Kelleris's page

Kelleris wrote:

I actually go the opposite way on this - in my games, each new rank gives your number of ranks in additional languages. So rank 1 gives you 1 additional language, rank 2 gives you two more, and so on.

My only problem with this is that PCs are likely to run out of languages.

Of course, if you use this together with adding a bunch of regional languages and dialects, and perhaps learning alphabets separately, then it could work very well and really reward high investment in the skill.

I generally just hand-wave it after a certain point - at around 10 ranks I'll just assume that the character speaks anything in a broad area like "planar languages" or "Avistani languages" unless it's extremely obscure, and at around 15 ranks the skill is functionally equivalent to tongues except in very odd cases. If there's some question on the matter, I'll ask for a Linguistics check and we note it down as one of the character's languages if they succeed.

I actually go the opposite way on this - in my games, each new rank gives your number of ranks in additional languages. So rank 1 gives you 1 additional language, rank 2 gives you two more, and so on.

I don't think this is unrealistic at all, though. As noted, there are real life examples of people speaking two dozen languages fluently, and, to me, 14 ranks in a skill represents far more ability in that area than any real-world human being has ever had or will ever have - yet, by the base rules, 14 ranks can't even duplicate something real people occasionally do. Once you get past level 5 or so, everything you do is better than anyone in real life could manage anyway. Why shouldn't Linguistics work the same way?

The rapid level-ups found in most campaigns are a pet peeve, but that's not unique to languages...

So, I'm not very happy with the organizational management rules that are associated with Kingmaker and Ultimate Campaign, for unimportant reasons. So I decided to write up my own system for faction-level play (although I borrowed some ideas from Stars Without Number).

Here's the Google Drive link -

Faction Rules v2.0

Design Goals:

1) Plays fairly quickly, while allowing interesting choices from faction leaders.
2) Mechanically concrete, but flavor-light. I enjoy making up in-world descriptions for various mechanical results and events as they arise, and so do my players. So there's little hardcoded flavor.
3) Works for a variety of scales. It can do gang warfare and intergalactic warfare just as easily.
4) Accommodates weird factions that don't have a traditional state-based political structure.
5) Is chaotic and unpredictable, since it's as much of an adventure seed generator as anything else.
6) Is short, since my players are bums. (It's only 6 pages in the current draft.)

We've so far played out part of a time skip between one campaign and the next using this system, and it's had very interesting results. Maybe it'll be useful to you, and I'm happy for any suggestions!

Potential Concerns: I'm not 100% sure that the attributes are roughly on par, or that all-eggs-one-basket versus balanced-attribute playstyles are interestingly incentivized in different ways. The event charts are wildly unpredictable in their effects on the game, which may not be to your taste. Direct interactions between factions might need to be encouraged a bit more.

Potential Areas for Expansion: Rules for how PC stats and actions interact with the faction-level stuff. I pretty much just eyeball that sort of thing right now. (I might, for example, say that players can do a sidequest to recover a point of damage to an attribute instead of taking a regular faction turn to do it.) Faction-building rules might be useful, too - I just assigned stats by fiat in my campaign.

My name is Matthew Kelsey, and I'm asking about Order 4080109. I purchased the Curse of the Crimson Throne hardback, and asked to have it delivered to my Denver address. But the order history is very confusing. It says that the book both has and has not shipped, and I see in my sidecart a copy of the book slated to go to Grand Prairie with my next AP subscription. So something seems out of whack. Just to clarify, then, I'd like it shipped to the aforementioned Denver address and not bundled with the AP subscription.

Towards the end of my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign, I started limiting buffs in this way to a number of spell levels equal to your level plus your Charisma modifier. That seemed to work pretty well in terms of limiting the effectiveness of buffs, though it doesn't really save time since people have to be choosier about what they accept. Makes Charisma more useful, too. I did have to house-rule that the party alchemist could benefit from more buffs than other characters, but that was easily done. "Buffs" being defined here as spells with a non-instantaneous duration that are either (a) harmless, per the tag in the saving throw entry, or (b) chosen by the character to waive the usual saving throw.

In my case, though, the primary motivation was that I was getting annoyed by how mandatory being heavily-buffed was. It makes it hard to use non-spellcasting characters or straight monsters as effective villains, and it makes the disparity between a buffed and a non-buffed character too ridiculous.

Wow. Nothing to add, really, just wanted to say this was pretty amazing. I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne now, but I think I'll look back at Council of Thieves for the next round...

Villainous speech from Lady Andaisin in the Temple of Urgathoa for me. Just to up the stakes a bit, I had the Urgathoans go off the reservation and plan to destroy the whole city. When they finally defeated Andaisin she told them about the Queen's underhanded population control measures. Then Rolth, who'd been working with them, Suddenly But Inevitably Betrayed the party and made off with the doohickey he was after, trapping them underground. They eventually escaped, but it took long enough for the city to be transformed. Fun times!

For me, one of the best parts of this adventure path is getting to see the Queen gaining power and resources alongside the party, so I've really played that aspect up. I expanded her inner circle, too, so they have a number of rivalries there. Should be very satisfying to wrap things up (we're just getting into the final book).