A group of friends and I have recently started playing DnD, I got the fun role of being the dm and I'm loving it, I want to add guilds into dragons of icespire peak I have a general understanding of how it all works. I am going to start off slow and just have a theives guild and a fighters guild /champions guild, if my players ever find it or mention that they want this option Ill have something available for them, now I was thinking that if they went with the theives guild that I could make a party of PCs that' is equal to the current parties level and I could use my party that runs the opposite guild, so if they are doing theives guild quests that I have made then I can use the party I created to be part of the fighters/champions guild that is trying to stop them or vise versa. I'm just curious if anyone as done something like this and if having the two parties fight ended in disaster or not
Not sure that creating a party of PCs to pit against your party of PCs is the necessary thing to go for, as PCs are complicated things to run in combat. Most players only have to run one.
I might suggest that you take a look into Reskinning or Merging a couple of NPC statblocks to achieve the desired effect that you are looking for. You can also bump CR by running the same NPC through the DMG - Creating a Monster section. This will likely take less time for you to accomplish, and will prevent you getting too attached to the PCs that you have built. The latter part is really the warning in the whole response. Sometimes running PCs against PCs can become adversarial, and DMs might want to avoid this. Some absolutley don't.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I'll second Kaavel that running actual DM-PCs in a combat is next to impossible if there are 4 or 5. You just can't build in all the reactions, special abilities, modifiers and remember them all. But there are ways around it!
One way is to make the PCs, then turn them into monster stat blocks. I do this for key NPCs, and reduce the number of abilities down hugely. So for example, a Wizard NPC will have maybe 5 actions: Fireball, Invisibility, Magic Missile, Shield and Firebolt. They will be written as Actions, rather than just listed as spells. This gives him a big AoE (used 1-2 times per day), a Reaction (Shield - easy to remember it since you can note it alongside his AC if you want to) and a few tricks for when he's out of Fireballs.
However, the easiest way to do this is just use the NPC Monster stat blocks, so have a party comprised of a Wizard (Mage), Barbarian (Berserker), Fighter (knight), Cleric (priest) and you have a good encounter for 5 x level 6 characters. Party lower level? Scouts, guards and cult fanatics will be fine. Champion, blackguards and archmages will do at a pinch at higher level.
One thing I always want to point out about Thieves' Guilds: they are essentially organised crime rings. They are the worst people in the society (except maybe politicians xD), uncaring of the woes of the general populace and make a living out of other peoples' misery. I have the same issue with thief PCs, who recklessly endanger NPC livelihoods, and Assassins who make a living out of murder (I mean eh?). The "noble thief" idea can work for an individual, but a whole organisation that lives off exploiting the hard work of ordinary people and making their lives miserable is going to need some serious Plot Armour if they are anything but Chaotic Evil. I'm not saying all Rogues should be evil - you can have those skills and be a good person - but a whole organisation dedicated to crime isn't on the side of Good.
I'll take a different tack after I agree with the others.
If you want the PC's to want to interact or join a guild, then have them encounter NPCs that are in the guilds that you want available. If the Fighter guild has a regular set of bouts on Thursday and many of the town talk about and bet on the outcome then the PCs will be more interested in participating. You could use the fighter's guild to introduce the thieves guild. Either through the pickpocketing and cons that happen around the bouts or the manipulating of the outcome of the bouts by the thieves guild. Weave the other guilds you may want into the story in a similar fashion.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
A group of friends and I have recently started playing DnD, I got the fun role of being the dm and I'm loving it, I want to add guilds into dragons of icespire peak I have a general understanding of how it all works. I am going to start off slow and just have a theives guild and a fighters guild /champions guild, if my players ever find it or mention that they want this option Ill have something available for them, now I was thinking that if they went with the theives guild that I could make a party of PCs that' is equal to the current parties level and I could use my party that runs the opposite guild, so if they are doing theives guild quests that I have made then I can use the party I created to be part of the fighters/champions guild that is trying to stop them or vise versa. I'm just curious if anyone as done something like this and if having the two parties fight ended in disaster or not
Not sure that creating a party of PCs to pit against your party of PCs is the necessary thing to go for, as PCs are complicated things to run in combat. Most players only have to run one.
I might suggest that you take a look into Reskinning or Merging a couple of NPC statblocks to achieve the desired effect that you are looking for. You can also bump CR by running the same NPC through the DMG - Creating a Monster section. This will likely take less time for you to accomplish, and will prevent you getting too attached to the PCs that you have built. The latter part is really the warning in the whole response. Sometimes running PCs against PCs can become adversarial, and DMs might want to avoid this. Some absolutley don't.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I'll second Kaavel that running actual DM-PCs in a combat is next to impossible if there are 4 or 5. You just can't build in all the reactions, special abilities, modifiers and remember them all. But there are ways around it!
One way is to make the PCs, then turn them into monster stat blocks. I do this for key NPCs, and reduce the number of abilities down hugely. So for example, a Wizard NPC will have maybe 5 actions: Fireball, Invisibility, Magic Missile, Shield and Firebolt. They will be written as Actions, rather than just listed as spells. This gives him a big AoE (used 1-2 times per day), a Reaction (Shield - easy to remember it since you can note it alongside his AC if you want to) and a few tricks for when he's out of Fireballs.
However, the easiest way to do this is just use the NPC Monster stat blocks, so have a party comprised of a Wizard (Mage), Barbarian (Berserker), Fighter (knight), Cleric (priest) and you have a good encounter for 5 x level 6 characters. Party lower level? Scouts, guards and cult fanatics will be fine. Champion, blackguards and archmages will do at a pinch at higher level.
One thing I always want to point out about Thieves' Guilds: they are essentially organised crime rings. They are the worst people in the society (except maybe politicians xD), uncaring of the woes of the general populace and make a living out of other peoples' misery. I have the same issue with thief PCs, who recklessly endanger NPC livelihoods, and Assassins who make a living out of murder (I mean eh?). The "noble thief" idea can work for an individual, but a whole organisation that lives off exploiting the hard work of ordinary people and making their lives miserable is going to need some serious Plot Armour if they are anything but Chaotic Evil. I'm not saying all Rogues should be evil - you can have those skills and be a good person - but a whole organisation dedicated to crime isn't on the side of Good.
Thank you I really appreciate the responses, I can't wait for my next session to try some of these out!
I'll take a different tack after I agree with the others.
If you want the PC's to want to interact or join a guild, then have them encounter NPCs that are in the guilds that you want available. If the Fighter guild has a regular set of bouts on Thursday and many of the town talk about and bet on the outcome then the PCs will be more interested in participating. You could use the fighter's guild to introduce the thieves guild. Either through the pickpocketing and cons that happen around the bouts or the manipulating of the outcome of the bouts by the thieves guild. Weave the other guilds you may want into the story in a similar fashion.