Where the dungeon ends, another adventure begins! Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign takes you on a guided tour through the parts of the game that happen between monster attacks and quests for ancient artifacts. As some of the most powerful and prestigious heroes around, do your player characters want to build up a kingdom of their own, or lead an army against a neighboring nation? Perhaps they want to start a business, craft magic items, or embark on a quest that will come to define them. Whether you're looking for help generating a young character or seeking ways to challenge adventurers who've grown bored of fighting monsters one-on-one, this book has everything you need!
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and an open playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era.
A detailed guide to generating character backstories, including a new system for random character generation and traits and drawbacks to meld your background with your statistics.
Story feats that increase in power as you achieve key goals, making quests and crusades more than just flavor!
A complete downtime rules system to flesh out those parts of a PC's life that take place between adventures, such as running a business, gaining power and influence in a community, or starting a magical academy.
New rules for retraining and switching classes; honor, reputation, and fame; young characters; investment; magic item creation; and other key adventuring topics.
Rules for building up a kingdom, including construction and technological advancements, governing your people, and more.
Mass combat rules to help you lead clashing armies and conduct epic battles in a fun and efficient manner—without losing sight of the PCs themselves.
My first impressions of Ultimate Campaign were pretty positive, and now that I've had time to read through the whole thing, I can honestly say that this is a must-have for any campaign that goes beyond the scope of the dungeon crawl. If you're looking for guidelines and rules for all the things that happen outside the dungeon itself, this book is an incredible buy.
Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea everyday!
Book- Ultimate Campaign
Publisher-Paizo
Price – ~$40
TL;DR- Tables and Rules Everywhere!-83%
Basics- Ultimate Campaign focuses on the rules around the rest of the Pathfinder RPG. This book is more "meta" then most books. The book starts with a chapter on how to make characters; not how to make stats, but how to build a story into your characters. Next the book gives a chapter on what you can do in your down time with ideas ranging from building businesses to creating organizations. After that is a chapter on different rules systems covering ideas such as bargaining to taxation in your game. The final chapter is how to build a kingdom and mass combat.
Mechanics or “Crunch”-This book is crunch-tastic! If you want rules regarding all the extra stuff in your game, this is it. Want rules for an honor system? It's here. Want to start a kingdom? There is a whole chapter on how to do the rules for it. It covers a lot of ground. Some of these rules are kind of reprints as these rules were covered in different adventure paths, but that's not necessarily bad as the rules have gotten a polish since their last printing. 5/5
Story or “Fluff”-This section might not fit the best here. This book sets out to be a rules book. It's pretty system neutral as you're just running the Pathfinder/3.5 system somewhere and these rules cover the "in between" stuff. You don't need a lot of story. However chapter one is how to build a character. It does an excellent job of describing what stuff you could include in your character. If you're George R.R. Martin, you don't need this. However, I have a friend who loves Pathfinder, but when presented with character generation, he freezes. This chapter gives some good fluff for your characters and suggests traits for you to take for all the fluff. Heck, if you want to completely randomize your PCs, this chapter gives tables and tables of random stuff to make your new PC. Where the fluff is needed, it's done well, but don't expect it throughout the book. 4/5
Execution-This book is the standard Paizo quality. The book is a nice hard cover with well put together pages. The layout lacks a bit. There are pages after pages of tables or rules or columns of text. Nothing brakes up much of what you're reading, so it gets a little boring. It's important rules, if you want them, but they get very dry, very quick. 3.5/5
Final Thoughts-Unlike a base book, this is a one copy at the table max book. This is something you might want to get, skim through, and then give to your GM while telling him which of these rules you want in the game. It's a repeat of many of the rules systems explored in the adventure paths, which isn't bad because the rules do get a little touch up here and there. However, if you want a dungeon crawling game where you find some monsters, kill them, and take gear, this isn't for you. If you want to do some crazy game where you explore a mist filled continent via random hex crawl where you establish a kingdom while maintaining your family's honor, waging a war for the throne, marrying into different family lines, and dealing with the crushing shame of your fathers half fiend lineage, then YES you will need this book. 83%
After thumbing through the book I decided to pick it up. I think the systems in the book are really interesting and I'm actually adapting them to my 4e game.
