Children of High Level Characters

[Agback]

Make all their magic items intelligent


and petulant

Or pedantic.

Or patronising.

Or overly protective.

Or jealous.

"Don't sheathe me, you whippersnapper! This is just the moment for a surprise attack. I've been doing this since before you were born. I've killed more orcs than you've had hot dinners."

"No, no, no! How many times do I have to tell you? Parry with the forte, cut with the foible!"

"I don't think your mother would be happy about this, Anne. I don't like the looks of That Young Man. You tell him to bring his etchings down into the parlour where we can all have a look at them."

"I'll tell your father about this!"

"Don't listen to the kid carrying me. Listen to me."

"your father always used to do that. Nearly got him killed the first time he met a mimic. I told him...."

"Now, now, Anne! I've known you since the day you were born. When your father had you carried into the meadhall in a helmet the night you were born, I was the helmet...."

"Is that what that stupid +2 ice blade taught you? Fah! What would it know? I don't know why your father had you trained with such a piece of junk. When you're packing a +3 greatsword of flaming bursts you can just...."

etc.


Agback

 

[blackshirt5]

Or pedantic.

Or patronising.

Or overly protective.

Or jealous.

"Don't sheathe me, you whippersnapper! This is just the moment for a surprise attack. I've been doing this since before you were born. I've killed more orcs than you've had hot dinners."

"No, no, no! How many times do I have to tell you? Parry with the forte, cut with the foible!"

"I don't think your mother would be happy about this, Anne. I don't like the looks of That Young Man. You tell him to bring his etchings down into the parlour where we can all have a look at them."

"I'll tell your father about this!"

"Don't listen to the kid carrying me. Listen to me."

"your father always used to do that. Nearly got him killed the first time he met a mimic. I told him...."

"Now, now, Anne! I've known you since the day you were born. When your father had you carried into the meadhall in a helmet the night you were born, I was the helmet...."

"Is that what that stupid +2 ice blade taught you? Fah! What would it know? I don't know why your father had you trained with such a piece of junk. When you're packing a +3 greatsword of flaming bursts you can just...."

etc.


Agback

Too funny. I'm gonna go with this in a future campaign.

 

[Endur]

CHILDREN of EPIC LEVEL CHARACTERS

I would think that the parents (epic level characters) of the children would give their children the best they could provide. Equipment to keep them safe, guardians, teachers, etc. Not deadly equipment, but protective equipment. With suitable tutors and training, the children wouldn't start adventuring as 1st level characters.

Unless they had some reason for which they had to hide their children, in which case the hidden children wouldn't have any assistance out of the ordinary.

i.e. Arthur grew up not knowing he was son of Uther in some of the stories, with Merlin only checking up on him from time to time.

 

[mmadsen]

In one of my campaigns, the player characters are epic level, and have started families. In considering their children, as some of them have gotten older, how much treasure do you think they should start the game with? I'm usually pretty "old school" in that I like players to start with nothing special and near poverty, but realism and the circumstances that some of these children have grown up in would seem to demand that they start very well equipped. After all, what very powerful, high level player character wouldn't want their child to start out with the best equipment possible?

I think you have two valid paths before you: (1) rationalize why these young heroes would face danger without their parents' help, or (2) accept that they will start the game with significantly more wealth than normal, and address that fact fairly explicitly; e.g., treat 1st-level characters with 10th-level treasure as -- making up a number -- 5th-level characters.

We've seen some good rationales for not loading junior up with powerful magic:

• The parents don't want to "spoil" the child.
• The parents don't want to make the child a target.
• The parents don't want to encourage adventuring.
• The parents don't want the child truly independent just yet.

I think it would be fun -- cruel, but fun -- to make the kids NPCs and to, in fact, spoil them. Have them turn into everyone's nightware of a 16-year-old with too much power.

