Dungeon Fantasy party compositions

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Sutibu

How do you deal with this sort of player?

You kick him out.

You might (should!) do it politely, but if his gaming style is ruining the fun for the rest of the group, then he needs to go. I'm too old to muck with that sort of sophomoric stuff anymore. Damn kids. :-)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

You kick him out.

You might (should!) do it politely, but if his gaming style is ruining the fun for the rest of the group, then he needs to go. I'm too old to muck with that sort of sophomoric stuff anymore. Damn kids. :-)

I wouldn't have put up with that when I was a kid. Why play with someone that cannot or will not resist the urge to stomp on everyone's fun?

[Ji ji]

Recently we decided to "come back to origins" for an adventure and we take The Temple of Elemental Evil, playing with D&D.
The party is made of two members. A halfelf/halfminotaur cleric and a draconic tiefling rogue. When we created there characters, we simply thought "in a world where it's common that two guys travelling from a village to another can encounter a fliyng Yeth hound or a fire salamander (more similar to a lamia than to a salamander), how could be freakish a similar party?"

DF is D&D flavour stuff. A lot of player in the world enjoy this kind of fantasy settings. Having dozens or hundreds of sentient races living in a similar melting pot can obviously bring to odd parties. But are they odd in the game world?
In a classical fantasy setting (thinking of '70es an '80es) playable races are usually little. Other, more exotic races are ususally forbidden by BG reasons: an half-ogre cannot go in a city, village, nor stay near them, because he would be attacked as soon as seen. In modern mainstream fantasy, it is often stated that there is hate between races, but in the end nobody care a lot of a lich necromancer going to shopping in central plaza with his halfmermaid/half demon friend.

A party is freakish or not only with regard to setting. The really important thing is that you and your players set in advance which degree of harmony you wish in the party. I never made a problem of a super loyal and cohesive party even if in the setting members come from enemy races. Simply settle in advance characters' life history, how they met, why they work together. An orc can be the best friend of an elf, if you settle so, or they can share a goal and be willing to forgot their reciprocal dislikes for a brief period. On the other hand, I stress that in a overly freakish game world there's no odditiy in a pixie, a minotaur, a halfhobbit/halfdwarf and a fire fiend going to restaurant together.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

As I am preparing for my Dungeon Fantasy one-shot, I am beginning to suspect that the party will end up as a freak show. Not all have settled on a character concept, but so far I have:

- A pixie wizard
- A half-ogre ninja

And the third character is a Holy Warrior... of a deity of love and lust!

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

So now I am wondering - if you are running or playing in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign, what kinds of characters does your party have?

In our current game, which has reached the mid-400 pt range: a coleopteran swashbuckler, a leprechaun wizard, a corpse eater unholy warrior, and a halfling cleric. But the party is actually much bigger with two demon allies and a giant spider familiar. There's virtually nothing the group can't kill.

And how well do they work together as a team? Were there any noteworthy holes in their lineup that harmed the party during adventures?

I've found that in most games, a good GM makes it fun regardless of "party balance." You don't want to throw anything at the players that would be literally impossible for their characters to handle.

When no one in our party had the Affect Spirits spell we did have some trouble with ghosts. We basically had to run away from them, as a result of which a few of us ended up Cursed. The cleric learned Affect Spirits the next time we got back to town.
Not having really good targeted ranged attacks is a bit of a hole, but one of the demons is double Chaos (highly recommended!) and can throw entropy clouds at people. And the rest of us have a few tricks like thrown knives, missile spells, etc.

All of that said, you need a healer in any decent party. Whether it's a druid with Plant Form Other and Heal Plants, a Holy Warrior with Healing, even a wizard with Minor Healing, some kind of healing is a necessity. With the right potions maybe you can even get away without that...

[Centisteed]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

As I am preparing for my Dungeon Fantasy one-shot, I am beginning to suspect that the party will end up as a freak show. Not all have settled on a character concept, but so far I have:

- A pixie wizard
- A half-ogre ninja

So now I am wondering - if you are running or playing in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign, what kinds of characters does your party have? And how well do they work together as a team? Were there any noteworthy holes in their lineup that harmed the party during adventures?

LOL. Is this real? It sounds like the start of an
awful Saturday morning cartoon show for ages
10 years & under. Will someone be rolling up a
Purple Muffin that has combat experience? :)

[Dammann]

Ogres and Half-Ogres with decent Karate and Judo and so forth can be devastating in combat. Throw in those chi abilities, a little bit of Striking ST, and an Ogre ninja makes as much sense as a Dwarven Knight or a Half-Elf scout. You cannot disarm this guy. Take away his sword and kusari and he will just one-shot enemies with exotic hand strikes and punches.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Centisteed

LOL. Is this real? It sounds like the start of an
awful Saturday morning cartoon show for ages
10 years & under. Will someone be rolling up a
Purple Muffin that has combat experience? :)

Quite real - we just don't feel obligated to take the characters for a one-shot terribly seriously.

And frankly, a wizard suffers few disadvantages from being a pixie... and a half-ogre will almost always be a dangerous combatant.

[Centisteed]

Originally Posted by Dammann

Ogres and Half-Ogres with decent Karate and Judo and so forth can be devastating in combat. Throw in those chi abilities, a little bit of Striking ST, and an Ogre ninja makes as much sense as a Dwarven Knight or a Half-Elf scout. You cannot disarm this guy. Take away his sword and kusari and he will just one-shot enemies with exotic hand strikes and punches.

The 'classic' Ogre, to make up for its powerful
strength, is usually as dumb as bag full of hammers.
Why not have a half-pixie/half-ogre ninja? :-)

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Quite real - we just don't feel obligated to take the characters for a one-shot terribly seriously.

And frankly, a wizard suffers few disadvantages from being a pixie... and a half-ogre will almost always be a dangerous combatant.

Too far-fetched for me, I guess. It just sounds
like Reality TV. It would be interesting to hear
about the final report when the game wraps up.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Centisteed

Too far-fetched for me, I guess. It just sounds
like Reality TV. It would be interesting to hear
about the final report when the game wraps up.

More far-fetched than the existence of pixies? ;)

And frankly, the only downsides of half-ogres are -1 IQ - which is manageable - and the Social Stigma and Ugly appearance, and social abilities aren't really part of the ninja's niche anyway.

Besides, anime and manga series focusing on ninja frequently have ninjas of the "strong but dumb" archetype, and these were at least as much of an inspiration for DF: Ninja as real world history - likely more so. So who am I to argue? It's not like the whole Dungeon Fantasy series takes itself terribly seriously anyway...