And if so, how far? Just a thought that popped into my head while looking into something totally unrelated and I wanted to gather a bit of data. I tend to play in low magic / lower level campaigns personally. As such I can't remember a time when I played a character higher than level 13, and more commonly not past level 10 or 11.
have you looked at the Incantation system from Kobold Press, in their Deep Magic book? It might be close to what you are looking for This sounds pretty interesting to me too. I've been looking for a Ritual Magic system which would be tied to specific magics like Teleport for better use in a low magic setting. Thus the spells remain in the campaign but effectively means they are not castable within combat and are more of a plot hook mechanic at that point.
I'm curious what are the top 3 rules (+/-) which have come about from later versions of D20 / PF / D&D that stood out to you as "Why wasn't THAT in PF 1 from the beginning??" A couple of the ones that have stood out to me was: Non-combat spells cast as ritual magic (5th ed?) Rolling with Advantage / Disadvantage (roll twice and take the best / worse roll) What about you guys? What stood out to you?
Why would Charisma have anything to do with a reroll?Charisma is your force of personality. In Sorcerers/Paladins/etc. This also represents a connection to the divine, or the weave of the universe, or whatever else connects all living things. This could absolutely give you some power to determine your own fate. While not a bad answer I would answer this question more directly: To discourage "dump stats" and give an incentive for having a well rounded character. This is particularly important in campaigns where Role Play (RP) is more heavily emphasized. If you are playing in a campaign where the point really just comes down to kill bad guy, take his stuff, level up, next dungeon...then this rule is probably a waste of time for your group.
I knew you guys would help me to get to the bottom of this. Your assistance has been far more helpful than you know! Thank you.
I used something very very similar at one point. It is sorta nice to know that I'm not the only one who had such an idea.
Yeah...how much do those vials each weight when filled? Seems like quite an investment in inventory space.
Personally the thing I want to see addressed is the question of Low Magic campaigns. Under PF 1.0 you could run a LM variant, but it was a serious pain to do so with only a handful of references to what it would take and 95% of the work left for DM's to figure it out for themselves. Not to mention a ton of community hate anytime it came up that "that isn't real pathfinder!" How about a system of rules mechanics that scale a bit better? High Fantasy? YES! Epic / Mythic levels? Certain! Low Magic / Game of Thrones? Yep, got ya covered there too!
Ok, nevermind. I found the map. It was in the Skeletons of Scarwall. I'm surprised the map in the Belkzen Hold campaign setting left out this level of detail.
That being said, there is official art of the weapon on page 27 of Ultimate Equipment. ^_^ Thank you! I'm checking that out now.
One I use as the default in my low magic campaign is the Paladin: Tempered Champion. They loose spell casting but still get divine blessings such as mercy and lay on hands, in return they gain fighter feats. Pretty well balanced. Sorta reminds me of the WarPriest with how it plays.
@wraithstrike "Everyone's "low magic" campaign is not going to be the same." -- I could not agree more! That is the beauty of the d20 system and the reason I've stayed with it for so long. It's modular nature is beautiful! @Childeric, The Shatterer "Ban all 9-level casting classes, using only the 6/4 level partial casters; use the mandatory esoteric material components rules; strictly enforce the use of spell components; etc..." -- Some good ideas you have going here. I had not previously seen the esoteric material components rules. I've also considered the idea of dropping the 9th level casters, and while this is a good idea in itself I'm feeling that this may simply be a "cut" which goes a little deeper than what I had in mind. It may allow for a smoother transition than some of the other ideas I've considered with rebalancing the magic system. Excellent idea however and one which will definitely remain on the table. @Childeric, The Shatterer "Just remember that the more you restrict the PCs access to/use of magic, every single monster/encounter in the game has to be "powered down" as well." -- Excellent point, however I started this thread with acknowledging that this would be the case. The "low magic" rules variants would apply evenly across the entire campaign to pcs, npcs, monsters, everything. This effects spells, magic items, monsters with supernatural powers, everything. Some monsters will simply no longer be in the campaign, or will take a serious reconsideration of their powers, abilities and tactics. Bare in mind however that we currently have 6 Bestiaries from which to draw upon, not to mention dozens of 3.0 / 3.5 monster books from which to draw inspiration from. I think there is plenty of material laying around to help breath plenty of life into the campaign. I'd also point out that is a "lower magic environment" not a "no magic environment" so simply turning everything off is definitely not the objective here. @Childeric, The Shatterer"this to me creates a boring non-magical world that I don't want to be a part of." -- I understand your point, however I'd point out that this reaction (which I also anticipated) is largely driven by the fact that what I'm suggesting is simply "different" and different is something that frequently takes a while to catch on. Consider this, if PF had launched and the idea of using guns were suggested many would have raged that this was not "fantasy". The same argument could be made for the recent d20 Starfinder (which was built on a d20 / PF chassis), many would argue that it could not be done under PF / d20. Yet both were done, admittedly with a lot of work and not a simple "no spelling classes allowed" type of house rule glued on top of a PF setting. It takes time and work to get such things balanced, and most are not willing to put in that amount of time. I've already been doing this for some time, and I can tell you first hand it was not as hard as anyone would have you believe, but it does take time and work. -- What I'm suggesting is something which will allow for the existing campaign setting to be converted to a lower level of magic while still retaining much of the same "feel". Yes, I'm also assuming that for many their vision of the PF setting is one which drips magic from every pore..that however was never what I got out of the campaign (and have never played it that way) and yet the game still ran beautifully without major issue. Personally I have never felt that magic defined the PF / Golarion setting, but rather was the people, culture and environment which did it. That however is a personal take, which I know some will disagree with. @Bob Bob Bob "what specifically are you looking for?" -- Excellent question, and given (as Wraithstrike mentioned earlier) that everyone's vision of "low magic" is different, not unlike everyone's vision of "fantasy" is different this is perhaps a point I should have made initially I suppose. My setting I'm looking at is similar to LOTR, Game of Thrones, the Shannara series by Terry Brooks and the Witcher books / games. In other words, there is magic in the world that the players struggle against. There is evil in the world. There are monsters in the world, both in the form of men and beasts. There are magic items to be found and used. The both players and npcs can be spell casters. The creation of new magic items happens, however it is a very time consuming arduous task that a PC is not simply going to throw together between adventures, thus magic items can be found and occasionally granted as gifts and rewards for great quests similar to the way they would have appeared in earlier editions of D&D. These worlds are NOT devoid of magic, and are not as some would claim, "boring". They are however different from a standard PF setting. Take a look at Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien) which was the very basis of D&D, Pathfinder, World of Warcraft, and literally thousands of books, games and movies. It was dramatically different from PF in the level of magic which was seen in the books and movies. The same type of argument could be made of Game of Thrones. There is much lower magic levels seen than what we have in a typical Pathfinder campaign. And yet it has been enormously successful. So to say there is no audience for such a setting, or that because it has a lower level of magic it isn't "fun" is an opinion I must simply disagree with. This is on par with saying that with the introduction of video games that tabletop games are no longer fun or obsolete. So then going back to my original question:
Thank you all for the thoughts and suggestions already put forward. Even positions I disagree with encourage healthy debate in these matters.
Negative levels are easy enough to simulate with similar but different things like imposing a flat "global" penalty such as a - 1 to EVERYTHING, skills, hp/ level, AC, BAB, saves, etc. If that isn't enough raise the penalty to a -2 per negative level. These add up FAST and can really make you party take notice. Just don't over use this. It is irritating as hell watching something take apart your character if you cant do anything about it. One way to minimize this effect is to simply spread this around your party instead of your negative energy bad guy focusing on one party member, have them try to hit everyone within striking distance. Also don't use an AOE level drain, make it single target and only have it hit one guy per round. This allows for something to do after the fight (healing the guys which got screwed over by this attack) without devastating your whole party. Now as for XP & Downtime it is entirely up to you. Quixote has stated he like games which never slow down, which is fine if that is the style of game play you are looking for. Dropping the XP however is simply another way of the DM saying "I'll keep track of all XP and let you know when you level." It is really no different. The advantage of the DM controlling distribution of XP is you don't have party members at different levels which can really throw off trying to plan your adventures. If you are looking for a RAW campaign I can tell you that such games play just fine. The real question is in trying to decide if you are happy with the way that such a game is played and what (if anything) you don't like about before you really set about the task of changing things.
