If' he'd have stuck to the PHB I'd not have said a thing and just okay'd the character. But he kept wanting some of the sillier/over powered classes (Favored Soul), not reading the materials & picking out of bounds domains (cleric of Clanggeddin (LG Dwarf god of battle) w/ trickery & pestilence), and some odd feats.
As I told'em all, if it's from the PHB, then I don't care, though I would still like a background write up. But if it's from outside the PHB, then you need to come up with a plausable reason in the character's background for it. With all the players I was quite lenient on that stuff as well. Again, so long as they had sound reasoning for it, then it was cool. He didn't wanna do that at all though.
The group was originally 8 of us, we were a pickup group that'd gotten together off the wizards boards. For 3'em, it's a real pleasure to DM. The 4th has a lot of potential, he's still young, but he's a nice guy. The other 3 were just...odd.
There was the not so smart munchkin I've described. Then there were the two smarter munchkins. Smart Munchkin #1 wanted the feat rogue (a rogue that replaces each sneak attack boost w/ an extra feat) mounted archer using a heavy repeating crossbow. But he got seriously pissy when he kept badgering me to promise that the super heavy warbred rhinos would be available in the future... He didn't want to pick up a class that actually got a special mount/animal companion) since those "sucked".
Smart Munchkin #2 wanted to do either a cleric of nerull (so he could get the trickery domain) / necromancy specialized wizard & eventually True Necromancer (Libre Mortis). That was his 2nd choice of characters. The 1st one was a dual wielding fighter type using over sized weapons (originally he wanted a goliath (so he could use large weapons). I nixed the 1st and warned him that the 2nd one would be tough to play and he'd risk loosing the character (I couldn't tell him I am doin a Ravenloft game since I want it to be a surprise). He didn't take that news well, or me shooting down his large weapon dual wielding fighter, and dropped out.
#2 also was the DM for the game we were runnin (we were going to be running every week, trading off) that was the most astounding exercise in non-sequitur, ill prepared games I've ever experienced in my 22 years of gaming. We played for 3 months, and in that time he never came up with names for the primary NPCs (we ended up naming them Super Thief Guy (for the head of the thieves guild) and Captain Cliche (for our local principle NPC contact/employer); no background write up for his home grown world, so every adventure was just random vignettes; and his "bad guys" made NO sense.
I'm not a monster usin sorta guy really. Some Dm's are and that's cool, so long as they are used even somewhat logically I can get into it. But this was just...odd. There were:
1. Our first adventure was to stop a band of marauding bandits that would, regular as clockwork, walk into one of 3 towns every 10 days. Instead of doing a hit and run though, they'd walk in, search 1 house throughly, steal a little bit, and then leave. Rinse and repeat. When we finally confronted said maruaders, the group consisted of 3 rogues, a couple of orcs, a couple of hobgoblins, and 2 troglodytes. This motly band was generated by, I shit you not, him dealing them out from a stack of the stat cards from D&D Minatures.
After defeating them, we tracked them back to their hideout were they were supposedly employed by a drow sorceress who had 2 hill giant guards outside (we were level 3). So we left that, and went back to the unnamed city (after 3 months it never got a name) and reported back to our Unnamed CO.
2. The "evil" half-orc paladin that was using an unnamed artifact to control animals and using said animals to randomly attack 1 particular village. Oh, and he still lived in the village too. The critters in this one was a hell hound & 2 shocker lizards. Then add in an Ettercap, and I believe some sort of snake.
There was never any background for this, it just simply was happening.
Oh, and once we killed the guy, we couldn't keep the magical animal controlling widget. Not a big deal, but kinda odd.
Those were our first 2-3 games and at that point I still had some hope. I role-played and enjoyed my character, but it was getting harder and harder to suspend the disbelief.
The next few games REALLY killed it though.
Next we started getting into the "plot line" of the world where the ancient "deposed" gods were apparently trying to make a come back, and some how our level 5 characters were supposed to have some sort of effect ont his. But anyways. The next game was a "mystery" one where we tracked down a group of thieves who'd been stealing things around the unnamed home base town. So we did some investigating to the 4 houses that had been robbed, in the process discovering one that was a torturer/sadist/sickbastard for hire. He was later arrested and somehow we got to keep his house as “spoils of war”.
Anyways, we eventually tacked things back to the “ringleader” who was a doppelganger and the local “bad guy leader” for those trying to restore the bad old god’s side. So we go to arrest the guy/kill him at his house, and it just so happens that he has 2 minotaur guards just hanging around outside his house now, at like 8pm, in the middle of a residential neighborhood as his door guards.
So we put them down, and next out 2 wereboars come to try and kill us. So after a slightly tougher fight, we put them down too.
The game concludes with us preparing to go into the house.
This game also marks the 1st time that the aforementioned munchkin #1 joined in with his totally min/maxed melee optimized warforged cleric of Torm (we were not playing Eberon, and he liked the combat friendly domains of torm), with the 9 int, great sword, 18 some strength, and assorted other goodness, that couldn’t turn undead. Oh, and he was using some sort of feats from the Book of Exaulted Deeds that let him ask if he wasn’t being “good enough” or if it would endanger his alignment or something. So that he could progress to uber goodness later. While I understand the purpose of the feat is to give a check to make sure you don’t screw up in the Dm’s eyes for later subjective Prestige Classes, he used it religiously (no pun intended).
