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So it turns out a bunch of my friends wanted to play some dungeon and dragons, none of them knew the others wanted to but each of them told me.

I revealed that I'd been playing RPGs for a few years now Dnd 3.5 being one of them. I was then forced into DMing them a game

So the characters:

Orphos- Elven Bard. Chaotic neutral. Wise cracking guy.

Hixtooth- Human Paladin. Lawful Good. Harsh but fair I guess.

Thorin Snow- Dwarf Monk. Lawful Good (might be neutral, I forget.). Grumbles a lot and has banter with the bard often.

Since these 3 players hadn't played this before I ran a short intro quest for them to recover a mechants goods stolen by Kobolds.

I broke the big taboo and played a DM PC, a human cleric doing pure support and staying out of the limelight. (I love roleplaying I can't help myself.) The group were ok with it however so I may keep the PC.

So onto what happened: (paraphrased mind)

Starts in a tavern where a bloodied man stumbles in, Paladin helps him to a chair and coaxes the story out of him while the monk and bard watch on.

The Paladin decides this is a cause he'd champion but realises he needs help. Step up monk and bard who volunteer to assist.

Outside runs up a cleric asking to join them for she feels it is her duty to assist (Has protection domain), bit of tension as paladin was highly suspicious here until the bard breaks the tension with a well timed joke which gets a hearty reply from the cleric.

They get to the caravan attack site and it's a mess, stuff strewn everywhere. They search and find a trail of dropped coins and small items which lead into the forest and eventually an abandoned mine. Grumbling from the dwarf for all the walking and some excellant RP from the group. More than I was expecting.

So the party delves in, room 1 a bunch of kobolds which are dispatched easily, room 2 is trapped with bear traps luckily both the dwarf and paladin spot them. The bard Orphos has the bright idea to throw some stones to attempt to set off the traps which works, room 3 has some more kobolds to wade through and a choice of two tunnels to go down, left and right. The left has a kobold sorcerer and the loot. The right has a portcullis trap which would keep them in the room till they find a way out. They guess and go left, have a slight bit of trouble fighitng the sorcerer before killing him and celebrating back in the tavern once they take the stuff back.

For the groups first time I thought they did spectacularly with their role playing.

I've now got two more players interested after hearing these exploits. One is going to play a gnome rogue the other a Half-orc barbarian.

Now, my problem. Trying to think up a suitable antagonist. I'm thinking human wizard turned lich with undead servants but I don't want my cleric to take the spotlight with turn undead. Solution is just not use it though and just support the party with healing and buffs which is what I did in the mine dungeon. Thoughts and opinions anyone?

Other idea is a civil war between two cities which a third secretly started to profit out of it. PCs must get to the truth and stop the war.

Final idea is say an Orc warlord or other race threatens a city, assassinate him and save the day.

I'd love help/opinions/general well wishing and I hope you enjoyed reading this account of what happened.

The Lich idea is fine, the paladin will shine just as much as the cleric.

If you want to be really tricksy, retcon the cleric to a god or alignment that doesn't use positive energy or doesn't believe in turning.

The orc one always works well as a good pull for players and the civil war can be good if the players like intrigue and RP more than hitting things.

Good luck and let us know.

Sounds like you had a great game.

I'm unsure about the Lich. I mean, Liches are pretty solid antagonists, but what does he have to do with the kobolds, or are the kobold attacks and the Lich even related? It's okay if they're not.

Maybe your Cleric can't turn undead against the Lich, either because he doesn't do that, or because he isn't powerful enough? Maybe your Cleric can't be present for the fight? He might have his own agenda he has to deal with. Maybe he gets incapacitated by the Lich before he has the chance to do anything?

There's always ways around this kind of stuff. I never have my own PC when I'm running a game though, because I look at ALL the NPCs as though they're my PCs, and they're all there to serve their own interests, not the party's. Granted, there's a lot of times those interests coincide, but not always.

I kind of agree with DMPCs in the case of small parties. When they are healbots, it isn't as big a deal.

I guess that's fair, though there's ways around that. I played a Beguiler in a no-cleric game that always kept around wands of cure on him, but I guess that's not really sustainable until sufficiently high level. UMD is probably the best skill a limited caster could possibly possess. I would think their bard would be able to do the same thing.

Just so long as the Cleric doesn't start stealing the spotlight.

Right, but even with UMD, you lose actions to becoming the healer. The bard signed up to play a bard, not be the healbot.

And agreed. All of my DMPCs tend to be entirely supportive or reactive, not active.

It was a running joke in my games for a while that nobody ever played a cleric. We had healing from Bards quite a bit, and sometimes a bit of Lay on Hands, and one campaign that relied on a druid with level adjustment and wands. Oh and a campaign that relied entirely on wands.
It's perfectly doable, especially since a paladin and a bard can both do SOME healing. If you like roleplaying, I'd funnel that into making memorable villains.

On the bad guy ideas:

Lich is a good general purpose baddie who can easily be incorporated into a wider campaign. You can have low level stuff where they investigate rumours of undead, find a few, meet a low level lieutenant and then perhaps at the end of an arc, they have an encounter with the lich. You can then escalate it gradually, have the lich manipulate various events and so on, until some sort of climactic crisis. (Zombie plague!) Liches (and other phylactery using villains) make great antagonists because they can be beaten (providing short term satisfaction) only to re-appear (which can be enjoyable in a sort of "Damn his immortal hide! kind of way). If you did this, I'd kill off the Cleric part way through the first arc- make him really likeable first, and then murder him nastily (possibly raising him again as a servitor for bonus pathos). Solves your problem and lets you focus on making a real nasty lich, with an option for still playing the cleric as a baddy, if you so wish.

