Saevox's Gauntlet: A multi-table PvPvE Pathfinder module! (Inactive)

Game Master The Rising Phoenix

Have you ever wanted to pit your party's skills against another party? Do you enjoy running a challenging gauntlet of traps, monsters and puzzles in a race against time? Saevox's Gaunlet is the first installment of a three part PvPvE multi-table adventure PbP where four separate parties make a mad dash through a harrowing gauntlet of challenges to be one of the first to obtain Saevox's Fang, the first of three pieces of an ancient Thassilonian artifact called the Trimerix, uncover the location of the second piece of the artifact and make it out alive. Three other parties are running the Gauntlet as well, so you best be quick and at the top of your game if you want to make it out the other side!

GENERAL INFORMATION

• Parties will consist of 4 level 4 characters with any official Paizo class that is non-evil based.
  
• This is a PvPvE game. The intention of this game is not straight up PvP, but it is allowed against non-party members as required. The objective is to get the loot and get out, if your team doesn't have it and the other one does, well ...
  
• There will come a point in time where you will likely confront other members from another party. While death is a real possibility, murder should not be on your list of primary objectives. If half the party is already down and the other two are barely conscious, please do not resort to a fireball as your plan of attack. Remember, PvP is allowed in this game but evil characters are not.
  
• There will be FOUR GM's in this game to ensure that the game keeps moving and that there is always one around for adjudication.
  
• This is a one game day, one shot adventure. You won't be stopping to take a nightcap at the inn or worrying about setting up a watch at night. The objective is get in, grab the artifact and get out alive with the artifact! If your party survives, they can advanced to part 2!
  
• The encounters in this game are designed to be quite challenging and you should prepare yourselves accordingly.
  
• We’re still role-playing here! While it's obvious you guys are going to optimize the crap out of your characters, but we want to see more than just dice rolling please.

APPLICATIONS

• This is obviously not a normal game recruitment of four to six players, we need 16 people to pull this thing off! I have roughly one full team of players already, so I'm looking for about twelve additional players. You're welcome to dot this thread, comment as you see fit, muster, etc, but I'll be reserving spots for whole parties.
  
• This is first come, first served. I won't be looking for specific classes or concepts, that is going to be on you. You're going to need to form a full party of four amongst yourselves and submit the required information to me.
  
• Required information: Initially all I need to know is the main paizo alias (player not character yet) of the four players that make up the group.
  
• Once have a confirmed spot of four, you should then discuss the team name, classes, concepts and flush out your party here. Google Sheet.
  
• I have no how long it will take to get a full group of 16. Ideally I don't want to stay in recruitment longer than two weeks, but this is a bit bigger recruitment than normal. I'm not in a rush to get started today, but I definately like to get the ball rolling sometime in the next 2ish weeks.

FORMAT

• All PbP posting will take place here on Paizo's forums.
  
• This campaign thread will serve as the master game thread. All game wide announcements from GM's or game wide OOC discussion between all players will take place here.
  
• A separate campaign thread will be created for each adventuring party that will contain their localized gameplay and discussion threads.
  
• Roll20 will be used for the map. This will allow us to utilize dynamic lighting and restrict visibility for players to only what their team can see.

ROUNDS AND TIMING

• In order to keep pacing equal among all teams, the entire game will take place during Tactial Combat/Initiative rounds.
  
• Initiative is rolled for all players at the start of Round 1. Those initiative values will continue to be used until the party encounters a new combat encounter. If a multi-party combat is underway the new party will roll and be inserted into the existing init as new monsters joining combat normally would.
  
• If the game advances a round without all actions submitted, those characters with missing actions will be automatically be placed in delay and can come out of delay at any point in the next round.
  
• Because we are basing the time system of this game around real life days, we can't be subject to the less than stellar uptime of Paizo's forums. There will be a system in place for your to submit your turn actions to the GM's when Paizo is unavailable.
  
• The game will advance one of two ways:

  1) The round will advance no later than every 48 hours (2 days) from the start of the previous round IF all players from all teams have completed their actions for the current round. If all players from all teams have completed their action for the round the game can be advanced sooner than 48 hours.
  2) If a player hasn't completed their actions within 48 hours, a single 24 hour extension will be added to the current round. During extended round time, any player of the party whose character's actions are missing may submit actions for the missing chracter in their party for that round. Only 1 extension period of 24 hours will occur per round and no round will take longer than 72 hours to progress (unless the GM's announce it so for some reason).
  

