.
As much fun as it’s been discovering these different playstyles, the real pleasure lies in watching new group dynamics develop every session. There’s bad blood between the dwarven barbarian and the ogre fighter. The dragon sorcerer rolls his eyes when the wizard casts a “strictly inferior, non-draconic” fireball. The paladins and the cleric all serve different gods, and so bring different philosophies to the game. And that last example also happens to apply to Paladin and Inquisitor today. Those guys have VERY different ideas when it comes to serving the gods. These permutations are as unpredictable as they are entertaining, and I think that all of the characters involved have grown and developed thanks to their uncommonly large circle of acquaintance.
So here’s the question of the day. What unexpectedly awesome character combinations have come up in your games? Rival arcanists? Drunken master monk and teetotaler cleric? Perhaps a hulking goliath and a cheery gnome? Let’s hear it in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
REMINDER: The Handook’s latest con appearance is this weekend!
We’ve got a table at Fort Collins Comic Con. Both the writer & illustrator of this here Handbook of Heroes will be there August 26th and 27th. If you track us down, we’ll have a super-exclusive giveaway for fans who find us! We’ll even make it easy on you by wearing our Handbook of Heroes shirts. And if you’re at Dragon Con this year, keep an eye out. We’ll be doing the same giveaway for any fans who track us down in Atlanta.
Well I don’t know if this is awesome enough, but just the other day in one of my games my comedic relief Tiefling from the Upperlight got a (completely unnecessary) boostie from the party’s dragonborn bard. While failing to grasp the “you are weird” look from the barbarian goliath (because she thinks people just do that look very often as a cultural thing…. because she’s not from here and she’s weird) and the other three party members (a drow, a human, and a half-elf) didn’t even bother because clearly they’ve already given up.
I also like the party in another of my games. My Yuan-ti Pureblood Mystic, the Duregar Rogue, and the noble Drow lady they are pretending to be bodyguards. It’s a nice dynamic. The Yuan-ti and the Duregar don’t get along because of a certain party’s reasonable racial hatred of psychic powers. The Duergar and the Drow kind of get along in a mutual acknowledgement that the other is clearly, in an amusing way, viewing life entirely wrong (the Duergar is crass, the Drow refined). And the Drow being learned enough not to trust the Yuan-ti farther than she can throw her, while the Yuan-ti really only cares about the Drow’s safety because her being alive means access to the noble lady’s large collection of books and tomes.
1. What was the tiefling trying to see over?
2. The “you are weird” look sounds like exactly the sort of silliness I like to see in my games. Well done that goliath!
3. Props for the weird trio. Nice to see some of the less common races getting play.
Actually she was trying to get launched into the air since she’s the winged tiefling variant. Made better by the fact that everyone has already seen her fly off the ground perfectly fine on her own. She also gets around during long distance travel times by wrapping a string around her waist and having it tied to the party leader’s horse and thus actually being a living kite.
In my Mutants and Masterminds game, I’m playing a metal-covered Colossus clone with some minor fire powers and a 15 mph flight speed. He’s called Dirigible. I’ve affixed a water skiing rope to the back of the party speedster’s costume. I am now a super-sonic wrecking ball.
OH, THE HUMANITY!
Mm mm, what an attractive team. =)
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I think i’ve mentioned it before, but my original Arcane Trickster didn’t fit in all that well with her party. It’s not that she didn’t like them, but there were lots of clashes in style and personality.
She had a friendly (perhaps even slightly flirty) rivalry with the party Warlock, as we had many similar capabilities, and my AT has a bit of a proud streak.
She had a not-so-friendly rivalry with the party Monk, because he was a racist bastard. We constantly tried to outdo each other, prank each other, and spite each other. Squeak eventually helped us settle the rivalry into a more friendly form.
She got along well with the Fighter, your typical muscled half-orc with a friendly heart, as long as you weren’t on the other end of his axe. They had a compatible sense of humor and a mutual love of Drow women. However, he was *bloodthirsty,* to the point where he didn’t even ask for payment to perform tasks that involved killing. That doesn’t fly with my savvy AT. They had to have a serious discussion on that.
Overall that was a good group, and i’ve never quiiiite recaptured that magic since (no offense to my other groups, y’all are lovely.)
You know it’s early when you’re looking at a post about an Arcane Trickster, see the AT acronym, and wonder what the hell kind of D&D / Evangelion mashup is going on. I need coffee.
Ima need further details about Squeak the peace maker though. It seems like there’s nothing that little guy can’t do!
The Shadow Monk hated elves, but he had nothing against animals. Squeak even fed him a healing potion when he was down once or twice. They got on alright.
