AKA the adventure that killed the party three times in a row
Well, technically, one person survived the first two times, and managed to get back to Freesboro to recruit more suckers recruits to try and help, twice. The third time they all died, and then I went home and made up a whole new adventure to go off the basis that the bad guys succeeded at their plan.
Does anyone have any plans of running a Gamma World pbp game any time soon? I've been reading @Denada 's Journey to the West game and it is really fun.
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gaming_librarianTurn your face to the sun...Registered Userregular
Hey guys, advice if you please. I'm running Shadowfell for a small group. Well, the group started as 3: a cleric, warden, and ranger. I didn't want to mess too much with the encounters, so I thought what might balance things out a bit would be to make the players start at level two and give them one basic magic weapon (+1 magic weapon, no other effects, etc.), and just try and throw the whole thing at them and see what happens. We made it through two or three combat encounters, and things seem fine; they've felt challenged and are having fun. The thing is, I never anticipated us being able to add a fourth player, but now we have a guy who is jumping in as a wizard. This is great, because I'm all about having fun with more people. We're running this thing on roll20's virtual tabletop, and it's great. Going forward though, I wonder if I've now made them too powerful with the adventure as written, since now I've got 4 players at level 2 and we're still basically at the beginning of this thing. I want them to have fun, and I know they like to feel heroic but be challenged to use their resources wisely. Should I just slow the leveling a bit now until things balance out? I planned on using the adventure's own cues as when to level. I don't usually track xp as such, and just level the players typically as an adventure tells me to, that sort of thing. Any tips here?
Hey guys, advice if you please. I'm running Shadowfell for a small group. Well, the group started as 3: a cleric, warden, and ranger. I didn't want to mess too much with the encounters, so I thought what might balance things out a bit would be to make the players start at level two and give them one basic magic weapon (+1 magic weapon, no other effects, etc.), and just try and throw the whole thing at them and see what happens. We made it through two or three combat encounters, and things seem fine; they've felt challenged and are having fun. The thing is, I never anticipated us being able to add a fourth player, but now we have a guy who is jumping in as a wizard. This is great, because I'm all about having fun with more people. We're running this thing on roll20's virtual tabletop, and it's great. Going forward though, I wonder if I've now made them too powerful with the adventure as written, since now I've got 4 players at level 2 and we're still basically at the beginning of this thing. I want them to have fun, and I know they like to feel heroic but be challenged to use their resources wisely. Should I just slow the leveling a bit now until things balance out? I planned on using the adventure's own cues as when to level. I don't usually track xp as such, and just level the players typically as an adventure tells me to, that sort of thing. Any tips here?
Go read the encounter building stuff in the DMG. Follow the XP budgets. Enjoy the adulation.
I was super surprised at how well that stuff really works. To fix a module you will probably be seeing where it ranks for their level and adjusting by adding another copy of an already existing monster in the group. If you're feeling energetic you could hit the XP budget by leveling up the dudes in the encounter but that would be a bit messier and time consuming.
Incidentally, doing the opposite would have been a much better approach to fixing your initial problem but that's long gone.
Edit: Oh, and I know I used the word "XP Budget" but this doesn't mess with your plans about free form XP at all. It's XP as measure of monster power, not XP as progression marker.
Eh, they're not that much more powerful. They'll find some things a little easier, but you could just up all the defenses of the enemies by 1 until they would have hit level 2 anyway. Then follow along the rest of the module. If they ask why it's taking so long to level say the addition of a fourth member lightened the experience pot. I doubt they will ask, but just in case.
gaming_librarianTurn your face to the sun...Registered Userregular
Thanks guys. Yeah, I think I'm going to be lazy and just let them be level 2 a bit longer than I would via the xp progression in the dmg. They were well aware of why I started them higher in the first place, and I mentioned that adding another would slow the leveling a bit anyway. They're an easy-going bunch and don't really care as long as they're killing things and taking their shinies and having fun doing it. Going forward, I'll just do a better job of adjusting via the DMG.
Also don't be afraid to adjust stuff on the fly if things start getting dicey for the group. (Yay puns!) Whenever I DM, I have a set of abilities that I give to monsters when certain things happen. If a character is hit with a string of bad luck and constantly rolling low, I'll throw on "Take out the weak one!" which drops the monster's defenses because he thinks the character is kinda pathetic at not being able to hit him. So the monster's defenses drop a couple points, and he gets like half that much damage or whatever would still be manageable for the group to handle. That way the roll of 8 will now be a hit, and the character will be contributing and not just a tagalong.
