Where the dungeon ends, another adventure begins! Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign takes you on a guided tour through the parts of the game that happen between monster attacks and quests for ancient artifacts. As some of the most powerful and prestigious heroes around, do your player characters want to build up a kingdom of their own, or lead an army against a neighboring nation? Perhaps they want to start a business, craft magic items, or embark on a quest that will come to define them. Whether you're looking for help generating a young character or seeking ways to challenge adventurers who've grown bored of fighting monsters one-on-one, this book has everything you need!
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and an open playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era.
A detailed guide to generating character backstories, including a new system for random character generation and traits and drawbacks to meld your background with your statistics.
Story feats that increase in power as you achieve key goals, making quests and crusades more than just flavor!
A complete downtime rules system to flesh out those parts of a PC's life that take place between adventures, such as running a business, gaining power and influence in a community, or starting a magical academy.
New rules for retraining and switching classes; honor, reputation, and fame; young characters; investment; magic item creation; and other key adventuring topics.
Rules for building up a kingdom, including construction and technological advancements, governing your people, and more.
Mass combat rules to help you lead clashing armies and conduct epic battles in a fun and efficient manner—without losing sight of the PCs themselves.
My first impressions of Ultimate Campaign were pretty positive, and now that I've had time to read through the whole thing, I can honestly say that this is a must-have for any campaign that goes beyond the scope of the dungeon crawl. If you're looking for guidelines and rules for all the things that happen outside the dungeon itself, this book is an incredible buy.
Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea everyday!
Book- Ultimate Campaign
Publisher-Paizo
Price – ~$40
TL;DR- Tables and Rules Everywhere!-83%
Basics- Ultimate Campaign focuses on the rules around the rest of the Pathfinder RPG. This book is more "meta" then most books. The book starts with a chapter on how to make characters; not how to make stats, but how to build a story into your characters. Next the book gives a chapter on what you can do in your down time with ideas ranging from building businesses to creating organizations. After that is a chapter on different rules systems covering ideas such as bargaining to taxation in your game. The final chapter is how to build a kingdom and mass combat.
Mechanics or “Crunch”-This book is crunch-tastic! If you want rules regarding all the extra stuff in your game, this is it. Want rules for an honor system? It's here. Want to start a kingdom? There is a whole chapter on how to do the rules for it. It covers a lot of ground. Some of these rules are kind of reprints as these rules were covered in different adventure paths, but that's not necessarily bad as the rules have gotten a polish since their last printing. 5/5
Story or “Fluff”-This section might not fit the best here. This book sets out to be a rules book. It's pretty system neutral as you're just running the Pathfinder/3.5 system somewhere and these rules cover the "in between" stuff. You don't need a lot of story. However chapter one is how to build a character. It does an excellent job of describing what stuff you could include in your character. If you're George R.R. Martin, you don't need this. However, I have a friend who loves Pathfinder, but when presented with character generation, he freezes. This chapter gives some good fluff for your characters and suggests traits for you to take for all the fluff. Heck, if you want to completely randomize your PCs, this chapter gives tables and tables of random stuff to make your new PC. Where the fluff is needed, it's done well, but don't expect it throughout the book. 4/5
Execution-This book is the standard Paizo quality. The book is a nice hard cover with well put together pages. The layout lacks a bit. There are pages after pages of tables or rules or columns of text. Nothing brakes up much of what you're reading, so it gets a little boring. It's important rules, if you want them, but they get very dry, very quick. 3.5/5
Final Thoughts-Unlike a base book, this is a one copy at the table max book. This is something you might want to get, skim through, and then give to your GM while telling him which of these rules you want in the game. It's a repeat of many of the rules systems explored in the adventure paths, which isn't bad because the rules do get a little touch up here and there. However, if you want a dungeon crawling game where you find some monsters, kill them, and take gear, this isn't for you. If you want to do some crazy game where you explore a mist filled continent via random hex crawl where you establish a kingdom while maintaining your family's honor, waging a war for the throne, marrying into different family lines, and dealing with the crushing shame of your fathers half fiend lineage, then YES you will need this book. 83%
After thumbing through the book I decided to pick it up. I think the systems in the book are really interesting and I'm actually adapting them to my 4e game.
The book is chock full of fluffy stuff but stuff tied with mechanics so as a DM you get an idea of what type of rewards to apply to a player when they have a background or have own a business. The mass combat section is pretty neat as well, and with a little tweaking I can adapt that as well.
This is a pretty decent fluff book. However, I wish the price was $29.99 instead. The paper quality used is substantially weaker than previous books. There are useful things to be found within for the GM who is not too busy to come up with himself or herself but nothing is overwhelming in here. Reminds me of the numerous volumes Wotc produced for 4E.
This is definitely a homerun for Paizo. This is definitely one of their best products they have put out in a while. I actually gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars, but it is still good enough to give it 5 here.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
It seems like paizo deliberately goes out of its way to make abbreviating product names into acronyms difficult. See the AP line: Serpent's Skull, Skull and Shackles, Shattered Star. I'm probably gonna default to calling this book "The Campaign book" myself though.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
TOZ wrote:
Snow Crash wrote:
The problem with optional rules is that they are shiny and new and everyone wants to use them.
No I don't.
That's why they say you only need the core rule book, dungeon masters guide, and the moster beastery to play a game, all other things are optional, but can be fun if used properly.
I am very much looking forward to this. I don't give my players downtime often, but when I do they want to do quite a bit. Like work on the courting of someone their character is interested in, run a business, do training, do research. Lots of things.
