PC Balance?! and other ?'s

NeroVenedict

First Post
Ok. I am Creating my own realm to play in. That's what is going on and I have a fairly large playground already in motion for the PC's. THe entire world is not yet constructed though but that's fine because the Pc's Arn't from those other lands that they don't even know about ingame. To get to the point however, I'm having some issues I wan't to address and maybe get some help dealing with.

I have 4 Pc's currently. Human Theif / Half-Elf Ranger / Dwarven battle Rager (omg he's still alive at level 4.....and he's playing him correctly more on that later) / and a Genie....(I'll explain that in a bit)

But the Thief can be difficult to deal with...He wan'ts to pickpocket a lot and seems to think he can be like, I pickpocket him and him and him and her and him and him and him...roll roll roll roll roll roll ok give me random treasure.....(How do I get his mentality off that sort of thing?...and I don't want to kill him off, I am actually quite fond of his character and don't wan't him to get killed cause of his stupid acts...I just want him to learn his lesson)

Treasure...currently my PC's wealth at 4th level and after 25 games or so...is roughly about (all combined) 100,000 gold worth of crap....maybe even 200,000....gold.. and it's all because they fumble f*&Ked it right! They managed to kill this NPC or stumble upon this certain thing at this certain time in the game world to get this certain item....

The Ranger already has a +4 bastard sword. And the characters each have a little more magical items then I would like them to have...and I just cant take it away that might make the players mad and maybe not wan't to play anymore....

The Dwarf is content with his fullplate Spiked armor with 3 foot helmet spike and the likes. He's playing the BattleRager correctly....too. 6 Charisma, 8 Wisdom, 8 Int......and for his roleplay abilities....and his proper playing of the battlerager I allowed him the 22 Str 22 Con 16 Dex. His Cha Wis and Int make up for that though. And he doesnt usually pick up on puzzles or cool treasures....he's blood thirsty and that's it.

The Genie is about to come into play. The Dwarf is currently walking around the upper dark tunnels beneath a desert in an arabian type setting that the Pc's traveled to with their plot clues..And he's chasing some fodder that escaped a war party that fled into the tunnels.....(which is all being orchestrated by a couple Drow...so he might soon be dead and he doesn't know it but hey he's got an INT of 8...can't expect him NOT to run off away from the party. He's running right into one of the main plot points for this particular part of the mod. AND he didn't have to think it out...he Fumble F&@ked it right and has the possibility of solving the source behind the mod without the other characters even knowing! damn...)..The Ranger and Thief just found their way into the underground network threw a secret passage....that leads to this intricate but simple dungeon I made for them. (at the end they gain my newest player as a party member) The Genie....in a lamp (cliche yup :p )

In this dungeon I set up some simple traps..the main feature of this dungeon is the maze half way through it. I have a 2 foot and 10 inch by 2 foot and 2 inch board sperated in 1x1 inch tiles for the 5 foot distance. I split this board into half. In each half is 100 1inch x 2inch blocks in a maze type setup. That's not even the fun part. Every 5feet each PC and zombies (theres some wandering zombies in the maze) takes, I have to roll D% and D4 a couple times on my wall chart to determing which walls in each section activate and then in turn which direction and type of movment it takes....AMAZING. The maze continously CHANGES......very fun very awsome. Percentile 1 and 100 of both sets of the maze entrap both keys to open the door out of the maze. That's gonna be fun.

Anyway the Genie gets to grant 2 wishes to the PCS.....how powerful are wishes? and what can they and can not grant? generally speaking.I don't want the PCS becoming god ya know. Though, They have to word their wishes carefully....if they wish for a Staff of magi....they might be transported to the location where a powerful wizard is currently holding one......yeah....but I want to hear some other peoples suggestions and ideas about wishes. Thanks!
 
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NeroVenedict said:
But the Thief can be difficult to deal with...He wan'ts to pickpocket a lot and seems to think he can be like, I pickpocket him and him and him and her and him and him and him...roll roll roll roll roll roll ok give me random treasure.....(How do I get his mentality off that sort of thing?...and I don't want to kill him off, I am actually quite fond of his character and don't wan't him to get killed cause of his stupid acts...I just want him to learn his lesson)
let him pickpocket a Planar scholar (from manual of planes) in street and tell him hes been sucked into the scholars pocket plane. let him fret about getting out, then have the Scholar appear and tell him he'll only let him out if... (queue random quest)

NeroVenedict said:
Anyway the Genie gets to grant 2 wishes to the PCS.....how powerful are wishes? and what can they and can not grant? generally speaking.I don't want the PCS becoming god ya know. Though, They have to word their wishes carefully....if they wish for a Staff of magi....they might be transported to the location where a powerful wizard is currently holding one......yeah....but I want to hear some other peoples suggestions and ideas about wishes. Thanks!
make 'em write their wishes down - even experienced players can be relied upon to ask for the wrong thing.
only efreet can grant wishes and they are evil.
if they wish for a staff of the magi (which is beyond the normal capacity for the spell being a minor artifact) id let them have an intelligent one of an opposed alignment, theyll soon regret it as it'll have a gargantuan Ego score...