The players are still the heroes, after all, and while every hero has his low points, his normal status should be "Kicking ass and taking names", not "Rolling bad and wanting a taco".
I paid for a Spelljammer module on Amazon and got my order in the mail today. Imagine my confusion when I see the Spelljammer logo on the cover only to open it and find an adventure called "Castle Caldwell" instead.
One of my friends might be starting up a D&D game, so I might finally get to run a PC again. I've been thinking about my sumo wrestling dwarf concept and have been finding that there are a bunch of different ways to try and build it. I'm also trying to incorporate a spiritual theme, seeing as real-life sumo wrestlers are apparently derived from Shinto tradition (for example, sumo wrestlers throw salt into the ring to ritually purify it and have stories about wrestlers fighting with spirits).
Here are four different builds I've tried:
- Dwarf Brawler Fighter. Uses the Earthforger theme, which has several powers burst and zone powers that can represent a supernaturally-designated ring. Has a 15 Constitution so he can get plate armor proficiency at first level; I plan to reflavor the plate armor as the sumo's hard-as-a-rock girth. I was originally going to use a spiked gauntlet, but it does pretty low damage, and I could just use another, harder-hitting weapon and reflavor it as an unarmed attack.
- The second build is pretty much the same as the first, with the exception that instead of using the feat for plate armor it is used for a monk multiclass feat so I can get the monk's unarmed strike. I make do with scale armor instead of plate.
- Dwarf Earthstrength Warden. Uses the Ironwrought theme, Disciple of Stone feat, and Strength of Stone at-will power to represent a tough body. Unfortunately, the wrestler feel only really comes from the Roots of Stone encounter power and Form of the Fearsome Ram daily power with no grabbing abilities.
- I also looked at the monk for a little bit and noticed several options for reducing forced movement, such as one of the Eternal Tide monk's class features (I wonder how many forced movement reduction abilities can be stacked on one character?). I'm not certain a monk will actually work well to represent a sumo wrestler, though.
The main decision point I'm finding is that I'm not certain if I want to try and use flavor-appropriate mechanics to represent my sumo wrestler concept or take less-appropriate mechanics and reflavor them (for example, using monk unarmed strike versus using a warhammer and reflavoring attacks as powerful unarmed blows).
I'm sure some of you guys have an opinion on designing something like this. If you want to contribute, keep in mind that I want a character that:
1) Can push enemies around (and preferably could also make good use of grab and bullrush).
2) Has stickiness and can withstand damage (so most likely a Defender).
3) Can resist forced movement.
4) Can create a kind of warded area that can be reflavored as a spirit-infused wrestling ring. This could be accomplished a bunch of different ways, either by using burst and zone powers or even by being a fighter who makes very good use of the combat superiority feature. I might be okay with just using the Earthforger theme.
5) Can easily be described as an exotic warrior that uses a fighting style linked to a reverence of earth spirits. I'm very lenient with this point, and it'd be interesting to see takes on a earth worshiping sumo wrestler that are based on less obvious choices such as Divine or Psionic classes.
The level of reflavoring permissible is really something that is determined by the lower of your comfort level and your DM's comfort level. Anybody here who tells you how either of you should feel is just being a "BadWrongFun" Goose.
A friend of mine thought the idea of a Half-Orc bard named Oth'gar Strong-Song whose instrument was kettle drums that he had strapped to his side would be fun. So I made it for him. I think he had just a bunch of powers that gave temp HP, and umm, MBAs or something.
I am DMing a 4E game in a totally generic POL setting. To make things simpler, I had the characters be in a newly-founded frontier port town on the edge of an unexplored continent. I thought this would make things easier for me as a DM, because I don't have a lot of free time to be writing stuff.
But now, after 4 or 5 sessions, I am feeling the need for backstory and world-building and so on, but I don't have time. My players are loving the game, and buying supplements left right and centre. I have another friend who has loads of 4E books, and I have the Dark Sun books. Between everyone, I think I have access to all the setting/campaign guides.
