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Hi all, I have been pouring over the Ultimate Campaign Rules to see if it would work for my character in a friends campaign.
Background:
The campaign uses a mix of Pathfinder (predominantly classes races, and feats) and 3.5 rules.
The campaign is set in the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting.
The characters are evil or neutral alignments including 2 drow, a half-hobgoblin and a hobgoblin.
The campaign uses a hugely extended xp system that has required us to complete (on average) 3-4 adventures to obtain one level!
My Character:
My character is a cleric of the house of shackles (The Overlord) whose portfolio is oppression and slavery.
At character creation I purchased a number of slaves with starting money to begin my career.
Where possible, strong opponents defeated in combat on missions have been procured as slaves to sell to local mines and other labor intensive revenues.
Currently I have 3 Courtesans who ply the local town for information while I'm out "acquiring more slaves" (adventuring), a porter who accompanies me on quests to carry excess gear, and 6 bugbear warriors that I recently acquired in the last adventure to use as pit fighters in a local underground fighting ring.
The character concept is loosely based on the Spartacus TV series. my character fulfils the roll of Batiatus the owner of a Ludus (gladiator training school).
Question:
Ultimate campaigns downtime system has provided the DM with a much more structured ruleset as many of the PCs have plans to create hideouts, businesses, and training schools.
For most of the players, the rules work pretty much as written, however there is no clear definition of how to use slaves as workers in a business.
I would like to know what other peoples thoughts are on this matter and how best to expand on the downtime system to include slaves or as a simple houserule.
The other concern is CR/HD of higher level slaves and the effect they would have on the downtime system. Having a storm giant slave will likely fill the role of many laborers for example.
Current thoughts;
My thinking is that slaves count as laborers but cannot be acquired through anything other than gold or rewards.
Acquired slaves through adventures count as 1 person per HD of the creature. since laborer teams include 5 people a 5 HD creature would fulfil the role of 1 laborer team.
upgrading follows the existing rules but the (slave) prefix remains in place. for example you could upgrade a slave laborer team to a slave driver team.
Using slaves reduces capital attrition for 14 days like a manager, and you MUST have a slave master (4gp/day manager) to operate the slaves at all times. If you fail to pay your slave master you lose the manager AND all slaves revolt.
Slaves used in a business increases the risk of detrimental downtime events providing +1 crime and +10 danger modifier. A slave manager does not prevent business attrition although you may employ an additional manager for the business to prevent it.
If you fail a leadership check against a business run by slaves the slaves revolt and are lost.
Any buildings using slaves must provide 1 cell per slave team or 1 bunks per 2 slave teams.
I would use the rules of ballista crews in relation to size of creature = number of laborers that are equivalent to the creature.
"The number of members in a crew assumes Medium creatures. A ram can be crewed by Small creatures, but it takes double the crew to do the same job. If Large or larger creatures serve as crew members, each Large creature counts as four crew members, a Huge creature counts as eight Medium creatures, a colossal creature counts as 16 Medium creatures, and a gargantuan creature counts as 20 Medium creatures."
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Storm Giants are huge, so each one count as 8 laborers.
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Played another session of the game last night, to start with we went over previous rewards and loot and looked at converting it to the downtime system. The party has acquired the help of a local trader to sell our goods since the 2nd adventure in this campaign, we added up the loot and simply converted it to Goods (purchased Capital) we then divided the Goods among the players. We each ended up with 32 goods to use on downtime.
The Wizard in the party had a disused barn on a nearby abandoned farm as a reward, the DM classified it as a granary to calculate its square footage and allowed the wizard to spend money converting the storage into rooms to build a caster tower.
I received a decrepit old house on the edge of the town which I received as payment for a previous adventure. The DM requested I pay 1/3 the costs of a house in order to bring it back up to a liveable standard. Using the goods I had acquired from the trader covered all these costs minus 40gp to purchase some extra labor.
During the adventure we had a group of 10 bugbears attack the small town we where "defending", they simply charged down the road into the town square, my character stepped out of the tavern entrance and cast enthral on the advancing bugbears. I got 8 of the 10 (leaders saved) and succeeded on my Charisma checks to maintain their attention. The rest of the party dealt with the 2 I didn't enthral and then I proceeded to use diplomacy to teach them that Orcus is not a god they want to follow and should give themselves to The Overlord.
End result netted me 8 more slaves. I converted these and the previous bugbears to labourer teams to help rebuild my decrepit old house.
I plan to upgrade these bugbears to scofflaws and use them as pit-fighters to generate capital in the local tavern. once I have the capital I will then build a gladiatorial training school near my home and convert my house into a brothel. once that's done I can work on my evil scheme to introduce slavery as common practice in the area by inviting high standing nobles to my brothel and teaching them how beneficial slaves are compared to "paid" labor...
My GM is looking at creating new types of teams and a manager that better suits the roles I'm looking for, based off the Gladiator: Sands of Death book by mongoose publishing.
will keep you posted on how these house rules turn out and will post a full rundown once its completed.