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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8507055" data-attributes="member: 508">In my first 3.5 campaign with my current group ("Wing Three"), the worst was probably a pair of people: an NPC tiefling rogue, Kazmira the Magpie, and an "abandoned former PC and thus NPC" human sorcerer, Gareth.  Gareth started out as an experiment of my son's, who wanted to try making a "front-line fighter" out of a sorcerer with the right spells, feats, and ability scores.  He gave Gareth a high Constitution (for the bonus hp), a toad familiar (for the extra 3 hp the Toughness feat provides), took weapon proficiency in the greatsword as his bonus human feat, and figured he could use mage armor and shield to duplicate the effects of wearing armor and carrying a shield.  And he held his own for a while, but after several levels he was almost as good as a fighter of his own level...if you discounted all of the fighter feats a true fighter would have gained by that level by then.At the time, we had this deal going where each player had two PCs, all of whom were part of the same Adventurers Guild.  The PCs all wore magic rings and had a designated partner, such that one PC went "out in the field" on a mission while the other stayed at Guild HQ as a backup.  In an emergency, a PC in the field could use his ring to teleport back to Guild HQ, where his "ring-partner" could then touch rings and teleport back to where the first PC had teleported from.  (It was a means by which the players could swap out PCs if circumstances warranted.)So, when my son realized Gareth was a failed experiment he pretty much always sent his other PC, a paladin named Akari, out in the field and left Gareth on backup duty.  In fact, he was planning on having Gareth retire and bring in a new PC concept he wanted to try (a summoner wizard), but for the moment Gareth was technically still part of the team.And then they went out on an adventure and ended up capturing Kazmira the Magpie, a wanted criminal with a price on her head.  Not able to return to the city at the moment (another adventure plot hook was dangling there in front of them at the time), they stripped Kazmira, bound her with ropes, placed Akari's teleport ring on her finger with a note to Gareth to hold her until they returned so they could turn her in for the reward, and teleported her to Guild HQ with the ring.The PCs went on the other adventure, returned to Guild HQ a few days later, and not only found no evidence of Kazmira ever having showed up there, but nobody else had seen Gareth for days.  It turns out the fast-thinking tiefling had convinced Gareth she could show him a much more exciting time than sitting around for backup duty for a paladin who would never need him; why not join forces with her and rob the wealthy and live a life of excitement?When the PCs managed to scry on Gareth, they found him and Kazmira in a zoo.  Gareth flipped the PCs the bird through the scrying window while Kazmira placed Akari's ring on the finger of a half-fiend girallon at the zoo and activated it, teleporting the monstrous ape into the PCs' Guild HQ living room, blowing them a farewell kiss as the girallon attacked them all.  Later incidents involved sending a team of assassins after the PCs, replacing Kazmira with a mirror clone after she'd been captured so when the authorities tried hanging her she just vanished (after threatening the city with demonic retribution), and finally being slain after trying to beat the PCs to a treasure hoard and running up against an unexpected vampire.My players absolutely hated Gareth and Kazmira after his betrayal.  This event ended up turning that whole campaign from a "beer and pretzels" mish-mash of individual adventures with no real ongoing overall plot to a more focused campaign, and it was all thanks to a series of events that I couldn't have planned out ahead of time.Johnathan</blockquote>

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