Problem: character deaths are leading to enormous party wealth

[Khorod]

Alternatively to meta solutions, use a combination of all manner of things fluidly within the game world.

One character has an angry ghost, another has aristocratic relatives that want his stuff,

The party adventures in a more primitive land with higher population of item-eaters, which explains the fallen civilization...

Plus they get a nemesis in a magical thieves' guild that has pegged them as a really rich target.

Spreading all these out over a few levels will slowly and logically reduce the amount of items. The trick is not to create a ploy to disarm them, but simply to drop in some adventures/story arcs that happen to destroy magic or be related to them being a walking magical armory.

And, finally, despite what the average character level is, a party with gp in items two levels ahead of them should have a higher level. I am running a 7th level game. With high stats and magic items. Just for a change of pace to the wuxia. I consider them to be CR 10.

 

[Rel]

To bring the wealth level back in balance, alternate treasure seems to be in order for a period of time. A "coupon" solution can be useful but need not be overt. Have the group find expensive items that (perhaps after some divination) are discovered to belong to someone that wants them back, I.E. the chalice of Soenso, the honorable Baron of Zumplaize. Such items can be engraved with the name of the rightful owner or the heirs. An item can come in a case or box with an inscription denoting its owner.

Returning such items can entitle the party to medical assistance from the baron's staff or free but incredibly lavish lodgings next time they travel through his territory. Other such items that need to be returned could gain the party valuable information, a free resurrection, the goodwill of a small army that will pledge to guard an area for them sometime down the road. Make treasure more along the lines of barter for favors anytime the wealth level is out of whack. Once it is back in line with the standard, start handing out normal treasure again.

Just to elaborate on this one just a bit, have Baron Soenso be so happy that they returned the chalice that he grants them royal titles and the associated lands (lands worth "tens of thousands of gp"). Then, when the party goes to take possession of their royal estates, they discover that the lands are overrun with giant scorpion/a group of bandits/a herd of disenchanters/dinosaurs, whatever. It is of course their feudal duty to take care of the lands and the people who live upon them.

All of this was of course planned by the wiley Baron Soenso in an attempt to turn a notoriously troublesome province into a productive land by using the free labor of the PC's. Muhahahah!

There are a ton of possible variations on this theme but you get the idea. It seems like it could help you out in several ways:

1) The party seems to still be (and in a sense still are )getting valuable treasure (the royal titles, lands and estates). These are things they cannot readily sell and convert into other forms of "adventuring" treasure.

2) It pits the party against foes who are not likely to enrich the party treasure-wise but does give them experience. You could even say that after they take out the lower eschelons of the Bandits of the Black Forest, that their leaders (the guys with all the treasure) reveal themselves to simply be rebels against the oppressive regime of the Dictatorial Baron Soenso.

3) It provides a backdrop for more role-playing types of encounters including court intrigues and such. These types of encounters won't hinge on the kinds of magic items the party is over-equipped with right now anyway. I'm pretty sure I caught a reference to you giving out RP experience points so this is another way to let their level catch up with their gear and have fun doing it.

4) The taxes that they are required to pay the Baron may take them down a peg financially for a while until they can clear out enough of the monster/bandits/etc. to get the province productive again.


Hopefully that idea or something along those lines will work for you. I sympathize with your problem because we were forced to consider it early in our current campaign. We all just decided that we would keep the looting of the dead to a minimum as a sort of gentlemans agreement with the DM. If we hadn't gone that route, I could easily imagine him in your shoes.

 

[sabby]

Item Damage Rules and other fun stuff

Oh, the item damage rules are really a red herring. I'm one of those players who seems to roll a 1 on a saving throw at least once a week. I lost steel shield after steel shield until we finished reading the rules more. Items take half damage from elemental effects (thus the lightning bolts from the Javelins of Lightning that it seemed every Drow Warrior had in city of the spider queen), they have a hardness, and hit points. A mend spell cast after a fight, now and then, fixes that problem right up. Item damage rules are WAY too generous. It always seemed to me that there should be more equipment churn.

Oh, and when you come down to the fact that the party may not be generous with the newcomer, then perhaps you need to introduce your party to the idea that they need to work together or they will die together. It sounds like you need to do a "no holds barred" game session or two and have a full TPK. Once the party gets a TPK, they start to work together. There's a TREMENDOUS shift in the amount of generousity displayed. There's also teamwork and less "I want to be the best of everything" from players. I never used to have player deaths, but since I've started to play "within the rules" (and stop fudging the dice) I've had at least three TPKs from a group I genuinely like. They all come back as new characters. It definitely fixes the problem with treasure...

 

[sabby]

Oh, and let me explain the quotes

The quotes around "within the rules" and "no holds barred" means just that. I don't break the rules and thus have a TPK, I just start to play my monsters like a PC would play.