My first suggestion: pick a map / town you like from a published work. Study it. Learn it. The customize it and fill out it's people. This will become the hub of your campaign. Second: Don't go over board trying to explore the whole world / multi-verse. Start small with local problems. Kobolds attack the local farm, skeletons rising from the grave yard, etc. Even if you have been a player for a long time these types of small initial steps allow not only you to get used to DM'ing but allow your players to learn your style. In the first 5 - 10 sessions you will learn more about actually running the game than you will ever see as a player (because as a player you don't care about things like screwing up the DM plot line!) NOTE: I'm 45 yr old. I'm played D&D since I was 12 yrs old, and took up the role of DM around 2000. I run a heavily modified Pathfinder campaign with enough house rules to (literally) publish as its own work. I say these things as a way of illustrating that we all want to dive into the deep end of the pool the very first day, rewrite 1/2 the game mechanics and develop our own worlds and stories. But all that will come in its own time. Pace yourself when first starting out or you may wind up with such a mess you cant keep the gaming group together. Another tip? Establish a point to stop the first couple of campaigns. Perhaps at the end of an adventure path or module. This allows you the chance to ask the players, "So how have those last 4 game sessions gone?" And get real feel back from them on what did & didn't work. If you (or someone else) screws up something during game play, simply make a ruling on it and press on. Don't allow a discrepancy in the rules (or your understanding of them) train wreck the entire session which you've spent the past week preparing for. Note the discrepancy and look it up after your game is over. Acknowledge it during the next session and let your party know what will be the standing rule on the matter going forward. This not only allows for a learning curve, but is how house rules evolve. Above all, enjoy the game. And if you find something isn't working for you, have enough insight to know when to simply close the book and make it up as you go. This was advice which was included in the front of virtually every D&D manual from the earliest printings.
Oh I agree! In fact the historical knights could be true bastards, in fact if you re-read my original post all the way to the bottom you will no doubt notice that I said the same thing. However while the paladin is a historical figure, it is only so from the most idealized perspectives of knights where men actually lived up to the ideals they set before themselves and each other. As for the "unrealistic" restrictions making no one want to play them, those are some of the most real aspect of this particular rewrite of the paladin. Think about it for a sec: cant set your enemies on fire. Nothing particularly honorable about fighting that way. Cant poison them: same thing. Cant use ranged weapons: knights typically did not do so as they felt honorable combat was done face to face. This is where fantasy and reality deviate however. In reality tactical options like ranged combat or poisons were used as a weapon of opportunity, in fantasy however there is no reason for it to be so. In all honesty, one option I've looked at for the paladin in my campaign was to simply remove the class from game play entirely. Perhaps replacing it as an archetype for the Fighter, or an off shoot of the Inquisitor or WarPriest. Still a concept I toy with frequently. Either way, constructive feed back is welcome. Responses like, "OMG this sucks" however add nothing to the conversation. If you don't like it, feel free to actually state why so it can be put on the table for discussion.
Took a look at the Hoaxer, but it seems to be more City RP oriented rather than oriented towards a dungeon crawling adventurer. Are there any others (even well done 3rd party) that come to mind?
I suppose, but I based it on the cleric instead of drawing flavor from the favored soul or oracle.a spontaneous-casting version of the clericYou mean similar to a Favored Soul for Pathfinder? Since we are on the topic of spontaneous casting anyway, have you ever worked with a spell matrix setup? The short version is it allows casting very similar to what a sorcerer uses but does not have a spells known table. Rather when a 3rd level wizard learns his 3 -1st, 2-2nd, 1-3rd spell it means that he can cast dynamically from any of the spells he has memorized. So all of his first level spells are different, and he can cast any one of which until he runs out of available 1st level spell slots (3). This is an idea that Monte Cook also worked with in his Arcana Unearthed and from what I hear was the inspiration for the Sorcerer. This technique is stronger than the sorcerer however as the spells are still memorized which means they can be changed daily if need be. Personally I use a slight variant on this with the only difference being you have to be at a place of rest (an Inn, a Temple, etc) to change spells vs between fights in the middle of a dungeon crawl.
For my favorite project: I'm a fan of low magic settings and have worked on my low magic conversion for Pathfinder (focused on Lastwall in Northern Golarion: Avistan) for some time now. During which I've played around with all sorts of things. One idea I've worked with pretty extensively is manually retooling everything down by adjusting spells, feats, magic items, and high quality / alchemical items. Another idea was to not attempt to do all of this one at a time with custom adjustments for each one but rather stick to a higher level overview with a simple reminder to the players about the nature of the revised setting and not to create characters outside that concept. Currently I'm working on allowing magic items back into the campaign as long as they contain only "low magic effects" such as an elven katana with keen, or a suit of Dwarven Full Plate with a Fortitude enchantment. These would still require high skill checks to be able to create (increasingly so with each + 1 bonus of enchantment). A big thing I did to bring down the magic level of the campaign was in severely limiting the amount of magic items, magic using characters, and magic creatures in the campaign world. Magic batteries such as wands and scrolls were almost entirely removed from the campaign setting. Combat converted to be much more "gritty". All in all it has worked very well and hit a balance that was around Game of Thrones / The Witcher style of game play. My only complaint, it has taken a lot of time and energy to make such a conversion.
Agreed, and don't forget potions! One of my favorite treasures because they are one shot wonders that don't permanently increase the party over all power level. Also have you considered custom items / weapons / etc? Such as a magic item that adds a bonus to specific skills, especially if used by a member of a specific race or class? "Girdle of Dwarven Lords" that boosts a dwarfs racial abilities was another good one my players had fun with. In short, think outside the box. The Christmas tree was fixed, now it is time to get back to being creative!
Here is a pieced I worked out for my home campaign, and my players have loved it! What do you guys think? Shields – overhauled!
Light Shield + 1 AC – mostly wooden – weight about 8 lbs – cost: 3 gold – arcane spell failure: 5% Medium Shield + 2 AC – typically wood / metal reenforcements – weight about 15 lbs – cost: 12 gold – arcane spell failure: 10% Heavy Shield + 3 AC – layered wood & leather with metal cover – Example Spartan hoplon / aspis 36 – 40" diameter – weight about 25 lbs – cost: 20 gold – arcane spell failure: 15% Tower Shield + 4 AC – These are huge! – mostly used on open battle fields – offers Cover – mostly wood with metal cover – 3′ × 4 1/2’ – weight about 45 lbs – cost: 30 gold – arcane spell failure: 50% Shields can be sacrificed to counter a critical hit. This option can be used once for each weight category for the shield, once it reaches the maximum crits absorbed wooden shields are destroyed and metals ones are considered broken and too damaged to use as a shield until repaired. Additional augmentations could be used with these shields such as making them from a lighter wood (Darkwood) or a lighter metal (mithril), alternately adding reinforced metal bands would add both weight and additional durability. A reinforced shield adds + 25% weight, and 50 gold to its cost, and adds one additional crit absorption (adds 2 additional crits for heavy and tower shields). A light shield offers a 25% weight reduction, & still adds 50 gold to cost but the shield does not suffer from its ability to absorb critical hits due to its superior construction materials. NOTE I: if a light shield is sacrificed this way it is still destroyed but does NOT stop the attack. Rather the attack is simply treated as a normal attack (as though the critical was never confirmed). This tactic is best used against a larger weapon whose critical hits can be deadly, especially when used with the optional massive damage rules. All other shields actually stop the attack at the cost of the durability of the shield. NOTE II: When used with the Total Defense combat maneuver the AC bonus for shields doubles. All other enhancements, augmentations, masterwork considerations, etc work normally.
So I like spell casting characters but I rarely am able to play them long enough to get lots of spells. Anyway so I am making a reoccurring character who is gonna have a decent variety of spells so I'm just wondering how do you guys usually keep track of all your spells? Do you keep them on note cards or what? One of my favorite ideas I've seen over the years was when one of my players showed up with the spell info written on a set of 3x5" index cards. He would attach paper clips to the cards to represent how many times he had them memorized and simply remove the clips as he cast his spells. Thus using them as counters. Worked like a charm!
Guys feel free to take a look at How many towns / castles / people are in your kingdom?. It is something of a continuation of this discussion based on an EXCELLENT article I found some time ago and simply focuses on the population demographics based largely on the size of the region covered. From which it breaks down what population would look like, and from there you can begin generating your demographic numbers like we have been discussing. Based on those same demographics it also looks at how many towns, castles, castle ruins, etc should be in the area. This allows a DM to plan out adventures, campaign storylines, etc far in advance of when they were needed. Most campaigns tend to have you traveling through a deserted area 100 times until one day, "by the way, the deserted castle on the hill probably has treasure / monsters / quests". Wait up a second there boss...WHAT castle on the hill? You mean I've been here for 40 years of game time and NEVER seen it before now? As for my numbers being off for Forgotten Realms vs Eberron, etc. I'll draw your attention back to my original post which discuss the limitations of the campaign setting being used as the back drop. It is a "Lower" magic environment with a level cap and few magic items. That said, I still think the numbers are pretty close to where they should be. For those who disagree, that is good to. My post is not about establishing, "this is the way it has to be", but rather is about "this is what i thought was a good benchmark for campaign development". I have always felt these types of games are about creative expression and not about finding a definitive "right answer". I'd point out that even as far back as Gygax the D&D / D20 developers and authors have always said the same thing. Bottom line: If you don't care for my numbers, thats ok. Have you run a similar projection, and if so would you mind sharing with us how your demographics were the same or different? IE; if you feel PC classes are a 1 in 6, have you done a demographic break down of class & level to see how many of what are in the local market?
It is one of simple demographics. How many people have a 200 IQ? Or a PHD? Vs a professional certification or an Associates degree? Lower stats = more people will participate. A Wisdom 13 Cleric vs a Wisdom 13 Ranger. One will virtually master their trade, the other will barely scratch the surface.