THE STORY IN SAEVOX'S GAUNTLET

Forty-seven years ago a tremendous discovery was made in the badlands of the Barrier Wall, an abandoned treasure hoard of what is assumed to have belonged to a unknown dragon. This news wasn't able to be kept secret for long and treasure hunters, historians, governments, organizations from the around Golarion flocked to claim a portion of the untold treasures.

While many riches of tremendous power were uncovered, it was a manuscript that recounted a series of ancient Thassilonian trials that were the biggest find. These documents described three contests that were held every century to take protective ownership of an ancient artifact known as the Trimerix.

It appears that the last contest was scheduled to occur a few days after Earthfall and thus scholars predict that the contest was staged but never took place. They deem it likely that this artifact which has been long forgotten, was buried underground in three separate dungeons and likely survived the cataclysmic event. Numerous copies of the manuscript were uncovered from the hoard and each were spirited off to the best scholars that money could buy by their respective new owners. Through rigorous research and study over the years to follow, the location, timing and few other details of these contests known as Gauntlets began to emerge.

Today marks the day that the time-locked location of the first trial known as Saevox Gauntlet, is scheduled to begin. Four of the most powerful factions that control the information on the contest specifics have each dispatched their own agents to participate in the contest and take ownership of the first part of the artifact, an object known only as Saevox's Fang.

GAMEMASTERS

• Because we have 4x the players, we're going to roll with 4x the GM's!
  
• Your humble GM's will be: GM ShadowLord (thats me!), DM Bigrin, GM Kiito and GM Huggles.
  
• All 4 GM's will be monitoring all game threads to make sure we can things moving along according to our timing system.
  

DISCLAIMER (the fine print)

• We've put a LOT of work into this concept and we're really excited to try do this thing! That being said it may fail miserably. We ask your patience as this is obviously not something we've seen done before.
  
• This obviously is going to take several parties to pull off. If we don't get any interest and submissions for players we won't be able to run this.

IMPORTANT!
Mechanics, Party Information, Character Creation and other pieces of important information are listed in a Google Sheet that may be adjusted if something crops up in the future. Because of the restrictions on editing posts here, this sheet should be considered your master reference for this game. It can be found HERE.

CHARACTER CREATION SPECIFICS
Party size: 4
Character level: 4
Archetypes: 1/Class - All Paizo archetypes allowed, but only a single archetype per class
Starting wealth: 6,000 GP
Skills: Background skills in use
Traits: 3 (2 + 1 from Drawback)
Drawbacks: 1 (Required)
Hit point rules: Max at level one, 1/2 + 1 for each level after that
Teamwork feat: 1 free Teamwork Feat
Classes allowed: All Paizo non-prestige classes are fair game
Ability Scores: Ability scores are determined by the race points of your chosen race. Ability scores will either be 15, 20 or 25 points with lower points given to higher RP races.
25 Point Buy: Gnolls, Gripplis, Ifrits, Oreads, Sylphs
20 Point Buy: Catfolk, Duergar, Elves, Gnomes, Goblins, Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, Halflings, Hobgoblins, Humans, Lizardfolk, Orcs, Ratfolk, Undines
15 Point Buy: Aasimar, Dhampirs, Drow, Dwarves, Tengus, Tieflings, Vishkanyas
Lowest stat before racial modifiers: 10
Highest stat before racial modifiers: 18
Alignment: Nothing evil
Religion: Characters may worship any deity but must be within one step of their alignment

ALLOWED / IN USE

• Firearms are extremely rare and early firearms only.
  
• Encumbrance rules are normal except there is no coin weight.
  
• Background skills are in use.
  
• Golarion deities.
  
• All Paizo Pathfinder material.

NOT ALLOWED / NOT IN USE

• No prestige classes.
  
• No middle/old age categories.
  
• No templates.
  
• No item creation.
  
• No hero points.
  
• No custom items.
  
• No evil alignment.
  
• No mythic anything.
  
• No playtest anything.
  
• No single item over 3000 GP.

SPECIAL

• Each party needs a team name.
  
• Each party needs to select a benefactor for their team. Who's funding your expedition and why? Some examples could be an organization (such as Pathfinders or the Aspis Consortium), a national government (Prince Stavian III from Taldor), an extremely wealthy historian who has a penchant for Thassilon, a dragon who wants the Trimerix for their hoard, etc.
  
• The dungeon you are entering was created in Ancient Thassilon. I highly recommend at least one person from each party has Thassilonian as a language.
  
• We make good use of all types of challenges in the Gautlet. You should expect to encounter traps, puzzles, hazards and combat from start to finish.
  
• As if The Gauntlet wasn't deadly enough, there are three other parties gunning to be the first ones through. You are going to get hurt and there is no time to stop for resting. Be prepared.