I have a GM that regularly did that to us, it definitely taught me about D&D tactics. Ever since then, I can play in another GMs game world and fight above what would be expected of my level. As GMs, we tend to not do mean things like coup de grace, even when as a PC I might. (If my enemy had clerics healing the fallen wounded, I would definitely coup de grace a partilcularly tough fallen enemy.) I also have creatures which are vulnerable to fire and such target those in the lightest armor who aren't wielding a sword. I throw FORT SAVE effects at those in the lightest armor and WILL SAVES at those in the heaviest. (And REFLEX saves at those with holy symbols on their armor.) Intelligent spell casting with a ton of meat-shield piddly tanks tends to actually be a VERY TOUGH encounter. (And if a lot of their equipment is expendable, you find that you'll give out a lot less treasure. Potion of Fly, potion of Haste, potion of ... heh.)

All mean things that I wouldn't do regularly, but once in a while, it actually gets the players' blood flowing to have a particularly challenging encounter, even if it leads to a few deaths or a TPK.

 

[Mark]

Evidence in this campaign seems to prove otherwise. We have one character who has never ever died, and seems to rarely even get hurt for that matter. The only reason he's not 13th level right now is because his player has intentionally chosen to skip a few adventures while his comrades level-up. On the other hand, we have some extremely accident prone characters/players who are always seeming to blunder into situations they shouldn't have. There are two players that each have 3 deaths on their characters, and these are the same ones who always seem to be the closest to dying in every adventure.

If I were to continually start replacement characters at the lowest level as you suggest, I'd have the following situation:

Two 12th level characters
Two 11th level characters
Two 8th level characters

Is that an ideal situation for the party or the DM? Only penalizing a half-level for deaths or replacements keep sthings a lot more manageable. Using that method there's still a 2-level gap they're having to struggle with, but at least it's not 4 levels.

How is it that one character has ever gotten ahead of the group in experience points in the first place? Maybe I am not understanding how you run your game in regard to experience point distribution. Do you divide experience evenly for the whole party?

The ideal situation is not penalizing them from the beginning and keeping the group all at the same level. If a DM always starts characters out at the level of the lowest level survivor how would it be that the group isn't always balanced? Perhaps I'm not being clear. I don't mean to say that a replacement character begins at the start of a level, I mean with the same experience point total of the lowest surviving character.

There are a few areas where 3E does present a chance for a difference in experience point levels of characters, such as loss of experience with item creation. Provided the group (or a player) isn't using their character as an item factory, this should be a huge problem. If one character loses a few thousand experience through item creation, and a couple of the others die, then a few of the characters ar a few thousand experience behind the others. That's still not a few level gap.

In any event, I'd remove the penalty and try to remove the gap. It doesn't seem to be them who has to struggle with the gap, it seems to be you.

As I said, maybe there's a factor I am not figuring into this. Do you give out arbitrary roleplaying experience awards to individual players? I've found that unlike previous editions of the game where a DM could get away with that (all the way back to '78), 3E does not support handing experience to some players but not all.

If a DM in 3E is going to give roleplaying experience it is best to give it based on teamwork and divide it amoung the whole party even if it has been earned by a single player for a single act of roleplaying. If the reward is designed to encourage roleplaying amoung the whole group, it should have the same effect and become less about "this guy did well so he alone benefits" and more about "anyone who does well in roleplaying helps the whole group so it's in everyone's interest to follow the example of those who do well."

BTW, Did you not find the suggestions to your wealth problems useful?

There may be another problem you are not addressing that I found striking from this last post. How is it that one character rarely ever gets hurt? Is that character avoiding dangerous situations even when the group has plunged into them? Would that character's presense have prevented the deaths of some of the other characters? I've noticed in some games that an encounter designed for a whole group can sometimes be overwhelming when one character holds back...resulting in the deaths of some, or all, of the others. It's amazing how much the loss of a character through inaction can harm a group. I'm not saying this is your situation, but give us an example of and encounter where one character managed to avoid any damage even as another character (or more than one) died.

*EDIT* Rel - Good stuff!

 

[Kalendraf]

Warning - really long reply ahead!

How is it that one character has ever gotten ahead of the group in experience points in the first place? Maybe I am not understanding how you run your game in regard to experience point distribution. Do you divide experience evenly for the whole party?

