Bribing Players during PCGen

[delericho]

Del, the thing is, for the idea I had in mind, I was thinking I'd *want* to see Arcane, Primal, and Divine classes. I just wanted to see more Martial characters - and wondered if it's right to skew the results that way?

Ah, I see. Tricky.

My gut feeling is that if you offer a 'bribe' to players to favour Martial characters, you'll probably end up with the party consisting of only Martial characters.

I would suggest that your best bet might be to simply explain what you would like to see to your players. Assuming they're reasonable, you should end up with the group you want without any hassle - anyone who has been considering running a Martial character for a while will just consider this a good opportunity to do exactly that.

You could also say "Guys, for this campaign I want to limit some of the power sources. So, anyone can play a Martial character, but I want no more than one Primal character and no more than one Arcane or Divine character... you can fight it out amongst yourselves for who plays what." This would probably get you the party you were wanting, but it's a bit more risky - both because my experience is that players have objected more to a limit than to a simple ban (odd, I know), and also because it might cause bad feelings between Al and Bob if they both wanted to play the Primal character, and only one of them got it.

I think my advice would be to just speak to your players - they're probably a reasonable bunch.

 

[S'mon]

And S'mon, I actually really like that idea, and something sort of similar to that could work (except, one of the house rules I have a lot of player support behind is a "no magic items" rule!).

Well, you could rule that weapon & armour pluses were due to expert crafting, not magic per se - in 4e it makes almost no difference anyway. So a +1 greatsword is just a well-made greatsword. And it makes sense that Martial characters would have the best gear.

I think the result would be that players would tend to gravitate to Fighter, Ranger & Rogue if they wanted to play striker or defender, warlords might be more popular, but you'll still get players wanting to play Controllers and they'll still look to Wizard, Invoker etc.

 

[Umbran]

Is this a good idea?

That really depends on your people, and what feats you allow.

What are some other ways you can weigh the party towards certain choices without nerfing those that go against the grain?

Usually, I go with telling them the tone you want to set, and asking them sincerely to weigh heavily towards the classes you want to see. Players are usually intelligent people that can be reasoned with, and don't need mechanical bennies and cajoling in order to make a few compromises for the good of the game.

 

[Vorput]

I've done it. I never had a problem. If people wanted the bonus, they took it. If they really wanted the other class- hey it's their choice. Sometimes I'd pile up a lot of bonuses trying to steer them toward a specific class, but they'd still say no. I remember a campaign that never did get a cleric despite my best efforts...

It might be unbalancing. I never cared much for some magical 'balanced' game which never seemed to amount to much in actual play though

I was also a big fan of letting them roll on a minor wondrous items table, and if they could work the item they rolled into their character's back story (well), they got both that items and some other bonus.

Made character generation a bit more interactive for the DM as well!! Always a plus

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Do you want to have any of the players play a non-martial character at all? Once he is there, he is there. It doesn't matter if the chance was only 5 % or it was actually 95 % that there could have been one, he will be in the game and you will have to deal with that.

I think any half-way to determine this - like bribing - will probably just end up with someone disappointed. You because someone played a mage after all and its player because he plays a character that is slightly weaker than the rest, or the player(s) that wanted to play something non-martial but now have to play something else because they feared they would be too weak.

Here is an alternate "bribing approach":
This game has slots for [player number] martial characters and 2 non-martial characters. Everyone in the party gets two bonus feats at first level. But for every non-martial character, everyone in the party gets one less.

So the group has to come to a consensus itself. "Do we want someone non-martial? If so, who gets to play it? Which class to pick"

Of course, this might be a lot meaner than your bribe idea, because now the guy(s) playing the non-martial are the joy-stealers for everyone.

 

[fba827]

if you make sure statemeents clear and up front before players make their PCs, then I say it's fair game.

However, be mindful of -players- who (in your example) don't like weapon-fighting classes and only ever like playing magically-delicious classes. Keep them in mind for anything you develop.

Example: I was STRONGLY considering something very close to what you say (I was going to have arcane magic outlawed in the setting and give weapon-based classes a bonus church-given weapon etc). BUT there is one player in the group who really only likes arcane-style classes. I figured it would be okay because there is the roleplaying aspect to it and it could be a fun story for that PC if he still went with a magic user. However, then I thought about it and realized that player doesn't enjoy the roleplaying interaction much... so, it would just be dead in the water everytime i tried to bring up the setting's view on magic. So, yeah, it just wouldn't have gone very far without making a crabby player (which would have just brought down the mood) -- so it wasn't worth it.

 

[ExploderWizard]

This kind of thing can get tricky. Beyond the mechanical favoritism the players might wonder if any other disadvantages for arcane characters exist via subjective DM rulings and such. Overall if it is plainly stated that such characters are at a disadvantage in the campaign then everything should be ok.

 

[Wik]

Hm. A lot of interesting points of view, here.

I want primal and divine power sources to be more popular than arcane power sources, and I want martial to be more powerful than primal and divine. If I had to write a hierarchy, it'd go Martial > Divine > Primal > Arcane > Other (Shadow, Ki, etc - which I'll probably just ban outright). The idea of just saying "this is what I want, guys, can you roll with it?" probably would work, too - but then again, I've seen it backfire, with every player deciding to play that "odd man out"... and suddenly my "Roman Legionairre" campaign turns into "Three Vikings, an Elf, and a Roman Wizard".

What about the idea of giving martial characters an RP bonus, such as a minor noble title? I was thinking of doing this anyway - warlord characters, for example, could have men-at-arms that could be drawed upon occasionally. I'm also thinking a "human bonus" could be implemented in the same way (other races are either disliked, or suffer some sort of RP disadvantage - also, I plan on implementing numerous "races" as all being "human" - so a PC that is mechanically a goliath and a PC that is mechanically a bugbear are both considered "human").

 

[UngainlyTitan]

So if someone wants to play a hybrid?

 

[Wik]

Ha ha. They play in another campaign.

Haven't really thought that far ahead, at this point. Gut feeling is that they don't get any bonus bribe.