What follows is one of the best articles I've ever seen written on the topic of understanding just how many people are in the campaign world. It also answers questions like how many castles are there? How many towns? How many towns will actually have an Inn or Tavern (not all do)? It is presented in full as written by the author, and I take absolutely no credit for it. I am simply sharing it for those who have not seen it before. (NOTE: This article has a place along side another recent posting which discusses the demographics of the number of class vs level for determining pc vs npc classes. How many mages vs clerics, 1/3 & 2/3 semi-casters vs full casters, casters vs martial classes, etc.) ================ Original Article: Fantasy worlds come in many varieties, from the "hard core" medieval-simulation school to the more fanciful realms of high fantasy, with alabaster castles and jeweled gardens in the place of the more traditional muddy squalor. Despite their differences, these share a vital common element: ordinary people. Most realms of fantasy, no matter how baroque or magical, can not get by without a supply of ordinary farmers, merchants, quarreling princes and palace guards. Clustered into villages and crowding the cities, they provide the human backdrop for adventure. Of course, doing the research necessary to find out how common a large city should be, or how many shoemakers can be found in a town, can take up time not all GMs have available. To the end of more satisfying world design, I've prepared this article. This article is a distillation of broad possibilities drawn from a variety of historical reference points, focusing more on results than on the details that create them. The rules here provide a baseline to be deviated from at need, not numbers cast into iron. Following my favorite FRP traditions, I've focused my lens on a fairly developed version of the middle ages - I've drawn freely from periods ranging from the 11th to 15th centuries, and from locales as varied as Russia, England, France, Germany and Italy, but when I've needed a default rather than an average, I opted to look more closely at late-medieval France as a good model for a trad-fantasy gameworld. Halve things, double things, or otherwise fiddle with them to suit the feel you're going for; I've included guidelines on shaping the numbers to suit your needs.
Unless the kingdom is quite young, it is likely riddled with villages, a mile or two apart, covering every (farmable) inch of the countryside. Agrarian communities on the scale of the village or hamlet exist in vast networks. The only notable exception to this rule is frontier country, where isolated towns have no choice but to exist. But these towns will tend to be large and walled-a people huddled together for safety. On the frontier, food and goods are usually delivered by merchant caravans rather than produced by local agriculture. The presence of monsters would almost certainly magnify these effects. The average population density for a fully-developed medieval country is from 30 per square mile (for countries with lots of rocks, lots of rain, and lots of ice-or a slave-driving Mad King) to a limit of about 120 per square mile, for a land with rich soil, favorable seasons and maybe a touch of magical help. No land is wasted if it can be settled and farmed. There are many factors that determine the population density of a land, but none as important as arability and climate. If food will grow, so will peasants. If desired, exact density can be rolled randomly, and land arability reverse-engineered from the result. A roll of 6d4x5 will do the trick nicely. Reduce the x5 multiple by any amount down to x1 to represent a much less developed land, or to represent countries depopulated by invasions, plagues or other calamities. Nations hit by such troubles can stay depopulated for centuries, too, barring an influx of immigrants: natural population growth is usually glacial in pre-industrial worlds. Some Historical Comparisons: Medieval France tops the list, with a 14th-century density upwards of 100 people/sq. mile. The French were blessed with an abundance of arable countryside, waiting to be farmed. Modern France has more than twice this many people. Germany, with a slightly less perfect climate and a lower percentage of arable land, averaged more like 90 people/sq. mile. Italy was similar (lots of hills and rocky areas). The British Isles were the least populous, with a little more than 40 people per square mile, most of them clustered in the southern half of the isles. Hexes: It may be important for some GMs using this article to know how much land is in a hexagonal area! To determine the area of a hex, multiply its width by 0.9306049, and square the result. Thus, if your game-map has hexes 30 miles across, each hex represents about 780 square miles (and it's a convenient size for travel-times, since 30 miles is a good rule of thumb for a day's road travel on foot or horseback).
For purposes of this article, settlements will be divided into Villages, Towns, Cities and Big Cities (known as "supercities" in the parlance of urban historians). Villages range from 20 to 1,000 people, with typical villages ranging from 50-300. Most kingdoms will have thousands of them. Villages are agrarian communities within the safe folds of civilization. They provide the basic source of food and land-stability in a feudal system. Usually, a village that supports orchards (instead of grainfields) is called a "hamlet." Occasionally, game writers use the term to apply to a very small village, regardless of what food it produces. Towns range in population from 1,000-8,000 people, with typical values somewhere around 2,500. Culturally, these are the equivalent to the smaller American cities that line the interstates. Cities and towns tend to have walls only if they are frequently threatened. cities tend to be from 8,000-12,000 people, with an average in the middle of that range. A typical large kingdom will have only a few cities in this population range. Centers of scholarly pursuits (the Universities) tend to be in cities of this size, with only the rare exception thriving in a Big City. Big Cities range from 12,000-100,000 people, with some exceptional cities exceeding this scale. Some historical examples include London (25,000-40,000), Paris (50,000-80,000), Genoa (75,000-100,000), and Venice (100,000+). Moscow in the 15th century had a population in excess of 200,000! Large population centers of any scale are the result of traffic. Coastlines, navigable rivers and overland trade-routes form a criss-crossing pattern of trade-arteries, and the towns and cities grow along those lines. The larger the artery, the larger the town. And where several large arteries converge, you have a city. Villages are scattered densely through the country between the larger settlements.
Okay, so you know how big your kingdom is, and how many people live there. How many people live in the cities, and how many cities are there? How many live in smaller settlements, like towns and villages? First, determine the population of the largest city in the kingdom. This is equal to (P times M), where P is equal to the square root of the country's population, and M is equal to a random roll of 2d4+10 (the average roll is 15). The second-ranking city will be from 20-80% the size of the largest city. To randomly determine this, roll 2d4 times 10% (the average result is 50%) Each remaining city will be from 10% to 40% smaller than the previous one (2d4 times 5% - the average result is 25%); continue listing cities for as long as the results maintain a city-scaled population (8,000 or more). To determine the number of towns, start with the number of cities, and multiply it by a roll of 2d8 (the average result is 9).
Adjusting the Number of Towns: The ratio of towns to cities given above presumes the existence of a notable and thriving mercantile community. Adjust the upward by 50% or more for a fantasy world on the verge of Renaissance, but adjust it sharply downward for a pre-Crusades type world (if trade is limited and local, there won't be many more towns than there are cities; just continue the 10%-40% city-reduction scale to produce a single list of cities and towns). Historically, the number of town charters in many European countries multiplied nearly by 10 from the 11th-13th centuries as economic shifts reshaped the agrarian scheme into something more robustly mercantile. If your world has a visible share of merchants and rogues and other town-living types (as most do) use the 2d8 roll or even more. For a world in transition between these extremes, find a middle ground you like the looks of. ChamlekAn Example Kingdom: Chamlek Chamlek is an island kingdom with a total land area of 88,700 square miles, with a good climate and only a few rocky hills disturbing a well-watered countryside. Her population is just over 6.6 million, with an average density of about 75 people per square mile (an average roll of the dice using the recommended range for a developed land). Using average rolls for city sizes and town spreads, we can determine the following about Chamlek: It's largest city, Restagg, has a population of 39,000. The next-ranking major cities are Volthyrm (19,000), McClannach (15,000), Cormidigar (11,000), and Oberthrush (8,000). There are 5 cities and 45 towns all told, with a total urban population of just over 200,000 (about 3% of the kingdom). The rest is rural - there's approximately 1 urban center for every 1,800 square miles. If we used the early-medieval method of continuing the city scheme to determine the towns, there'd be only 7 towns (one urban center every 7,500 square miles).
In a village of 400 people, just how many inns and taverns are realistic? Not very many. Maybe not even one. When traveling across the countryside, characters should not run into a convenient sign saying "Motel: Free Cable and Swimming Pool" every 3 leagues. For the most part, they will have to camp on their own or seek shelter in people's homes. Provided they are friendly, the latter option should be no trouble. A farmer can live in a single place all his life, and he will welcome news and stories of adventures, not to mention any money the heroes might offer! Each type of business is given a Support Value (SV). This is the number of people it takes to support a single business of that sort. For instance, the SV for spice merchants is 1,400. This means that there will be one spice merchant for every 1,400 people in an area. This can vary by up to 60% in either direction, but provide a useful baseline for GMs (the top spots are even more variable as they'll depend on the industries the town specializes in; medieval Paris, the model for this list and a fantastic model for any fantasy city, was a shoemaking center). Think about the nature of the town or city to decide which numbers to change. A port, for instance, will have more fishmongers. To find the number of, say, inns in a city, divide the population of the city by the SV value for inns (2,000). For a village of 400 people, this reveals only 20% of an inn! This means that there is a 20% chance of there being one at all. And even if there is one, it will be smaller and less impressive than an urban inn. The SV for taverns is 400, so there will be a single tavern. Business SV
[Posters Note: Sorry for the long list, but I suck a html tables which would have made this part more readable.] Some other figures: There will be one noble household per 200 population, one lawyer ("advocate") per 650, one clergyman per 40 and one priest per 25-30 clergy. Businesses not listed here will most likely have an SV from 5,000 to 25,000! The "Magic Shop" means a shop where wizards can purchase spell ingredients, scroll paper and the like, not a place to buy magic swords off the shelf.