Then, one fateful encounter, the Monk pulled a Clown Shoes and accidentally hit Squeak for half damage. Half damage was enough to kill Squeak, even with his lucky max HP roll of 3. He disappeared in a puff of smoke, and my Trickster was left at a significant disadvantage for the boss fight just moments later. Plus, you know, her best friend and partner in crime just got hurt. This, of course, irritated the hell out of my Trickster, and this made Squeak upset when he was summoned back.
The next session, we were brought to the temporary home of some allied NPCs, in the first few rooms of some ruined structure carved into a cave system. The first floor was mostly explored already, so we split up for a brief time. My character went to go flirt with an attractive Drow assassin, but Squeak accompanied the Monk and Fighter to go check out some of the other rooms.
When they set out, Squeak rode on the Fighter’s shoulder. When the Monk tried to address Squeak, he would huff and turn away. Eventually the Monk put two and two together and realized what Squeak would be upset about. In a wonderful moment of roleplaying, the Monk sincerely apologized to Squeak. They hadn’t gone far at that point, and my AT was still able to listen in through their telepathic bond.
That night, while my AT spent her evening with the Drow, Squeak went to the Monk instead, a few rooms away. Seeing him in solemn meditation, Squeak joined him, sitting upon his shoulder in silence.
We had just hit level 6, and the Monk had just gotten Shadowstep; it was during this meditation that he first realized the ability, lore-wise. He demonstrated it for Squeak, who was very impressed. Squeak then demonstrated a hidden feature of Find Familiar; by using your action to dismiss it, and then again to make it reappear somewhere else, the Familiar can effectively teleport as well (albeit in a way that’s useless for combat.) I dubbed it “Squeakstep.”
Combined with Shadowstep, that made Squeak and the Monk into the best scouts for hard to reach or inaccessible places. This further cemented the bond of friendship between them, occasionally leading to a mini solo adventure.
However, to keep Squeak’s friendship, he had to be nice to my Trickster. Likewise, seeing Squeak and the Monk be so cute together helped my Trickster forgive him. This calmed down the rivalry considerably; sassy remarks and pranks were still common, but not putting each other in danger. They may have even been flirting a bit by the end of the campaign.
Thus ends the tale of how Squeak bridged a gap between party members. =)
Seriously. If we ever manage to put Handbook Con together, we are so playing together.
I really had fun playing our Dark Souls based D&D campaign, in no small thanks to the awesome interactions between the knight and my spellthief-turned-warlock.
The knight was classic LG “white hat” hero who was looking for his missing sister. He was part of an order who vowed to hold back the curse and vanquish anyone that has fallen to it too far. My character was an apprentice at a sorcerer school, then got betrayed and booted out when others found out he was an undead (not actual undead type, but bears a curse of the Darksign). He then pretty much said “screw tradition”, became a warlock, and started following the path of the Dark (which was all about doing your own thing).
The knight and warlock became the most unlikely of friends. Probably because their vision of their ideologies came crashing around them. The knight found out that his order, The Way of White, locked up and tortured ALL undead, even the ones that swore to battle the curse and had the noblest intentions. The warlock was kind of a nice guy as well, and found out that while the Dark Path did promise limitless freedom, most people saw it as an opportunity to perform limitless savagery.
In times when their own teachings failed them, each looked to the other one to preserve what little sanity they had.
Mechanically it was a good combo as well. The knight was a tank ripped straight out of RPG vidyas, complete with taunt (called Knight’s Challenge) and movement restriction. He did a fantastic job as a frontline and dealt quite a lot of damage to boot. Anything that had too high an AC or had other shenanigans going for it (incorporeal, DR…) my warlock mowed it down with his Eldritch Glaive. It was a reach weapon so it could hit squares threatened by the knight, and enemies couldn’t 5-foot-step out of the knight’s threatened squares without taking our combined AoOs. Also, the warlock had Mortalbane and Maximize SLA… good times.
In the end we managed to stop the spread of the Abyss, but all turnes Hollow in the process…which is a “good ending” as far as the DS setting is concerned.
In case you couldn’t tell by today’s scroll over, I love the buddy cop thing. One of my current campaigns is a gestalt Curse of the Crimson Throne game with only two PCs. Watching them go apartment hunting, spend their first real money on fancy clothes, and tag team a rooftop chase has been amazing. It’s like getting to watch new Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories every week.
Anywho, do you have any resources lying around for running a Souls themed game? Did you ramp up the difficulty and throw in free resurrection or something?
I wasn’t the GM obviously, but I gather it was mostly like regular D&D (3.5e in our case) but with certain differences.
