Fozbek's page

Penny Arcade just posted a strip featuring Pathfinder and a commentary that criticizes 4th edition (which they've been pretty up on overall in the past).

Expect some additional traffic as PA-ers start investigating this "new game".

NOTE: This isn't an edition war post and I'd appreciate if people wouldn't turn it into an edition war thread.

So, what are some archetypes people have thought up for 3.0/3.5 classes? Here's one I drew up for an NPC (an amazon princess) in my Pirate Kingmaker conversion campaign:

WARBLADE

Savage Warlord (Archetype)
Where normal warblades use their keen intellect and remarkable weapon skill to make their way in the world, savage warlords use raw force--both force of personality and force of arms. They eschew the calculated training and maneuvering of sword princes in favor of animal cunning, dirty tricks, and any other tool more honorable warriors would scoff at. To a savage warlord, the only thing that matters in combat is who survives at the end.
Class Skills: Savage warlords gain Perception, Stealth, and Survival as class skills, but lose Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Local), and Diplomacy as class skills.
Armor Proficiency: A savage warlord does not gain proficiency with heavy armor or light or heavy shields (but does gain proficiency with bucklers).
Maneuvers: A savage warlord has access to the Iron Heart, Shadow Hand, Stone Dragon, and Tiger Claw disciplines. This replaces the normal list of disciplines a warblade can access.
Savage Determination (Ex): At 1st level, your forceful personality prevents you from giving up easily and allows you to draw upon wells of mental strength others cannot touch. You gain an insight bonus equal to your Charisma bonus (to a maximum of your Warblade level) on your Will saves. This ability replaces Battle Clarity.
Raw Fury (Ex): At 1st level, a savage warlord can enter a rage, as the barbarian class ability. She can rage for a number of rounds per day equal to 2 + her Charisma bonus. At each level after 1st, she can rage for 1 additional round. Raging does not prevent a savage warlord from using maneuvers. In all other ways, this functions as the barbarian class ability. This ability replaces weapon aptitude, battle ardor, and battle mastery.
Rage Powers: At 5th level, a savage warlord gains a single rage power, as the barbarian class feature. She gains another rage power every four levels after 5th. This ability replaces the warblade's bonus feats.
Savage Cunning (Ex): At 7th level, you can channel your savagery to allow you to take advantage of enemies who are sick, wounded, or otherwise hindered by circumstances. You gain an insight bonus equal to your Charisma bonus on melee damage rolls against blinded, dazed, dazzled, entangled, flat-footed, grappled, nauseated, sickened, or stunned opponents. This ability replaces battle cunning.
Savage Skill (Ex): At 11th level, your savage willpower grants you an edge when using underhanded tactics against your foes. You gain an insight bonus equal to your Charisma bonus to dirty trick, steal, sunder, and grapple combat maneuver checks, as well as to CMD when attacked with dirty trick, steal, sunder, and grapple combat maneuvers. This ability replaces battle skill.

So, I had a brainstorm on my way home from work the other day:

Everyone I know really wants to play a pirate campaign, but the very nature of pirates (being rather on the independent side of things) means there really isn't a ready-made adventure path, campaign, or even really any modules where the players are pirates, and it'd be a ton of effort to write one yourself.

Then I realized that the Kingmaker mechanical framework would make for an awesome pirate/nautical campaign. It's already designed to be sandbox in nature, the mechanics are already very abstract, and there are already at least basically useful rules for most everything you'd want to cover in a pirate campaign.

Thus, I committed to running a pirates campaign using the Kingmaker mechanics after our current Kingmaker campaign is done.

What I'm looking for advice on is what sort of changes could be made / would need to be made to the Kingmaker mechanics to suit a campaign that starts with a single pirate ship and potentially grows up into an entire pirate empire.

Our group doesn't mind a bit of extra complexity, and in fact we've found the Kingmaker rules a little bit too abstract sometimes, so any suggestions are good.

Right now I'm looking at adding a "notoriety" stat to the overall nation stats, which would determine how much effort other nations put into suppressing the pirates. I'm also going to remove roads because they make no sense in a nautical campaign. Obviously claiming territory will have to be restricted to just hexes containing land; it's real hard to claim any significant amount of ocean. The magic item economy will be removed with the focus instead on trade routes (the players' own trade routes as well as the NPC nations trade routes that they can pillage), with profit from trade routes being based on length and possibly on actual goods traded. The buildings available for each city will probably be re-built from the ground up, and I'm thinking of changing the non-city constructions as well.

Also, the mass battle rules will probably have to be seriously overhauled to work with ship-to-ship combat, although I could see each ship being an "army". I'm holding off on even worrying about the mass battle stuff for now, though, because Ultimate Combat will be out long before we're ready to start this campaign and is supposed to have more fleshed-out mass battle rules in it.

Can anyone else think of other changes or additions?