A square mile of settled land (including requisite roads, villages and towns, as well as crops and pastureland) will support 180 people. This takes into account normal blights, rats, drought, and theft, all of which are common in most worlds. If magic is common, the GM may decide a square mile of land can support many more people. Note that the number of people a square mile of agricultural land will support is not the same as the maximum population density for a kingdom. Once you've decided the ability of the land to support people, you can determine the amount of wilderness/unfarmable country in the kingdom by working backwards. Take the example kingdom of Chamlek again. With one square mile supporting 180 people, that means there are approximately 37,000 square miles of developed agrarian land - about 42% of the total area of the isle. This offers a graphic example of just how sparse the population really is. The remaining 58% of the country is wilderness, rivers and lakes. Even if Chamlek had the maximum population density (120 people per square mile), the farmland would be a whopping 2/3rds of the total land, leaving one-third of the country to wilderness (mostly forested hills between the farms) and waterways. That's somewhere near the absolute maximum, given Earthly conditions, though higher is theoretically possible if the GM determines that the entire country is arable. While the average distance between population centers can be derived from the total land area, the average walking distance from one village to the next is more realistically determined by considering only the settled land. Villages and towns tend to cluster tightly along the arteries of travel defined by the lines between the cities - leaving gaps of wilderness in the middle.
Okay, we now completely understand the lay of the land as regards civilization, the cities and farms. Nearer to the heart of the adventurer, however, is the castle, or better still, the ruined castle. Once again, how many should there be? Ruins, first of all, depend on the age of the region. The following formula is only a guide. The frequency of ruins in Europe varied greatly depending on military history and remoteness of the area. To determine the approximate number of ruined fortifications, divide the kingdom's population by five million. Multiply the result by the square root of the kingdom's age. If the kingdom has changed hands a lot, use the total age-the number of years that castle-building people have lived there, regardless of the Royal Lineage. Chamlek, our island kingdom, has around 6.6 million people today. Chamlek has been populated by castle-building folk for 300 years. She has 23.04 ruined forts or castles, which means 23 for sure, and a 4% chance of one more. Active castles are much more common; ruins are rare because the solid ones are constantly put back into service! Assume one functioning castle for every 50,000 people. The age of the kingdom is not really a factor. Chamlek would have 133 active castles of various stripes, approximately. 75% of all castles will be in the civilized (settled) areas of a kingdom. The other 25% will be in the "wilderness," along borders, etc. The role of these castles is something too world-oriented to be reduced to formula. Most will mark the landholdings of Barons and Dukes, but some may be bandit strongholds, or the outposts of Goblin warlords. It is all up to the GM.
City Size: Cities and towns of the Middle Ages cover about one square mile of land per 38,850 people, on average. This is a density of about 61 per acre or 150 per hectare, so the land within the walls of a typical city of 10,000 would be 165 acres - hardly a city by modern standards, in terms of population OR size. Some extraordinarily-dense supercities may have had densities up to 4x this high (but note that historians proposing those densities also propose higher populations for the cities themselves; it's an area where scholars disagree), and some sparse cities almost certainly had densities less than 100/ha. In general, the 150/ha average is a great place to focus, and let exceptions occur as needed. Law Enforcement: A well-kept medieval city will have 1 law officer (guardsman, watchman, etc.) for every 150 citizens. Slack cities will have half this number. A few rare cities will have more. Institutions of Higher Learning: There will be one University for every 27.3 million people. This should be computed by continent, not by town! This figure assumes entirely scholarly universities, not those dedicated to the arcane arts. Whether or not magical universities are separate institutions, and how common they are, is a matter for GM decision. Livestock: The livestock population, on the whole, will equal 2.2 times the human population, but 68% percent of this will be fowl (chickens, geese and ducks). The rest will be dairy cows and "meat animals:" Pigs are superior as food animals, since they eat less individually, and are not picky eaters. Sheep will be extremely common if the region has a wool market (like medieval England, which was built on wool). Cattle for labor and milk will be found occasionally, but cattle raised specifically for meat are only found in very prosperous areas.
The SV list was taken (mostly) from the tax list of Paris in 1292, and checked against other sources. This list can be found in Life in a Medieval City by Joseph and Francis Geis (Harper and Row, 1981). This is a fine book by amateur historians, which includes some fascinating descriptions of medieval city life and layout. You can also find the list (including less-truncated versions) online if you poke around. Other books consulted include: Medieval Cities, by Henri Pirenne. Doubleday.
Here is the Direct link to a web based kingdom generating tool that uses these demographics.
I think a point should be clarified with demographics, these are not a straight jacket, but rather are in place to establish baselines of normalcy. Much like taking a photograph of a given point in time. Yes if the volcano explodes and wipes out an entire group of mages / clerics / etc then the numbers will be dramatically thrown off. No this does not suddenly mean 1/2 the remaining population applies for admission to the mages college (or whatever). It does however mean that the demographics for that area might take time (perhaps decades) to rebalance and return to "normal", but eventually they will do exactly that...more or less. Demographics are much like taking a census and are only done once every few years to get a feel for the growth of a civilization. I sometimes think some DM's take such things a little too literally and thus loose sight of the point behind such things.
I will have to disagree on the ratios of arcane vs. divine casters in the original post- just having more classes doesn't mean there are more of them. My original argument for the 70 /30% split between divine & arcane had little to do with how many published classes there are, and more to do with addressing the question of how many would appear in the campaign as "normal". This was largely a judgement call made for my own campaign (which is hard capped at level 13, and features very few magic items). On the other hand, others feel that having a PC class showing up 1 out of every 6 characters (with casters being at least 1/2 of that) is the way to go. All I will tell such a DM is to simply keep it consistent and you will have a believable campaign world. I would imagine the majority of divine casters are clerics (since they are fairly powerful and general use casters associated with large scale, highly public institutions such as organized religion) and wizards/alchemists (since they can just be taught their magic in schools/apprenticeships). I agree with your logic, however would point out that for most people entry into a class like the ranger would generally be easier than a cleric. Why? Well a character with a Wisdom of 13 can still make for a decent ranger (especially with level caps in place) but a Cleric with a 13 Wisdom is likely to never be more than someones apprentice. This is why my original chart is balanced towards 1/3 & 2/3 partial casters. Their entry requirements are simply lower. The other thing to consider from an RP perspective is the Core Caster classes are very demanding on their members. These are fraternal orders with high expectations ranging from strict alignment considerations, and in some cases commitments in time or tithing. Semi casters typically don't have such restrictions, or at least fewer of them. Most other casters are just too reclusive (druids, witches), have too high a requirement (paladins), or are too specialized to train too many of them (inquisitor, magus). I wouldn't imagine you would see too many of them, and they are just the special snowflakes that end up as adventurers. I definitely agree with your point about the Druids and Witches...unless you are playing in a wilderness / barbarian culture. In which case they suddenly became the normal. In that culture arcane spontaneous casters take the forefront of as well with Sorcerers being much more common than Wizards (even if they are still very rare).
I completely agree! The whole point behind the demographic charts is the get a feel for just how many people are around at a given level. How many clerics (or whatever) can actually raise the dead for example? Is that an ability that is so rare as to be epic / legendary? What about the infamous teleport? Can everyone do it, and thus reducing it to a commodity to be bought and sold like any service, or is it the stuff of legend? Another consideration: the value of money. So I walk into a tavern and toss down 1 gold for my dinner. How much money did I really just give the guy? Is it worth $100 in our market? $1000? or maybe only $1. Now i'm not talking about the value of gold by ounce IRL, rather the question is what is its buying power in game? Example: a long sword is worth 15 gold vs a short sword at 10. Just how big of a difference is that to Joe Farmer? What about to a 5th level Aristocrat? When you understand how many people have at any given level, and the relative wealth that comes with those levels, you can begin to make sense of just how poor is poor? and how strong is a 1st, 5th, 10th level character by comparison to a normal guy. By establishing a baseline for these questions and then sticking to it, it creates a sense of realism for the campaign world with an enormous ripple effect. If 90% of your world is dirt broke, play up on that fact! If most people have only "normal" stats ranging from 8 - 12, then the girl at the bar with 14 charisma is HOT! and the one with a 17 is attractive enough to become the wife of nobility even if she has no other traits (class levels or high stats) worth a passing glance. In fact I would likely interpret a young woman with a high charisma / low constitution as one who would be sickly, easily intoxicated (bar whore?), and likely to die in child birth without a cleric / high skill: Heal check being made. Here a closing thought on this: Are certain weapons or magics allowed by anyone or only be certain classes, social groups, servants of the military or king, etc. Example: is the only cleric who can cast Raise Dead on permanent retainer with the king and forbidden to cast the spell for fear that the king might need it instead? What about the laws regarding weapons? Is a long sword legal in most settlements? In Japan only the samurai were allowed to carry the katana. It was both a weapon of war, and a symbol of their authority over the common populous. Compared to most "normal people" your typical PC walks around with enough weapons, spell power and equipment to take over a small country. This is a fact which should NOT be lost on the common folks of the communities your adventures take you to. They are quite literally a walking WMD (weapon of mass destruction), which is even more true when you consider a Mage's abilities. Flight, teleportation, hurling fireballs, etc. This is the sorta thing that would scare the CRAP out of most kings! Are these new comers friend or foe? Can they be controlled? Should I just have them killed? These are the reasons I look so heavily at the campaign demographics. Without understanding just how powerful or wealthy the PC's are in relation to the world around them, there is no sense of continuity which allows for real growth. More importantly that how impressive are the PC's is how impressive is the rest of the world? Take one look at HBO's "Game of Thrones" and you get a feel for what I mean by all of this. There are very wealthy / powerful people, and very poor ones. Very strong warriors, and those who had best avoid fights when at all possible (Sam and Tyrion come to mind). Best of all, these standards are consistent across the entire story and adds a feeling of continuity and realism that would otherwise be both missing and glaring.