I figured that would be pretty obvious, but maybe not. Over the span of 2 years, there have been a number of party deaths. Those deaths each cost a half-level of exp in this campaign. As it currently stands, this has led to a gap of about 2 levels across the party, since a couple players have had 3 deaths, most have had 1, and 1 real lucky SOB has managed to never die. In addition to this, some characters have missed a few sessions and fallen behind on experience that way as well. Now, if I were to apply the rule that that new characters come in at the level of the lowest character party, and I'm assuming that we also use the book ruling on raise dead costing 1 level of exp, here's how it would work out in my party:

Around 4th level, a character dies and is brought back from the dead (he's 3rd, other 4 members are 4th).
Around 6th level (with 1 guy at 5th), a new guy joins the group and joins in at 5th level.
Two characters die, but are raised - one of them being a guy at 6th and 5th. Resulting levels after raises are 6,6,6,5,5,4
Party hits 7th (7,7,7,6,6,5)
One of the 7th level guys buys the farm from a mummy and turns to dust. Brings in a new character at 5th (7,7,6,6,5,5)
Party goes up a couple levels, and then in a nasty encounter two more characters die, one of them at 9th, one at 8th and are raised (9,8,8,7,7,7)
Due to some vacations, some guys get more/less exp (9,9,8,8,7,7)
Party goes up 3 levels w/o any deaths (12,12,11,11,10,10).
One of the 10th level guys dies and is raised (12,12,11,11,10,9)
The 9th level guy dies and is raised again (12,12,11,11,10,8)
The 10th level guy dies and can't be raised. He brings in a new character at 8th.
Final party levels: 12, 12, 11, 11, 8, 8

That's basically how things would look right now if I used the rule of new characters coming in at the level of the lowest surviving member.

The ideal situation is not penalizing them from the beginning and keeping the group all at the same level. If a DM always starts characters out at the level of the lowest level survivor how would it be that the group isn't always balanced?

The above example should illustrate the problem with that method. When the same players' characters tend to be the ones dying and replaced the most often, it begins to break down.

There are a few areas where 3E does present a chance for a difference in experience point levels of characters, such as loss of experience with item creation. Provided the group (or a player) isn't using their character as an item factory, this should be a huge problem. If one character loses a few thousand experience through item creation, and a couple of the others die, then a few of the characters ar a few thousand experience behind the others. That's still not a few level gap.

This has been a contributing factor. Some of the lower level characters have blown some large amounts of exp crafting items. It's probably only a few thousand, but it does keep them behind the rest of the party.

In any event, I'd remove the penalty and try to remove the gap. It doesn't seem to be them who has to struggle with the gap, it seems to be you.

This is true. When there's a gap in the party, it becomes difficult to properly challenge them. Hand them something easy, and the high level characters plow thru it. Hand them something difficult, and the low level guys tend to get plowed instead.

As I said, maybe there's a factor I am not figuring into this. Do you give out arbitrary roleplaying experience awards to individual players? I've found that unlike previous editions of the game where a DM could get away with that (all the way back to '78), 3E does not support handing experience to some players but not all.

I vary rarely hand out any individual exp, and then only in the case of something really awesome that the character has done in character. To date, I think this has totaled less than 300 exp for any single character. And I tended to award them to the characters further behind on exp, so if anything this has helped narrow the gap in exp.

BTW, Did you not find the suggestions to your wealth problems useful?

Many have been useful suggestions for *future* campaigns. Requiring future dying characters to have npc's that demand their items is not something I can easily drop into this campaign given the history to this point. Some suggestions for low-magic campaigns simply do not work for this campaign which tends to be more in the normal to high-magic range. Using more item destruction methods is a mixed bag - it works, but it's kind of a cheesy route for the DM to take. How to correct the problem easiest has been answered by 1 person who happens to be familiar with the adventure I'm using (Hell in Freeport). There's a certain location where items can be rather easily "lost", and that should solve my short term problem. However, looking ahead, a similar situation could manifest again after this adventure concludes when other characters die, can't be raised, and are replaced. I've yet to figure out a solid solution for that. The ideas have been helpful, and hopefully I'll be able to pull something out of them all to make it all work out.

There may be another problem you are not addressing that I found striking from this last post. How is it that one character rarely ever gets hurt? Is that character avoiding dangerous situations even when the group has plunged into them?

That character is a ranger/deep woods sniper who is pure death with his bow. Being a ranged attacker, he tends to avoid the melee attacks that have claimed the rest of the party. And he's gotten insanely lucky on some die rolls as well. He does get hurt, but not to the degree that the front line fighters do. The party balance has a lot to do with his survival. Paladin, Fighter/Sohi, Cleric, Wizard, Sorcerer and then the Ranger. Smart enemies tend to focus their attacks on the wizard, sorcerer and cleric (in that order), and stupider ones go after who ever is closest including the paladin or fighter. So the ranger is often the last one that is gone after, and by the time the monsters realize their mistake, it's fatal for them. The ranger does have a fairly high AC, and some decent defensive gear in addition to his nifty bow. He's built this character to be the ultimate archer and it's a pretty lethal build in terms of what I've seen so far. There have been a few fights where he's been clobbered, including one critical hit for over 50 points from a stone golem that required a fortitude check or face instant death. Of course he made it w/o any problems. Mostly, he seems to be just blessed with luck. And it's not loaded dice or anything as he does roll his fair share of 1's on rolls that don't mean much at the time using the exact same dice. I've seen characters like this before in a few campaigns I've DM'ed - no matter how hard you try to kill them, they avoid death each and every time! They often become the heros that the group remembers.

