Uber-Heroic Statblocks

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

I had a slight idea the other night (well, in November) and ran it by my players.

They all about freaked.

"Here is your new stat-block. You have 4 levels to spend, but you may only take a single level in a single class, the rest must be spent in templates or racial adjustments. You have 10,000 GP to spend on gear, and can use any of the 3.0 or 3.5 or Shtar books you want. There are no cross class skills and feel free to beg for cool stuff."

The stat block was as follows (Include the Apperance stat from BoEF)
26, 25, 24, 23, 21, 19, 18

Yup, you read it right.
26, 25, 24, 23, 21, 19, 18

We ended up with SuperPC's, strange combinations and packing powerful magic from the get go.

We had a lot of fun, and the PC's felt confident in taking on challenges. Some people traded in thier levels for free feats or magic items, or odd stuff.

The characters are alive still, but fight the brutal battles, face the hard fights, and take on the rough things that most PC's would run from.

(Yeah, I'm the "idiot" who slammed a barbarian against a marble pillar and ruled: Dude, you're dead. Contrary to what a lot of you suspected, Kerrick wasn't complaining, just curious as to your responses.)

We cross between cinematic and gritty styles. Since they are WAY larger than life heroes (I'm sick of the "nobody special" style, I'm nobody special in real life, I'd like to RP a larger than life heroe) we have the Wuxia style combats.

Any of you ever tried this? Just releasing the restraints, throwing that Holy Cow of "Game Balance" out the window and just having fun?

 

[shilsen]

Sounds pretty balanced to me. You gave all the PCs the same starting attributes and wealth and have them at the same ECL. Since they are more powerful than regular by the book PCs their level would be, you have them "fight the brutal battles, face the hard fights, and take on the rough things that most PC's would run from". Sounds perfect. Where did you get the idea you threw game balance out the window?

 

[questionmark]

Yes, I agree

Most of the games I run are built off previous sessions. in three years of playing with the same group we have only ever had 1 one shot quest. On average I probably DM twice a year for 4-5 months at a time. I am a big fan of cinematic heroic games were the pc's start off slow but rise to incredible power. I like throwing really hard challenges at the players. But just as the challenges are great so are the rewards.

My newest idea is to start a level 1 campaign were the pcs find the corpse of a epic character. Each character in turn "inherits" a single epic Item. It is a for sure epic item and maybe even an artifact. Then I want to see how Each uber item effects each caharacter. I think it could be a really fun game. Some items may be intelligent to mix things up as well. I can already think of quest hooks where an old enemy or ally recognizes one of the items. or the trouble a pc would have if they ever get there item destroyed (in terms of self confidence). Also other more powerful npc's would see the potential of such a powerfull and green goup and may try to exploit them.

All I know is it is really fun for me to see pc's changing and evolving as the game keeps going and sometime's a players greed(unwillingness to give up a high stat or good item is enough to keep them from playing the next "template": they read about.

 

[seankreynolds]

Any of you ever tried this? Just releasing the restraints, throwing that Holy Cow of "Game Balance" out the window and just having fun?

At one MonteCon I ran a game where a bunch of 2nd-level characters were handed a bunch of artifacts by a god and told to take them to a cave (guarded by goblins and an ogre) where there was a planar rift that would cast the artifacts out of that Material Plane forever. It was pretty fun, and I'll never forgot this exchange with Chris Perkins:

Chris: Are there any goblins left?
Sean: Yes, there's one right next to you.
Chris: Good, I hit it with the wand of Orcus!

It was an interesting game where the PCs had incredible power at their disposal but were still quite fragile as 2nd-level characters. Not exactly what you're talking about, but IMO worth mentioning.