The book is chock full of fluffy stuff but stuff tied with mechanics so as a DM you get an idea of what type of rewards to apply to a player when they have a background or have own a business. The mass combat section is pretty neat as well, and with a little tweaking I can adapt that as well.
This is a pretty decent fluff book. However, I wish the price was $29.99 instead. The paper quality used is substantially weaker than previous books. There are useful things to be found within for the GM who is not too busy to come up with himself or herself but nothing is overwhelming in here. Reminds me of the numerous volumes Wotc produced for 4E.
This is definitely a homerun for Paizo. This is definitely one of their best products they have put out in a while. I actually gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars, but it is still good enough to give it 5 here.
I recently obtained a copy of the Ultimate Campaign and become very intrigue in concept of building a kingdom.
I would like to create a web-based game out of these rule sets and concepts. Would I be allowed to do that? What would be the restrictions and/or conditions?
Mainly because of background generator :'D I'm currently starting campaign where it is used(its really fun system me and my players think) and I find it bit of dismay how it doesn't cover all the classes and not all the advanced race guide races.
So far I'm loving the book, but I have a quick question:
In the Terrain Improvements section it states that any improvement that has an (*) next to it can be built with other improvements. Does this mean that you can only have one improvement without an (*) and all the rest can have them or does that mean that if I build a mine I would not be able to build anything else there?
The first is correct. If it doesn't have an asterisk, you can build only one improvement of that type. If it does, you can stack it with other types (including with starless types).
I'd have to go back and look at my original turnover, but I'm pretty sure that the Farm should *not* have an asterisk. Basically, the idea was that you could create any one of the following in a hex: Farm, Mine, Quarry, Sawmill.
Then, if you wanted, you could also add other things running through the hex, like an Aqueduct, Bridge, Canal, Road, etc., or a smaller improvement like a Fort or Watchtower; any number of these could stack with the one basic improvement listed above.
The operating principle is that improvements of the first four types (Farm, Mine, Quarry, Sawmill) really represent the sum total of the economic use of the land in that hex. It's not one farm, it's 100+ square miles of farmland; not one mill or mine or quarry but lots of them.
The other improvements are more concentrated in terms of their physical size, which is why you can combine them in hexes with other things.
Cities themselves are much the same. A city doesn't fill the whole hex. An official-sized city district is a bit less than a square mile, so even a huge multi-district city occupies only a tiny fraction of a hex. IOW, there's no problem putting a city in a hex that already has other improvements (or vice versa).
P.S. The deletion of the asterisk from the Farm is not official errata, though; it's there in the final text, so if you're playing RAW then by all means use it. If you're interested in RAI, I intended for it...
Jason, there is another clarification needed (at least in my mind)... can multiple improvements of the same type that have asterisks be put in the same hex? So, can you put multiple roads in a single hex? Since the watchtower specifically says you can not put it in a hex with another watchtower, then that would lead me to believe that other ones CAN be stacked with them selves (roads with roads, canals with canals, etc.). Is that true? Or is it intended that only one of each type of improvement can be put into any one hex?
That has been clarified, not sure if here or on another thread.
But basically, each improvement can only be done once. Either the hex has the improvement or it doesn't.
The published rules have a small error though regarding which improvements can stack with others or not. Each hex can have any number of improvements that have an asterisk, and only one improvement without an asterisk. But this improvement without asterisk can be built on the same hex that has improvements with an asterisk.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber
So I was looking at the Alternate Profession Rules, and I cannot seem to find any benefit to having more than the minimum number of Employees once you have a Medium or Large size business. It seems that all they do is provide a penalty once you hit a certain point, is there something missing that got cut?
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber
What you write in a fugue state, stays in a fugue state.
Jen Page
Media Specialist, SmiteWorks USA (Fantasy Grounds)
Happy October, everyone! Just so you know, this is now available for purchase from Fantasy Grounds or on Steam. Sync your account first to get it a discount equivalent to the PDF Price ($9.99)