First of all, up the encounter level. Either bring out stronger enemies, or more of them, and also put them in adventageous positions. The rest of the modifications are there mostly just to help the party keep up.with the higher difficulty curve.
Secondly, souls were both XP and the currency (1 soul per gp or XP, I think). One could not have “loose XP” only the amount that would take him over to the next level.
Next up, revival and bonfires. Bonfires serve as primary resting points that fully heal anyone who sits at them. I can’t really remember how spell recovery worked, so that one is on you. When (not if) a PC died he returned to the last bonfire rested at and leaves any souls he had where he died. He can recover them if he returns to that spot, but if he dies again before he can reach that spot, they are forever lost. Additionally, he gains a Hollowing point. When a character has 5 Hollowing points he goes fully Hollow and is effectively permanantly dead. The player hands over his sheet to the GM and makes a new one, while the GM now has another enemy to throw at the party as an invading spirit. The only way to remove the Hollowing is to consume a Sprite of Humanity.
…speaking of which, there are special items.
The one mentioned above, the Humanity Sprite, a black wisp of inky mist that when crushed as a full-round action, heals the user and restores his Hollowing to 0. It’s kinda foggy on how much it healed. IIRC it was around number of HD x d8 + Con modifier (a full heal for the squishies most od the time). Alternatively, if burned at a bonfire, it would kindle it and make it more powerful. Humanity was rather sparse.
Estus flask was like a healing potion that replenished at the bonfire. A character could take a single sip as a standard action that provokes AoO and heals 1d8+ Con mod HP, or take as many as he wants as a full round action. A normal bonfire gave 5 charges of Estus, and a kindled gave 10. Each PC could only drink their own Estus (and animal companions, familiars, etc.).
There was also the Homeward Bone. It allowed a character and any of his animal companions or familiars to return to the last bonfire rested at, while retaining all souls and not turning Hollow. Were usually found in multiples equal to the number of PCs, for convenience sake.
That’s most of it…
Well that sounds like a ridiculous amount of fun. You’d have to run it as a mostly dungeon-based game. Relatively little “shopping in town” and similar.
I might just give it a go next time I run a one-shot. Cheers!
We did that thing where you roll up 30 random characters to populate a village, define a whole bunch of relationships between them, then use the first session to attack the village with a bunch of orcs.
Naturally only 7 or 8 survived (each player got to choose one, with one left over), and they were all out for revenge of some kind, since siblings, friends, and lovers were killed in the battle. Very strangely though, just through dumb luck, the only people who survived were gnomes, halflings, and dwarves. So we had this weird clan of diminutive orc hunters roaming around everywhere.
Character funnel! Damn I want to try this one day…
What were the survivors’ relationships to one another? Did those relationships change before and after the character funnel?
Well we had one aged character who was the grandfather of another. The father didn’t make it through session 1, so even though they didn’t get along, the grandfather and grandson now had something in common to fight for.
Another dead character owned the (now burned down) pub and the drunken dwarf was his best patron. He eventually became a monk and took a vow of abstinence from alcohol in memory of his favorite bartender.
Weird to think that a grandparent / grandchild pairing never occurred to me, but there it is. That’s why I want to try a character funnel. I would not have come up with those backstories on my own.
One particularly entertaining combo that I’ve seen has been a Sorceress who serves the Goddess of the Sun, a Ranger who serves a council of 5 death gods, a War priest from another dimension, and a very aggressive monk turned God. It’s been a long game and it isn’t liable to truly end anytime soon.
So like…what’s the main personality conflict? Sun sorceress vs. death ranger?
To be honest the entire party was in conflict with each other frequently. The Sun Sorceress and the Monk started off alright but the she liked talking her way out of problems (and using him has a shield) over his hit hard first and talk once they’re in the negatives. The Sun Sorceress and the Death Ranger were constantly competing due to the fact that neither could see past their immediate goals until several hours had been spent waiting for their debate to finish (at which point other party members had already moved ahead with what they felt they could do).
The War Priest from another dimension got along amicably with everyone except that he managed to get both himself and everyone else into trouble by his impulsive nature. So in the end I would probably label him has the one that caused the most conflict but also united the party the most.
They all love the game still (2 years and counting).
Nothing better than a long-running game. Keep the interest alive for that long and you know you’ve got a solid group.
Also, good on that war priest for being both “thing doer” and “moral center of the party.” Those are both important roles.
Where’s the drow from ? Looks like a swashbuckler. Is she supposed to be Thief’s counterpart ? We’ve never seen her before with the anti-party
That’s the reason I decided to write about odd couple PCs today. These two don’t usually adventure together, but circumstances (CIRCUMSTANCES!) have brought them together to take on an evil cult. Was it the same evil cult that brought on the Apoceclipse in the last comic? Hell if I know.