I'd point out that the theoretical population I'm working with was 1,000,000 (1 Million) not 10,000. The 10,000 are the 1% of the population which are spell casters (of any class). Using the method you describe above (which I agree is essentially how the DMG broke it down) I'd point out you will be dealing with a very different power arc than the one my numbers were generated against. Are you sure about your numbers? I know from previous editions the "gold standard" was always 5% PC classes vs everyone else. Your numbers are set at about 20% PC classes vs everyone else, which admittedly seems to be how most groups actually play these days. Pressing on: According to the DMG 3.x, once the total number of PC's were generated (typically accounting for only a couple of dozen above 1st level) everything which was left of the population became NPC classes, which was broken down by percentages. DMG 3.5 pg 139 - take the remaining population after all other [PC Classed] characters are generated and divide it up so that 91% are commoners, 5% are warriors, 3% are experts, and the remaining 1% is equally divided between aristocrats and adepts (0.5% each). It is from this that my NPC's are generated, using my original percentage chart for levels. Now it should be noted that in my case when dealing with NPC's I simply was never a fan for how D20 (any version) handled the levels for NPC's. For starters I never use commoners or warriors above 3rd level. Past that point and they are no longer "common" nor are they just some mook on the battlefield who is there to take one hit and die. As such: Warriors above 3rd level are retrained as a 2 level fighter and assumed to join a "special forces" team or take on an officer role. Commoners above 3rd level typically get retrained as a 1st level expert. This assumes they are no longer simply a farmer, but have become successful enough at it that they now understand weather / seasonal patterns, sales techniques, and perhaps know: local or know: nobility. Adepts: I HATE this class and never use it. A caster is a caster in my book. Don't want them to be as powerful as a PC caster? Multi-class them. 2 druid / 1 warrior as a Kobold shaman for example. An admittedly personal bias here, but it is what it is. Aristocrats - this is a class I have always felt was severely underdeveloped and should have had significant "influence" style class abilities. I seem to recall D20 Star Wars did something similar. It is my opinion that the Aristocrats should be nearly as powerful as a PC class, but do so in non-combat ways. If anyone has a good class variant for this I'd be happy to take a look at it. So if we apply those percentages to our Ancient Roman city of 1 million you would get: 50k PC Classes, 864.5k commoners, 47.5k warriors, 28.5k experts, 4,750 aristocrats, and 4,750 Adepts. If I stayed with my original level percentages I first presented for PC classes the numbers would look like this:
Level...Commoner...Warrior...Expert...Ari / Adept
One word of caution: don't make the mistake of comparing the Warrior column with the "marital / non-spellcaster" column from the original chart. The original charts were all forms of non-spell casting pc classes (fighter, monks, rogues, etc etc) vs the Warrior column is specific to only warriors. In other words, there are a lot more warriors running around. Just for comparison sake the chart I would more typically use in my campaign however would look more like this: Level...Commoner...Warrior...Expert...Ari
Under my system experts remain strong through out, partially because of the influx of commoners who retrain (around middle age) and partially to represent the proverbial "master smith" occasionally seen. You will also notice that around 5th level there is not an enormous influx of experts coming over from commoners, this is because most dont make the conversion (or don't live that long) and is typically reserved only for Commoners mentioned by name in an AP for example. Looking over the Warrior / Fighter conversion I noticed something that I'd previously missed in the original chart. If a warrior would normally convert around 4th level, only 60% of the Warriors have been allocated, thus 40% are left or about 20K. For every 10,000 you have 1% of a 1 million population. In other words, instead of there being at 95 / 5% split it would actually change the "gold standard" to 93 / 7% and the Non-Caster PC classes would go from 4% to 6%, and thus need recalculating. In a closing thought, I'll briefly touch on racial demographics. Canon d20 states there is a chart which tells you what the statistical split is based on size of the area in question. That chart looks like this: Racial Mix of Communities
Within my campaign I use the following chart instead:
Anyway. Perhaps I'm overthinking it, but those are my thoughts on the matter.
What about psychic casters? Where do Alchemists and Investigators fall? This is going to refer to my disclaimer in #1 about it being focused on a custom environment I am using for my campaign, which does not include any form of psionics, or the investigator class. That said however, the source document I pulled the base numbers form address 3 types of classes: the Non-PC classes like Warriors or the Aristocrat (which I didn't include in the numbers of my original chart), Non-Spell Casting PC classes, an PC Classes (of any kind) which cast spells. This later group of PC Classed spell casters only makes up a total of 1% of the population. Based on those (admittedly loose definitions) I would look at the class in question and ask if it is an Arcane or Divine caster. Does it get spells up to level 4, 6 or 9? This will tell you if it is a 1/3, 2/3 or full caster. From there just look at your population and do the math. The beauty of my chart is it is not stuck with only calculating the numbers within a 1 million population, but is based on percentages so if you have a population of 12,374 just follow the formula in order to get your population break down. Don't forget, my scenario here is capped to only create levels / classes up to level 13. This is not an oversight but the threshold of my campaign.
Thank you for those who have addressed the question about the source document for where the level / class material came from. I was looking for it earlier today an could not find it for the life of me. The 3.0 DM's Guide is apparently where the chart was last printed. As for the assumption that everyone other than PC's were 1 - 3 commoners, that is not what I said. I said "most of the world" which is true according to both historical records of earth, as well as the 3.0 material I was referring to earlier. Honestly I didn't realize that chart went all the way back to 3.0, and to be equally honest have not yet had the time to read up on the Ultimate Rulership / Kingdom building material recently released by Paizo / Pathfinder. For the record, if you take a look at the chart I was offering (but not suggesting it as "canon") it only addresses the classes which are PC classes. If you are using the older charts as a point of reference then my doc is alot more relevant. If you are not using the older docs, or just don't like the direction I was going with it, that is cool too. At some point I'll probably go back and address the question of if a 1 million population gives you X number of class Y at level Z for PC classes, how many XYZ are the for the NPC's? For me I find such reference material VERY helpful when fleshing out a city, or military, etc because it gives a good feel for just how significant is it to meets a level 10 mage for example? Either way, are you guys using a different reference doc for building settlements? If so what have you found that works well for you?
Looking back over some previous articles I found this: Medieval Warfare and Magic - A Discussion (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2n2qv&page=1?Medieval-Warfare-and-Magic-A- Discussion). The article is an excellent discussion about various comparisons, tactics, etc in dealing with larger conflicts in a PF universe. As I looked into it deeper, some of the demographics involved started to unfold for me, here is what I came to understand. 1) Disclaimer: my campaign is hard capped at level 13 (vs the level 20 of PF RAW), which means it's spell levels are capped at 7th level spells. It is a low magic environment with few magic items. It is based on that statement these figures were generated. 2) RAW puts the total world population at 95% Non-PC classed (most of the world are level 1 - 3 commoners), and only the remaining 5% as possessing a PC class. 3) Of the 5% with PC classes, 4% are Non-spellcasters (Fighter, Rogue, etc) & the remaining 1% are the spell casters (combined arcane and divine). 4) This amounts to about 10,000 casters, across all classes and levels, out of a 1 million population. It also means that martial characters (non-casters) are 400 times more likely to appear than a caster of any class. For my campaign I determined that 70% of the total world wide casters are Divine, while the other 30% are Arcane. For Divine Casters I broke it down as 1/3 partial casters (Ranger, Paladin, etc) make up 50% of the total number of divine casters. 2/3 partials (WarPriest, Inquisitor, Hunter) account for 30% and the remaining 20% are composed of Full caster classes such as the Cleric or Druid. For Arcane classes 73% are 2/3 classes (Bard, Magus, etc), 2% are 1/3 (the Bloodrager specifically)*, and the remaining 25% are full casters such as a Wizard or Sorcerer. NOTE: in the event the Bloodrager (or other 1/3 class) isn't being used, the Arcane caster 2/3 class would be calculated at 75%. Levels for the casters were broken down across spell levels as such: 1st Level - L1 Spells - 40% of the total caster population world wide
These figures are an estimate I created for a more or less linear progress across the levels. By my figures those who could cast a level 7 spell account for only 2% of the total world wide casters. Which is to say in our Ancient Roman city, with 10,000 total casters, only 200 of them ever reach level 13 (max level). Let's take a closer look at how the numbers break down if we stay with Ancient Rome as our model. Divine Casters (.7% of a 1 million population) Level...1/3...2/3...Full
Arcane Casters (.3% of a 1 million population) Level...1/3...2/3...Full
Non-PC casters / Martial classes (4% of a 1 million population) Level..How many at that level
This final part of the chart covers non-casting classes such as the Fighter or Rogue, but also covers archetypes which convert casting classes into a non-casting class variant (EX: Paladin - Temple Champion). Also notice the difference between the number of 13th level Fighters (800) vs the number of 13th level mages (15).