those are my suggestions, good luck
 

Well, I'm using a guidline thing.....as far as the wishes go....The Genie is not the evil one...and he's first level...but I'm allowing him to grant 2 wishes to each person who picks him up...ONCE. And the Pcs already expressed (since they are GOOD and chaotic neutral with good) that they'd free him.

with the theif....He pickpocketed a WEALTHY merchant from the Kamerishan Desert (that's what I named it...since I'm making this realm from scratch you wouldn't know what the hell i'm talking about unless I said so :P) This merchant was doing trade up in the area the PC is from.....Well just so happens the thief got a Figurine of power...I made stats for an Ebony Monkey Figurine that he can summon the monkey from the astral plane. And not until game 26 (which by pure luck he got this) he didn't know the name of the monkey so He couldn't summon him......But the Merchant is hiring assassins to track down the thief...and by blind luck the thief has an item on him unknowingly that prevents scrying......but an assassin found him but the PCS took him down and interogated him.....so they know what's up now.
 

NeroVenedict said:
But the Thief can be difficult to deal with...He wan'ts to pickpocket a lot and seems to think he can be like, I pickpocket him and him and him and her and him and him and him...roll roll roll roll roll roll ok give me random treasure.....(How do I get his mentality off that sort of thing?...and I don't want to kill him off, I am actually quite fond of his character and don't wan't him to get killed cause of his stupid acts...I just want him to learn his lesson)

Deal with him fairly. Let him tell you who he pick pockets and resolve it. He'll eventually get noticed and have people start screaming "thief". Let him run and hide as people look for him or if he doesn't run and hide, show up with the guard. If he or the party messes with the guard, they're either going to get captured or have to leave the town. If they get captured, kick them out of town. Eventually, getting chased by the guard or having to leave town won't be worth the extra few silvers he's trying to grab and he'll reserve it for the prizes worth getting into trouble over.

Branding is always a good punishment. A small "T" for "thief" on the hand. -4 on any Chrarisma check to a lawful characer that sees it. He can just wear gloves, but it'll be a pain to keep concealed all the time, especially if he's noticed always wearing gloves in the summer.
 

Eventually the thief is going to inadvertently steal from someone who looks like a good 'mark' but turns out to be an experienced wizard, sorcerer, monk, paladin, barbarian, druid, or the like, who just looks like some rich fool or clueless vagrant. Then BAM! They grab the thief's arm when he trys to pilfer their coinpurse or something, and proceed to give him the beating of his life (non-lethally of course), or something similar. Hold Person or Suggestion from a mage could result in his ill-gotten gains being taken by the mage, putting him back to average wealth for his level.

A monk or paladin might just restrain him or subdue him (punching, grappling, or the like; any melee weapon can do subdual/nonlethal damage at -4 to the attack roll anyway) and turn him in to the local authorities, letting them fine him or something for his purse-snatching.

A barbarian or druid would likely just beat him savagely and take some of his stuff, possibly donating it to a local religious institution they favor (if any), or just taking them as retribution. A druid might just break all his most valuable stuff instead, in hatred of civilization's humanoid offal and their unnatural inventions. And the druid would only really need to summon an ape or dire ape to hold the rogue still while doing this. {:^D

You CAN change the gear of an NPC on a whim when a PC inadvertantly kills something they shouldn't have been able to yet; if you don't want them getting a +4 bastard sword at 4th-level, or a Gem of Wishes or the like, then DON'T GIVE IT TO THEM. The enemy just had a higher Strength score perhaps, giving the same total bonus to attack and damage but with a mere, normal bastard sword. Or their Gem of Wishes was already depleted. Or it was just a cheap gem with Nystul's Magical Aura on it to make it seem important and useful. For example. As DM you're not only the narrator, you're also the referee.

Have a Wish backfire, but not catastrophically. Wishes that go beyond the bounds of the spell's normal effects (described in the spell; just check the Player's Handbook or one of the online D20 System Reference Documents), are supposed to have unexpected or quirky results, and be subject to DM adjudication. So they Wish for something great. Okay, they get something great, but at the expense of much of their stuff being magically weakened, and their 'something great' turns out to be less great than originally expected too. Maybe they wish for a particular item; okay, they get a cursed copy of that item, you just decide what kind of curse. Maybe it breaks after its first use, or if used by someone of non-evil alignment, or if activated in natural sunlight. Etc.

The Shatter and Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells aren't only on PC sor/wiz spell lists...... And Sunder/Improved Sunder isn't a feat exclusively available to PCs. Just don't over-use them with NPCs.
 


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