Would that character's presense have prevented the deaths of some of the other characters?

The ranger is the guy sitting out this adventure (the whole Hell in Freeport thing) for 2 reasons. First, he wants to enjoy the summer evenings, and secondly, he does want to let some of the other guys catch-up. He may have been able to help in one of the 2 recent encounter that lead to character deaths. However, in the most recent, I doubt he would have helped much. His spot is the highest in the group though, so he may very well have helped them avoid being surprised. It's really a tough call.

While I'm on the topic, I'm beginning to believe that it is almost mandatory to have at least 1 character in a party with a high spot modifier. In roughly 3/4's of the encounters where characters have died in the last 2 years, the enemies had surprise on the party, and got off a surprise attack or ambush.

I've noticed in some games that an encounter designed for a whole group can sometimes be overwhelming when one character holds back...resulting in the deaths of some, or all, of the others. It's amazing how much the loss of a character through inaction can harm a group. I'm not saying this is your situation, but give us an example of and encounter where one character managed to avoid any damage even as another character (or more than one) died.

Actually I think that has happened almost everytime there's been a fatality. At least 1 or 2 characters have avoided all damage while someone bought it. From memory:

1) Characters (about 4th level range) are being really stupid, chasing a gorilla in the jungle. Ranger and the druid (old character in the party) are hoping to charm it as an animal companion. Red flags should be going off right now for most of you - this isn't proper behavior for either a ranger or a druid, and their diety did punish them for their selfish behavior, but back to the death. Gorilla isn't entirely stupid and runs thru a clearing with a large giant beehive and as he runs past, angers the bees. Party is pursuing and runs smack dab into the giant beehive. The bees surprise the party and charge. The fighter/wizard (another former character) who managed to roll 1's, 2's and 3's on his d10s for hit points is stung badly. Bees then win initiative. Fighter/wizard stung to death. The other characters manage to drive off the bees with fire, and a couple take no damage at all. They were too low to cast a raise dead, and the guy with the fighter/wizard opted to get a new character rather than have them pay for a raise dead. There really wasn't a whole lot anybody could have done differently besides not being stupid idiots trying to chase an ape in the jungle!

2) Around 6th level, the rogue (yet another former character) sees a room with 6 coffins. There was a trap outside, so he decides he'd better search this room for traps. 2 rounds after he enters, 4 mummies emerge from the coffins. He misses his spot check as he's searching the floor. Mummies get flanking and hit him. He was wounded from before, and the damage drops him to the ground. He fails his save and is infected with mummy rot. In a panic, the wizard casts an acid orb into the room, and the splash damage drops the rogue past neg 10. The rogue turns to dust leaving his equipment behind. Next turn, the mummies are killed by a fireball or something similar. This is an encounter where only the rogue took any damage at all, and died unrecoverably. Chalk it up to A) rogue being overly paranoid about traps, B) rogue being absent-minded about his prior damage and C) wizard forgetting how his spell worked on a miss. Could it have been avoided? Certainly. But this was just players being forgetful/stupid. And by the way, the rogue's items did roll saves against the acid, and most of the stuff saved. Only some meaningless stuff got destroyed.

3) Around 7th level, 2 shambling mounds pummel two characters (druid, sorcerer) to death. The grapple attacks did them in. Character didn't know about lightning helping the monsters, and accidently boosted one of them with a lightning attack. Oops! Meanwhile, the rest of the party went thru the battle w/o much damage. Both the druid and sorcerer had some damage from previous encounters and we later figured out that if they'd been fully healed entering this combat, both would have survived. Chalk these 2 deaths up to A) characters unfamiliarity with shambling mounds, and B) forgetting to heal up properly after a previous battle. Both characters opted to be reincarnated of all things. The druid came back as a bat and left the party taking most of his items. The human sorcerer came back as a halfling sorcerer and stayed in the party.

4) Around 8th level, a fight against 3 undead creatures (undead lizardman fighter, undead serpentman rogue and undead serpentman sorcerer) led to the party sorcerer and barbarian (another old character) getting killed. This was a tough fight, probably about 2 to 3 EL's above the party. However, the party was given several earlier hints as to how to avoid having to fight all 3 of the undead at once (the lizardman fighter was under control of the sorcerer and rogue), which would have made it much easier. He would not have attacked them had they only gone after the rogue and sorcerer. Also, they were wounded and low on spells, but decided to press on, in spite of several warnings that much danger was ahead. To top it off, I even gave them a last ditch diplomacy option which they wasted miserably. When the dust settled, 2 characters were dead, while at least 2 characters had hardly taken any damage at all. The ranger archer was one of the those who got thru w/out a scratch, but was largely responsible for toasting both the serpentman rogue and sorcerer and ending the battle before it turned into a total party kill. This was clearly a case of the party over-extending, and failing to use information it had been handed several times during the adventure. The monsters fought to the best of their ability, which is what led to 2 characters dying, and another being within a single hit of dying.

