Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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This is a charity pdf. 100% of the proceeds will go to the Red cross for disaster relief, starting with their fund for the Moore, Oklahoma tornado.
The cover sketch was donated by Wayne Reynolds, the layout and production work was donated by Hyrum Savage, and I donated my time to writ the text.
Because of the accounting tools available on those sites, Charity Product: The Merciful Cousins Cavalier Order is currently slated for release only on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.
The Geniuses would also like to thank world renowned illustrator Wayne Reynolds, who kindly donated the sketch used for the cover of this product. The sketch, and his kind gesture to make it available, not only inspired the Order of Merciful Cousins, but this entire charity pdf.
The Order of Merciful Cousins, who also go by the name the Masons of Recovery, are an order available for cavaliers (a class presented in the Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game: Advanced Player’s Guide™). Dedicated to assisting those who have suffered tragedy or disaster, the merciful cousins wander the world trying to help those communities in greatest need. In addition to defending those too weak or shocked to defend themselves, the merciful cousins spend time healing the injured, rebuilding shattered homes, and helping communities plan to better weather future hardships.
The merciful cousins see themselves as kin to all the distressed and dispossessed, and believe communities that have suffered significant disasters must be protected and helped to rebuild. Of course, the cavaliers also believe in preventing such disasters before they strike and are happy to hunt down bands of pirates or brigands, secure destructive artifacts before they fall into the wrong hands, and help protect caravans and keeps where danger looms, but has not yet befallen. But if a community or settlement has already been ravaged, that is the where cavalier’s first duty lies.
The symbol of the order is two four-pointed stars overlapping one another. These represent the four pillars of their duty – defense, preparation, recovery, and rebuilding – both in the present (the front star) and in the past (the star in the background). Whenever an order of the merciful cousins cavalier helps a community recover from disaster, she adds another smaller star to her personal heraldry, much as soldiers mark their successes in major battles. To the cavalier, those she has helped are more important than those she has defeated.
Nice one SGG - I'll pick this up. Good to see such kind-hearted, generous people.
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I yoinked this one as soon as I stumbled across it at DTRPG (about this time yesterday). As awesome as it is to slay dragons and take their stuff, it’s really refreshing to see a character-option that lets a character make a real difference within a community as a whole. There’s rarely a shortage of adventurers willing to go out and kill-or-die in the name of loot, XP, and becoming legends, but people who do stuff that matters to a community’s future, like building a school? That’s novel in this game, and more than welcome. (The donation-to-charity thing is cool, too; if Paizo was set up for it, I’d’ve bought it through here as well, just on the strength of that.)
As I noted in my DTRPG review, I’ve already got some character ideas that will make Alain look like the self-obsessed ass he is (not that I’ll ever get to use them myself :(). Methinks meeting a samurai from the Order of Merciful Cousins would be sufficiently outside-context to completely BSOD his ‘mind’.... ;)
This seems like a great idea. I will have to pick this up.
Taken.
I really enjoy just how well this cavalier order works with the kingdom building rules. If and when I ever run a Kingmaker campaign, I know which order any cavalier of mine will belong to.
Also, nice(?) touch with the possibility for a Lawful Evil member. Hey, even bad guys have to put some effort into keeping their subjects happy. And having an evil character who works to protect and maintain the community they live in is definitely a seldom-seen idea!
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Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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I really enjoy just how well this cavalier order works with the kingdom building rules. If and when I ever run a Kingmaker campaign, I know which order any cavalier of mine will belong to.
Cool!
Also, nice(?) touch with the possibility for a Lawful Evil member. Hey, even bad guys have to put some effort into keeping their subjects happy. And having an evil character who works to protect and maintain the community they live in is definitely a seldom-seen idea!
I confess I wrestled with that idea for a few minutes. But then I thought of Darth Vader, to be honest.
Moff Jerjerrod: Lord Vader, this is an unexpected pleasure. We are honored by your presence...
Darth Vader: You may dispense with the pleasantries, Commander. I'm here to put you back on schedule.
Moff Jerjerrod: I assure you, Lord Vader. My men are working as fast as they can.
Darth Vader: Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.
So, yeah. Evil empires want their peasants up and producing again as soon after a disaster as possible...
An Endzeitgeist.com review
This pdf is 4 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover (with a sketch by Wayne Reynolds!!!), 1 page SRD, leaving us with 2 1/3 of a page content, so let's take a look!
