NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustinM" data-source="post: 3805513" data-attributes="member: 44560">Hoo boy.  My group has a problem.  It's probably already covered earlier in this thread, but I don't have the time before next session to read over 2100 posts.Let's start with the characters I've had so far so I can use names instead of pronoun:Lathorian - human scoutElesse - human cleric of PelorRukia - human ninja, cousin of LancasterToby - spellscale warmageLancaster - human fighter, cousin of Rukia (who was played by the same person as...)Soren - human cleric of Neruletwo as-yet unnamed replacement characters (they haven't seen game time yet)I as DM made two or three (depending on how you're counting) errors in judgment.  To start off, I used a dream sequence for each PC to get them to the side of the mountain.  Depending on their deity of choice, the message was different.  Elesse got a message about a massive undead problem, Rukia and Lancaster got a message about a rising evil, and so on.  The problem lay with Toby and Lathorian, who weren't religious.  I gave them a vague message of atonement since both had checkered pasts.  It was supposed to be from St. Cuthbert, but he remained hidden to the players' subconsciouses.  Following the dream, they woke, finding themselves summoned to the side of the mountain in the beginning of the campaign.Elesse immediately began on her mission as it was appointed to her, as well a cleric probably should.  The two cousins were apprehensive and essentially forgot(?) that they were there to quell a threat.  The two non-religious characters, realizing the only way out of the situation was to dive headfirst into it, but only to get themselves out again; they are very exit-oriented PCs who completely ignored that they were sent there to learn a lesson about the nature of evil.In my defense, I used this opening once before to quite satisfactory results.  I didn't anticipate this from this group at all.Lancaster got himself killed in the first session.  Rukia went insane with revenge, which allowed Soren (Lancaster's player's new PC) to influence her for ill quite easily.That, coupled with the fact that the two "lets just find our way out of here" characters are played by the two people with the strongest personalities, has led the group into Region B as first-level characters, now second-level characters.  They instigated a war with the goblin tribe in the southwestern corner (the one led by a doppelganger and Hammerfist--I'm at work or I'd use the actual tribe name); while the goblin groups were pretty easily dispatched, Hammerfist killed Lathorian and Rukia utterly and could have killed Soren as well if I had bothered to use his Cleave and Improved Sunder feats.So, now we only have two original characters remaining:  Elesse and Toby.What this comes down to is a) I could have brought the players in better, b) I didn't Rule Zero the doors between regions inoperable until the party completed a certain percentage of the current region, and c) I didn't give them a compelling reason to stay in Region A until they were better equipped to handle the situation.So, I need ideas.  One idea I had was to revisit the dream sequence for Elesse, where Pelor indicates that he is not happy about her having skipped over the cause of the threat in Region A, and if she doesn't go back and do something about it, her powers will start fading to show her that he means business.  Because the party would then be left without a healer if she went off on her own, and because one of the new PCs is a knight, they may decide that Region A is better than Region B without someone to heal them.  Another idea I had was to bring in the new characters by having them run for refuge to the room the three living PCs are in, followed by a swarm of fiendish monsters now overflowing from Region A (as they never found and closed the portal, and indications that the problem will only get worse until and unless they take care of the situation.  (Where they are on the map, it would be easy enough to have the "flood" come from the east and push them back into Region A.  The problem is, they haven't run as a group from anything I've thrown at them so far.)Yeah.  Suggestions?  If you need more info, just say the word.</blockquote>

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