5) Again around 9th level, they run across 3 shambling mounds as part of a random encounter in the jungle. The sorcerer who had been wounded in an earlier encounter, gets grappled to death. The rest of the party takes almost no damage in the encounter. Chalk yet another one up to a character forgetting to heal up after a fight. In fact, after this, the entire group chastised the player for again forgetting to do this.

6) Party is about 11th to 12th level when 3 Large Ice Stalkers (CR 6, Hell in Freeport) ambush them. The cleric winds up getting flanked. His greater cloak of protection helps against about half the blows. He uses his opening round to cast...Sanctuary?!? On the next round it stops one of the stalkers from attacking him, but the other one makes its save and pummels him to death. I suspect the stalkers are actually closer to a CR8 or 9. Party wasn't that smart in movement or spell usage either. Two other characters suffered a lot of damage, but the sorcerer and fighter had almost no damage when the fight ended. Chalk this death up to a combination of poor tactics on the party's end.

7) This time, a group of 8 shadows emerge from the walls of a tight passageway surprising the party from behind. Several of them flank and attack the cleric who's at the very back. This time his greater cloak of displacement only deflects 1 blow, and the other hits easily reduce him below 0 strength. Cleric only had like a 10 or 11 strength, so it didn't take much. Non-corporeal attacks that ignore armor are nasty. Monsters died instantly on the next round (Paladin turned them or wizard cast spell, can't remember now), and no one else was hurt at all. My attack rolls for the shadows were pretty avg (10's, 12's, 8's), but it's pretty easy to hit a touch armor class of 11 with flanking. Chalk this one up to a nasty ambush that the party didn't spot, coupled with some bad rolls on the cloak.

In each of the above examples, there were characters that were pretty much unharmed while others died. In many cases, the party blundered into a bad situation all on their own, and wound up losing a character or two in the process. You might think I have stupid or reckless players. However, they are extremely lethal when it comes to tactics before and during combat, and most of these guys are brilliant folks in their technical professions. My guess is that it's mostly carelessness and some bad luck.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I've seen characters like this before in a few campaigns I've DM'ed - no matter how hard you try to kill them, they avoid death each and every time! They often become the heros that the group remembers.

I finally managed to actually take a hit point off the sorcerer in my campaign not that long ago - they've just hit 6th level.

I'd tried. He had a combination of good instincts, insane luck, and pure cowardice that mean I simply never landed an attack on him.

"Hit points?" the player would say. "Oh, those. Those are those things the meatshields are always complaining about?"

But they finally bumped into a reflex-half area effect that he didn't manage to run away from before it went off.

The other players applauded

-Hyp.

 

[Mark]

Warning - really long reply ahead!

I'll try to make your efforts worthwhile...

Over the span of 2 years, there have been a number of party deaths. Those deaths each cost a half-level of exp in this campaign. As it currently stands, this has led to a gap of about 2 levels across the party, since a couple players have had 3 deaths, most have had 1, and 1 real lucky SOB has managed to never die. In addition to this, some characters have missed a few sessions and fallen behind on experience that way as well. Now, if I were to apply the rule that that new characters come in at the level of the lowest character party, and I'm assuming that we also use the book ruling on raise dead costing 1 level of exp-

Nope. Scratch that rule in your case as it would only exacerbate the problem you have. At the least, suspend the rule for a while. If the remarkably lucky guy dies a few times and things get back to even, then maybe consider adding it back in. I'm not much of a house-rules guy, but since (like Will/d20 Dwarf) so much of my DMing falls into the category of playtesting, I need a nice base line in the characters so I can judge the material fairly. In the case you have, I would approach it the same way until things normalize. So, no, don't use the book ruling on losing a level.

Some of the lower level characters have blown some large amounts of exp crafting items. It's probably only a few thousand, but it does keep them behind the rest of the party.

Are these items they are crafting for themselves to use, or are the other members of the party asking for these items to be made? If the latter, I might be tempting to drop a scroll (divine or arcane, whichever is needed) into the campaign somewhere that has a spell on it that could be learned by the crafter. Something on the order of a "Shared Experience" spell. Make it as high a level spell as you think fits, but is still accessible to the caster. Can only be cast on a willing subject. Allows the caster, just before an item creation process, to absorb the experience necessary for creation from another willing person. If the higher level guy truly wants to even things up a bit, he'll volunteer for this process when necessary. Won't clear up everything, but it may help a bit.