Here is the Class Defense Bonus chart i'm working on. Any thoughts? NOTE: of all the things I stink at, few compare to how badly I suck at HTML tables. If someone wants to help clean these up I'd be grateful.
Defense Bonus by Armor Type & Level The LCM Ruleset uses a Defensive Bonus by Armor Type & Level system to determine AC. This system is based on the Armor Type allowed by the character class (adjusted for Archetypes) & character Level. The value of armor being physically worn translates directly to Armor Damage Reduction. Enhancement bonuses to armor add directly to its Armor DR value. Example: a 5th level rogue in + 2 studded leather armor would have AC 17 (plus misc bonuses) and an Armor DR 5 /-.
Unlike the official version of the Class Defense variant rules, the LCM version rewards classes which are lightly armored because of the way Armor DR works under the LCM. In short, lightly armored foes are much harder to hit, but when hit they tend to be more seriously injured due to their lower hit points and lack of Armor DR. Heavily armored characters on the other hand, are hit much more frequently but suffer less from the injury due to higher HP and greater DR from their armors. The Defense Bonus by Armor Type & Level is based on the HP per Class, and the Armor type per class / archetype. Armor categories are modified by any archetypes or feats which grant heavier armor proficiencies as it reflects the trade off the character is choosing to make. For classes whose Armor Type changes as they level (such as the Magus) adjust their chart at the appropriate levels. UNDERSTANDING THE CHART:
Category B) Heavy Armor users rely on their Armor DR and higher HP to mitigate injury. These classes are less worried about avoiding the hit, and more capable of simply surviving it. Category C) Medium Armor users, and those who tend to be “light / fast warrior” types like the barbarian, ranger or monk. NOTE: Monk is included here for balance reasons because of their class abilities which already enhance their AC. Category D) Light Armor users, for those who have lower HP and exclusively use light armors. These classes are the opposite of warriors in that they rely on their ability not to get hit at all. Table: Defense Bonus by Class & Level
Level--A--B--C--D
THE DEFENSE BONUS by CLASS & LEVEL
Like bonuses from Dodge, a class defense bonus improves a character’s AC against touch attacks, but not against flat footed AC. THE MULTICLASS DEFENSIVE BONUS
MONSTER DEFENSE BONUS
If the creature possesses no Class Levels but is listed as wearing specific armor, treat them as having class proficiency with the armor listed and their HD as their level, unless their description indicates a Natural Armor bonus higher. In which case base AC / DR accordingly. If a creature possess Class Levels, use their armor proficiency per normal to determine their Defensive Bonus. ARMOR AS DAMAGE REDUCTION Under the LCM Ruleset this conversion is much more simple than in other systems, with the equipment Armor bonus to AC translating directly to Armor DR on a one for one basis. This includes Enhancement bonuses (if any) on the armor. Example: + 2 Chainmail (AC 5) becomes Armor DR 7/-
The Effective Worth of Class Defense + Armor DR
For example: A 3rd level goblin warrior not be much of a threat to a 3rd level human fighter wearing splint mail (Armor DR 7 / -). The fighters Armor DR is more than enough to entirely negate the damage dealt by an average hit. On the other hand, there are still plenty of things the fighter is vulnerable to such as fire, poisons, drowning, critical hits, called shots, CMD attacks (bullrush, trip, etc) and thus should avoid becoming too confident in the goblin’s inability to be a viable threat.
Totally agree with Purple Dragon Knight, you [@ psychie] just perfectly described a Bard.
As my campaign is set in Lastwall (with heavy cross over with Cheliax) it would either be Iomedae or Asmodeus. I'm a very "lawful" person in the honorable, keep your word, defend your own people / family, etc sorta way, but good and evil can get pretty fuzzy for me. LN by nature, so worship could go either way.
What follows is part of a larger work I'm currently working on for a low magic campaign. Some of the earlier discussions from this campaign can be found here: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t1jz?Rewrite-for-Injury-and-healing-rules#1 and here http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t45d?Low-Magic-Variant-Combat-Rules#1 I welcome constructive feedback on these ideas. The Tiers of Magical Items
Truly magic items under this system become more rare while items of exceptional quality have become more common. Low level magic items tend to fade into the background and are replaced by items of exceptional quality, or alchemical properties. An example might be the “loss” of the spider climb potion, but the “gain” of a Superior Quality climbers harness which add a + 6 bonus to climb checks. The advantage is that the harness is a permanent item, but one which is expensive, bulky, difficult to find / make and because it is now a skill check there is always the risk of failure. The Tiers of these effects are universally scaled as Normal -> High Quality -> Superior Quality -> Masterwork Quality for most items, and weapons and armor also have Common -> Uncommon -> Rare -> Exotic. The 3rd and 4th Tiers in both cases have prerequisite skills levels, feats and quality of materials which must be used to achieve such results (detailed below). The distinction between the categories of “Masterwork” and “Exotic” when dealing with weapons and armor have specifically been maintained due to how tightly integrated these concepts are in the base game, and to maintain compatibility purposes. Crafting is tracked in Tiers, which means for every + 10 by which the DC to create it has been passed the item advances by one Tier; IE: DC 15 with a total roll 35 is a Tier 2 item. When creating magical items it requires a quality level to equal the item bonus in order to create. Thus to add a + 3 enchantment the item must be of Masterwork or Exotic Quality. Magic Items under the LCM Ruleset
“Magic items” tend to come in 4 forms: Alchemical concoctions, items crafted from superior materials, items crafted with superior skill, and items that actually are magic in the traditional sense. Crafting of magical items, such as a weapon like Excalibur, might take a couple of years to gather the needed materials and then another several months to actually craft and lay the proper enchantments. Even then the creation of such an item would only be possible by a very small handful of Mages in the entire region.
Alchemy .
Craft: Alchemy Mundane alchemical creations with a craft DC higher than 15 are restricted to the Alchemist, Druid or Witch classes. Druids and Witches both have an extensive understanding of the natural world and may craft Alchemical creations from plants and such using the skill Profession: Herbalism with a DC up to 10 + twice their level, and a hard cap of DC 30. Alchemist may attempt the creation of any alchemical substance whose DC is not greater than 15 + twice their level (IE: 5th level = DC 25) and they have no hard cap to DC. Alchemical Healing Salves (AHS) are similar to an accelerated form of natural healing and thus will not regrow limbs or cure blindness (unless it was temporary to begin with), etc. Such potions only take one round to apply but any direct HP recovery takes effect once per hour based on the strength of the salve being used (see below). Salves and poultices which effect specific types of injury such as a burn ointment (ala Aloe Vera) will heal at twice the normal per round rate but only against that specific type of injury. A normal Alchemical Healing Salve will heal 1 HP of damage every hour for four hours (4 HP total), and require a Craft: Alchemy skill check of 20 to create. Multiple applications may be applied per day equal to the CON bonus of the person receiving the medication (your party Warrior for example) + the WIS or INT bonus of the person applying it (your party Medic for example). If the craftsman making such an Alchemist Healing Salve possess the necessary feats, AND the Craft check used to create such a poultice exceed the DC for creation by 10 then the concoction will heal for 2 HP per hour for four hours, 3 HP for 4 hours for a + 20 result, and 4 HP per hour for 4 hours for a + 30 result.
Crafting Alchemical Items - For Tier two and three Alchemical crafting addition training is required in a specialized area of alchemy, examples would include Craft: Healing Potion, Craft: Explosives, etc. FEAT: Tier 2 Craft Alchemy – Superior Quality
FEAT: Tier 3 Craft Alchemy – Masterwork Quality
The Cost for Alchemical Healing Salves (AHS):
For Alchemical weapons (Alchemist Fire, Acid, Poisons, Grenades / Explosives, etc) assume the cost increase by x5 for each Tier. Keep in mind the level / skill requirements for each level and the rarity of such an item. Examples of Other Alchemical Items of note:
This highly volatile material is dangerous to carry around and is will break upon a critical hit against you, or a failed Ref Save. In such an event any other alchemical flasks you are carrying will also break, their effects are cumulative. Such materials are highly illegal in most kingdoms outside of officially sanctioned use by the military, and most soldiers want to be nowhere near such items on the off chance of a breakage that could blow them all to kingdom come! NOTE: It is not the intended purpose of this document to detail the Tier advancement of every Alchemical item in the game. Future documents however will undertake a much more thorough exploration of both spells and alchemical creations. Examples of what such Tier advancement might be: medical items increase the effectiveness of Heal checks, amount of healing done, the time its effects will last, etc. Weapons such as Pellet Grenades could see DC and damage increases. Items which allow for a bonus to saves / skill checks (such as a +2 to Survival) could see that bonus with each Tier, such as a +4, +6, etc. Arms & Armor – Superior Materials
Elven Craftsmanship: Elves are fond of working with Mithril and alchemically treated organic materials such as Darkwood, Darkleaf Cloth, and Whipwood. Finely crafted steel sees a lot of use in Elven culture, as does wood items such as a training sword made of Darkwood. Iron is never used in Elven construction due to the harmful effects it has upon these Fey blooded people.
