Well it's certainly been a while since I ventured into this part of the forums but here goes nothing!
This is a campaign I've been wanting to run for quite some time, a more open, freeform exploration story centered in the world of the CastleVania games and associated media (including the Bloodstained games and of course the CV anime). I'll be making some adaptations and adjustments for the sake of the system and the PbP format as well as the group dynamic versus the usual single explorer mechanic the games are built around, but I hope to get the feeling and atmosphere of the CastleVania setting and the open, nonlinear nature of exploring the castle and its mysteries down for your enjoyment and challenge.
I'm basing much of the early portions of the castle on the Maure Castle modules from Dragon Magazine, but pulling other sections from other areas and of course making my own adjustments as I go.
Feel free to ask any questions you have in mind, and I'll do my best to answer them swiftly and thoroughly.
This is going to be a fairly laid-back, casual project for me, so I wouldn't expect anything intense as far as expectation of schedule - if you can post two or three times a week, that'll be plenty for me, as that's about the rate I'll likely be making my own updates.
Character creation rules to follow; after that, feel free to start dropping inquiries and concepts and anything else you all feel like sharing. Thanks for stopping by and here's hoping this is fun for everyone involved =)
Character Names and Relations
Characters may be connected to canon families and histories from the CastleVania universe, such as the Belmonts, Belnades, Graves, Lecardes, etc. However, I ask there only be one such character from each; I'm willing to make a single exception for a pair of siblings, parent/child or spousal pair, or etc. from one family but would rather not have multiple pairs of such filling up the party.
No, you can't play Alucard, even if you want to be a Dhampir. He's an NPC and I haven't decided whether or not he'll even be present. ;)
Race
Characters in this game are limited to the following options, to fit in with the theme of the game world and setting:
Human
Dhampir
Skinwalker
Changeling
Samsaran
Aasimar
Tiefling
Ganzi
Fetchling
Ifrit
Oread
Sylph
Undine
Suli
Vishkanya
Shardbinder (represented by the Maenad)
Characters are free to take any of the racial alternative options available from official Paizo printings or from d20PFSRD.com.
Class
I'm pretty much open to anything from Pathfinder, first or third party, and will allow most official 3.5 WOTC material if someone wants to dip back into something from there that didn't make the jump to PF for one reason or another. If there's an issue with a class choice, I'll let you know.
Characters begin at Level 2. I'm not going to be so mean as to throw you into the meat grinder at level 1 fragility. =)
Characters may pick any of the available Favored Class bonuses they wish, regardless of race. If playing a 3.5 class and you want an option other than +1 HP or +1 Skill Point as your Favored Class option, I'll consider cooking something up.
Alignment
I would prefer that all the PCs involved are Good or Neutral, but I'm not going to immediately prohibit evil alignments - I trust all the people who'll be in this game and I'm confident that if your concept is evil it will be a kind that is of temperament to work with the party rather than against.
As long as you have the shared understanding that the goal is to defeat Dracula and banish CastleVania back from whence it came, the rest is fair game.
Stats
Characters will be built using a pre-set array: 16 14 14 12 10 8.
Other Character Creation Options
As usual, start with two Traits, usual rules apply. If the Trait isn't on PFSRD I may ask you to print the full text for me.
Most anything on PFSRD as far as feats, spells, items, etc. is fair game. 3.5 material is slightly more limited - the following books are open for pre-approved use:
Magic Item Compendium
Spell Compendium
Tome of Magic
Book of Nine Swords
Anything else I ask you request first and I'll likely approve but I do want to look it over first.
Leadership will not be allowed so I recommend not building your character with it in mind. Likewise I advise only one person in the party have a combat-inclined companion - be it animal companion, eidolon, combat familiar, or so forth. I don't want to completely rule out druids, summoners, etc. but I want to keep the number of pets to a minimum. Regular non-combatant familiars are fine.
Remember that you'll be spending most of the campaign inside the extent of the castle, so spells and abilities focused on working in natural areas will probably not function during the majority of the story.
Enemies will be the standard CastleVania fare - you'll see a lot of undead, a fair number of aberrations, outsiders, magical beasts, and oozes, and the occasional plant, fey, animal or vermin, monstrous humanoid, and construct. Dragons are a possibility but likely rare. Humanoids will be nearly nonexistent outside PCs. Keep this in mind when considering character options.
Exploration will be a primary theme of the game, so characters are encouraged to have investment in skills and abilities that assist with this. Knowledge skills will be useful as always. Craft, Profession, and similar skills will likely be less useful given you will be spending almost all of the storyline inside the castle and thus have little to no interaction with civilized areas.
Other Rules
We will be using the Automatic Bonus Progression rules from Pathfinder Unchained.
