I did check out Zeitgeist. While at a glance it did seem like it might be a good fit, closer examination revealed that it wouldn't have been a good fit at all. I neglected to mention this in my previous posts, but the adventure I plan to run is one where the PCs become revolutionaries seeking to bring about justice through extralegal (and likely destructive) means. In Zeitgeist, the players work alongside law enforcement to bring known criminals to justice and ferret out doomsday conspirators that seek to totally upend the current status quo. By contrast, my adventure would necessarily bring the party into direct and frequent conflict with the local law enforcement, and they are going to be the ones upending a fundamentally corrupt system. If anyone owns the Zeitgeist adventures, how easy (or difficult) do you think it would be to flip the script?
Actually, art assets are a low priority for me right now. I need prefabricated dungeon layouts, prefabricated town layouts, prefabricated scripted NPCs, and other things related to game mechanics. And I need all of these things to be designed for a setting that is within the ballpark of a turn-of-the-20th century urban setting, so that it's easy for me to reskin and rehash things as needed. I think the Outlaws of Alkenstar adventure path is the most likely to have everything that I'm looking for, but I'd like for someone to confirm this for me first. If I drop money on a product, expecting to get things like street layouts wide enough for horseless carriage chases, industrialized factory floors, subway stations and tunnels, and tall office buildings designed for stealth missions; I would be very frustrated to find out that it just contains the usual medieval fantasy fare like dirt-road villages and castles and ancient ruins and whatnot. I would also like to know if there are any other adventure paths besides Outlaws of Alkenstar published for PF2e that can be easily reskinned for an early 1900s big city adventure, if you happen to know of any.
In the upcoming campaign I plan to GM, I am going to homebrew my own setting. I'm going to design the world as the campaign unfolds; I will provide a starting area that should suffice for 1st level, and then continuously design outwards depending on what the players decide to do. I've chosen this approach because the setting of Golarion just doesn't suit my needs. But I'm not confident in my ability to design towns and dungeons from scratch, so my plan is to buy some adventure paths, pick and choose the individual parts I like, and rearrange them into a cohesive whole. Which adventure paths (or other sources) would likely have the kinds of things that would fit my campaign? My homebrew setting is an Earth-like planet where humans are pretty much the only sapient Ancestry. If other Ancestries exist, they would all be very Rare. The starting area is largely modeled after Manhattan around the turn of the 20th century, with technology being partly steampunk, partly magitech. Culture and architecture can vary wildly compared to Earth's New York around that time, and can be ahead or behind the curve by plus-or-minus 30-40 years. The Gilded Age is in full effect, and wage slavery is a major source of strife amongst the working class, mainly upheld by an aristocracy of wizards who have worked to slow the development of non-magical technology so that the working class remains reliant on them. The city likely has many secrets buried beneath the surface, and the recent opening of the city's first subway line can be a great entry route for a dungeon or two. Additionally, there are some prominent commercial buildings which are as large as castles and up to 30 stories tall which the party may have to infiltrate on secret missions. The existence of gods and the afterlife remains unconfirmed, but divine magic is about as commonplace as arcane magic, and faith in the ancient and storied traditions of their forebears allows clerics and champions to wield divine power. Based on everything I laid out, which adventure paths or other sources would be most likely to have the best-fitting elements for my campaign, or at least the first few levels of it?
