Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 1777226" data-attributes="member: 9053">I'm currently playing in a campaign where we have characters at extremely different power levels in terms of combat. The characters are: Human Rogue 1 swashbuckler 2 (my character: an academic "tomb raider" type character)Elf Bard 2, fighter 1 (attempting to become a bladesinger)Orc Barbarian 3 (one of our problem children, has Monkey Grip and uses a large great axe)Human Warmage 1, Human Paragon 2 (heading for the Mystic Theurge prestige class).Human Cleric 1, Human Paragon 2 (just intending to be a pure caster, from what I understand)Minotaur Fighter 2 (no racial hit dice, our other problem child)Human Druid 2. A new character.Human Wizard 2. Another new character. The campaign rules are that characters start at level 2 (or one level below the lowest level character, whichever is higher) but you may also start up to two levels higher by taking in game disadvantages. The minotaur character has done this, and is effectively a 4th level character. All but the human druid and human wizard have advanced a level to third level. So you can probably see the issue here: in combat terms, this group is all over the place! The minotaur and orc are combat monsters of the highest degree for their levels. As a result, the GM has tailored the encounters to these characters to a certain extent. He has done a reasonably good job of having opponents designed to take on the combat monsters and plenty of other foes for everyone else. This has worked reasonably well, but some of the characters are feeling very left out in terms of combat, especially our new characters, the druid and the wizard. I know that many ENers have run campaigns where characters operate at different character power levels, does anyone have advice here? For what it's worth, most of these characters have an excellent niche to fill. My character is an academic who has a lot of skills in many different areas, and knows a little bit about everything. The bard is a diplomat with an important family and has been put in charge of our group. The warmage's player has taken the long term view for his character (as I imagine anyone who plays a Theurge would...). The cleric worships the god of dreams, who has a huge role to play in the campaign (there is a sort of dreamland that these clerics operate in much more efficiently than any other characters). The druid is the only character with real survival skills and the campaign is going to feature a lot of outdoor traveling in bad weather (the campaign world's sun has gone out). Finally the wizard is our group's only real wizard, and has magical knowledge skills that my character can't touch. The GM for this campaign runs a very combat light game, with major emphasis on skills and roleplaying, so everyone will have something to do. ...but the problem remains. Everyone wants to be effective in stand up fights. The funny thing is, the minotaur and orc haven't complained about being useless in the non-combat situations yet, and I think it's because they knew the deal coming in: very good and focued in one thing means not so good in other areas... So this is a rambling post (hey, it's late!) but if you have some advice on either the diplomacy in handling this situation, or the mechanics of how to balance a fight with these dramatically different characters, I'd sure appreciate it.</blockquote>

Verification