Survive the rough and wild world that has grown out of the chaos of Second Starfall. Explore the wilds and survive long to begin to pick up the shards of the past and learn the true folly of Second Starfall.
Skill Checks: Even if your skill check is high enough to pass the DC of the required check without a roll, you must roll regardless. Even with your high skill in that check, you still have a chance of critically failing with a natural 1, but also having a critical success on a natural 20 which will grant additional boons.
Traits: Traits are earn via playing the campaign. These are rewards or affects your characters will gain depending on their actions in the campaign.
PC vs PC Diplomacy Checks: This will not be allowed to force players to think or behave a specific way. You must convince them with traditional means of roleplay.
Feats: Feats are gained as normal, but additional feats may be awarded by group/character play.
Crafting: A whole new system will be replacing Pathfinders crafting rule set to accommodate the campaign.
Combat: Players will be giving one day to post their turn in combat. By the end of day if a player has not taken their turn, they will be put on delay and combat will proceed normally. GM will roll all initiative rolls to keep from breaking the flow of the PbP.
Player Death: In the event of a players death, that is the end of their journey (If there is no chance to get a revival/reincarnation). This also means your participation into he campaign is done. No re-rolling of characters will be permitted. This is to allow other outside players a chance to participate in the campaign.
Party Wipe: In the event of the death of the entire party, a new recruitment will be held. You will be allowed to submit a new character then, but only then.
Combat:
Spoiler:
During small(few to one monsters) combat: Standard book combat rules apply.
During large(many monsters) combat: Players Initiatives will be averaged, so players may take their turn at any time during the players group turn.
Enemy initiatives will be grouped together as well in the initiative order. They will be placed in respect to the averaged players initiative.
During Combat. Due to its lengthy nature, I will speed up posts to once a day. At the end of each day, the monsters will always take their turn. This is to prevent a month long combat sequence.
Ex.
Combat 1:
Players have an average initiative roll of 8. Monsters average initiative rolls is a 4. In this event, the Players take their turn first, then the monsters will after.
Crafting System:
Spoiler:
You can craft many items in the campaign, from armor and weapons, but you must have skill points allocated to Craft: [Category] in order to do so. You must obtain raw materials and/or schematics to do. The system is explained in more detail below:
Crafting Categories:
Armor
Weapons (guns fall under this category now)
Alchemy (Knowledge of gunsmithing ammo has progressed to the point that it now falls under this)
Siege
Traps
What you need to craft?
To craft items in the campaign you must have the raw material to do so. Most raw materials can either be found, salvaged, or bought. There will be unique materials and components you can find to add special affects or bonuses. When you have the required materials, you can do one of two things. You can either find/purchase a schematic in order to know the quantity of resources you need. Or you can make a Craft [Category] skill check to see if your character knows how to craft that item that you want. If you fail to pass this knowledge check you have to buy a schematic or take a -5 penalty to your Craft [Category] check to when you craft your weapon.
How long does it take?
Crafting takes time in the game world, there will be moments when you enter towns where you will have access to what you need to craft your items. The length of time is calculated from a Craft [Category] check and the complexity/quality of the weapon. You can rush your crafts but you will take a penalty on your Craft [Category] check for quality.
How are the stats determined?
I will determine final base stats of your item. Your will make your final Craft [Category] check to determine your characters success at making the item. This check will help determine the quality of your item, or if your character blunders and wastes the materials.
Can I get an example?
Of course you can! (Note: All data here is an example and does not represent what the materials actually do.)
Targen the Dwarf decides he wants to make a one handed waraxe. First he makes a check to see if he is knowledgeable enough in crafting it. He has a Craft: Weapons skill of 15. His final roll tallies results in a 25. Crafting a standard waraxe is pretty common knowledge so he doesn't need a schematic. He finds out he needs 2 ingots to craft it and it will take approximately 2 full days to make it.
Targen the Dwarf has enough Darksteel and Obsidian to craft it. He decides to use Darksteel because it gives a inherent +2 to attack rolls against Goblins. He knows this because of a finding a tattered book on Darksteel. Though a Craft Weapons check could reveal if he worked with that material before and possibly gleamed what it might do.
Targen then makes a Craft Weapons Skill check to Craft the weapon. He doesn't have enough time craft it so he wants to attempt to craft it in one day which raises the difficulty of the check. His skill check results in 20. Luckily since it is a simple weapon with no other enhancements he makes it without too much difficulty. His weapon now has the base stats of a common waraxe, but with a +2 to attack rolls against Goblins.
If he had extra time, he could lower the difficulty of the check or opted to use extra materials to try and get a boost to its effect or find a new affect by combining materials.
Major Events:
Spoiler:
The war of the World Wound has been lost as some of the mightiest heroes fell. The Ward Stones were shattered and the full might of the demon armies was unleashed on Golarian as the Worldwound grew exponentially. In response the gods moved as never before to quell the sudden onslaught and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their followers. An unusual alliance between Asmodeus, Iomadae, Sarenrae and Cayden Cailean saved the world but destroyed it at the same time.
The four gods broke Divine Law and appeared on Golarian in the flesh. Iomadae and Cayden moved to fight off the demons with the support of Sarenrae's healing light as Asmodeus used his deep and forbidden knowledge of dark magic to cast a powerful spell that would forcibly seal the World Wound by collapsing the Wound and all the land within twenty miles into a great chasm. That this would kill the millions of soldiers fighting a retreating war against the demons meant nothing to the Father of Lies. To his eternal surprise however the World Wound resisted the Archdevil's magic, pulsing in response and vomiting out even more hordes of demons. Nothing he did seemed to work.