In addition, a character may start with a single magic item if they wish and it is suitable to their concept - for example, a Belmont beginning the game with the Vampire Killer whip. These items will use rules similar to those from Weapons of Legacy from 3.5, but I will need to come up with specific progressions for each.
For obvious reasons whips will be improved in this game: they'll be using the stats of a barbed scourge - 1d6 lethal Slashing damage, one handed, x3 critical on 20. In addition, they'll be treated as Martial weapons, not Exotic. They can still be used with Weapon Finesse if one desires.
If you have any other questions or feel I've left something out, let me know! I'll be happy to answer ASAP =)
Yeah sure, that's fine.
I'm thinking a divine class - a healer/channeler, whether it be cleric, life oracle, or shaman or what have you.
I always seem to go for blurred morality, you know, anti heroes and anti villains, and I feel it would be a refreshing change to be a black and white kind of guy who actually wants to save people and stop villains and just boy scout it up a bit.
Someone to act as a foil when we inevitably get a dhampir or other "harness the darkness versus the darkness" type that gothic horror games inevitably attract.
Sounds good to me. The rest of the party will definitely appreciate having someone to deal with all the nasty things undead can inflict.
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If I go with witch (which is what I am leaning toward), I will likely go with a background like this.
I recently found myself looking at the witch class again - I've never played one - and considering what type of character a male witch would be. I googled "Pathfinder male witch" for ideas, and that thread was the first hit from the Paizo messageboards. And then I noticed I made the fourth post in that thread 10 years ago. I never did get to play that character concept. Better late than never!
Possibly going with changeling, which could fit well with that backstory.
Works for me! Feel free to ignore the gender thing - if you want to play a dude changeling, by all means.
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Alright then, I'm going ranged martial type with a couple of neat tricks besides inflicting damage that our casters will appreciate like inflicting serious debuffs to saves. He will eventually have a familiar via the eldritch guardian fighter archetype, probably a monkey because monkey.
Are you in a big hurry to get going? I need to read up on Castlevania to come up with a nice backstory and work is cuckoo right now
Edit: Man this site has been acting strange as of late
No huge rush, though within the week if everyone is ready by then. CV has a pretty extensive wiki here for quick and easy research.
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I like the idea a someone going to the monastery seeking some solace from his classic tragic backstory, using the time to channel his pain through writing and of course training for sweet vengeance
Appearance: Montague’s ocean blue eyes that pierce the midnight sky formed by the long locks of his curly raven black hair. The man’s features tell the story of an individual who grew up with a certain amount of wealth with the most obvious tell being the ink stains on his hands and wrists.
Montague is obsessed with the morbid, the macabre and the occult. The death of his mother kick-started it all and the man remembers vividly how carefree she had looked upon the world as her body spun around at the end of a rope, her golden hair dancing in the wind. Haunted by his past the boy looked at the future from underneath a black veil, death ever accompanying him. He learned to deal with the dark clouds that loomed overhead by channeling his thoughts and feelings into writing. The ramblings of a hurting soul don’t sell that well and Montague saw himself forced to having to write more popular fiction: an upcoming genre was gothic horror, inspired by the great writers Marianne Shellas and Bron Stokar, two (insert land name) natives.
CastleVania takes place more or less in a magical version of the real world, primarily southeastern Europe - the Transylvania area and surrounding regions, though the specifics vary from game to game. So your characters can be from just about wherever on Earth.
The year is 1816 for anything that would rely on it.
Would it be possible to begin with an adaptive Comp longbow, I know you mentioned we could possibly start with a magic weapon
So, hows a cleric going to work, with that, domain-wise? If I were, say, to make a travelling catholic friar, would it be a pick and choose domain situation?
@Monty: I can do that for you sure. When you've got the full details on your character backstory, I'll work up a weapon with a story to match.
@VE: As long as it makes at least passing sense, go with whatever you feel fits the character best. Obviously no evil domain if you're not evil, etc.
Just the usual. Where you grew up, how you acquired your skills, how you ended up heading off to face off against the most evil and powerful vampire of all time, that sort of thing =)
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Hello, I'm coming over from Celestial Healer's ravenloft game. I was thinking of playing an occultist character. Possibly related to one of the major families, though as I only have a passing familiarity with castlevania lore I'd have to do some research for a proper back story.
Sounds good to me. I'm not incredibly familiar with all the psychic classes, so I'll be needing to do some reading up of my own on them.
