This has been a problem since I started playing D&D and has only gotten worse due to unforeseen instances of 13-year-old-girl-ness. When I started playing D&D it was with Matt, my brother –in-law, and my good friend Jon. We played one module bringing characters from level one to dead in the first three sessions. This was due, in large part to the DM (Dungeon Master) not taking into account that the module was built for 4+ adventurers and two just wouldn’t cut it. After that adventure we added another player and had three players and one DM. This made things a lot easier and while we barely won most fights we still won them.

After almost a year of playing I was ready to try my hand at DMing. I had come up with an idea to have a gladiatorial arena and the PCs were slaves required to fight in the arena. The style was going to be very combat heavy and I thought quite a bit of fun. I asked the players to create any character they wanted. And I mean any character. If they played a level adjusted race they had to take the lesser stats if they played non-level adjusted they got awesome stats, I figured that would level out the game a little. I asked them to create character sheets for levels 1-20 so that we could play it out in one huge gaming session.

Unfortunately we never got to play. Our normal D&D DM, Matt, decided that I was screwing up as a DM and he didn’t want to play, unfortunately he didn’t say it in this way. He chose instead to insult me personally and the 13-year-old-girl-ness happened. The aftermath was that Jon and I continue to play games and have had to figure out how to play a 4+ player game with only 1 player. I did a lot of research on the internet about solo campaigns and what you need to adjust etc. There isn’t a lot of information so I figured that I would share what we are currently doing and how it is working.

The Problem with solo campaigns is that all of the monsters are rated based on a party size of 4. This means that a kobold, which has an encounter level (EL) of ¼, should be easy for 4 level 1 characters. With a single level one character that one kobold suddenly has an EL of 1, a much more difficult fight for the character. As monsters go up in EL the distance between their skills and that of a single PC increase at an alarming pace, so what do you do?

You use level adjusted races without counting the level adjustment, roll super stats and use the Tome of Battle/Gestalt Classes. These three things allow your character to do insane things. It also creates a super heroic character that can go toe to toe with a dragon.

Using level adjusted races without counting it is a fantastic way to turn the tables on the monsters. A level one +1 level adjusted character is really a level two character. This makes that character more able to fight monsters at its class level. This is especially true if you choose a level adjusted level with monstrous humanoid levels. Depending on your campaign and how powerful you want the PCs to be I would limit it to +1 or +2 level adjusted races. Anything more might be world breaking.

Rolling super stats just sounds cool. And it is a lot of fun. It is talked about in the Dungeon Masters Guide, though I didn’t realize that until we had already started the adventure. Here is what normal rolling consists of: Roll 4d6 six times discard lowest die of each roll and that is your ability score. For our super stats we rolled 5d6 seven times, discarded the lowest two die from each roll and discarded the lowest of the seven. This gave us great scores, allowing us to maximize our characters for their class.

Speaking of classes we used the Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. Partially because it is such an awesome book and partially because the one adventure we did in the past where Jon played a crusader from the book, his character was insanely powerful. These classes with their martial maneuvers are fantastic and probably a little broken. Of course that doesn’t matter since you are playing with very few characters and need to be able to kick as much ass by yourself as possible. Another option is to make up a few gestalt classes. Combine cleric with rogue or monk with wizard. You can pretty much do anything with the classes. Make sure you take the highest hit die of the two classes and bam you have a fantastic hero ready to kick a lot of ass and take names.

An example of this that I am currently playing is Karkillian, an Ibixian(goat person MM3) Crusader of Erythnul. He is now level six, his ability scores are insane, 24 STR, 15 DEX, 19 CON, 12 WIS, 11 INT, 16 CHA. Because of his monstrous humanoid levels his BAB is nuts as are his hit points, basically he makes other things hurt a lot. Using his Large +1 Great axe combined with devoted spirit and stone dragon maneuvers there is very few monsters of EL 5 or lower that stand a chance toe to toe with this monsters.

Jon has a similar character; we recently kicked off our adventure series with a dungeon clearing for both of us. We encountered up to an EL 6 demon with our two level 5 super solders and nothing lasted more than four rounds with us. We had done some experiments with two level 5 normal classes and found that anything higher than an EL 3 monster tore us up.