The dragon has raided the village, the orc-horde has rampaged through the town, the necromancer-king is ravaging the country-side or the insane druid has conjured forth tornados and tidal waves - business as usual for adventurers: They set off, kill the bad guy and there - all well! Well, not in my game. I always considered it weird that there was no repercussion for the people - beyond a motive for closure/revenge - what help is it to a town if the PCs kill threat xyz, but they'll still starve?
Enter this cavalier order, which is not about killing baddies, but about HELPING people. You know, doing something that's actually GOOD. The merciful cousins get heal and knowledge (engineering) as bonus class skills and may use the latter untrained - and if the cavalier actually has ranks in the skill, s/he can substitute Craft (Masonry/Carpentry) and Profession (Engineer) for Knowledge (engineering). When issuing challenges, allies within 60 ft. get a +1 bonus to AC and allies with significantly less HD than you get a more substantial AC-bonus. Additionally, such cavaliers may expend one use of a healer's kit as a standard action to restore one hit point to a dying creature, thus saving it. Treating deadly wounds is still possible after benefiting from this usage of the heal-skill. As beacons of hope, they may also reroll saves versus despair, fear and similar negative emotion-inducing effects with a neat +4 bonus.
So far, so good - but where the class starts rocking VERY hard is with the Architect of Improvement-ability: It allows the cavalier to devise an improvement plan for a given settlement by succeeding at a knowledge (engineering)-check that is determined by a settlements size. Properly implementing the improvement plan can be done with or without the cavalier and takes DC minus 10 months, but every day the cavalier helps counts as two for the purpose of when the plan is ready - its aftermath netting a new settlement quality. The settlements maximum number of qualities can thus even exceed its usual limit by 1. Additionally, settlements can thus modify one of their modifiers (like crime, lore, etc.) by 1 - upwards or downwards. Settlements may only implement one such plan per year, though.
But that's not all you can do with the ability! Creating shelters etc. at half the time and improving strongholds at cost are also possible! And to provide something even cooler, we also get 5 new beneficial settlement qualities: Defensible, Good Roads, Planned Community, Therapeutic and Well-educated - awesome!
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good - while I noticed a missing blank space, no glitch impeded my understanding of the pdf. Layout adheres to SGG's 3-column horizontal standard and the cover artwork is awesome. The pdf even comes with bookmarks, in spite of its short length - commendable indeed!
Well, usually, I would complain about the product's length - but this is a charity product, as all benefits are donated to the red cross relief funds to help the victims of disasters. And it actually doesn't feel like just some cheap charity product - it actually provides the coolest cavalier order I've seen so far - unique abilities, balanced crunch and an option to make a difference in the lives of the people of the campaign world as well as an option to actually do some good in real life? Hell yeah! Now don't get me wrong, I'd recommend this pdf even if it wasn't a charity product - but SGG's quality combined with the good cause? A must-buy and an easy verdict of 5 stars plus seal of approval.
Endzeitgeist out.
Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here as well as on OBS. Cheers!
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Thanks for doing such a cool Charity Product, Owen - it's great to see and another good reason why I'm proud to eb of service to this community. :)
@Caedwyr; I don't have Ultimate Campaign yet (can't afford it this month) - so I can't comment on what/whether that book brings something to the table regarding characters and settlement-improvement, but of all products I've read, this is the first that has a settlement-improving ability - so yeah, I consider it quite unique. ^^
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we also get 5 new beneficial settlement qualities: Defensible, Good Roads, Planned Community, Therapeutic and Well-educated
Those are actually from Cityscapes by Skortched Urf Studios at least according to d20pfsrd's settlement section.
I'm sorry, I don't own Cityscapes by Skortched Urf. I assumed they were new since I wasn't aware of anyone apart from JBE (And recently Legendary Games) doing kingdom/settlement building. Thanks for pointing me towards this one, Thanael and apologies for any inconveniences caused. Cheers!
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Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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The new settlement qualities are from Cityscapes -- and that product has LOTS more good stuff. I carefully only borrowed a few for this, which is how I prefer to use OGL material.
The rules for upgrading a community and/or stronghold are new and, to the best of my knowledge unique. Adding new qualities is just one of the ways to use those rules, as well.
The cavalier order itself is also all-new.