Is there any non-jarring way to change over to using a campaign setting? I suppose they could fall through a portal and wake up in Athas, or get on a ship and sail to the Forgotten Realms or Neverwinter, but those seem jarring and rubbish.
Any ideas? If we retcon, any ideas on smoothing that over?
I am a bit stumped. I really regret not picking a setting from the start. I thought this would be the easy way, but it's not really turned out that way.
Or perhaps I don't need to write backstory if the players are having fun?
I figure I could take a bear.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Give them a quest to avoid an apocalypse and switch setting based on the outcome?
I suppose we could say that this is and always has been Forgotten Realms. But ah no, that has different gods doesn't it? There's a paladin of Bahamut and a cleric of Avandra in the party. The cleric is new, so maybe no big deal, but the paladin is very much built around Bahamut.
I suppose we could say that this is and always has been Forgotten Realms. But ah no, that has different gods doesn't it? There's a paladin of Bahamut and a cleric of Avandra in the party. The cleric is new, so maybe no big deal, but the paladin is very much built around Bahamut.
They're only 3rd level, too low for apocalypses.
Too low to stave off one
Also yeah, your cleric and paladin would not like Athas unless you somehow give them access to their gods.
I suppose we could say that this is and always has been Forgotten Realms. But ah no, that has different gods doesn't it? There's a paladin of Bahamut and a cleric of Avandra in the party. The cleric is new, so maybe no big deal, but the paladin is very much built around Bahamut.
Bahamut exists in the Forgotten Realms as a lesser deity allied with the god Torm.
@poshniallo Sorry for really long post, but here's a thought that might help keep a setting transition from being as jarring, inspired by the TV show Once Upon a Time (which my wife convinced me to watch with her this past summer; it's worth watching but quickly so you remember the bread crumbs from one episode to another. The overarching story is well done, the reinterpretations of classic Disney material is pretty well done, Robert Carlyle is brilliant, and the attention to details and clues are masterful but the dialogue writing that should be driving individual episodes is usually lackluster or worse).
Anyway, in OUAT the evil queen casts a spell that transports a large portion of the inhabitants of her realm to a new land and wipes all of their memories but her own. In the show, it's her transporting people from their world (Fairy-Tale land) to ours (a small town in Maine). Her motivations (general terms in case anyone watches the show and isn't all the way through season 1 yet): The Queen has hated Snow White since Snow was a girl for ruining the queen's chance at her "happy ending," and so just before Snow and her prince are supposed to have their child (and their happily ever after), she curses the whole realm to lose their homes and their memories so none of them can have their happy endings and she can try anew for her own happiness in the new world.
Translated to D&D : A wizard who's lost his whole family to tragedy snaps and prepares a ritual to whisk away your PCs whole POL home to another realm so he can start anew (maybe his family was killed by a competing wizard so he is trying to go to a world without magic like Athas, or maybe they died of disease that a more advanced civilization could have cured so he targets Eberron).
The PCs first hear about a crazed man procuring very odd items of darkness (could be just weird things in strangely large quantities, could be grisly, like the hearts of his victims), but being only 3rd level, they maybe are unable to stop the ritual (works especially well if the players are on board with a setting change) and have to instead find a way to protect themselves from the memory wipe, or perhaps they arrive and defeat the wizard but the ritual has already been enacted and instead they get to keep their memories (or depending on how well they did, maybe they get to pick the new destination by changing the glyphs on the floor around or something)
This comes with some fringe benefits, too: First, it introduces the mechanic of realm-jumping, so if you get bored with the setting (again) but not with the characters, you could try to get back to the POL, or send them somewhere new to find a rare cure for a curse (or something that smacks a little less of handwavium nonsensia).
Second, you can recast NPCs yours players already know and love (or hate) in new ways to make the PCs automatically have connections in the new world.
Just a thought, but maybe it'll inspire something.
Tymora is the closest equivalent for Avandra, I think.
I wouldn't get SUPER bogged down on specifics though--remember why you're doing this and who you're doing it for. You can easily say "X is named Y" or even "X is Y but otherwise this is Forgotten Realms"
If my role play is hindered by rolling to play, then I'd prefer the rolls play right, instead of steam-rolling play-night.
