The Problem at Hand

I believe we identified two issues that may make or break our current Epic campaign. The primary issue is that at our current power levels when one or two people go missing our party is put way off balance and we can no longer deal with some opponents or issues as well as we could. This was demonstrated quite clearly with our last fight where we lost all three Kobolds to two well placed blasts of sonic energy. Patrick had not expected this and felt that, had we had Paul with us, we could have taken care of it much quicker and with a lower loss of life. Even if we had lost all three Kobolds they would have been brought back in moments.

The secondary issue builds off the first. Character power levels are uneven and some people feel that they can no longer offer much of anything to the party when in or out of combat compared to other characters. Of particular note is Jordan's Dragon Shaman which can no longer provide any real benefit in combat. To some extent this is based on the relative abilities of each class involved and could be solved by reclassing.(In Jordan's case from Dragon Shaman to Marshal which are close enough in style to not be too improbable.)

There is opposition to simply abandoning our Epic game so some sort of solution must be found. Of the two issues i've outlined the first is an availability issue and thus difficult to resolve due to real life issues. The second is the more fixable one but the possible fixes are varied and will often not resolve the problem fully.

The easiest thing that can be done in my opinion is to allow Jordan to reclass his character into a Marshal. This would allow him to be more involved in combat while keeping true to his origional character idea.

The next up from that would be to allow gestalt for all characters. Adding a second class tree to each character would broaden each individuals ability and would help make up for any absent players. It wouldn't be true gestalt as our characters didn't start as gestalt. If we assume feats and, for the most part, skills and HP are fixed then the only thing gestalt would really add are saves and class abilities. It is a complex bit of work and since total character reworks are not something Patrick seems comfortable with it probably isn't a possibility.

Any solutions beyond these two however seem to be to difficult, to time consuming, or would not be as easy to work in story wise.

What are everyones' thoughts on this subject. I know we just went over it but we've had two nights to sleep on it now and I'd like to reopen the discussion.

New Campaign Possibilities

This seems somehow fitting as a first post for this reactivated blog...a discussion on possible options for a new campaign. The Kobolds and Craven, along with Craven's wife, discussed various options over a happy hour dinner this evening.(should we use pseudonyms here or is everyone comfortable using their names on the web?) We came up with two solid options which may interest players, all of which would start at relatively low levels(1-6 being most likely).

1) A Harry Turtledove style game which involves a standard DnD world gripped in the throws of world war suddenly finding itself faced with an invasion from off planet by technologically superior beings. The waring factions are forced to forget their grudges and work together to rid their world of these invaders.

2) An airship-centric campaign based on a cold war style of world with the PCs as part of a crew of undercover information gatherers/saboteurs/assassins/pirates/warriors working for one side or the other. This provides a lot of action, adventure, and roleplaying which should be able to pull everyone in to some degree.

The first would involve some of the alternate rules for non-renaissance period weaponry available in the DMG. The second is already more developed due to the fact that Jordan has a good chunk of an airship campaign preplanned. Thoughts or ideas are welcome. If these don't interest you please suggest something else and we'll take a serious look at it.

New Blood

I've decided to restart this blog once again. Its been nearly 8 months since its been used and once again I feel the need to use this as a collection point for my game groups new and old. I've gone through and cleaned up the place. I've deleted most of the old posts since they're way out of date. I've also added a bit to the useful links on the right.

To my Gresham game group I hope you'll continue to use this as a way to stay in contact and hopefully at some point get together for a game or a drink or both.

To my Downtown game group I hope to provide a place where we can post our ideas, game times, availability, etc in one easy to search location instead of pouring through emails like we have been.