Very early stages in my brainpan, so I figured I'd post it here:
I have an idea to run a campaign with two different groups of PCs, one group of evil characters and one group of good characters that would actively work against each other. In my mind, one character on the evil side would be significantly stronger and be the BBEG of the campaign. Obviously this would be PbP or discord, and the setting would be a home brew that I've been working on as well. Character death would be much more significant, there would be no replacements for either side.
What are potential pitfalls you see? It seems ambitious to me, is it too ambitious? What do you guys think?
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Back and ready to DM and chew bubblegum. And I'm alllll outta bubblegum.
The most obvious problem I see if that most classes in 5e are not optimized for PVP - that said if you have "Both Teams" only play classes that are effective in PVP I can see it working - but it will be a lot of work for you to keep things balanced.
Off the top of my head I think a decent party comp might be a Moon Druid, Veng Pal, Twilight cleric, swash rogue, and Bladesinger wiz - On the other side a Barb, Warlock. Chrono Wiz, Gloom stalker and again a twilight cleric. (That's just off the top of my head)
The other thing to keep in mind is it may be better to have the groups running parallel but opposite tracks and only have them clash occasionally so its not all PVP all the time.
Last thought I would not have 1 player be OP it may lead to a lot of frustration - perhaps give the 1 player a slight edge due to his subservience to an evil deity or something - but nobody wants to go into a thing knowing its rigged against them.
I advise against having one player more powerful than the rest, as this will make the others nothing but chaff.
PVP isn't ideal in D&D, as a lot of classes can oneshot each other with certain combos (stunning strike springs to mind, and that's without delving into the spells that Wizards can get).
I would argue that the best approach is to have conflicting goals, and to have them largely doing things like rigging traps for each other, rather than outright attacking each other, so they essentially are both walking in a circle around a dungeon, on opposite sides to one another, leaving danger behind them and facing the danger ahead of them.
PVP rarely makes for a campaign, more for a oneshot or short module. It might extend longer in a political intrigue campaign where the parties are told that they can't hurt each other, but are trying to influence a vote in opposite directions. Lot of work for the DM, specifically in preparations as to what each NPC will accept to get their vote - if you wing it, you risk being biased!
I'm currently doing this type of campaign. I am having my main adventurers basically hunt down another group of adventurers. The group hunting is of 4 players but the hunted group is 7 and more powerful. To level the playing field and drag the encounters throughout the campaign, I plan on them only encountering 1 or 2 of the "opposing team" initially but, as the threat to them becomes more obvious, they travel in larger groups, for protection, instead of smaller teams, to cover more ground, for what their goal is. With each encounter I plan for certain characters to sacrifice themselves for others so they can escape or something to that effect. That way the surviving characters from the hunted group will be able to communicate with the others from their group and heal and become more powerful for future encounters with the main group. Eventually wittling the hunted group down to an encounter of 3(hunted) vs 4(main group) and an eventual end to them there.
Very early stages in my brainpan, so I figured I'd post it here:
I have an idea to run a campaign with two different groups of PCs, one group of evil characters and one group of good characters that would actively work against each other. In my mind, one character on the evil side would be significantly stronger and be the BBEG of the campaign. Obviously this would be PbP or discord, and the setting would be a home brew that I've been working on as well. Character death would be much more significant, there would be no replacements for either side.
What are potential pitfalls you see? It seems ambitious to me, is it too ambitious? What do you guys think?
Back and ready to DM and chew bubblegum. And I'm alllll outta bubblegum.
The most obvious problem I see if that most classes in 5e are not optimized for PVP - that said if you have "Both Teams" only play classes that are effective in PVP I can see it working - but it will be a lot of work for you to keep things balanced.
Off the top of my head I think a decent party comp might be a Moon Druid, Veng Pal, Twilight cleric, swash rogue, and Bladesinger wiz - On the other side a Barb, Warlock. Chrono Wiz, Gloom stalker and again a twilight cleric. (That's just off the top of my head)
The other thing to keep in mind is it may be better to have the groups running parallel but opposite tracks and only have them clash occasionally so its not all PVP all the time.
Last thought I would not have 1 player be OP it may lead to a lot of frustration - perhaps give the 1 player a slight edge due to his subservience to an evil deity or something - but nobody wants to go into a thing knowing its rigged against them.
I advise against having one player more powerful than the rest, as this will make the others nothing but chaff.
PVP isn't ideal in D&D, as a lot of classes can oneshot each other with certain combos (stunning strike springs to mind, and that's without delving into the spells that Wizards can get).
I would argue that the best approach is to have conflicting goals, and to have them largely doing things like rigging traps for each other, rather than outright attacking each other, so they essentially are both walking in a circle around a dungeon, on opposite sides to one another, leaving danger behind them and facing the danger ahead of them.
PVP rarely makes for a campaign, more for a oneshot or short module. It might extend longer in a political intrigue campaign where the parties are told that they can't hurt each other, but are trying to influence a vote in opposite directions. Lot of work for the DM, specifically in preparations as to what each NPC will accept to get their vote - if you wing it, you risk being biased!
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I'm currently doing this type of campaign. I am having my main adventurers basically hunt down another group of adventurers. The group hunting is of 4 players but the hunted group is 7 and more powerful. To level the playing field and drag the encounters throughout the campaign, I plan on them only encountering 1 or 2 of the "opposing team" initially but, as the threat to them becomes more obvious, they travel in larger groups, for protection, instead of smaller teams, to cover more ground, for what their goal is. With each encounter I plan for certain characters to sacrifice themselves for others so they can escape or something to that effect. That way the surviving characters from the hunted group will be able to communicate with the others from their group and heal and become more powerful for future encounters with the main group. Eventually wittling the hunted group down to an encounter of 3(hunted) vs 4(main group) and an eventual end to them there.
it sounds like you want to play League of Legends