|
12 months ago ::
Jun 25, 2012 - 2:09PM
#1
|
Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2010
|
We have just had a party member get killed so one of my players will be creating a new character soon. He has left it up to me how he becomes a member of the party, so I was wondering what are the most interesting and fun ways you gave seen new members introduced? We run a very light hearted game so comic value is always a plus point.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 25, 2012 - 2:14PM
#2
|
|
|
I never introduce PCs "in play." It's much better usually to simply ask everyone to collaborate on a reason/occurence for the new PC, add him or her right then, and forge ahead from there with the adventure. There are only so many convenient prisoners or sudden magical arrivals one can stand before it gets pretty trite. I bet if you take 5 minutes to brainstorm with everyone at the table, you'll have a fine idea very quickly. To that end, getting their buy-in with a conversation and then pressing on is a better focus than concocting events to play out that have a predetermined end anyway.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 25, 2012 - 2:36PM
#3
|
Date Joined:
Jun 29, 2011
|
The times the campaign was set with the whole group as part of a guild, when a player died or new PC showed up he handed the group a letter saying he was part of the guild as well and been assigned to the group.
One time we had two new players, I had them meet the rest of the group mid way through a dungeon/ruins, the two new people were members of a failed group and they were the only two surviors. It was a good way to force them into the group without even having to do the usual metagamed tavern meeting idea since they all needed to band together to get out of the dungeon and it made the two newer players feel useful since I gave them some hints because they were in said section of the dungeon beforehand.
Another time, I just did a silly idea with an unknown egg one PC had found, he kept the thing with him to see if it would hatch. Later on one of the adventurers died and made a new char, I decided he magically hatched from the egg the other PC was carrying.
Other then that as Iserith said, its alot of they were prisoner or magically just appear with the group to get the game flowing.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 25, 2012 - 3:16PM
#4
|
Date Joined:
Aug 23, 2010
|
Just had to do this for three new players in my saturday game at level 14.
*clears throat*
Dragonborne Fighter- While the party was back in Fallcrest, the current Dragonborne Fighter (Rhogar) happened to see a fellow Dragonborne sitting off the side of the road wearing shredded armor and rags and holding a chipped and otherwise damaged great sword. Having known this Dragonborne, a female friend from his home tribe in the Harken Forest, Rhogar gave her his old suit of +3 full plate and his old +3 great sword. Soon the two would fell an Elder Black Dragon with thier new party of 8, and they would share in it's scales and bone forged as armor and blade.
Halfling Wizard- Weenar Bru was entertaining the local children of Fallcrest with some Prestidigitation and other simple magic effects in the Merchant Green, when he asked for an audiance member to play assistant. Weenar picked one of the more, gifted, woman form the crowd and readied his next magical spell. Befor he proceeded however, he copped a feel on the woman. Her Husband gave chase, followed by the woman and the crowd of children. Weenar ran up to the party but Cogs, the party rogue and halfling sized Warforged, hid him under her cloak as Weenar balanced on her shoulders and they pulled off a secessfull ruse to make the locals think the two were now one human.
Deva Invoker- As the party walked around Fallcrest, they noticed the people on the streets give way to a shining light. They noticed that the light had a humanoid figure in it's center, and that it was a Deva. As the Deva came to the party, they could see the fires of war followed the Invoker, for he was a worshiper of Kord, and as the aura of light anf fire subsided and after introducing himself as Tavar, he told the party it was this life's duty to aid the them in their coming trials with the Book of Vile Darkness.
Other times, when I don't have the convinence of the entire party being in town, usually a single new PC will be from a failed group of adventurers and would be the sole survivor, and if another new PC comes in soon after, they become part of that killed party as the second survivor. Ususally the first new PC has already worked well with the new group and that helps the second new PC to take to the group easier.
Other times, if multiple new PCs join in, they become their own adventuring party that joins up with the current party. They then have their trust with a few party memebers off the bat while working for the trust of the older PCs. Escaped prisoners and magical appearances can become conveluted, but it's best to give your new characters a bit of an introduction sometimes.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 27, 2012 - 9:17AM
#5
|
Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2010
|
I'm not at all worried about using the 'usual' methods as our group as 6 pcs at level 7 and we have only just had the second death. So what other standard ways are there.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 27, 2012 - 2:13PM
#6
|
Date Joined:
Oct 24, 2001
|
The most unusual method was the following: A new PC came into the game when the party was mid-adventure. They were investigating a tomb with a lich that had its phylactery trapped in a stasis field. To retrieve the object they sought, they had to negate the statis field, thereby freeing the lich. The statis field made the room within look a lot like the "trapped in amber" scenes in Fringe. They thought the body trapped in the amber was the lich. They did not know that the lich was trapped "in its phylactery" in the field and that the body they saw was our soon-to-be-freed PC. He had been trapped there for over a century, shortly after delivering the killing blow to the lich.