Dwarven weapons and armor are commonly seen with runes of the Dwarven language engraved into them. A classic example of this would be a shield engraved with the large face of a Dwarven ancestor or deity with family name or lineage or prayers surrounding the border of the shield. Dwarves never make light / finesse weapons such as the rapier as they consider them too “dainty”. Arms & Armor – Superior Skill
Masterwork quality may advance a weapons up to + 3. This bonus would be applied to either the hit or damage rolls. Elves favor hit bonuses, Dwarves favor damage bonuses, and human craftsmen tend to favor a more balanced approach such as a + 2 / + 2. NOTE: Elven one handed bladed weapons are considered light / finesse weapons. Exotic quality likewise comes in three tiers and may advance either the weapon’s threat or crit multiplier by 1 per tier. This effect does stack with the Improved Critical feat. Once again, Elves tend to favor improved Threat Ranges, Dwarves improved Crit Ranges, and Humans a point or two in each. FEAT: (Tier 2) Superior / Rare Craft Weapon - Mithril
FEAT: (Tier 3) Masterwork / Exotic Craft Weapon - Adamantine
*Skill: Crafting* requires a Skill Crafting: Weapon check. For every + 10 by which the craft skill is passed the crafted item can be advanced by + 1 enhancement bonus (with the right feats and materials). The crafting of racial armor
Masterwork Shields Shields Master Work
Miscellaneous magic items are very rare in the campaign and are largely replaced by high quality or alchemical mundane items. An example would be wearing fine clothing and jewels getting a + 2 bonus on diplomacy when dealing with nobles, or Boots adding a + 2 bonus to Stealth checks. When used this way the Tiered system for Arms & Armor is still used here. A standard item specifically constructed for the purpose (a set of Thieves Tools for example) adds a + 2 bonus, high quality adds + 4, +6 superior or + 8 for top tier masterwork gear. Magic Scrolls are not used in the campaign – thus Scribe Scroll is BANNED. Wands, Rods & Staves: Are only available for use by core Prepared-Spontaneous Caster classes (Cleric, Druid, Mage, Priest), and augment the casters existing spellcasting abilities. For example, a Wand of Fire + 3 would grant a + 3 bonus to the DC check for casting any Fire related spell and add 3 additional spells levels per day as free magic for casting fire related magic. Such an item would only function in the hands of a core caster who could already cast a spell with the Elemental: Fire descriptor.
These Low Magic - Variant Combat Rules are used in my home campaign as a field test for a product I hope to publish later in 2016. The campaign setting can more accurately termed "D20 Fantasy" than "Pathfinder" and looks alot like setting seen in Lord of the Rings or HBO's "Game of Thrones", vs the ones seen in Greyhawk, Golarion, or Forgotten Realms. It is necessary to mention this is a low level / low magic setting where the hard cap is level 13 and the soft cap around 9th or 10th. 7th level magic is considered to be nearly "epic" (8th and 9th level magic is completely banned due to level restrictions) and anything over 4th level is limited to a specialist in that school or domain. Encounters will typically be against mundane foes vs ones with heavy magical spells and abilities, and magic items are virtually unheard of. Spell casters in this environment are very rare and only appear about 20% as commonly as what is found in most campaigns. This variant of the combat rules focuses on the question of “How do I hit, or avoid getting hit, and thus dealing damage?” The second section (referenced at the bottom of this page) will focus on the question of “Now that I’ve taken damage how serious is it, and what can I do about it in an environment where healing magic is very rare and natural healing recovers much slower?” I encourage the rules in this article to be used together, but caution they make for an extremely dangerous form of D20 combat. Simply rushing headlong into combat (the way you can in most D20 fantasy fights) will likely result in a TPK 90% of the time. Consider carefully before engaging your enemies, use any available buff spells, shield walls, group tactics etc and for God's sake: "Stay alert, stay alive!" Attack rolls: All attack rolls are modified by Dex. Melee Damage is modified by Strength for melee attacks. Ranged attacks use Dex for damage for bows and crossbows, composite bows also add Str modifiers to damage. Thrown weapons use Str (light thrown weapon such as a shuriken may use Dex instead). Weapon Finesse allows for Dex to modify damage for all Small / Light / Finesse weapons. Effects of a Natural 20
Natural 1 = Fumble All Natural 1’s must be declared as they are the property of the DM and typically result in dramatic effects. Class Defense Bonus and Armor as DR
The Class Defense Bonus is one of the primary sources for AC (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm), the other being blocking & shields. Some effects completely bypass the DR values of armor. Critical Hits, Magic, elemental attacks like fire, or smoke. Drowning, poison, disease, any attack which scores a Natural 20 and a spear which has been set vs charge (considered an automatic critical hit anyway). Likewise a Helpless Defender does not benefit from Armor DR nor Class Defense bonus, and a prone defender is reduced to 1/2 their normal values for both Defense bonus and Armor DR. Shields Let’s face it; shields have always sucked under the D20 system (both old and new), so under the LCM ruleset this has finally been addressed. Small Shields add + 1 AC, & + 1 to Ref Saves, medium shields add + 3/ + 3, and heavy shields add + 5/ + 5. Shield bonuses (a + 2 shield for example) applies its bonus to both categories (+ 3 / + 3 becomes + 5 / + 5). NOTE: the bonus to Ref Saves only applies to frontal attacks that the defender could have used the shield to block against. An explosion that goes off behind the defender would gain no such additional protection, nor would simply wearing the shield on your back. Shield use is an active defense, and only works against a frontal attack.
Blocking
Blocking works against one target, if you have the dodge feat blocking works against two targets. The Dodge feat is stackable, but if you have more than one level of the feat it does not add additional targets that you can effectively block, but allows you get the stacked AC bonus against two targets. Blocking with a shield allows the defender to add and additional target against whom they may effectively block when equipping a medium sized shield (3 with the dodge feat). With a large shield the protective arc of the shield at a full frontal 180*, thus allowing a medium sized defender with the Dodge feat to effectively block against four targets if they are all in front of him (without the dodge feat the defender is still limited to 3 medium sized targets). EXAMPLE: a 10th level Paladin has the Dodge feat x2. He is fighting defensively and blocking with a + 2 heavy shield. He thus has a would be at – 7 attack roll penalty but an AC bonus of + 19 / + 5 Ref save against up to four targets. NOTE: While the AC bonus in the example above is very high, it can be quickly offset by tactics such as having to defend against multiple attackers, being attacked from behind (no shield bonus), called shots (see below), grappling, being knocked prone, a natural 20 attack roll, being doused in oil and set on fire, sunder attacks against the shield, etc. Such a paladin is carrying very expensive gear that amounts to a huge amount of weight and is moving slowly under its burden. This the reason such warriors were historically part of a heavy cavalry unit (their horses were carrying the gear) and not simply a common foot soldier who is commonly encountered. Fighting Multiple Opponents
EXAMPLE: two elves attack an orc applying the - 2 multiple attacker penalty to the orc’s AC. Then two more elves join them, each adding an additional - 2 (- 6 total). Next the elven archer joins the fight, and while he does not add additional bonuses for flanking considerations, he does however still benefit from the - 6 AC penalty to defense his friends flanking maneuver has already generated. The orc has the “Flanked Condition", and because he is “flanked” and thus denied his Dex bonus the archer may apply Sneak Attack damage as a standard action (per RAW for sneak attack). Like normal, when firing into melee it will still be advisable for the archer to have precise shot before attempting such a shot to avoid hitting his friends. Flanking is a positional modifier that is triggered when two attackers are on either side of a target. The target loses their dex bonus to AC as a penalty when defending against both ranged and melee attackers, but the attacker does gain the additional + 2 bonus to attacks normally allowed under d20 RAW (it is already factored into these rules). Heavy Armor and being Knocked Prone
Shield wall / Phalanx Formations
As an added benefit, the phalanx formation also prevents the front line ranks from being surrounded or flanked. If it could be said that the phalanx has a major weakness it would be that while the frontal attack and defense are extremely strong, the sides and rear are much less so and the troops in the rear can find themselves very vulnerable to a sneak attack from the rear (no shield defense, no shield wall, no one behind them, etc). The other down side of the phalanx formation is one of maneuverability. With a densely packed formation of 100 + troops they do not maneuver or change facing easily. Call Shots Called Shot to Weak Point
Called Shot to Vital Spot
Extra Aim
Touch Attacks
Pulling the Punch: player may declare they do not wish to kill the foe, and only wound them. In this case they have two options: the target only takes stun damage, or the attacker attacker stops just short of death as the target falls unconscious (first aid is probably a good idea at this point). Types of actions and maneuvers
Combat Maneuvers Only provoke an Attack of Opportunity on a failed Combat Maneuver. This is to encourage such maneuvers to be used more in order to create more dynamic battlefields. Bushwhacking Rules The bushwhack rule applies only when a target is flat-footed, completely unaware of an attack against him, and the attacker has 3 rounds to quietly prepare a single attack. If the attack is successful it is considered to be an automatic critical hit which bypasses armor DR. Due to the Massive Damage rules used in the campaign most low level NPCs would be instantly killed. Even mid-level characters could be seriously injured by such an attack. Creatures immune to critical hits or sneak attacks are immune to bushwhack attacks. NOTE: this attack can be used even at long range for tactical sniping from a rooftop, etc. If the attacker has a class ability for sneak attack or precision damage determine the attack normally and then apply sneak / precision damage. This damage is still applied at long range for sniping. Bushwhacking can be surprisingly deadly with snipers or hidden rogues, especially when combined with the rules for Massive Damage, and adds a tremendous amount of combat realism. This is a good reason to level skills such as Perception, work as a team, have an Animal Companion or Familiar who can help you look for such things, etc. Pass Through Damage Pass Through Damage is the concept of an exceptionally hard hit that converts some of its attack result into direct damage similar to how power attack works. In effect any time that your attack roll exceeds the AC of the target by more than 10 you apply the excess amount towards HP damage. IE: If the target has an AC of 20, and you hit with a 33. 33 Hit – 20 AC – 10 = 3 points of additional damage that has penetrated their defenses. This additional damage is also generated on attacks which score a natural 20 (ie it is stacks with those rules). This damage is treated like damage from a power attack and is subject to critical hit multipliers. Massive Damage Threshold (MDT) and Results
The previous article on Death and Dying can be found here:
Guys I'm looking for some alpha play testers for a low magic campaign. This is a work in progress and part of a larger body I'm strongly considering publishing under the OGL. This is a significant overhaul which hits all of the major points of a campaign: magic, combat and character creation. At this stage I'm just looking for feedback on how balanced the options are. Bare in mind these three sections are intended for use together, and represent a low magic campaign. Thus they are not intended to simply "fix" some aspect the Core / RAW has overlooked. To be fair, magic is more restrictive, combat more dangerous, and the world less forgiving...and that is what makes your characters heros. If it were easy anyone would be able to do it. The overall effect of these rules should create an environment similar to Skyrim or Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings level of power without trying to "be" any of the above. https://lazlo-cos-pathfinder.obsidianportal.com/wikis/character-generation https://lazlo-cos-pathfinder.obsidianportal.com/wikis/spells-and-magic https://lazlo-cos-pathfinder.obsidianportal.com/wikis/combat Let me know what you think.