As far as running a solo campaign goes I would suggest alternating who DMs and who is the player. That way you can have two separate stories going on and develop each character individually. You can always start off with an adventure where you go out together. This will allow you both to see how each character plays as well as make adjustments to the characters to make them function at optimal levels so they can live longer.

Good Luck.

•  Loot everything- This doesn’t mean that you have to kill everything and then take all of its stuff. No, what you need to do is look for the financial gain in everything. This means taking a look at everything you do and seeing what else you can gain. Maybe this means putting your money in a higher interest bearing account or ordering the free checks instead of the ones covered in chromatic dragons. Consider saving money to be looting from yourself, which is ideal since looting from your friends is not cool. Save as much as you can so you can afford a +1 budget that will allow you to slay your debt.
•  Everyone is trying to poison you- I’m not kidding, even your friends are trying to poison you. This means that you can only eat food that you have prepared. Sure if you trust your significant other they can prepare your food, but do you really trust them? If you make your food choices based on the assumption that anything you haven’t prepared could be poisoned, killing you, you will be more inclined to eat food you prepare. The nice thing about food you have prepared yourself is that it is cheaper. A lot cheaper.
•  Search for traps- When you get offers in the mail for credit, get a loan or borrow money from anyone, READ THE FINE PRINT. Reading the fine print won’t kill you and you will learn the terms of the loan and find any potential traps. Traps that you will find might be an acceleration clause or maybe a change in your interest rate if you pay late. Trust me a 3d6 A.P.R. adjustment will kill you as surely as a fireball. Keep in mind that a trapped door or loan is going to do its best to not look trapped.
•  Invest in +1 budget- Do this as soon as you can. You wouldn’t enter a dungeon without the proper equipment and a +1 budget will allow you to fight off even the hardest temptations. A +1 budget gives you a bonus on Will saves to avoid stress shopping and a +1 to Fortitude saves against pushy sales people. Make sure that your budget does allow for the occasional shopping trip. You need it.
•  Find a good party- Just as a good party needs a Cleric, Wizard, Fighter and Rogue, a good financial plan needs someone to fill all those roles. The Cleric can help staunch the bleeding that is your current financial crisis, the wizard will work his magic to enchant your budget, the Fighter is responsible for keeping the spending monster at bay and the Rogue is in charge of finding good deals and of course picking pockets.
• Everything is treasure- Everything is and should be for sale. If you have found something that you could sell and it is free, take it and sell it. Do this quickly before someone else does. Never underestimate the value of something you would donate to a thrift store. Sure it might be nice to donate to the less fortunate but if you are going to get your finances under control you need to sell everything. Even better try to sell it without having to split the gold with your party. Splitting treasure is for pussies.
• Save for healing potions- You wouldn’t go fight a dragon without buying a few extra healing potions. Of course if you spend all your gold on super fancy armor and a bunch of weapons how are you going to buy the potions? Always set aside a little gold for the future. That way you will never be surprised when you run into a monster of the emergency variety.

If you are wondering how one creates a +1 budget I would suggest that you start with one of the spreadsheets below. They are pretty easy to use. You just fill in what you make, what your monthly expenses are, your debt and what things you are planning on buying in the next year. Once you do that you need to figure out what you can pay for each bill. Start with the smallest balance and work your way to the most expensive. You can see that there are two sheets. Both use the same numbers and you pay off all of your credit card debt in the same month but with the savings plan you have $380 in savings the same month you paid it off and $2810 in savings in a year.

If you have questions please let me know and I will do my best to help. I am not saying that I am the best financial planner but I am pretty good at making budgets. Good luck and remember, when you are needing help in life look no further than your local gaming group.

Pre-Office 2007

Office 2007

The first thing Matt did was allow us to either play a level adjusted race with an ability total at +12, a gestalt class or a non-level adjusted race with an ability total of +16. On top of that both Jon and Ez opted to take an additional boon of playing crazy concepts.