@poshniallo, you say that you don't have time to write all the stuff yourself, but what if you involve your players in it? Take a session or two to sit down with them and discuss what they think the world should be like. You don't have to get into super specific details, but even some broad strokes with some interesting flavorful bits can help make it feel unique, and the players will be more invested in it if they've helped decide some of the stuff. Also this can lead to the cool part where making checks about things like history and religion, players can actually contribute minor facts to the world mythos if they do well enough.
Just take your time. There's no need to define your entire world overnight. Go one location at a time; like, this is the Tower if Gromesh, site of a great goblin battle, home of a beautiful elf witch, now overrun by looters and bec romances? Now that's more than enough to start building an adventure. After that adventure, you send them to the abandoned keep, still haunted by The Lord slain the goblin wars and so on and so forth. Remember, it doesn't have to happen overnight. Take your world building one adventure at a time.
Also, let your players contribute to the world. I have a player who I always let contribute an NPC and if the create a favorite haunt back in town I try to give it a little flourish with an interesting proprietor, staff, regulars and history with their help. Player agency is a good thing.
// PSN: wyrd_warrior // MHW Name: Josei //
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AnialosCollies are love, Collies are life!Shadowbrook ColliesRegistered Userregular
I may just get them killed so we can play Dark Sun.
Ah, going the Iconic route.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Question for DMs:
How much setting-original stuff do you let bleed back into PoL when you set stuff there?
Like, are you all about magic robot sword masters fighting alongside giant bug gladiators or do you only let the "standard" races and classes in, or somewhere in between?
I think he's more asking about letting setting specific stuff into a general PoL setting.
General random games I don't much care. If I'm working on a more detailed campaign I'll try and be accommodating but some of the weird as shit stuff is a tough sell. Too many of the weird races warp a campaign around them.
Too many of the weird races warp a campaign around them.
I am totes in agreement here.
One time I was trying to run a game and like EVERYONE at the table showed up expecting to play something weird. Like one guy wanted to be a short human with too much facial hair, another wanted to be a shorter human, some guy wanted to be a skinny human with pointy ears, and after I talked to them about this and how upsetting that was, one guy was nice enough to pick human but he didn't want to have pale skin, blue eyes and blond hair.
I just can't manage that kind of suspension of disbelief, and I don't see how any sane person could, so I don't play with those guys anymore.
Now that I'm done being silly: Is "bugman" really that much crazier than "semi-immortal snobby douchebag that needs 50 years to learn how to not need diapers, but supposedly is super-smart?" Are half-dwarves insanely out of place in every other world just because they 'started' in Dark Sun? Playable golems? Nature spirits? Beast-men?
This is just one guy talking, here, but I've always found it easier and much more fun to find reasons to say 'yes' than to go hunting for excuses to say 'no.'
Leper on
If my role play is hindered by rolling to play, then I'd prefer the rolls play right, instead of steam-rolling play-night.
This is just one guy talking, here, but I've always found it easier and much more fun to find reasons to say 'yes' than to go hunting for excuses to say 'no.'
Nice to see you agree with the part of my post you edited out before being sarcastic about what you left.
Bug men are weird and in a standard PoL campaign is going to be the focus of most of the "Party" interaction with town NPC's. Now if everybody is cool with that being a big part of the campaign, have fun! If the rest of the party is all looking to do some covert spy missions where the bug will always be uniquely identifiable and blow cover....that is less good.
Posts
AKA the module that will live in infamy
AKA the adventure that killed the party three times in a row
Well, technically, one person survived the first two times, and managed to get back to Freesboro to recruit more suckers recruits to try and help, twice. The third time they all died, and then I went home and made up a whole new adventure to go off the basis that the bad guys succeeded at their plan.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
the latest issue of Dragon has playable draconians based on dragonborn
and it also has items from Dragonlance, directly referencing kender
and next month will have yet more Dragonlance material
we were so close to avoiding all of this
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Go read the encounter building stuff in the DMG. Follow the XP budgets. Enjoy the adulation.
I was super surprised at how well that stuff really works. To fix a module you will probably be seeing where it ranks for their level and adjusting by adding another copy of an already existing monster in the group. If you're feeling energetic you could hit the XP budget by leveling up the dudes in the encounter but that would be a bit messier and time consuming.
Incidentally, doing the opposite would have been a much better approach to fixing your initial problem but that's long gone.