It is pretty cool actually. Take their full bonus and add +10. This is now their static value (this is similar to how they did it in 4th ed), and you roll a caster check based on the following formula: D20 + ½ caster Level + Relevant Stat Bonus (Int for Wizard) + Feats / Bonuses (spec / domain add the normal + 2 bonus Area effect spells use a ranged touch attack. Success = no save because you have HIT them. Roll damage normally. Crit success = Max damage Massive Damage Threshold:Con Score + (LvL x 2) == IE: level 5 with a 15 Con would be 25 MDT, Level 10 with a 20 con would be 40 MDT. MDT Fort Save: succeed on Fort Save with a DC 15 +1 / 5pts dam over threshold or suffer the effects of massive damage
NOTE: this is actually only a very small snip of a much larger work I hope to publish later this year
I disagree. The majority of the responses have clearly stated the point of view of "evil for evil's sake" in regards to Cheliax and assume the PC's are themselves evil (to whatever degree). On the other hand...there is no reason why the PC's don't simply live there. Think about places with very oppressive governments in our own world. Just because someone lives in Nazzi germany during WWII does not mean they support the extremes of government oppression and racism that were so rampant. In fact here in the U.S. I have frequently heard the sentiment of, "I love my country, but fear my government." There have been some similar statements made in the Star Wars novels by citizens of the Empire who have (quietly) stated "I love the Empire but hate the Sith". Obviously some would state this is a contradiction. Yet how is this any different than someone who lives in Cheliax? Perhaps their family line goes back to the time before Emperial Cheliax fell and became Infernal Cheliax. Pro-Cheliax could just as easily translate to Pro-Cheliax: People, Pro-Cheliax: Culture, Pro-Cheliax: History and does not HAVE to default to Pro-Cheliax: Evil Satanic Empire. Just saying. Lazlo
Here is a compilation of my favorite ideas i've seen from this thread (in no particular order) and a few of my own: A series of books focusing on different environments, desert, urban, arctic, jungle, aquatic, etc. <Kudos to the guy would suggested this, sorry I've missed your name> Stronghold Builder's Guide! Advanced Guide to GMing low magic suggestions for PF (likely in an isolated region of the map) 800 page hard cover racial specific books (the small Dwarves of Golarion style books were really sub-par). Complete Societies and Factions to really lay out some who's doing what to who / who likes who / who is trying to kill who sorta demographic dynamics Current / Annual spell & Feat Compilation books with a DATE!! That way it is easier to reference in the future. And DON'T reprint the same stuff each time (except to correct for Errata) but assume we bought the first one and press on! a PF Unearthed Arcana. This was my one of my favorite books of 3.5 Kingdom / Empire building rule book Mass Combat rules that don't suck and integrates well between the PC as both a commander and as a skilled individual A high level campaign setting which goes into Empire building vs Epic Levels If PF is keeping the alignment system (i personally think this was a REALLY bad idea to start with) then it really needs to be fleshed out in a fashion similar to what Monte Cook did with Hallowed Might. Or more loosely defined like Palladium. Get rid to the ambiguous crap and either define it better or acknowledge that it is only there for flavor and dump alignment specific spells and classes (make them "oath" specific or something). Temples of the Inner Sea / How Paladins and Cavaliers (and other classes like Monks or Inquisitors) interact with the various Temples. Disclaimer: no attempt here to steal anyone's idea, think of it more as a compiled list of "Yeah, i like that too!"
Here is my first tip for designing low magic campaigns: don't let the folks on the message boards here tell you it cant be done. Keep in mind the D20 system is crazy versatile. The real question you want to ask if the campaign is low magic, or do your PC's simply not have access to it? Most assume the second when posting replies to such a campaign concept because they are so used to seeing D20 fantasy campaigns run a certain way. If it is truly a low level campaign then simply focus your encounters (and the monsters in them) with that in mind and come up with work arounds for any barrier you may throw at your party (and make sure they don't have to be psychic to figure it out!!). Example: Incorporeal Ghost. No one with Ghost Touch or similar weapon / effect. But can still be hit with Paladin Smite and the family sword of it's ancestors, etc. Result: Instant Ghost Touch (but only against uncle bob the ghost). The Golem needs an adamantite weapon to hit it, instead it now has DR5/-. Result: the fight is difficult and lasts longer but perhaps the Golem is vulnerable to the heated metal, such as raw bars which are red hot in the nearby forge and thus even the DR5/- could be by passed. You do not have to rewrite the entire system using this approach, but you do have to spend and extra hour or so before running a published adventure reading it through and making sure that none of the threats are "unbeatable". Occasionally an encounter will need to be swapped out for a different foe, or that foe needs to have a special defense lowered or swapped for a different effect that still leaves the fight challenging but not unstoppable. Another tip: for particularly tough "boss fights" have at least one non-combat option available to the party such as the Ghost cant enter the ruins of the ancient temple, wont attack the party if accompanied by a member of the Ghosts family, etc and thus you have your magic which the party can access for that encounter but aren't running around with +5 Flaming Swords of Butt-Stompin all the time. It forces your players to THINK, use non-combat skills such as Knowledge, unravel the next layer to your story and actually work together. This technique works. More over it allows you to create customized and original encounters which yours players will talk about for YEARS and keep coming back for more. Anyone can pick up the +5 sword and go mow down the Big Bad Monster, but when they actually have to fight tactically together as a team in order to exploit a specific weakness that is an encounter they will remember. Yes it takes a little longer to set up. NO!! It is not impossible, nor the massive pain in butt to do that so many here on the forums will tell you that it has to be. And yes you can do it with Pathfinder core without having to use an alternate system like E6 or Iron Hero's or something. Next tip: Set a level cap for your campaign and gauge your party progression against that. Gaining levels & magic items are NOT the only measurable rewards. Winning the big battle and saving the town can be a reward in of itself, especially if the party is attached to the place because you have woven the story line around them and their relationships there. Once they have saved the town now use that as the spring board for the next adventure. Your players become so involved with the cooperative story you create together they wont even care about the pieces they are "missing". Keep in mind: Fantasy adventure is not about Magic spells, magic items, nor magical beasts. It is about Heroic stories being told about good vs evil. Think I'm wrong about this approach? Watch the Movie "Conan the Barbarian" with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Lots of high adventure, but low on the magic side of the house. I'd also point out that Conan's DM wasn't throwing at him monsters that required specific spells or magic items that he didn't possess in order to over come them either. This same thing can be said about the Lord of the Rings. Classic fantasy which is the very frame work upon which virtually all modern fantasy was written around, but if you read the books / watch the movies you will notice that even Gandalf wasn't throwing around reality ripping magic all the time. In closing: i'm not suggesting removing any of the magic from you campaign per se, but rather am saying get a good feel for what level of magic you want in your campaign and then build your campaign around it. Does that mean you'll need to think things through a bit on how you have to handle magic items, beasts, spells, etc? Yes, of course. But then when you choose to run a non "canned" style of campaign you sorta take on that load as a DM. Welcome to the world of creative engineering. :) ~ Lazlo ~ |