Here are the PHB essentia, in my opinion: - Three Basic Rules (p 11)
- Power Types and Usage (p 54)
- Skills (p178-179)
- Feats (p 192)
- Rest and Recovery (p 263)
- All of Chapter 9 [Combat] (p 264-295)
A player needs to read the sections for building his or her character -- race, class, powers, feats, equipment, etc. But those are PC-specific. The above list is for everyone, regardless of the race or class or build or concept they are playing.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 27, 2012 - 3:15PM
#7
|
|
|
In a home game, my Warforged Battlemind|Fighter joined the party by being awarded to one of the party members as a +2 Neck slot item. Basically we needed a way to introduce my character to the party without being cliche.
As such my DM of the time concented to have my character not be a Warforged per se, but instead to follow the rules for a Docent. After the character was introduced there was a minor side quest where they went to what ammounted to a museum/vault and stole a body for him. After two sessions, he basically behaved as any other Warforged PC would, mechanically.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 27, 2012 - 3:26PM
#8
|
Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2010
|
That's funny. My Ranger wanted a bear, so I gave him a neck slot item, too, that summons a bear. Don't know how I'd feel as a player to be bound to someones magic item, but it seems like you've handled it well.
Sleeping with interns on Colonial 1
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 27, 2012 - 3:40PM
#9
|
|
|
I try to develop something that is fitting to your current story point. Works well unless the guy died on a solo that conclused the arc.
For instance, I had an NPC give light to the fact he was traded by someone close. "X,Y,Z, and spirtual guide" are the only ones who knew. Then the spirtual guide was my PC monk. Now, they will have to RP it out, but one thing that I make sure of, and this may be my preference and not the way, is not to let the players role against each other. Bad for in game relation and it usually translate to player resentment. If they want to check to see if the monk is lying, then they roll an insight against a DC, not the monk's bluff. If it digresses to an all out fight or if later the character wants to lie or something, essentially if the players are bent on conflict with each other, than I let them have it. Unless it's one sided hostility.
Another case, one character joined our party in mid adventure, as well as another character who wanted to switch what he was playing. I had an half elf ranger and an elven rogue to introduce at the same time. I made them already know each other, and the main party was traveling through their tribe's forest. They tracked them and also identified a group of assassins tracking the party as well. This sort of makes the main party friendly towards them by coming forth with this information.
|
|
|
|
12 months ago ::
Jun 27, 2012 - 7:29PM
#10
|
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
|
An extremely specific situation, but back in 3.5, a warforged joined the party a few sessions into a short campaign. He wanted to fluff his character as more of a Primal sort of Pinnochio rather than a magical mech built in a lab, and both of us being Swamp Thing fans, I had a thought how to tie the character's backstory into the party's current location.
The party was investigating evil cultists trying to raise something at the site of an ancient "haunted" battlefield in a swampy area of a forest. The cultists were trying to use the mystical power of the area to summon a Balor or something similar (the game wasn't going to last long enough for me to need to decide what it was), and the battlefield had finally had enough of stupid morons killing each other on its ground, trashing the scenery and generally polluting the karma of the place.
It got pissed.
So many battles had occurred at that spot over the milennia that the location itself had become a genius loci - literally, "spirit of the place". It was a living, sentient thing. The battlefield's spirit used a portion of its power to make a tree grow up through an old suit of magical armor buried with a fallen warrior from one of those ancient battles, and invested it with part of its consciousness. Armed and armored with relics retrieved from the fallen buried within it's earth, the portion of the battlefield's spirit uprooted itself and set out to punish those who'd defiled it.
The warforged had now been refluffed as sort of a plant/zombie hybrid.
I had the character come growing up out of the ground to freak them out a bit and hand them some archaeological artifacts they were looking for, and then the Spirit possessed the character to deliver an introduction/backstory speech and explain that it was sending the warforged along with the party to guide them through the forest and go lay the smack down on the cultists.
After the end of the big fight, the Spirit placed the soul of the armor's original owner (bound to the battlefield, and thus to the Spirit) back into the newly animated plant/armor body, and he decided to accompany the party on their further adventures.
Spoiler:
Show
I am the Magic Man.
(Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.)
I am the Lawnmower Man.
(I AM GOD HERE!)
I am the Skull God.
(Koo Koo Ka Choo)
There are reasons they call me Mad...
|
|
|
