When You Keep Killing Characters?

[Old Gumphrey]

So they each have both Bull Strength and Enlarge Person and only cast them on one other character? Do they always get to cast all their buffs before every fight? That probably helps a lot if they do.

You do realize those two spells are on specific recharge times; they are only available to cast once every 5 minutes. That means unless both casters have them, only one instance of the spell can be in use.

If the sorcerer has Enlarge Person, and the cleric has Bull's Strength, that means ONE CHARACTER can have both Enlarge Person and Bull Strength on them at a time, because the spells last 1 minute per caster level, and they can only be cast every five minutes.

There's no such thing as buffing a whole party using the Recharge Magic variant unless you have a wand or some scrolls (or unless your character level is obscene, IE 20th; and even then you can only have 4 instances of a 5 minute recharge spell going at once).

 

[Retreater]

They also use Wands to augment their casting, plus the occasional scroll.

Now that the party's sorcerer is dead and the player doesn't want to be another arcanist, I'm sure the recharge magic rule won't have as great of an effect.

 

[Herobizkit]

Sounds like it was a suicide to me.

And in all honesty, that's quite possible. Perhaps the player was tired of his character and wanted to make a new one, and felt this was the "proper" way to go about it. Perhaps the players just aren't into the adventure. Or perhaps they don't enjoy Retreater's DMing style...

... all things that can and should be cleared up once they all have a powwow about the game and their places in it.

 

[BASHMAN]

STOP.... USING.... MINIATURES.

If you run the combat without miniatures, you will find that the PCs commit suicide far less often in your own mind's eye than they do on the battlemat. It will also be a game that involves more storytelling & description I think, and a nice change of pace from all this miniatures stuff.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

STOP.... USING.... MINIATURES.

If you run the combat without miniatures, you will find that the PCs commit suicide far less often in your own mind's eye than they do on the battlemat.

Not necessarily. If you do not use miniatures, they might misinterpret things (especially since those guys seem to me like they don't have the largest attention span), so they will jump into a mob of rogues at least as often as they do now.

It will also be a game that involves more storytelling & description I think

Nah. Minis usually show up only in combat, and storytelling happens mostly out of combat. You don't set up the throne room on the gird for a big audience with the king, after all.

Sure, the describing of combatants might be neglected when you can just put a mini on the table, but that is not always the case, and on the other hand, not using minis doesn't mean that the enemies get better descriptions. "Enemy with a weapon" can still happen.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

They also use Wands to augment their casting, plus the occasional scroll.

So what you're saying is that wands and scrolls allow them to buff the whole party, and not the recharge magic? I'm just trying to defend this system since it's actually pretty darn nice and the way it was portrayed in this thread kind of made me giggle.

The only way you can buff a whole party every fight is either A) have everyone be a caster and buff themselves, or B) have a bunch of scrolls and wands...same way you do it in core D&D. Trust me if you went back to the core system you'd notice the casters getting a lot more burst power and people would still be buffed up all the time due to the wands and scrolls.

 

[Corinth]

Your players are being stupid. Change nothing. They will continue getting their PCs killed until they either shape up or ship out. This is what the game is about, and if they don't want it then they can go elsewhere.

 

[hong]

Your players are being stupid. Change nothing. They will continue getting their PCs killed until they either shape up or ship out. This is what the game is about, and if they don't want it then they can go elsewhere.

D&D. Serious. Business.

 

[Elemental]

Secondarily, it sounds like they've got some serious role confusion going on. You might want to sit down with them and figure out if they really want to be sorcerers, or if they wouldn't rather play a beatstick like a fighter.
-blarg

Maybe their character concept is "someone who fights in melee using magic", and they haven't realised that pure spellcasters can't really fight up close. You could try and introduce them to something like the Duskblade.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah, it is getting a little ridiculous with the recharge variant. We began with the regular method, and after a single fight, all the casters were drained. Then they would go back and rest and re-plan for the next day with another single fight before the casters were drained. So the game was really boring. We'd have maybe 2 combats in a single session.

With recharge, we've been breezing through this module. We'll go through a chapter in a single session and still have time afterwards to hang out. The only problem is when the players get careless and do stupid things, which sets everything back a few weeks, pretty much guaranteeing we won't finish the module.

So I'm going to talk to them on Sunday. I think our days of D&D are numbered, though.

Retreater