Off the top of my head the Belnades are of course the primary spellcasters in the setting, almost always being mages, witches, or priests. The occultist flavor of drawing power out of objects and locations would also work well for a shardbinder if you wanted to go that route.
oh I like the shardbinder thing. it works well with the class mechanics
Shardbinders are technically from the Bloodstained series, which is sort of a spiritual sequel/spinoff from CastleVania, but I'm considering them canon to its world for the purposes of this story. They absorb magical power from demons or other magical sources and store them within crystals embedded into their skin; that's one of the main reasons I used Maenad for their stat equivalents. Further details here. =)
That reminds me - since this is set in more or less the real world, most racial languages would be replaced with real-world cultural and national languages. Characters get their local language for free depending where they're from, as well as English replacing Common if only because that just happens to be the language we all speak IRL and we can blame it on the British Empire.
The following game languages are still in use:
Celestial
Daemonic (replaces both Abyssal and Infernal)
Sylvan
Aklo
Necril
Druidic (the four elemental languages are covered by this now)
Otherwise, expect to see more use of real-world linguistics than fantasy-world.
Hmm, given the distribution of other classes and a distinct lack of tankage, a paladin could serve my concept of light in the darkness just as well.
Opinions, group and GM?
To clarify, I was gravitating towards a caster cleric earlier - blossoming light and ecclesitheurge, with the aasimar FCB for more channel power, and taking quick channel ASAP to really unload positive energy like a beast.
As a paladin, I would likely go smitey smitey I love the smitey. Plus side - I could be our resident Belmont.
I realize a battle cleric could straddle the line, but 1) they're MAD as all get out, and 2) I prefer specialization over generalization, typically. Just a preference thing.
Either way, it's going to be an uber-good guy.
Either works! Paladin would indeed make an excellent Belmont base, and Aasimar is perfectly justifiable in the family. Cleric no less, either as a combat priest or a healer-blaster.
The occultist class is a front line fighter but maybe not enough for being the only front line fighter
So current roster looks like:
CH - Witch
TFY - Monk (Zen Archer)
Acorn - Occultist
VE - Cleric or Paladin
And woran when she feels up to playing.
Looking like a pretty interesting party, all things considered.
I'll link screencaps from maptool or something as needed during combat and when necessary for navigation. Otherwise shouldn't be a huge issue I think.
Since I'm holding a spot for woran and possibly TL, I'm going to go ahead and not take any further players except those two if/when they feel up to joining. Thanks so much CH for recommending his thread for recruitment and Acorn and TFY for filling the group out.
I decided to stick with the cleric. Im still building him, but Ive started working on the profile and such a bit.
I decided to avoid the whole Belmont thing, because, frankly, its always a bloody Belmont - maybe thats what the f@$*er keeps coming back. They dont do the job well enough.
Looks good! Let me know when he's done and ready.
Also forgot to note - normal starting gold, take the maximum for your class. You're level 2 for survival's sake, but you're technically just getting started with your adventure. There'll be opportunities to get treasure and buy equipment within the castle, don't fear. =)
How are things coming along? TFY looks like he's mostly done and VEs character is started, how are the other two progressing?
Mostly done
So is he human or shardbinder? >.> or just not yet decided?
Scratch that! Question answered =)
I am just about there.
A lot of the background is still in my head - I just need to type it out (hopefully tonight).
Also, I'm just not sure what type of legacy item is appropriate here. While I anticipate he will use his crossbow fairly often until he gets more spells/day, it's not really his thing. I'm not sure if some type of wand or rod is more appropriate here, or what you would allow.
I am going with more-or-less the original concept. A foundling raised by a wise woman in modern-day Belarus (in that era of history, that region was recently conquered by the Russian empire, but saw frequent invasion for generations). His background is definitely provincial, not noble, but his mixed ancestry (the child of a hag and an aasimar) makes him anything but ordinary.
I can do a rod or staff, since yeah crossbow is a last-resort type thing at low levels that you probably wouldn't want to invest legacy powers into unless it's going to be your main weapon (like playing a Bolt Ace or something).
I'm ready, I just need you to create...Netherstrand, spooookky
All I really care about is adaptative. With ABP(Which I am a huge fan of) Everything else will be taken care
Will do! Also it does appear you have too much gold - remember we're using default starting gold, not level-2 standard gold.
My choices are mostly made. The majority of my work is typing the sheet up on these horrid profiles. I'm using a phone, as my laptop broke it's delete key (and a few others), and the formatting is just a pain, even with a template, as you need to reference back and forth...which is not easy using an android phone's tabs.
Ooof, yeah I feel you. I try to do as little forum stuff on my phone as possible other than basic posting. Rough, sorry to hear that.
I think I am mostly set. I beefed up my touch attacks - hopefully I don't regret that. Hopefully I can get some defensive items. At 3rd he can deliver touch spells through his familiar, although that is risky in its own right.
The only thing that is still open is my magic item. Struggling with ideas.
Should we anticipate a use for dead languages? (Latin, Ancient Greek, etc.)
Latin definitely shows up a fair bit, Ancient Arabic and Greek are probably likely as well.