Edit: Oh, and I know I used the word "XP Budget" but this doesn't mess with your plans about free form XP at all. It's XP as measure of monster power, not XP as progression marker.
It's much more important to adjust when the PC's are too weak than too strong. Too weak ends campaigns, too strong...makes them boring.
The players are still the heroes, after all, and while every hero has his low points, his normal status should be "Kicking ass and taking names", not "Rolling bad and wanting a taco".
R*SC: BladeCruiser
Check out my GTAV-PC custom race tracks inspired by real life racing circuits!
forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?641187-Can-someone-explain-what-the-quot-Escalation-Die-quot-is
Then there is the giant red one Fire Opal Media has pictured here with my DM's posterior next to it at ECCC.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Here are four different builds I've tried:
- Dwarf Brawler Fighter. Uses the Earthforger theme, which has several powers burst and zone powers that can represent a supernaturally-designated ring. Has a 15 Constitution so he can get plate armor proficiency at first level; I plan to reflavor the plate armor as the sumo's hard-as-a-rock girth. I was originally going to use a spiked gauntlet, but it does pretty low damage, and I could just use another, harder-hitting weapon and reflavor it as an unarmed attack.
- The second build is pretty much the same as the first, with the exception that instead of using the feat for plate armor it is used for a monk multiclass feat so I can get the monk's unarmed strike. I make do with scale armor instead of plate.
- Dwarf Earthstrength Warden. Uses the Ironwrought theme, Disciple of Stone feat, and Strength of Stone at-will power to represent a tough body. Unfortunately, the wrestler feel only really comes from the Roots of Stone encounter power and Form of the Fearsome Ram daily power with no grabbing abilities.
- I also looked at the monk for a little bit and noticed several options for reducing forced movement, such as one of the Eternal Tide monk's class features (I wonder how many forced movement reduction abilities can be stacked on one character?). I'm not certain a monk will actually work well to represent a sumo wrestler, though.
The main decision point I'm finding is that I'm not certain if I want to try and use flavor-appropriate mechanics to represent my sumo wrestler concept or take less-appropriate mechanics and reflavor them (for example, using monk unarmed strike versus using a warhammer and reflavoring attacks as powerful unarmed blows).
I'm sure some of you guys have an opinion on designing something like this. If you want to contribute, keep in mind that I want a character that:
1) Can push enemies around (and preferably could also make good use of grab and bullrush).
2) Has stickiness and can withstand damage (so most likely a Defender).
3) Can resist forced movement.
4) Can create a kind of warded area that can be reflavored as a spirit-infused wrestling ring. This could be accomplished a bunch of different ways, either by using burst and zone powers or even by being a fighter who makes very good use of the combat superiority feature. I might be okay with just using the Earthforger theme.
5) Can easily be described as an exotic warrior that uses a fighting style linked to a reverence of earth spirits. I'm very lenient with this point, and it'd be interesting to see takes on a earth worshiping sumo wrestler that are based on less obvious choices such as Divine or Psionic classes.
Why didn't you like Monk with the Earthforger theme? With maybe multi class into Warden?
Even the movement powers are quite sumo-ish, as the charge is a big part of a bout.
Yeah....
Mine's probably in real bad.
I am DMing a 4E game in a totally generic POL setting. To make things simpler, I had the characters be in a newly-founded frontier port town on the edge of an unexplored continent. I thought this would make things easier for me as a DM, because I don't have a lot of free time to be writing stuff.
But now, after 4 or 5 sessions, I am feeling the need for backstory and world-building and so on, but I don't have time. My players are loving the game, and buying supplements left right and centre. I have another friend who has loads of 4E books, and I have the Dark Sun books. Between everyone, I think I have access to all the setting/campaign guides.
Is there any non-jarring way to change over to using a campaign setting? I suppose they could fall through a portal and wake up in Athas, or get on a ship and sail to the Forgotten Realms or Neverwinter, but those seem jarring and rubbish.
Any ideas? If we retcon, any ideas on smoothing that over?
I am a bit stumped. I really regret not picking a setting from the start. I thought this would be the easy way, but it's not really turned out that way.
Or perhaps I don't need to write backstory if the players are having fun?
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
They're only 3rd level, too low for apocalypses.
Also yeah, your cleric and paladin would not like Athas unless you somehow give them access to their gods.
