The Mongol conquest of Khwarezmia from 1219 to 1221 marked the beginning of the Mongol conquest of the Islamic states. In the ensuing war, lasting less than two years, the Khwarezmid Empire was destroyed.
But the meaning of all these accounts in various traditions is that an account is preserved of the Prophet – peace and greetings be upon him – that he said: “Soon it will be that the descendants of Qiṭūrā b. Karkar will come, and they are the Turks, and they will drive the people of Khurāsān and the people of Sīstān hard before them; Turks with flat broad faces and small eyes and flat noses and red countenances and their skin will be stretched out like shields and they will wear furs and on their feet will be shoes of hair,” – and these are the hārū of undecorated cow skin that these Tatārs wear. And he said: “They will come three times and slaughter the people. The first time, those who escape them will be delivered safely, and on the second time they will kill some of them and pass over some, and the third time they will kill them all, God Forbid!” And he said that they will tie their horses to the pillars in the mosques of the Muslims.
"Misunderstanding of how essentially fragile Sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad Khwārezm-Shah’s apparently imposing empire was, its distance away from the Mongols’ eastern homelands, and the strangeness of new terrain all doubtless induced fear in the Mongols, and this might partly account for the terrible events with which Genghis Khan’s name has ever since been associated. The terror his invasion brought must also be ascribed to his quest for vengeance. Genghis Khan’s first two missions to Khwārezm had been massacred; but the place of commercial motives in the Mongol’s decision to march to the west is indicated by the fact that the first was a trade mission. The massacre and robbery of this mission at Utrār by one of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad’s governors before it reached the capital made Genghis single out Utrār for especially savage treatment when the murder of his second, purely diplomatic, mission left him no alternative but war."
"His guides were Muslim merchants from Transoxania. They had to witness one of the worst catastrophes of history. During 1220–21 Bukhara, Samarkand, Herāt, Ṭūs, and Neyshābūr were razed, and the whole populations were slaughtered. The Khwārezm-Shah fled, to die on an island off the Caspian coast. His son Jalāl al-Dīn survived until murdered in Kurdistan in 1231. He had eluded Genghis Khan on the Indus River, across which his horse swam, enabling him to escape to India. He returned to attempt restoring the Khwārezmian empire over Iran. However, he failed to unite the Iranian regions, even though Genghis Khan had withdrawn to Mongolia, where he died in August 1227. Iran was left divided, with Mongol agents remaining in some districts and local adventurers profiting from the lack of order in others."
Encyclopedia Britannica, "Iran -- The Mongol Invasion"
*** These rules also apply to 'buddies' for 'buddy classes' and all cohorts. Use the base form of the creature from the Bestiary and construct it exactly like a PC. In other words, familiars, mounts, animal companions, and other 'buddies' are like 2nd PCs. ***
System: A mix of DnD 3.5 and PF 1e.
Player Count: I'm going to guess we'll have 4-8 characters playing. I've been doing recruitments with similarly intense houserules for a couple of years now, and I never get more players than I need for these games, so I don't think it will be an issue. Everyone who finishes a character should be able to play, and we can discuss a second table if there is an issue with numbers (but I'm 100% sure there won't be).
Style of Play: This campaign is generally going to follow the historical outline of the 13th century Mongol invasion of Persia and the rest of the Near East.
Some of it will be a kind of sandbox.
History is not predetermined -- the characters, who I generally imagine as being on the side of the Mongols, can certainly so completely bungle the invasion that the hordes have to flee back to the steppes in pitiable defeat.
The first scenario is going to begin in an outlying campaign fort of the unified Mongol horde as it prepares to exact bloody vengeance on the realm of the Khwārezm-Shah. An expected caravan of campaign supplies and reinforcements has gone missing, and the present inhabitants of the fort risk hunger and attack if they don't quickly get to the bottom of the mystery.
Allowed Content: I think it will also be better if we can focus on Paizo material because there are good optimization guides for all that stuff. Truly, I get the appeal of Spheres and Dreamscarred psionics. In fact, I made a troubadour character in the last year, and there are certainly some neat subsystems to be had in Spheres, as well as a lot of other 3pp. sources.
Still, I think most build ideas can be accomplished with the Paizo classes, including the Rogue Genius 'Genius Guide to the Talented X' versions, as well as the Legendary Games 'Legendary X' series, which allow more leeway with class ability selection.
For instance, I'm pretty sure a troubadour equivalent can be made with a vigilante.
I'm not going to make an absolute rule, but I want everyone to at least try to not use Spheres or Dreamscarred stuff and see if you can do what you want. There's a lot of stuff for the base classes that I think gets overlooked.
Other than that, the important secondary sources that will be in use are the Legendary Games' line of mythic materials, the Feats Reforged series on scaling feats by Total Party Kill Games, and both the Horrifically Overpowered Feats and Horrifically Overpowered Mythic Feats, as well as the archetype packages from Rouge Genius Games.
Backstory: You need to have a reason to be at the Mongol fort I referred to in my summary of the campaign above.
Experience: I don't use experience points, I just level up the players when its appropriate for the story.
Wealth: Double maximum.