EZ is playing a rogue-bard gestalt that will later take the prestige class of Shadow Dancer. This allows him to fill the role as our rouge and add a little bit extra divine spell casting.

Jon is playing a tiefling(part demon) fighter and is planning on multi-classing later with beguiler. In order to avoid the xp penalty he asked Matt if he could count beguiler as the tiefling’s favored class.

Since I am playing a pretty straight forward class and race I got some extra gold to start. This has allowed my whisper gnome cleric to start with nicer armor and weapons then the others. Being a whisper gnome also makes me sneaky and hard to hit.

Overall I am a little nervous for our group. We are lacking in a serious tank character. My character has the highest hit point total of the group as well as the highest AC but since he is small he does less damage. Jon‘s character has the best chance of hitting opponents but is a little easier to hit then my character. EZ‘s character is able to sneak attack, which should be handy, but he has the lowest AC and the smallest amount of hit points.

We also lack a serious arcane spell caster. Jon‘s character, when he takes a few levels of beguiler, will be able to cast buffing spells and trick our opponents, but won’t have any damage dealing spells. In fact we will be reliant on my clerics ability to cast damage spells when the need arises. The problem with that is my character has a limited number of spell slots and having to pack damage spells vs. buffing spells could make other aspects of combat more difficult.

I will try to keep you posted on our progress and hopefully all of our characters will make it through until the end.

Online Dungeons and Dragons (DnD), the Mutants and Masterminds (MnM) rule system is very organic. There are a lot of rules to learn but the game encourages breaking those rules with the permission of the game master. It even goes so far as to mention that the game master is responsible for the enjoyment of the players and that rules should be bent and broken to provide the best experience. This encourages a level of improvisation that other games lack.

This kind of fluid rule system is needed in a system where you can quite literally play any character you can imagine. Our group had a Batman/Rorschach type character, a fallen angel and a man who turns into a razor demon. The Skull was our Batman, always planning and kicking some henchmen butt. On top of that he was able to hold his own in single combat with a lot of the super villians, Elimesial was the fallen angel. He had wings, a flaming sword and a foul mouth. He was also trying to work his way back into heaven. Finally we had Razor, a normal everyday 25 year old who could transform into a thirteen foot tall razor demon complete with a devil like tail. Three more unlikely heros have never worked together.

Character creation is my favorite part of any tabletop game. Ask the boys and they will tell you that I make five to ten characters to there one. This usually means that my characters lack elaborate back stories but is also means that I get a lot of experience using the creation system. MnM uses a points system with a separate power level limiting how powerful your character can be. These points, known as power points, are used to purchase everything from powers to saving throws. What makes this into such a powerful system is that you can literally create any type of character you can imagine.

The creators of the system have taken the time to create a lot of general powers which you can modify with descriptions, drawbacks, feats and the like. This means that you can select flight and then with you description decide if the hero is able to fly like Superman, uses a jet pack like the Rocketeer, has wings like a bird or any other method of flying you can come up with. Trust me when I say that with this system you can create any type of hero you can imagine.

You want a hero that is made of Guinea Pigs and shoots them at his foes? Easy, you just select the Alternate Form power then spend your points within that to get Blast: Guinea Pigs. Then take the time to think about what other things you could do with a body made of Guinea Pigs. Adjust other powers to fit. If, instead, you decide to go with the hero that poops unicorns that then fight crime all you have to do is select the Summon Minions power and add Poop Unicorns as a descriptor.

One thing to keep in mind is that the first character you create will be the most difficult. I would suggest creating at least three characters before working on the hero that you are going to want to play. This should help you get the feel for things and prevent you from wasting a lot of points on unnecessary powers.

Gameplaywise MnM, like most Tabletop RPGs, requires a game master that can engage his players. This is even more important in MnMs since the rules are so fluid, with characters potentially being able to speak to objects, throw battleships and control minds.

Overall I would say that MnM is my favorite system. It allows you to truly create characters from the ground up. Instead of having to create a character that falls within a preset class you can create you own class. This can make balancing a party a little bit tricky but also creates a lot of great role playing.