Bahamut exists in the Forgotten Realms as a lesser deity allied with the god Torm.
I could tweak Forgotten Realms deities slightly so that Bahamut replaces Torm or is equal to him.
But what about Avandra? I can't find a FR deity similar.
Anyway, in OUAT the evil queen casts a spell that transports a large portion of the inhabitants of her realm to a new land and wipes all of their memories but her own. In the show, it's her transporting people from their world (Fairy-Tale land) to ours (a small town in Maine). Her motivations (general terms in case anyone watches the show and isn't all the way through season 1 yet): The Queen has hated Snow White since Snow was a girl for ruining the queen's chance at her "happy ending," and so just before Snow and her prince are supposed to have their child (and their happily ever after), she curses the whole realm to lose their homes and their memories so none of them can have their happy endings and she can try anew for her own happiness in the new world.
Translated to D&D : A wizard who's lost his whole family to tragedy snaps and prepares a ritual to whisk away your PCs whole POL home to another realm so he can start anew (maybe his family was killed by a competing wizard so he is trying to go to a world without magic like Athas, or maybe they died of disease that a more advanced civilization could have cured so he targets Eberron).
The PCs first hear about a crazed man procuring very odd items of darkness (could be just weird things in strangely large quantities, could be grisly, like the hearts of his victims), but being only 3rd level, they maybe are unable to stop the ritual (works especially well if the players are on board with a setting change) and have to instead find a way to protect themselves from the memory wipe, or perhaps they arrive and defeat the wizard but the ritual has already been enacted and instead they get to keep their memories (or depending on how well they did, maybe they get to pick the new destination by changing the glyphs on the floor around or something)
This comes with some fringe benefits, too: First, it introduces the mechanic of realm-jumping, so if you get bored with the setting (again) but not with the characters, you could try to get back to the POL, or send them somewhere new to find a rare cure for a curse (or something that smacks a little less of handwavium nonsensia).
Second, you can recast NPCs yours players already know and love (or hate) in new ways to make the PCs automatically have connections in the new world.
Just a thought, but maybe it'll inspire something.
All I have to do is change a few Gods and maybe get the PCs to choose a home nation.
Thanks for the idea though - a bit too high magic for my way of doing things, however.
I wouldn't get SUPER bogged down on specifics though--remember why you're doing this and who you're doing it for. You can easily say "X is named Y" or even "X is Y but otherwise this is Forgotten Realms"
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Also, let your players contribute to the world. I have a player who I always let contribute an NPC and if the create a favorite haunt back in town I try to give it a little flourish with an interesting proprietor, staff, regulars and history with their help. Player agency is a good thing.
Ah, going the Iconic route.
How much setting-original stuff do you let bleed back into PoL when you set stuff there?
Like, are you all about magic robot sword masters fighting alongside giant bug gladiators or do you only let the "standard" races and classes in, or somewhere in between?
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
General random games I don't much care. If I'm working on a more detailed campaign I'll try and be accommodating but some of the weird as shit stuff is a tough sell. Too many of the weird races warp a campaign around them.
One time I was trying to run a game and like EVERYONE at the table showed up expecting to play something weird. Like one guy wanted to be a short human with too much facial hair, another wanted to be a shorter human, some guy wanted to be a skinny human with pointy ears, and after I talked to them about this and how upsetting that was, one guy was nice enough to pick human but he didn't want to have pale skin, blue eyes and blond hair.
I just can't manage that kind of suspension of disbelief, and I don't see how any sane person could, so I don't play with those guys anymore.
Now that I'm done being silly: Is "bugman" really that much crazier than "semi-immortal snobby douchebag that needs 50 years to learn how to not need diapers, but supposedly is super-smart?" Are half-dwarves insanely out of place in every other world just because they 'started' in Dark Sun? Playable golems? Nature spirits? Beast-men?
This is just one guy talking, here, but I've always found it easier and much more fun to find reasons to say 'yes' than to go hunting for excuses to say 'no.'
Nice to see you agree with the part of my post you edited out before being sarcastic about what you left.
Bug men are weird and in a standard PoL campaign is going to be the focus of most of the "Party" interaction with town NPC's. Now if everybody is cool with that being a big part of the campaign, have fun! If the rest of the party is all looking to do some covert spy missions where the bug will always be uniquely identifiable and blow cover....that is less good.