Civil War Plot: I guess this would depend on the group. With the set up you've got, I think they may be inclined to solve problems by punching them in the face, which can put a damper on intrigue plots. However it can be a lot of fun for the players if you are okay with them doing that. Though I love role playing, I would find that sort of political machination-y game a little frustrating personally, just because I roleplay partially to get away from the politics of everyday life. But your group could really love it.

Orc warlord invasion: This is the other end of the spectrum- this will almost certainly end up being primarily tactics and combat focused, which is fine. But make sure your group would be into it, is all. Also be prepared for them to outsmart you and kill your big bad in some sort of ridiculous way early on .

I think the lich is my runaway favourite, but I love horror games and undead as antagonists anyhow. I would think if you do go for that, moiderin' your dmpc is a good plot hook to make them really HATE your villain.

Da Boss wrote:It was a running joke in my games for a while that nobody ever played a cleric. We had healing from Bards quite a bit, and sometimes a bit of Lay on Hands, and one campaign that relied on a druid with level adjustment and wands. Oh and a campaign that relied entirely on wands.
It's perfectly doable, especially since a paladin and a bard can both do SOME healing. If you like roleplaying, I'd funnel that into making memorable villains.

Yeah, that has always been a problem with D&D that they have tried to address in a variety of ways. No one wants to be the healer.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Yeah I was planning to drop the cleric to a recurring character since the group is expanding and then have them rely on both the bard and paladin for healing.

The Kobolds were just to introduce them, nothing to do with any long term plot or goal really. A one off to see if they liked the game enough for me to prepare a proper adventure.

One thing: What is UMD?

I think I'll end up going with the Lich idea now. Thanks for the assist. I appreciate it. And I'll probably steal most of your plan Da Boss if you don't mind

VikingScott wrote:One thing: What is UMD?

[url=http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Use_Magic_Device_Skill]
Use Magical Device.[/url]

pretre wrote:

Da Boss wrote:It was a running joke in my games for a while that nobody ever played a cleric. We had healing from Bards quite a bit, and sometimes a bit of Lay on Hands, and one campaign that relied on a druid with level adjustment and wands. Oh and a campaign that relied entirely on wands.
It's perfectly doable, especially since a paladin and a bard can both do SOME healing. If you like roleplaying, I'd funnel that into making memorable villains.

Yeah, that has always been a problem with D&D that they have tried to address in a variety of ways. No one wants to be the healer.

Unless they enjoy power tripping. "All of your lives depend on me!" "Praise Pelor if you desire healing!"

Or just want to be super durable; my Dwarf Cleric and my Trollborn (mechanically Half-Orc, but with Fighter as preferred class rather than Barb) Cleric were the toughest characters I ever ran in 3.x.

I think one of my players caught wind about undead. Suddenly the new ranger he rolled (due to being bored with having lawful good as an alignment, this guy was the paladin) has undead as his preferred enemy.

Lovely.

And since that means now we have no good alignments they just wouldn't have interest in the planned adventure. Excellent.

Best thing to do then is sit down with them and have a chat about what kind of game you want to run and what kind of game they want to play. If they just want to be a gang of morally ambiguous adventurers, that can be fine and dandy, but you need to know that before you start planning out an epic clash of good and evil.

Ahhh caravans. What horrible luck they have in role-playing games.

Morally ambiguous characters are great to GM for, as you can pull the old unlikely heroes schtick. It's harder to think of appropriate hooks to draw them into the grand quest, but it's so much more satisfying when you do.

A good way to start is to have a chat about the players' characters' backstories. More to the point, what motivates them, why they adventure, who they are. Once you have that, it's just a case of scripting events that push the character's buttons and draw them in, or draw something out of the character's history that links them to the quest.

pretre wrote:

Da Boss wrote:It was a running joke in my games for a while that nobody ever played a cleric. We had healing from Bards quite a bit, and sometimes a bit of Lay on Hands, and one campaign that relied on a druid with level adjustment and wands. Oh and a campaign that relied entirely on wands.
It's perfectly doable, especially since a paladin and a bard can both do SOME healing. If you like roleplaying, I'd funnel that into making memorable villains.

Yeah, that has always been a problem with D&D that they have tried to address in a variety of ways. No one wants to be the healer.

And the people whine about healing surges!

streamdragon wrote:

pretre wrote:

Da Boss wrote:It was a running joke in my games for a while that nobody ever played a cleric. We had healing from Bards quite a bit, and sometimes a bit of Lay on Hands, and one campaign that relied on a druid with level adjustment and wands. Oh and a campaign that relied entirely on wands.
It's perfectly doable, especially since a paladin and a bard can both do SOME healing. If you like roleplaying, I'd funnel that into making memorable villains.

Yeah, that has always been a problem with D&D that they have tried to address in a variety of ways. No one wants to be the healer.

And the people whine about healing surges!

There is such a thing as overcompensating.