This is true. When there's a gap in the party, it becomes difficult to properly challenge them. Hand them something easy, and the high level characters plow thru it. Hand them something difficult, and the low level guys tend to get plowed instead.

Are you making sure to throw diverse groups at them, and slyly pairing them off so the tough guy gets the tough opponents and the lower fellas get the easier pickins? That may help keep everyone challenged a little more.

I vary rarely hand out any individual exp, and then only in the case of something really awesome that the character has done in character. To date, I think this has totaled less than 300 exp for any single character. And I tended to award them to the characters further behind on exp, so if anything this has helped narrow the gap in exp.

Well, that's not it then. Some folks I know who DM have a tendancy to dole out the experience to the guys that impress the DM the most, but often it turns out to be the same player again and again. It's a slippery slope but it isn't your problem. My bad.

Requiring future dying characters to have npc's that demand their items is not something I can easily drop into this campaign given the history to this point. Some suggestions for low-magic campaigns simply do not work for this campaign which tends to be more in the normal to high-magic range. Using more item destruction methods is a mixed bag - it works, but it's kind of a cheesy route for the DM to take. How to correct the problem easiest has been answered by 1 person who happens to be familiar with the adventure I'm using (Hell in Freeport). There's a certain location where items can be rather easily "lost", and that should solve my short term problem. However, looking ahead, a similar situation could manifest again after this adventure concludes when other characters die, can't be raised, and are replaced. I've yet to figure out a solid solution for that. The ideas have been helpful, and hopefully I'll be able to pull something out of them all to make it all work out.

It might be worthwhile having NPCs and creatures that might carry magic to stop fighting to the death. An encounter in 3E is supposed to expend 20% of a party's resources, but there's no real problem with having things run away after taking 10% (you also have the option to give lower experience for those encounters of you like) and no new magic items are left behind. If you are concerned that the NPC might not get away, toss in some extra minions to remove the chance of following the NPC, and that would also suck up some more of those resources.

In the future, you might also consider having more items that work with charges, so they aren't permanent items, even if those types of items normally function as permanent items. If planned treasure in a module calls for a ring of invisibility, change it to a wand of invisibility with twenty charges. Things like that can help to even things out sooner or later.

That character is a ranger/deep woods sniper who is pure death with his bow. Being a ranged attacker, he tends to avoid the melee attacks that have claimed the rest of the party. And he's gotten insanely lucky on some die rolls as well. He does get hurt, but not to the degree that the front line fighters do. The party balance has a lot to do with his survival. Paladin, Fighter/Sohi, Cleric, Wizard, Sorcerer and then the Ranger. Smart enemies tend to focus their attacks on the wizard, sorcerer and cleric (in that order), and stupider ones go after who ever is closest including the paladin or fighter. So the ranger is often the last one that is gone after, and by the time the monsters realize their mistake, it's fatal for them. The ranger does have a fairly high AC, and some decent defensive gear in addition to his nifty bow. He's built this character to be the ultimate archer and it's a pretty lethal build in terms of what I've seen so far. There have been a few fights where he's been clobbered, including one critical hit for over 50 points from a stone golem that required a fortitude check or face instant death. Of course he made it w/o any problems. Mostly, he seems to be just blessed with luck. And it's not loaded dice or anything as he does roll his fair share of 1's on rolls that don't mean much at the time using the exact same dice. I've seen characters like this before in a few campaigns I've DM'ed - no matter how hard you try to kill them, they avoid death each and every time! They often become the heros that the group remembers.

In another thread I added these suggestions for how to handle the back ranks of NPCs without having to plow through the front ranks first-

Use terrain more effectively and split NPC groups so they attack the PCs from multiple points on several fronts. Use tunnels and areas with chasms that can be used to flank (in the traditional sense of the word) or move around the rear of the party.

3E, 3D - Flying attackers are very difficult to keep all on one side of a group with a single character between the opponents and the party.

Ethereal attackers can come out of walls, the ground, objects, etc.

Dimension Door, Blink, Teleport, Passwall, Polymorph, Meld into Stone various illusions and even a simple Rope Trick are other ways an opponent can bypass a font line fighter.

You may have to be unfair in how you use these tactics so that you are attacking only the PCs that can take it, but if it helps to even things out a bit, it couldn't hurt. As long as you don't do it every single time it shouldn't be overly upsetting to the players.

The ranger is the guy sitting out this adventure (the whole Hell in Freeport thing) for 2 reasons. First, he wants to enjoy the summer evenings, and secondly, he does want to let some of the other guys catch-up. He may have been able to help in one of the 2 recent encounter that lead to character deaths. However, in the most recent, I doubt he would have helped much. His spot is the highest in the group though, so he may very well have helped them avoid being surprised. It's really a tough call.

Well, that might settle some of the trouble for you. If things get close about the time he wants to come back, hedge your bet and dole out enough experience to get the party a level ahead of him.