SO, the next game! We proceeded to attack the house. Inside we found 2 vampire spawns (bringing us up to 2 minotaurs, 2 wereboars, a doppelganger, and 2 vampire spawns) living in a small 2 story house (plus basement) in a residential neighborhood. Well, we went inside, killed the vampire spawns, killed the doppelganger, then downstairs in the basement we notice that they have a pentagram and out pops a demon. Bringing us up to 2 minotaurs, 2 wereboars, 2 vampire spawn, a doppelganger, and a 12’ tall, bat winged fiend of the abyss, all living in a nice quite house in a residential neighborhood.
Anyways, we triumphed. Yay us.
We also managed to get our 1st weapon, a spiked chain +1! A weapon no one at all used or had any intention of using. And since magical weapons were illegal to the point that possession of them was punishable by death, so we couldn’t trade it. (oh and for a bit more oddness…illegal magic weapons, death to have one… but you can buy off the shelf scrolls of fireball & any other spell, no questions asked at the local mages guild. Yeah….)
Oh, we also got the guy’s other house as “spoils of war”, bringing us up to 2 houses. Yes… we were quite on the way to a career in realestate.
So…NEXT adventure, next to last, we are sent off on a new mission to deal with another set of bandit attacks “on the other side of the mountains near the coast.” So we head out, predicatably we get ambushed by a bunch of goblins I believe it was, at this point I honestly stopped payin to much attention to the details because it was all so mindbogglingly silly.
On their person, we just happened to discover their orders on where to be waiting to ambush us as well. Indicating that we’d been sold out. So we tracked them back to their base, killed the lone guardsman inside, and proceeded inside. Inside it was a den of clichés.
1st there was the splitting hallway just after entering. We first headed to the left and quickly encountered a set of guards in their barracks. A fight ensued and the group was split in two by a 10’x10’x1’ ADAMANTITE door that slammed down when one of the locals “flipped the switch.” Yes…a several ton block of adamantite was hauled out to the middle of nowhere to make an emergency trap door.
Group 1, inside, side of the door proceeds on, and next comes to the mimic treasure room with 2 mimics in it, but the mimics didn’t attack in unison against 3 people, even after they saw them destroying the previous treasure chests…
Group 2, the one I was in, now having no choice, heads right, and fights a big huge honkin lot of rogue guards. So while dodging sneak attacks, and saying thanks that fireball scrolls are perfectly legal while a +1 spoon would get you executed, we beat them, and proceed on. Though it must be mentioned that this group was no more than 100’ away from the sounds of a pitched battle w/ considerable yelling going on, ot to mention the rather loud sound of a multi ton hunk of metal crashing down. Yet they never came to see what was up.
Anyways, group 2 proceeds onwards and our warforged cleric, being the ballsy uber melee sort he is, promptly drops into a pit trap, but no ordinary pit trap! It’s a pit 30’ deep pit that contains 2 Dire Lions! Oh, and they are apparently kept a bit starved, so they immediately start chewing on the big hunk of metal & wood. We barely haul him out in time and the 2 15’ long agile & EXTREMELY strong critters can’t jump or climb out of the pit. So we pepper them with crossbows with impunity until they die.
Despite all this carrying on, not 60’ away was the totally uber bad ass lich who ran the “base”. The halls worked out to be one big circle that looped back together in this large hall were we could finally confront the villain! But that was for the next game…and the last.
So…last game begins with group 1 approaching from the left and he begins monologging, explaining his dastardly plan (apparently he never read the Evil Overlord List). Well, I being the uncooperative bugger that I am, take advantage of his monologging and start shooting him. Instead of a fight however, he whips out the “mysterious tendrils of fire” that we can’t escape and that teleport us to an small room, that looks bigger, and cloaks us all in illusion so that we think each other is a monster. The cleric is once more beaten nearly to death, this time by our large hammer wielding goliath barbarian chum, and who seems hell bent on killing the party (this would be the not so smart munchkin).
Well, we escape this dastardly trap and suddenly find ourselves in the outer planes and several hundred yards away from a pair of dueragar sitting on a rock outside of a pueblo. All of which is on top of a large plateau surrounded by a river of green acid/slime. Well, we head to the dueragar, cause that’s what you do with dueragar in the outer planes, and they start monologging about how we were expected and yadda yadda yadda we kill’em and get our 2nd magic weapon! Another +1 spiked chain! And still no one who would ever use such a thing.
I’ll spare you the rest of the crap from this, but it just kept getting worse and even more cheesy & clichéd.
Yeah…so after that he sends out an email about how the campaign isn’t going where he intended it, he isn’t having any fun, so he’s going to drop out of the group. No one seems particularly broken up by this turn of events, and I then pick up the DMing, which started all this thread.
Anyways, so yeah, it’s late, I’m rambling, and while I do miss playing, I’ve gotta say, that game was awful and I was NOT looking forward to him being a player. The incessant nose picking (the sort where he’d REALLY dig in there after one and do it every 3-5 minutes and then play with the booger afterwards for upwards of 20 minutes (yes…I timed it…)) was just getting to be a tad much and the characters he was describing were like a munchkins love fest. On top of it, the 4 players now are just a damn lot of fun and they REALLY enjoyed the game last night. While it wasn’t my best one, at least I had names for my major NPCs and towns.
But hey…everyone has to start off with a setup game!