In the upcoming campaign I plan to GM, I am going to homebrew my own setting. I'm going to design the world as the campaign unfolds; I will provide a starting area that should suffice for 1st level, and then continuously design outwards depending on what the players decide to do. I've chosen this approach because the setting of Golarion just doesn't suit my needs. But I'm not confident in my ability to design towns and dungeons from scratch, so my plan is to buy some adventure paths, pick and choose the individual parts I like, and rearrange them into a cohesive whole. Which adventure paths (or other sources) would likely have the kinds of things that would fit my campaign? My homebrew setting is an Earth-like planet where humans are pretty much the only sapient Ancestry. If other Ancestries exist, they would all be very Rare. The starting area is largely modeled after Manhattan around the turn of the 20th century, with technology being partly steampunk, partly magitech. Culture and architecture can vary wildly compared to Earth's New York around that time, and can be ahead or behind the curve by plus-or-minus 30-40 years. The Gilded Age is in full effect, and wage slavery is a major source of strife amongst the working class, mainly upheld by an aristocracy of wizards who have worked to slow the development of non-magical technology so that the working class remains reliant on them. The city likely has many secrets buried beneath the surface, and the recent opening of the city's first subway line can be a great entry route for a dungeon or two. Additionally, there are some prominent commercial buildings which are as large as castles and up to 30 stories tall which the party may have to infiltrate on secret missions. The existence of gods and the afterlife remains unconfirmed, but divine magic is about as commonplace as arcane magic, and faith in the ancient and storied traditions of their forebears allows clerics and champions to wield divine power. Based on everything I laid out, which adventure paths or other sources would be most likely to have the best-fitting elements for my campaign?
I've thought about this before. My idea is to make Slowed an inversion of Quickened; instead of reducing the number of actions available to you outright, it should instead impose limitations on what you can do with a number of actions. Furthermore, if an affected creature ends a turn without using some of its actions, it can carry over the unaffected action to its next turn; when it regains its three actions on its next turn, it can choose not to regain the affected action, thus giving it three unaffected actions for the turn. As an example, you can rewrite the second paragraph of the Magnetic Repulsion spell as follows: While the spell is active, you're slowed 1, and can't use the affected action to use metal objects (including to Strike with a metal weapon). If you're wearing metal armor, you also can't use the affected action to take move or manipulate actions. If for whatever reason you choose to cast this spell on yourself while wearing metal armor, and then want to cast a Summon Elemental spell, you can do so, but it requires an additional turn to pull off. First, end your turn with one action not affected by the slowed condition. When your next turn comes, you can choose to regain only the two actions that are not affected by the slowed condition. You can then use your three unaffected actions to cast Summon Elemental.
I would use Nature in place of Survival for the skill needed to extract. Also, duration per level is a very 3.5e/pf1e mechanic and doesn't really gel well with the 2e ruleset. I would change the success shelf life to "until your next daily preparations" and critical success shelf life to "48 hours".
Fair point. I originally proposed that all checks relating to the limit break should be guaranteed no worse than successes for allies and no better than failures for enemies. Do you think it should be more extreme? All limit break checks should be critical successes for allies and critical failures for enemies? Or maybe, the Hero Point cost should be variable. Spending 1 Hero Point could trigger minor limit breaks (regular success/failure with a small chance to critical). Whereas spending 3 Hero Points could trigger major limit breaks (guaranteed criticals).
Teridax wrote: I'd be keen to playtest that, as a single feat a couple levels above the party's may not necessarily be so impactful as to make up for the cost and restrictions That might be a good thing, though. If you're familiar with Final Fantasy 8, then you probably know about a certain degenerate strategy in which players intentionally leave their characters at low health in order to continually trigger opportunities to unleash their massively overpowered limit breaks. I want to avoid encouraging that same sort of metagaming with this house rule. If limit breaks are too powerful, then the players may choose to deliberately leave their characters under-healed (or worse, attack each other until they're bloodied). I would consider that to be a design failure. Limit breaks should not be so powerful that they're worth intentionally suffering damage for, but should be powerful enough to create a sense of awe and spectacle.