The second option, loading the young heroes up with powerful items, might run into game-play issues. Even powered-up, low-level characters have, for instance, very few hit points. Magic armor or no magic armor, a magic missile might take 'em out.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

As someone pointed out, maybe the children won't want all that expensive stuff, and decide to go out adventuring to prove themselves. It's no fun living in daddy's shadow, you know.

AR

 

[Volaran]

Taking mmadsen's point, you may wish to adjust their experiences accordingly. If all their deeds are thanks to the vorpal swords and staves of the magi, they're not really exercising their own skills.

I would reward characters who showed restraint in using their magical items with experience closer to the baseline.

Sure, the characters using their parents artifacts all the time without restraint may find victories easy early on, but when their items are stripped (or run out of charges, or whatever) and there's a three or four (or on SHARK's world more likely fifteen or twenty) level difference between them and their more restrained and frugal fellows...well, it should be an interesting situation.

 

[Victim]

Well, many parents might not give the best to their kids if having the best only makes them bigger targets. Against their parents' foes, the kid is toast even if he has a +4 sword. And if they're first level, waving that +4 sword around clumsily has a good chance of drawing all kinds of trouble. There are so many different ways to seperate the kid from his toy, and against most of them, fancy +4 weapons won't help against.

I'd expect the children of powerful adventurers to have magic items blocking divinations and some common spells, and use activated items for communications and escape. These kinds of devices should keep people out of trouble, and let the young adventurer call for help/get away if things go bad. The children of adventurers should also have access to good training. That doesn't mean they'll make effective use of it.

Those intelligent items are awesome.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

A couple of thoughts:

What are the parents like? And by this I don't mean their game stats and classes, but their personality? Are they doting and putty in their children's hands, or do they believe in "tough love"? And what do they think of the children of the other characters?

I think that this will determine the equipment far more than any "metagaming" concerns. If the parents want to spoil them, they will give them extremely expensive equipment, no matter what their children's actual level is.

They will probably give them somthing "for emergencies", like a powerful bound guardian spirit or a way to contact their parents. Ideally, this aid should be able to get them out of emergencies - but at the same time so embarassing that the kids will only use it as a last resort.

- If the characters have high-end equipment, the DM is fully justified in scaling down the XP awards. After all, encounters are supposed to be challenging - and if the equipment does most of the work, the characters have less opportunity to learn. In game terms, this means that you can bring on encounters with higher challenge ratings while giving out XPs for lower challenge ratings. As long as the PCs are still getting challenged and the players have fun, this shouldn't be a problem.

- Low-level characters with highly expensive equipment mean trouble. Sensible people will stay away from them. Shady people will try to steal the stuff. They will attract a lot of attention if they flaunt it. Which can, of course, be lots of fun for the DM...

 

[mmadsen]

Are they doting and putty in their children's hands, or do they believe in "tough love"?

Why am I thinking "tough love" here...?

 

[Tonguez]

I had to solve this problem for an individual character. She came from an Aristocratic background, so it would be logical for her to have more and better equipment. I wrote into her background that her parents didn't approve of her going off adventuring, so she ran off without approval with only what she could carry..

I think this brings up a good point about 'wealthy kids' in intergenerational play - what is motivating the kids to go out and be adventurers?
Their parents (maybe) did it to gain wealth and power - the kids already have that by association and thus have the abiiity to enjoy life and hire 'adventurers' to go out and risk being eaten.
Isn't it more likely that these kids will be involved in Court politics rather than battling Orc raiders (unless the raiders attack their fox hunting ride)? Thus the magic items provided could be Roleplaying types (a horseless Carriage, a +2 glass slipper of Charisma or a Rope of Balcony ascending perhaps) rather than the +5 Vorpal Sword of Doom

Of course can motivate the children of powerful characters to go out 'adventuring' is the above mentioned 'doing it on their own' (which means no boon from daddy), 'inherited enemies' - which ought to be highlevel anyway making the high level weapons 'justified' or 'social obligation' (ie they must prove their stripes by raiding the Ogre Horde - which might allow a minor item but anything powerful is going to have them loose face)