As a last resort Sarenrae tapped into the full depths of her power and summoned forth a lance of pure sunfire and cast it at the wound. The resulting explosion was so immense that people over a thousand miles away could feel the earth shake and hear the boom as a mushroom cloud hundreds of miles tall reached beyond the atmosphere and ejected thousands of tons of debris that would become a ring around the planet. Tidal waves washed over Magnimar and leveled the city as the island of Hermea vanished under the waves. Belkzen disappeared into fire and ash when several dormant volcanoes exploded all at the same time and shattered the orc empire. The great Cypher Gate of Riddleport fell into the bay as Mendev, Ustulav, Numeria and the western part of the Realm of the Mammoth Lords vanished into light and fury.
The Wound was sealed.
At what cost however? Millions were dead as the ground continued to shudder for several days following the explosion as the very land around the survivors warped. Brevoy woke up the day after the explosion to find a great escarpment had risen up to the west, sealing off western travel unless they were willing to travel several hundred miles south through the volatile River Kingdoms. Caliphas residents were thrown from their beds as the city rose up on the edge of a great cliff that overlooked the desolation of Ustalav to their north, now only smoke and shadows covered with thick clouds of volcanic ash and gases from Belkzen.
It was only a week after the initial shock of the explosion did the true horror of the event set in. As the various nations began to pick up the pieces did they realize that magic had stopped working. Wizards in every nation suddenly were little more then custodians of esoteric knowledge. Clerics, paladins, druids and all others who channeled the Divine's power were gone. Not dead, they simply vanished over night. With them went every manner of creature who flew, ran or swam in the oceans with significant magical power. Chaos erupted as mobs descended on the now empty temples to loot and pillage and only in cities with strong governments did law prevail. In Almas the army descended on the mobs headed towards the temples and dispersed them, taking the holy scripts and libraries and storing them under government protection. The Cathedral of the Starstone was sealed and not even a direct hit from a trebuche could open those doors. The Starstone was sealed away, seemingly forever.
The gods had become silent.
Varisia suddenly had to deal with an influx of panicked and demoralized Orcs, the shattered remnants of a once powerful people. To add insult to injury the orcs found no respite from the vengeful Varisians, long subject to the brutality of their neighbors to the east. In a stunning display of bloodlust the Varisians began to slaughter the orcs by the thousands, reducing an already broken people to a shadow of their previous glory. Never again would the orcs rise to prominence as a people.
In Cheliax the opposite happened. With their diabolic allies all cast back into the nine hells and those capapable of summoning infernal servants gone the thrice-damned house of Thrune faced the unimaginable; nothing protected them but the questionable loyalty of normal palace guards. It was at this time that the Army of Light struck for freedom. Despite lacking any magical support the people, with sudden support from Andoran, rose up in revolt and for 3 long years civil war ravaged the the country before Queen Abrogail II herself was marched out and publicly executed in front of her palace.
The army of Andoran moved in with the collapse of the Chalaxian government as the people vented decades of suppressed rage on the noble houses who had publicly supported the devil god Asmodeus. Before the country dissolved into the chaos that was Galt the Andorans stepped in and created an interim government while they taught the now free Chelaxians the ideas of democracy and free market. Those few noble houses still alive were allowed freedom only it was proven they had never openly supported the diabolists and their noble titles gave them no power over the free people. When the armies of Molthune threw off the yoke of Cheliax and invaded Isger and Nidal on either side of it, the armies of Andoran were forced to mobilize to counter the aggressive expansionists. This war was known as the War of Roses and it was the stalwart and unflinching heroism of the Andorans, with unexpected financial support from Druma merchants, that finally severed the country from it's infernal contracts.
After battling against hellknight rebels, Morthal expansionists and what was left of the shadow houses of Nidal for close to 20 years the Andoran's were left with hundreds of miles of new country they didn't want but had defended out of necessity. Many of the free people of Cheliax had joined the Andoran's in battling Morthal and Nidal and now they were a single united force believing in freedom and the choice to choose. But democracy cannot protect such a huge expanse of land and resources and despite the Andoran's best effort to teach the people of Cheliax, they wanted something that the Andoran's weren't willing to give; a new ruler. The Andoran's had developed their country on the idea of democracy and free market and the idea of installing a ruler of any kind over their kin to the west was repugnant. It took close to fifty years for public support to shift enough that the border between Andoran and Cheliax dissolved and they became one country. A new city was founded at the midpoint of the new large country and named Rodan after the name of the Andoran general who led the forces that defeated the forces of Molthune. Rodan became the new capital of Andoran as the borders of the country now spread all the way to the Arcadian Ocean and they became one of the most powerful countries in the world.
Over the next 200 years the strange technology from the Mana Wastes blossomed. With no clerics to channel healing magic wounds festered and killed until more mundane healers could once against become true masters of their craft. Knowledge in the medical fields become more advanced then ever, mainly due to thousands dying to the plague that followed the first years after the war. Now is the era of the steam engine, a mighty device of steel and fire that turned water into vapor and pulled vehicles hundreds of feet long over parallel tracks that wound across the countryside for hundreds of miles. The temples, if they even stand, are edifices of the old world.
And in a world devoid of magic steam technology and it's ilk were allowed to flourish. With Numeria's destruction in the Cataclysm, or Second Starfall as it's called, all of the fantastic technology from the alien ship that had crashed was destroyed. The few pieces that had been smuggled out of the country haven't been replicated and most are out of power now. Geb and Nex have been silent since Second Starfall and tales of an unusually cold winter start filtering from Brevoy. Will you stay safe behind the walls of Westcrown or will you brave the long and perilous journey to glory?
