beginning a new campaign, need help with balence and suggestions!

[Naoki00_]

You get every single believer listed. Every first, second, third, etc. level believer is under the Thrallherd's command. And no, you can't use Leadership and the Thrallherd extraordinary at once; don't get broken up about it though, the Leadership feat is a terrible attempt to introduce follower mechanics anyway. I banned it from my games ages ago.

alright thank you for that clarification! anyone else have any suggestions or comments?

 

[S'mon]

Vrilisa rather seems like she's the star of the show. What happens if the PCs fight her - are you ok with them killing her? If not, you have a GMPC problem. Be careful to keep the campaign PC centric. The PCs should be the coolest thing onscreen.

 

[Naoki00_]

Vrilisa rather seems like she's the star of the show. What happens if the PCs fight her - are you ok with them killing her? If not, you have a GMPC problem. Be careful to keep the campaign PC centric. The PCs should be the coolest thing onscreen.

Well she's suppose to be a centric character, as are the other 'Pirate Lords' and a few of the main movers in the State as well. The PC's are going to be the focus of the story, and while not the most powerful people in the world are going to have one of the largest parts in it, Vrilisa is meant more to start shaking things up and getting everyone in the same place, then provide choices and options through out the story based on how the PC's act toward her, the crew, the world, etc. I'd imagine that if they DO choose to fight against her that I'd not want them able to kill her more for story reasons as without her around at the end (at least how I have things structured) they would never be able to win in the end as I plan to have her sacrifice herself to weaken the 'end boss' enough that they can even hope to beat it, otherwise.

IF they do side against her then I see one of two things happening 1- they just don't have a hope and she wastes them, but doesn't kill them and instead merely throws them out of her crew (she's honorable and not totally ruthless) or 2- their able to beat her, but she manages to escape, I see this happening not because she's my character, but more because in this plot she's not supposed to die until the end and if she does well then things won't go over well later lol. Heck she's likely not going to adventure with them since she's the ship captain and will instead have other matters to attend to.

If anyone has any thoughts on this idea as well please feel free to add those thoughts in as well.

 

[Nezkrul]

just keep in mind that Vrilisa is a 33rd level character (assuming she has the vampire template from MM1) with many high level expendable (w/out penalty) followers as well. If you start your pcs off at 4th level, they'll probably never actually stand a chance at beating her in any fight for 28 game sessions - assuming they level up 1 level every session... if you want to wait that long for her to "shake things up" then cool, otherwise you might want to consider introducing her when she is only 6 levels higher than the PC's, and level her up as the PC's level up, so that she seems to always have the edge or a bit more power than them and you can keep using her in encounters without the guarnteed TPK w/out DM fiat. IMHO avoid DMPC's.