While I'm on the topic, I'm beginning to believe that it is almost mandatory to have at least 1 character in a party with a high spot modifier. In roughly 3/4's of the encounters where characters have died in the last 2 years, the enemies had surprise on the party, and got off a surprise attack or ambush.

I agree. You may want to make sure the party has an item that functions as an alarm, to some degree, in the Ranger's absence.

Actually I think that has happened almost everytime there's been a fatality. At least 1 or 2 characters have avoided all damage while someone bought it. From memory:

1) Characters (about 4th level range) are being really stupid, chasing a gorilla in the jungle. Ranger and the druid (old character in the party) are hoping to charm it as an animal companion. Red flags should be going off right now for most of you - this isn't proper behavior for either a ranger or a druid, and their diety did punish them for their selfish behavior, but back to the death. Gorilla isn't entirely stupid and runs thru a clearing with a large giant beehive and as he runs past, angers the bees. Party is pursuing and runs smack dab into the giant beehive. The bees surprise the party and charge. The fighter/wizard (another former character) who managed to roll 1's, 2's and 3's on his d10s for hit points is stung badly. Bees then win initiative. Fighter/wizard stung to death. The other characters manage to drive off the bees with fire, and a couple take no damage at all. They were too low to cast a raise dead, and the guy with the fighter/wizard opted to get a new character rather than have them pay for a raise dead. There really wasn't a whole lot anybody could have done differently besides not being stupid idiots trying to chase an ape in the jungle!

Hee hee hee Got stung, eh? Greed is sometimes going to happen and you've punished them for breaking their "character code" so I don't suppose you could have done anything differently.

2) Around 6th level, the rogue (yet another former character) sees a room with 6 coffins. There was a trap outside, so he decides he'd better search this room for traps. 2 rounds after he enters, 4 mummies emerge from the coffins. He misses his spot check as he's searching the floor. Mummies get flanking and hit him. He was wounded from before, and the damage drops him to the ground. He fails his save and is infected with mummy rot. In a panic, the wizard casts an acid orb into the room, and the splash damage drops the rogue past neg 10. The rogue turns to dust leaving his equipment behind. Next turn, the mummies are killed by a fireball or something similar. This is an encounter where only the rogue took any damage at all, and died unrecoverably. Chalk it up to A) rogue being overly paranoid about traps, B) rogue being absent-minded about his prior damage and C) wizard forgetting how his spell worked on a miss. Could it have been avoided? Certainly. But this was just players being forgetful/stupid. And by the way, the rogue's items did roll saves against the acid, and most of the stuff saved. Only some meaningless stuff got destroyed.

If this were to happen now in your current situation I'd suggest fudging the saving throw rolls and destroying any of the things you think would unbalance the party...at least until things get back closer to normal.

3) Around 7th level, 2 shambling mounds pummel two characters (druid, sorcerer) to death. The grapple attacks did them in. Character didn't know about lightning helping the monsters, and accidently boosted one of them with a lightning attack. Oops! Meanwhile, the rest of the party went thru the battle w/o much damage. Both the druid and sorcerer had some damage from previous encounters and we later figured out that if they'd been fully healed entering this combat, both would have survived. Chalk these 2 deaths up to A) characters unfamiliarity with shambling mounds, and B) forgetting to heal up properly after a previous battle. Both characters opted to be reincarnated of all things. The druid came back as a bat and left the party taking most of his items. The human sorcerer came back as a halfling sorcerer and stayed in the party.

Just a bad break there. If a number of characters are in close quarters melee you might consider switching the focus of the attacking monster toward someone who can take the damage more. Also, even if there aren't other characters in direct melee, if someone is taking too much of a pummeling, there's really no reason an irrational creature can't view someone plunking him with arrows or spells as the greater threat, break off melee and charge the bowman or caster. Monsters (especially chaotic ones) don't always have to ceaselessly attack until an opponent is dead, it just seems that way because we've become used to watching the hit points go down and trying to take out PCs one at a time to lessen the number of attacks they get. Battles can be more random than that with creatures bouncing from one opponent to the next regardless of how well they might do against one particular foe.

4) Around 8th level, a fight against 3 undead creatures (undead lizardman fighter, undead serpentman rogue and undead serpentman sorcerer) led to the party sorcerer and barbarian (another old character) getting killed. This was a tough fight, probably about 2 to 3 EL's above the party. However, the party was given several earlier hints as to how to avoid having to fight all 3 of the undead at once (the lizardman fighter was under control of the sorcerer and rogue), which would have made it much easier. He would not have attacked them had they only gone after the rogue and sorcerer. Also, they were wounded and low on spells, but decided to press on, in spite of several warnings that much danger was ahead. To top it off, I even gave them a last ditch diplomacy option which they wasted miserably. When the dust settled, 2 characters were dead, while at least 2 characters had hardly taken any damage at all. The ranger archer was one of the those who got thru w/out a scratch, but was largely responsible for toasting both the serpentman rogue and sorcerer and ending the battle before it turned into a total party kill. This was clearly a case of the party over-extending, and failing to use information it had been handed several times during the adventure. The monsters fought to the best of their ability, which is what led to 2 characters dying, and another being within a single hit of dying.

