(III) The Half-Elven Campaign

[Admin Pete]

This started as a one shot experiment; however, I have decided to pursue it for a while. I am going to using the 3 LBBs, a bit of the Greyhawk supplement, a bit of the Eldritch Wizardy Supplement and my own re-write of the Ranger Class. I am usually not big on Half-Elves or multi-class characters; however, for this I am going whole hog. The players will be handed a group of character sheets and they will need to pick one. The PCs will be Half-Elves that are either Ranger/Magic-Users/Clerics or Ranger/Magic-User/Druids. They will all be of Lawful alignment out on the lawless frontier between the human settlers and the wilds. These PCs will be 5th level and will each have two magic items. Leather armor and on foot. The wilderness is rugged and hard to travel through.

More to follow:

[Admin Pete]

This campaign experiment ran from March to June 2015. I will try to post a bit more about it, though suffice it to say that it confirmed my belief that the much beloved multi-classing (beloved by the so-called old school experts) leads very quickly to a super-powered party. A mere six Half-Elves that are either Ranger/Magic-Users/Clerics or Ranger/Magic-User/Druids at 5th level across the board are incredibly powerful and even more so because it is almost impossible to ambush them. This mainly confirmed why I don't normally aside from experiments allow this type of thing, multi-classing and dual classing can make PCs really tough and while fun for a few game sessions would get boring in a longer campaign because things would rapidly become too easy with just going up one more level.

[robkuntz]

It's really a matter of scale--that is, using scale when needed. Scaling tends to balance inclusions of this sort. If they are tougher, then scale the encounters accordingly. The idea of scale is all over this forum, especially in the HP discussion we are having; but, if you stay within certain predefined boundaries (numerical as well as rigid design philosophy) and only use scale within that certain range, well, expect the dynamic which is otherwise balanced to appear unbalanced. I have never found a situation in any game instance that I could not scale up or down to reach such parity.

[Admin Pete]

Mar 28, 2016 17:45:08 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

It's really a matter of scale--that is, using scale when needed. Scaling tends to balance inclusions of this sort. If they are tougher, then scale the encounters accordingly. The idea of scale is all over this forum, especially in the HP discussion we are having; but, if you stay within certain predefined boundaries (numerical as well as rigid design philosophy) and only use scale within that certain range, well, expect the dynamic which is otherwise balanced to appear unbalanced. I have never found a situation in any game instance that I could not scale up or down to reach such parity.

Your points are well-taken and I don't think I was clear and I gave you a picture other than what I really intended.  This was a playtest for the heck of it and I just gave them all these 5th level across the board multi-classed characters that were not earned through play which also means that I did not have the chance to let the campaign grow with the players. I did scale the encounters but it took me the whole first game to really adjust and then I got it pretty good I think, I had tough encounters for them and on two occasions there existed the strong possibility of a TPK.

I think more what I meant is that the multi-classing so greatly multiplies the strength of the party that without careful attention to scaling you run more risk of a boring game in some ways. The more powerful the party the finer the line is between a pushover encounter and a TPK and good or bad run of the dice can easily tip the scales one way or the other. Part of it is that I have not reffed any really powerful parties for a long time. Since this run started back in July of 2009 I have had one character earn his way from 1st level to 7th level and then he went off to school and has not played the last three years. Where bitd I had at different points parties that were 7th, 8th and 9th levels and I was feeling being out of practice working with higher levels and there is big difference between 5th level single classed and 5th level multi-classed.