Anywho, Inquisitor is the leader of “Team Bounty Hunter.” Her story begins here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/evil-twins
She’s also got a few appearances on the NSFW comics over on the Patreon.
You make a good point though. I need to write up a proper cast of characters page one of these days.
That comic taunts me (the nsfw thing). Curiosity dictates i look up what it is but i cant because my poor student ass cant afford the money
We may or may not have invented an all-female band of adventurers in preparation for the Patreon. >_>
I can neither confirm nor deny that Laurel and I had long debates about the sexiest combinations of race and class. (I still maintain that Catgirl Magus should have been Catgirl Ninja.)
I think you just like the phrase ‘Buddy Cop Show.’
But I’ve already regaled you with stories of Rhodon, the Coldly Calculating Evil Wizard and Savrah, the Innocent Undine Sharpshooter.
Still diggin’ Inquisitor. I have a new one now. I hope to earn my hat in game.
And now I read the comments section and realize “Oh. They went over that one already.”
You began play without a hat? Mad respect for playing a character concept, but that is a brutal self-nerf. I hope you survive long enough to earn your main class feature!
I ran a game that featured the friendship between a fairly generic elven ranger with a halfling that stole doors. The halfling would take the doors off hinges, the elf would jam them into a special chest of holding. By the time that campaign ended, they had stolen about 5 different doors as well as an entire house they took apart and put into their chest. In the epilogue I wrote for that game(I like doing this, especially for campaigns that end prematurely. It gives myself a sense of closure) they went off on a quest to steal the gates of hell.
Laurel likes to tell a story about one of her early D&D parties. Apparently the DM made the mistake of creating “impenetrable” doors made from adamantine. After the party calculated the cost of the materials, they proceeded to ignored the dungeon and steal the doors.
Also of note, have you ever seen Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell?” Laurel and I were lucky enough to stop in at the Musée d’Orsay last summer. They are all kinds of impressive in person:
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire_id/the-gates-of-hell-8933.html?no_cache=1
Not on the subject, but this does remind me of a party I was part of that decided they were going to build their own tower and had no intention of paying for any of the parts. From that point on, all dungeons were regarded as supply depots, as we collected doors, tables, building materials – basically everything that wasn’t nailed down and quite a few things that were quite firmly nailed down… the monsters were regarded as inconvenient interruptions to DIY shopping trips. Made my day for my somewhat deranged pixie mage/cleric when we found a wizard’s lair and I got t ocollect lots of cupboards and bookshelves.
OK. First of all, I love you name so hard it hurts. I’m glad to see the comic’s unsung Hero is getting some love.
More on topic: It sounds like you guys were paying Minecraft the RPG. Which, as I think about it, seems like a pretty cool idea. If you had a robust crafting system, I bet you could make it a really fun game.
What do you call this art style? It looks a mite like paper cutouts.
I don’t really know what to call it, but you’re dead on with the paper cutouts–they were definitely part of the inspiration!
One of my gaming groups is kind of like your megadungeon campaign. Four players, twelve characters. There’s somewhat less party-mixing going on due to one party being more than ten levels below the others and another being off on a long-term exploration mission across some planes that have been sealed off from the rest of the multiverse, but it has ended up with a couple of interesting party situations.
One is in my current party, and involves two similar characters; my human Factotum/Chameleon who is a skillmonkey and “caster-lite”, and a catfolk Factotum/Warblade more focused on combat. The player of the catfolk has decided that his Factotum is intensely competitive with other Factotums, and regularly has him entering pissing contests with my character. I’ve decided that my character personally doesn’t care much, but has decided to humor the cat whenever doing so isn’t dangerous to the party.
> a catfolk Factotum/Warblade
> regularly has him entering pissing contests
Careful. That’s how they mark their possessions. You don’t want to lose all your stuff in an ammonia-scented property dispute.
Damn you! I had planned on a character using this exact wordplay!
Except it would be used to extract information instead. “Speak and I’ll show you Mercy.” Once the cowed prisoner tell everything he can, then said interrogator shows him Mercy… his sword engraved with this name.
And then he can kill him without having broken his word. What? Lawful Evil is fun to play.
I do hereby give you permission to play Inquisitor. Remember her daddy issues in your RP:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/family-ties-2
😛
There was my nobleblooded elven cleric (who went from haughty to exasperated over the course of the campaign), the secretive human rogue, the well-meaning but stupid ettin barbarian/warlock (two characters, not a weird multiclass), the cowardly yet ominous NPC support wizard, and one or two other characters, typically including whatever character the table’s resident idiot hadn’t killed yet. Good times.