Each PC gains a free Legendary Item per the universal path ability, which scales based on the tiers of the PCs. Each PC is considered to have taken the path ability 'for free' for each tier they posses.
I don't like the Xmas tree effect, so we'll use these two systems to get around that:
I really don't like the Xmas tree style of equipage, or the 'significant six' economy of items. If you're going to have magical items, I want you to make them named items with fluff based on this system from Ghostwalk:
Quote:
NAMED MAGIC WEAPONS
An unusual aspect of the Ghostwalk campaign is that all magic weapons, no matter how minor, have a name. The process to craft magic weapons that was discovered millennia ago in this part of the world required the weapon to have a unique name to cement its powers into place. A weapon is often named for the person who is to bear it, or for some memorable event tied to its creation or the person who created it. For example, a +1 longsword made for a Tereppekian fighter named Bakara might be named Bakara’s Blade by its creator, and a +2 ghost bane heavy mace made by the church of Orcus might be known as Spirit Breaker. Magic weapons that have abilities added to them over time sometimes have their names expanded, but always keep some element of the original name. If Bakara’s Blade later had the flaming special ability added to it, it might be renamed Bakara’s Brightblade. If Spirit Breaker was later crafted with the torturous special ability, its name might be changed to Spiritwrack. A weapon’s name often reveals some of its history or features, even if its name has changed over time due to the addition of new properties. Spells such as analyze dweomer, identify, and legend lore automatically give a weapon’s current and previous names (in addition to all other effects of the spells), and a bard who knows the name of a magic weapon gains a +5 bonus on bardic knowledge checks made to reveal more information about that weapon.
Ability Scores: I use a custom point buy system. At lst level, you receive 108 points that can be spent on a 1-1 basis -- i.e., an attribute of 1 costs 1 point, an attribute of 10 costs 10 points, and an attribute of 18 costs 18 points.
You can manipulate this however you like, with no minimum or maximum, as long as your score is high enough for your character to be alive. I think that's 1 for everything.
I have two additional modifications to the standard PF 1e rules for attributes.
For Intelligence, I adopt the rule from DnD 4e that it can be used for AC, as well as Reflex saves, but not for Initiative.
For Charisma, it can be used as 'morale' in place of Constitution to calculate Wounds, Vigor, and Fortitude saves. It is also the attribute which is the basis for the custom Hero Point system I use, which is a mix of the PF1e Hero Point system and the Action Point system from DnD 3.5.
Please also note that Constitution is the primary stat for combat stamina and tricks, which are a part of the core system for this game, since everyone gets the associated feat for free. Accordingly, you can't just dump constitution in favor of charisma without really losing out on your stamina points.
Hitpoints/Health: In place of Hit Points, I use a custom Wounds and Vigor system that synthesizes elements of the Wounds and Vigor system from PF 1e and the Wounds and Vitality system from DnD 3.5.
There is no rolling, you take the maximum value for everything, double at first level, and then double the total.
For Wounds and Vigor, I am maintaining the higher Wound total from Pathfinder (i.e., Constitution x 2 instead of just the flat attribute value) instead of the flat ability score value from 3.5. Furthermore, Vigor is calculated as per Vitality in DnD 3.5 -- adding the Constitution bonus.
Example: A half-orc barbarian has an 18 constitution. At 1st level, His Wounds are 72 (18 x 2 = 36, 36 x 2 = 72), and his Vigor is 32 (12 + 4 = 16, 16 x 2 = 32). At 2nd level, and every level thereafter, he will get an additional 16 Vigor points from his class and Constitution modifier, but no additional Wound points, which stay the same after they are calculated at 1st level unless modified by a feat or some other ability.
-As I stated above in the discussion of 'attributes', you calculate your Wounds and Vigor using either Constitution or Charisma, which ever is higher.
-In my system, critical hits still multiply damage, and they do not go directly to Wounds, as in the DnD 3.5 version of this system. This contrasts with the PF1e variant, where critical hits do not multiply damage and go straight to Wounds. Basically, that means critical hits work as normal, except they apply to Vigor instead of Wounds.
-Both temporary and lethal/nonlethal categories of Hit Points are converted into lethal/nonlethal categories types of Vigor, instead of dispensing with those categories. I am doing this to avoid conflicts with class abilities, feats, and spells that mention temporary Hit Points or lethal/nonlethal damage.
Races: Everyone is human. You can use the hybrid 'horrifically overpowered feat' to gain the abilities of another race.
Here is the feat description:
Hybrid:
Select a second race. You gain all of the racial traits of that race in addition to your primary race. You count as a member of both races for the purposes of any prerequisites.
Special: This horrifically overpowered feat usually has to be taken at 1st level. Although maybe you were in some sort of weird reincarnate accident or something.
Classes: As I stated above, I would like to stick with paizo classes if possible.
Experience: You have 6 gestalt levels, 3 gestalt mythic tiers, and a bin of +6 CR of templates, with a max of +3 CR for any single template, with which to construct your character.
