Wizard Tag
Sometimes roleplaying negative traits can be fun! Maybe your fighter is not too smart, maybe your wizard continually makes bad (unwise) choices, and maybe…some of the characters in your party just have bad luck!
A Pechvogel is an unlucky person, but directly translated from German, “a bad-luck bird”.
Somehow Cally created a party of characters for D&D that included at least two of these Pechvogels, or as written in German “Pechvögel” for plural.
D&D Roleplaying the Good and the Bad
How can one party have so much bad luck, and how can one player roll so many critical failures?
Cally has been learning Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition by playing through the starter set campaign.
She was using pre-made characters that she modified, but somehow they all have bad luck, so I am thinking about calling her party Pechvögel, which is the plural version of “bad-luck bird”.
What makes a good D&D party?
Her party consisted of two fighters, a rogue, a cleric, and a wizard.
One of the fighters was an expert at rolling critical misses and slashed her party members with her great sword, when she wasn’t dropping it or tripping over her own feet.
Her other fighter had her share of bad luck too. She got hit by a tree trunk swung by an ogre, fell off the horse and was knocked unconscious in the fall. Another time she was about to make the finishing blow on the last of a hobgoblin band that nearly wiped out the party, when she missed, struck the ground and snapped the shaft of her great axe!
The rogue is an expert at sneaking right up to the enemies, and occasionally missing completely…
The cleric was constantly bringing party members back from the brink of death.
The wizard frequently led the way into danger, or if he couldn’t find it, he created some on his own.
Even the characters who do well have more than their share of bad luck!
The rogue generally did well, backstabbing, hiding, doing sneak attacks, and contributing greatly to party damage totals, but he was also no stranger to bad luck.
In one battle, he became surrounded by monsters and was able to hide from some, but not all of them. He ended up nearly dying twice in that battle. The cleric managed to restore enough hit points to the rogue, that he was able to jump up and back into battle.
However, as soon as he reengaged, he was struck down, bleeding to death, and the cleric was out of healing spells.
So…the rogue was bandaged up quickly by the cleric and lay there unconscious until the fighting was over.
Barely succeeding in the dungeon with no room for error.
So far, that party has managed to squeak through numerous major encounters, and heroically leave everything on the dungeon floor.
By that I mean, that they use all of their spells, switch to backup weapons, chug healing potions, and still have to find creative ways to survive!
One great example happened when her party decided to try to chase off a dragon after entirely clearing out the town below the dragon’s tower. However, they were out of juice and ended up learning about dragons the hard way…but that is another story!
Share your thoughts in the comments below!
- Have you ever gotten in over your head in an RPG?
- Was your DM/GM hesitant to kill off players or did the dungeon teach you a lesson the hard way?
Want more Wizard Tag updates?
Follow our Progress as we create Laser Tag for Wizards!
#makingmagicreal
Browse the Latest Blogs:
Game Review: The Vale of Eternity
- 6 min read
- Date: May 12, 2024
Game Night: Root
- 4 min read
- Date: May 5, 2024
Wizard Tag Web Design
- 4 min read
- Date: April 28, 2024