The intent of this variant rule is to give struggling player parties sudden bursts of power to overcome unexpectedly dangerous situations, and give players a preview of abilities they may acquire at future levels. Under this variant rule, a player can spend Hero Points in one of two ways: to lose the dying condition and stabilize at 0 HP (this costs only 1 Hero Point), or to invoke a Limit Break (this costs all of their Hero Points). A player can only choose to invoke a Limit Break when the entire party is bloodied or worse, or a party wipe seems likely under the current circumstances. The GM is the final arbiter for when the use of a Limit Break is appropriate. On the player's turn, if they choose to invoke a Limit Break, the GM searches their rulebooks or Archives of Nethys for a feature or feat up to 2 levels higher than the player's character level, or a spell up to 1 rank higher than what the player's character can cast; the GM must choose something which is likely to be very effective against the most dangerous threat present, and the player must meet the prerequisites and requirements (except the level requirement). The player gains access to the chosen ability for a brief time -- usually until the end of the player's current turn, but can be up to 1 minute depending on the nature of the ability and the severity of the situation -- and the GM instructs the player how to use the ability. When the Limit Break ability is used and/or while it is in effect, whenever the ability requires checks of any kind, the Limit Break user and their allies cannot get results worse than success, and the user's enemies cannot get results better than failure. Over the course of a campaign, each time a player uses a Limit Break, the GM should try to select a different ability each time. The player should not be able to choose or predict which ability they will temporarily receive. This helps to maintain a sense of unpredictability and wonder each time a Limit Break is invoked.
I'm planning on creating a setting where Automatons are Uncommon rather than Rare. I want them to be distinctly non-organic, without unbalancing them too much from other organic ancestries. Take a look at the ancestry features and let me know if this looks too strong, too weak, or just right. Low-Light Vision
Glitch-Prone
Constructed Body
Construct Maintenance
@Teridax: You know, I think that might actually work. I made a Google Sheet to map out which domains are opposed. In most cases, there are pairs of domains that are mutually weak to each other, but in some cases one domain is weak to the other, but not vice versa (Metal is weak to Lightning, but Lightning is not weak to Metal.) Anyone on this forum can contribute here.
TL;DR - In a homebrew setting where no incontrovertible proof of the gods exist, what makes divine magic any different from occult magic? Please post your suggestions below. I'd like to request some help from the worldbuilding community. I want to create a setting where the existence of the Outer Sphere, let alone what it contains, is unknowable and can neither be proven nor disproven. The kinds of stories I want to tell as a GM are ones including themes of existentialism and pontifications on mortality. At best, mortals should only be able to confirm the existence of souls, and any systems of reincarnation that do not necessarily involve trips to the Outer Sphere. Final Fantasy VII is my main inspiration here. Unfortunately, the default Golarion setting is terrible for telling these sorts of stories. Just about every mortal in Golarion knows that the gods and the afterlife exist, so the concept of death already loses a lot of gravitas. And because everyone knows that their souls will be judged when they die, everyone is incentivized to be good for a few decades or centuries so that they can enjoy paradise for eternity. Only the absolute densest 0.1% of mortals would ever choose petty evil, knowing full well that Hell or other unholy realms await them as punishment. And mortal supervillains seeking to upend the cosmic order wouldn't fare much better, as they wouldn't have very many loyal minions to select from. At that point, the only real contenders for villains are monstrous beings like fiends, undead, fey, and aberrations. Saturating my villain roster entirely with monsters like that is sure to break the intended tone of my stories. I absolutely must have human (and human-adjacent) villains who seek world conquest, who lie and cheat and steal for their own self-interest, who believe life is all about maximizing their own pleasure in the little time that is available to them, and who will exploit their fellow human beings to those petty ends. So, for all these reasons, I want to make a custom setting where the Outer Sphere is ambiguous in its existence. I want to keep in divine spells, clerics, champions, and all other game mechanics involving the divine in place, partly out of a desire to avoid having to rebalance everything, but also because discussions of faith and the eventual fate of the soul are very interesting to have, especially when such subjects are not understood by even the wisest of mortals. But here is the main problem I've been running into in trying to design such a setting. Without the confirmed existence of gods, what really differentiates divine magic from occult magic? In Secrets of Magic, Djavin Vhrest describes occult magic as follows: "Ideas, art, and expression form metaphysical threads, each woven into a grander tapestry of culture, tradition, and community. Every thinking being develops some twist on this vocabulary—every painful lesson of cause and effect, every bedtime tale laughed off or taken to heart, every syntactic rule that dictates our logic, every object that carries even a semblance of symbolism—all strained through the myriad combination of senses we each experience. Each of these elements forms your narrative language, rooted in your thoughts and emotions. Each is a tool to create and manipulate a story.
