User blog:Hashimashadoo/The 'evil' campaign

Under mounting pressure from my players I rushed the start of the 'evil' campaign which is more accurately titled 'no alignment/race restrictions' campaign but I do agree that 'evil' rolls off the tongue a little better.

Started at ECL 8 and I ended up with a human blackguard recovering from a bout of insanity, an elven vampire spawn and a natural wererat troll (I had to update the troll monster class to 3.5 and he's currently 6 out of 11 levels through it) looking to advance in the War Hulk PrC from the Miniatures Handbook.

Two problems with this selection: I've DM'd campaigns before with vampire players and sunlight is always an issue. A parties activites are usually severely hampered if they can only go out during night but while digging through some of my 1st edition source material I found an entry in the original Lords of Darkness that had a paragraph on Greater Vampires. These are vampires created by a Succubus' energy draining kiss and can go out in the daylight but lose all of their vampire abilities. Perfect, I thought, problem solved. The second problem came from our troll. The campaign mostly takes place in Athkatla and I doubt, even with Arrk making a name for himself in the Lake of Steam region, that the haughty Amnians of Athkatla would put up with a troll in their midst, even if he restricted his movements completely to the foreign quarter of the city. This time, the troll's player came up with the answer. He agreed to take the form of a dire rat, pretending to be an animal companion, whenever they were in public. But with only 1 skill point per Hit Die he didn't realise that he had to invest in Control Shape to change form and spent those 4 skill points on things he thought would be more useful. I do fear that when they first encounter a citizen/guard he'll be quickly killed if he's not very lucky.

Apart from these issues, the normal ones remain. My new players never showed up and I doubt they ever will, plus the players I've got are still easily distracted with noone taking up a serious leadership role so adventuring is slow and sometimes a little boring.

Edit: I later realised that the troll did not have to invest in Control Shape as he is a natural lycanthrope and they have complete control over their transformation.