These levels can be moved around and exchanged at the following conversion rates:
1 CR = 1 gestalt levels of a base class or prestige class
2 CR = 1 gestalt mythic tier
You can use this conversion to acquire more template CR, gestalt base class levels, gestalt prestige class levels, or gestalt mythic tiers by sacrificing template CR, base class or prestige class, or mythic tiers, but no individual template can be over +3 CR, and you cannot make a build with more than 4 gestalt mythic tiers, and you cannot have any individual class level over 12.
You can multi class within the gestalt.
Here are some examples:
The same template can be taken more than once.
*For archetypes, you can gestalt two archetypes for each base class. That means you add the features on top of the base class, rather than replacing features. You can also add further archetypes on top of that in the normal fashion, replacing class features.
*There is a system from Rouge Genius games called 'archetype packages' which are base class features like animal companions or clerical domains which can be taken to add additional oracle domains to an oracle, an additional animal companion to a druid, etc.
Skills: We will use the Background Skills system from Pathfinder Unchained.
Feats:
This game will have a metric ton more feats than in a normal game -- there are three major sources of feats, not counting any for certain races or bonus feats gained by classes like the fighter.
First, you get certain feats for free (Signature Skill (General), Combat Stamina (Combat), Hybrid (Horrifically Overpowered)).
Second, you get feats as if a PF1e fighter receiving 1 feat per level on both sides of gestalt base class levels, gestalt prestige class levels, and gestalt mythic tiers.
Finally, you get additional bonus feats from the low-magic item, automatic bonus progression system I use called 'Chopping Down the Christmas Tree' (see above).
For feat progression, instead of the standard allocation of 1 feat every other level, everyone gets the PF 1e fighter progression of feats as if they were a fighter with 1 feat per level on each 'side' of the gestalt. So, you get 2 feats per level, plus 1 additional feat on each side of the gestalt for every level you would get a bonus feat as a Pathfinder fighter. This also applies to the mythic tiers.
This means you get between 2 or 4 feats each level.
You can use PF1e or 3.5 versions of feats.
Feat progression for gestalt levels:
Level Feats
1 4
2 4
3 2
4 4
5 2
6 4
Total = 20
Feat progression for mythic tiers
Level Feats
1 4
2 4
3 2
Total = 10
*We are using these puppies from Rogue Genius games.
*You can only pick 1 horifically overpowered feat per level or mythic tier. For the base build of 6//6/3//3 +6CR, that would mean 6 horrifically overpowered feats and 3 horrifically overpowered mythic feats.
*We are using the feat tax rules from Elephant in the Playground, and will be using the updated pdf instead of the original blog post. This document can be found here:Elephant in the Room Feat Taxes in Pathfinder
*Everyone gets Signature Skill (General) for all skills they possess, as well as Combat Stamina (Combat) for free.
*You can use the scaling versions of feats from the Feats Reforged series from Total Party Kill games, or can rewrite a feat that is not in that collection to scale if you so desire.
Spellcasting:
We are using the Spell Points (PF) system from Pathfinder, except for the following aspects of this PF 1e conversion of the DnD 3.5e Spell Points (3.5) system:
*For prepared casters, you have two options: you have to pick whether to prepare spells, in which case your selection is limited as per the DnD 3.5 rules, or you can use the PF1e system where casting the same spell multiple times raises the spell point cost of the dweomer each time you cast it.
*Where the DnD 3.5 spell point value for a given level is higher, the greater value is applied.
*There is no restriction on the number of bonus spell points based on the highest level of spell you can cast, instead you just get bonus points as per your casting stat.
*The Vitalizing Variant rule, where casters can draw upon their life force to power spells, is also in use.
*You can have 5.
*You can use PF or 3.5 traits/drawbacks.
Other Notes:
*Bonuses of the same type(profane, competence, insight, etc.) from different sources stack - i.e. a deflection bonus to AC from a template stacks with a deflection bonus from a spell.
*We are using a custom armor as DR system which combines elements of the DnD 3.5 and PF1e system. For my variant, I am maintaining the 3.5 system of having an AC instead of the defense score from Pathfinder. However, I am also changing it so you still calculate AC as normal. In other words, the difference is just adding the DR value for your armor and the defense score for the opposed critical hit roll. In this way, the armor as DR system is just tacking on something to the existing combat system instead of messing with all the AC values.
*Characters get a Defense Bonus to their AC based on class as per DnD 3.5 Unearthed Arcana.
*Here, the defense score is only used for an opposed check for critical hits. When an opponent hits you, they roll to confirm the critical hit, and you make an opposed check based on your defense score. If you succeed, you stop them, even if they confirm.
*Armor will provide temporary Vigor equal to its hit points and can transfer damage. If it runs out of Vigor, it falls apart.
*This system has healing surges, which are basically the DnD 4e system.
*In combat For the Action Economy, you can use either the standard or the Unchained Action Economy for your actions.
I find the latter less of a headache than the normal system, but I'm leaving it as a parallel option so that builds that rely on swift actions aren't compromised. You can switch back and forth, you just have to declare each round which is operative.
*I do block initiative, as in the monsters go together, and the players go before and after the 'block' of the of the opponents. I find that makes things easier.
*I use battle maps in google drawings, and love making maps and handouts, etc. I will do a lot of that for this game. I will post a pdf of the combat round at the beginning of each round.