I could use some rules for managing downtime and the romances in the game. Since I run a homebrew only I don't have the rules for relationships that will be in this. So on the whole with what my group likes to do this book will be a huge boon to me.
I want this oh-so-damned badly for even just one reason only: "An extensive system for generating character and NPC backgrounds, history, and family, from the son of the farmer to the king’s daughter."
I really want to run a campaign in the Golarion setting, but there's just so much information spread out over so many books, it's hard to keep track of everything that one should know to make a background that fits in the setting.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Harrison wrote:
I want this oh-so-damned badly for even just one reason only: "An extensive system for generating character and NPC backgrounds, history, and family, from the son of the farmer to the king’s daughter."
I really want to run a campaign in the Golarion setting, but there's just so much information spread out over so many books, it's hard to keep track of everything that one should know to make a background that fits in the setting.
the Rulebook Lines are Setting neutral. this is a background System in general I believe. Not Specifically for Golarion.
I'm not so much on the tactical minatures games, what I'd really like to see is either something like BECMI's fairly large-scale strategy rules or the board game that was one of the original Dragonlance modules that let you track the course of a war across the entire continent month by month.
The mass combat rules in Ultimate Campaign will be the same rules as we debuted in Kingmaker, in Pathfinder #35, but polished up and expanded. As with the kingdom building rules, we've looked at feedback on these boards, as well as actual in-game play from in-house campaigns, and are using that feedback to enhance the rules for appearance in Ultimate Campaign.
A full-scale tactical mass combat game like Warhammer or Battlesystem or something like that is FAR beyond the scope of Ultimate Combat. Something like that would easily be it's own book or own game.
The mass combat rules in Ultimate Campaign are more of a narrative tool to help you quickly resolve such huge battles in your adventures.
EDIT: Looks like I already replied as such upthread, but I'm reposting a slightly more descriptive reply to help folks anticipate what exactly this book will be doing.
Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
I really enjoy the kingdom building rules for Kingmaker, and my players in two campaigns have found them to be a fun "something different." One thing I would LOVE to see as a GM in any updates would be a way for the cities one builds using kingdom-building rules to generate a stat block like the one Paizo now uses to describe cities in adventures. Right now, the two are totally different. It's kind of like PCs and NPCs having different ability scores with different names, with PCs having "Dexterity" and NPCs having "Agility."
Kingdom-building cities (in Kingmaker) have three stats: Economy, Stability and Loyalty (okay, five: plus Unrest and Defenses).
Regular Paizo cities have six stats: Crime, Corruption, Economy, Society, Lore, and Law.
What I've been doing is:
• Econ = Econ
• Law => Stabilty
• keep Crime as a sub-score of Stability (crime = instability)
• add Loyalty
• keep Corruption as a sub-score of Loyalty (corruption = government disloyalty)
• add Unrest as a sub-score of Loyalty (unrest = public disloyalty)
• keep Lore
• add Defenses
• drop Society
So what's that, 8? Not perfect, but something like this would mean that kingdom-building cities and cities in adventures could use the same stat blocks.
Any info on if we will be getting any new stuff for the settlement rules like new governments and what not? Also would love to see some way of unifying this and the kingdom rule together as one coherent system like people have said above if that's possible.
I really would like to see the ship combat rules added in a chapter for this book if possible. Those rules always are handy to have.
Ooh! All for that! I've been in a bit of a pirate obsession lately (though I've not been able to get Skulls and Shackles stuff yet due to budget concerns), so it'd be nice to see ship combat stuff. I'm a little sad caravan stuff won't be in, but it's included in the free Jade Regent player's guide, so I doubt that'll be much of a problem. ^_-
This book looks awesome. I'm particularly excited about the expanded Kingmaker Kingdom rules.
As an Adventure Path subscriber, do I get a free PDF copy of this if i preorder it?
As Azaelas Fayth pointed out, Ultimate Campaigns is part of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game line of products and you need to subscribe to that product line to get the free PDF.
There is a thread collecting points of confusion in the crafting rules. This book will try to make some of those more clear, but it has been stated that the existing rules will *not* be changing.
Rules for non-government organizations (such as some of the Factions in the Faction Guide and the Schools in Inner Sea Magic); or, at least some means for them to interact with Kingdoms meaningfully.
Rules for scaling Factions. The ones in the Faction Guide are generally all continent-spanning in their reach (throughout the Inner Sea). Some discussion on using the same base mechanics for smaller organizations (such as a noble house with influence limited to one realm, or even a Guild with influence mostly limited to one city) would be nice.
Rules for non-government organizations (such as some of the Factions in the Faction Guide and the Schools in Inner Sea Magic); or, at least some means for them to interact with Kingdoms meaningfully.
Rules for scaling Factions. The ones in the Faction Guide are generally all continent-spanning in their reach (throughout the Inner Sea). Some discussion on using the same base mechanics for smaller organizations (such as a noble house with influence limited to one realm, or even a Guild with influence mostly limited to one city) would be nice.
I saw there are rules for backgrounds and families. Will this give way to stat out children? I have a couple of players that feel like playing younger casters and I'm interested in obliging them.
I saw there are rules for backgrounds and families. Will this give way to stat out children? I have a couple of players that feel like playing younger casters and I'm interested in obliging them.
You could try using the "young" template from the Bestiary.
"From delving deep into your character’s background to exploring life between adventures to building strongholds, attracting followers, and conquering kingdoms, this wide-ranging resource for players and Game Masters greatly expands the scope of characters and campaigns."
So it sounds like maybe yes ...
CalebTGordan
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32