They certainly pushed their luck and payed for it. I've seen this happen a few times during games and sometimes have just called for a break. Taking fifteen minutes away from the table sometimes helps players to calm from the adrenaline rush they got from the last fight. Not saying it would have helped in this case, but it bears mentioning for anyone who happens to be slogging through our extend-o-posts.

5) Again around 9th level, they run across 3 shambling mounds as part of a random encounter in the jungle. The sorcerer who had been wounded in an earlier encounter, gets grappled to death. The rest of the party takes almost no damage in the encounter. Chalk yet another one up to a character forgetting to heal up after a fight. In fact, after this, the entire group chastised the player for again forgetting to do this.

Simple foolishness. With some groups I got in the habit of asking if anyone was doing any healing and staring directly at one player who always used to forget. This guy had ADD and it really wasn't his fault that he would forget. The guy who played the cleric in that group was a newer player so I couldn't really blame him for not speaking up. Sometimes I would be less blatant and tell the back ranks that they noticed a trail of blood so they would follow it to their bleeding companion and tell him to heal up.

6) Party is about 11th to 12th level when 3 Large Ice Stalkers (CR 6, Hell in Freeport) ambush them. The cleric winds up getting flanked. His greater cloak of protection helps against about half the blows. He uses his opening round to cast...Sanctuary?!? On the next round it stops one of the stalkers from attacking him, but the other one makes its save and pummels him to death. I suspect the stalkers are actually closer to a CR8 or 9. Party wasn't that smart in movement or spell usage either. Two other characters suffered a lot of damage, but the sorcerer and fighter had almost no damage when the fight ended. Chalk this death up to a combination of poor tactics on the party's end.

There have been ocassions where I've lessened the amount of damage I've dealt, taking a PC to one point below 0 instead of outright killing them. Sure it's fudging but if you feel the CRs are out of whack, you're really just leveling the playing field. Might not have helped in this case but who knows?

7) This time, a group of 8 shadows emerge from the walls of a tight passageway surprising the party from behind. Several of them flank and attack the cleric who's at the very back. This time his greater cloak of displacement only deflects 1 blow, and the other hits easily reduce him below 0 strength. Cleric only had like a 10 or 11 strength, so it didn't take much. Non-corporeal attacks that ignore armor are nasty. Monsters died instantly on the next round (Paladin turned them or wizard cast spell, can't remember now), and no one else was hurt at all. My attack rolls for the shadows were pretty avg (10's, 12's, 8's), but it's pretty easy to hit a touch armor class of 11 with flanking. Chalk this one up to a nasty ambush that the party didn't spot, coupled with some bad rolls on the cloak.

Shadows are one of the nastiest creatures no matter what level a party is. Almost certain ambush and most normal defenses don't help much. Nuff said.

In each of the above examples, there were characters that were pretty much unharmed while others died. In many cases, the party blundered into a bad situation all on their own, and wound up losing a character or two in the process. You might think I have stupid or reckless players. However, they are extremely lethal when it comes to tactics before and during combat, and most of these guys are brilliant folks in their technical professions. My guess is that it's mostly carelessness and some bad luck.

I wouldn't be so harsh as to say they are stupid or reckless, but if they are repeatedly missing what you think is the obvious maybe they need some sharper hints than you have been giving them? Being so lethal in combat might also be giving them a false sense of superiority. Maybe there are ways to curtail that with more horrific descriptions of those who have died before they get to their destination. Scrawlings on walls by a nearby skeleton, the sole survivor of an encounter gone wrong as a dying declaration of just how dangerous a next encounter might be. Maybe add in some clues as to what might be a good approach, I.E. warnings of possible ambushes, types of creature if not exact names, tip offs for traps ("keep your eyes on the path" before a pit), things like that.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Last night's unfortunate episode had the 10th level cleric get jumped by a bunch of shadows which managed to drop him well below 0-strength, causing him to turn into a shadow. His corpse and items were still there for the party.

Actually, just to complicate the situation a bit, the spawn ability says the victim becomes a shadow, not that he lies there and emits a shadow. I don't necessarily see where the shadow doesn't get to keep his stuff, at least until they kill it.

 

[Psion]

Actually, just to complicate the situation a bit, the spawn ability says the victim becomes a shadow, not that he lies there and emits a shadow. I don't necessarily see where the shadow doesn't get to keep his stuff, at least until they kill it.

Shadows are incorporeal... and unlike ghosts, don't have any special "ghostly equipment" entry. That pretty much seals it.