This is how I would ideally like faith to be handled in my stories. The shared values that bind communities of people develop into widely-accepted that embody these values. When enough people believe in the shared idea of Sarenrae, Sarenrae becomes real -- or at least, real enough that dedicating your life in her service will grant you real power. But then, if that is all the gods really are -- just shared delusions which grow so popular that they take on a life of their own -- then what really makes divine magic anything more than just a popular offshoot of occult magic? There must be some other aspect that divine magic embodies which occult magic does not. In a world where no incontrovertible proof of the gods exist, what would take its place? That's what I need help figuring out, more than anything.
Intent
Note: "Subject" is a catch-all term for any creature, object, or individually-targetable entity. Detection conditions
Note: Some abilities only work against targets that don't notice the user. Targeting spaces and areas
Concealment
Cover
Sense-based conditions
Examples of abilities and effects with updated descriptions Hide (1-action)
Seek (1-action)
Crystalline Dust (2-action) Feat 5
Mist (3-action) Spell 2
I've come up with a better way to implement this concept in gameplay. I will use Irori as an example this time. Irori's edicts are:
Whenever a sanctified follower of Irori deals spirit damage to a target sanctified by another deity, the player must declare an act or behavior that abides by Irori's edicts and either violates the target's anathema or singles out a fundamental aspect of the target. The GM arbitrates, and can reject a declaration that they deem too vague or too contrived. The GM can instead allow the target to treat their save as one degree of success better if a declaration does not strictly follow these guidelines but still feels "on-brand" for an Irori worshiper. This is a non-comprehensive list of declarations that a reasonable GM might accept for the purposes of an Irori cleric dealing spirit damage against sanctified followers of other deities.
Calistria's edicts are as follows:
The GM may decide that sanctified clerics and champions of Calistria can deal aligned damage to creatures sanctified by or otherwise closely associated with the following gods:
Abadar's edicts are as follows:
The GM may decide that sanctified clerics and champions of Abadar can deal aligned damage to creatures sanctified by or otherwise closely associated with the following gods:
Bear in mind that these are not hard-and-fast rules, and the nuances of a given situation are factors in deciding whether any two gods' goals are antithetical to each other. Ultimately, the GM is the final arbiter.
@Teridax
The main reason why I propose this concept of anathema-based alignment damage is because Paizo has shown a vested interest in moving away from D&D's Good-Evil-Lawful-Chaotic system, and I'm in support of this decision.
This is more of a shower thought than an actual homebrew, but I think it could work. When performing an action that would deal spirit damage, the player declares one act that abides by their character's edicts and does not violate their character's anathema. If the act does not abide by the target's edicts and violates the target's anathema, the target takes spirit damage. You can determine a target's edicts and anathema through prior research, from making a successful Recall Knowledge check (usually Religion), or just by making educated guesses based on observed behavior.
This is an attempt to split the Confused condition into two separate conditions, Berserk and Erratic. The Berserk condition forces the player to fight aggressively, but still allows them to choose which targets to attack. The Erratic condition randomizes the player's target each turn, but allows the player to choose their actions. Berserk: You are enraged and attack wildly. You are off-guard, and cannot Delay or Ready.
Erratic: You don't have your wits about you, and act inefficiently. You cannot Ready or use reactions.
Confused: You are in a violently irrational state and pose a danger to friend and foe alike. You are Berserk and Erratic, and you don't treat anyone as your ally (though they might still treat you as theirs). Neither the Berserk nor Erratic conditions can end as long as you are Confused.
Provoked: You're compelled to violently attack a specific target to the exclusion of other viable targets. You are Berserk. You do not treat the subject of your provocation as your ally (though they might still treat you as theirs). The Berserk condition cannot end as long as you are Provoked.
Fascinated: As RAW. Additionally, if you would become Berserk while Fascinated, you become Provoked toward the subject of your fascination. |