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.
This book really blew me away (to think I was almost hesitant at first!) Every chapter is filled full of great things.
The character backgrounds are sublime, and the lists and lists and new traits (and flaws!!!) is mind-boggling. I also really enjoy the story feats.
The stat blocks for buildings are not only great for a kingdom building campaign, but also for a GM to populate a town with. A lot of the building even have full grid maps!
Honestly, I could just go on and on and on, but I think it would best do the product justice or you to give it a solid read through yourselves.
This is a great resource for Game Master's and player's alike, but if you are like me and enjoy creating your own campaigns, this is worth the money. Immediately after thumbing through the pages you will be inspired to create an epic battle or create a family of NPCs for your PCs to contend with.
The only minor criticism I will add is I would have liked to have some advanced character sheets to incorporate drawbacks and some of the new background options, but this is something that can easily be created.
This product for me is a Rare five stars, it exceeded my expectations.
This book delivers not only great options for the GM, but for players as well.
For players (as well as NPCs) you are given a very nice selection of background options to choose from which can also help you to narrow down your decision on traits and story feats to take (Options from lineage, family, place of birth, even types of birth).
For those you who have played it, the story Feats herein remind me of the destinies a player could pick in Star Wars Saga. As feats they give you certain bonuses or abilities under certain situations and when certain prerequisites are met (differant for every feat) they become upgraded to be even better, basically 2 feats for the price of 1! Good enough of a feat to stand on their own, the story aspect can greatly help to tie characters and players to whatever story and plot a GM wants to tell, and vice-versa.
The Retraining options are a welcome addition, not only allowing players to alter or update their characters as new material and options come out but also from an in story perspective to better adapt to certain circumstances. Ranging from things like a HD to skill points to feats, even archetypes and class abilities (the ranger's favored enemy and terrain comes to mind).
Now for the really fun stuff.
The rules for Mass Combat (army vs. army) look really interesting but alas, I will admit, I did not read too much into this as my GM did, who likes now having an actual option for combat like this instead of just relagating it to cutscenes.
And the Kingdom Building rules. *drool* Oh the Kingdom Building rules. Building on(pun not intended) the hex based rules introduced in the Kingmaker Adventure Path the rules presented here have been largely expanded on and polished up, as befitting a whole chapter in a 250+ page hardcover as opposed to an article in a 100 page softcover. All manner of buildings, their functions, their needs, and their uses are explained within, as well as all manner of other types of architecture such as roads, defenses, safety, and aesthetics.
To accompany this we also have Kingdom Managing rules and guides. Various roles player characters and NPCs can play in running, protecting, and expanding your kingdom, as well as managing running a kingdom while still adventuring.
A very much loved addition at our gaming table, I can safely say it is worth every penny and highly recommend you adding it to your gambling group.
This book reminds me in some ways of classic RPGs from the old days, with tons of charts to determine some background pieces... except these charts are far more detailed and optional. There is some *really* good material in the first couple chapters to, in a matter of minutes, have a very detailed background for any NPC or lazy/undecided/unmotvated player. it is really, really good material!
If you hate that, the book is worth it alone just for the massive new array of traits spread across all categories. pages and pages, including a lot of new race traits (not to be confused with racial traits). Worth the price right there.
Then theres a ton of great GM only material for building a campaign, and ill just say it is high quality, ill be here all day if i describe it all.
The surprise gem near the end is a brilliant stroke - they have taken the successful concept of Fame from Sanctioned play (where characters earn fame with a particular Faction, and can then spend it on minor perks) and now have a system in place for 'regular' players not in sanctioned play to earn Fame in i guess what youd call 'the general world'. Its taking a popular concept from sanctioned play and allowing a Gm running a non-sanctioned game to award his players Fame in his campaign, which they can spend on minor perks. Brilliant and not just slapped together, the section is extensive.
Whether you want the player helper stuff (or instant NPC background in 2 min), or the traits to give a new host of options to players to choose, or just basic campaign material, or this new non-sanctioned fame for your campaign, this book has it, and would be worth the price if you just wanted one of those four categories.
Just from the first few chapters I've already gotten my money's worth from this delicious product. Already harvesting bits and pieces to incorporate into an ongoing campaign, and I'm looking forward to offering the story feats to my players - some of the story feats seem like they were tailor-made for specific PCs in the game!
I recently obtained a copy of the Ultimate Campaign and become very intrigue in concept of building a kingdom.
I would like to create a web-based game out of these rule sets and concepts. Would I be allowed to do that? What would be the restrictions and/or conditions?
Mainly because of background generator :'D I'm currently starting campaign where it is used(its really fun system me and my players think) and I find it bit of dismay how it doesn't cover all the classes and not all the advanced race guide races.
So far I'm loving the book, but I have a quick question:
In the Terrain Improvements section it states that any improvement that has an (*) next to it can be built with other improvements. Does this mean that you can only have one improvement without an (*) and all the rest can have them or does that mean that if I build a mine I would not be able to build anything else there?
The first is correct. If it doesn't have an asterisk, you can build only one improvement of that type. If it does, you can stack it with other types (including with starless types).
I'd have to go back and look at my original turnover, but I'm pretty sure that the Farm should *not* have an asterisk. Basically, the idea was that you could create any one of the following in a hex: Farm, Mine, Quarry, Sawmill.
Then, if you wanted, you could also add other things running through the hex, like an Aqueduct, Bridge, Canal, Road, etc., or a smaller improvement like a Fort or Watchtower; any number of these could stack with the one basic improvement listed above.
The operating principle is that improvements of the first four types (Farm, Mine, Quarry, Sawmill) really represent the sum total of the economic use of the land in that hex. It's not one farm, it's 100+ square miles of farmland; not one mill or mine or quarry but lots of them.
The other improvements are more concentrated in terms of their physical size, which is why you can combine them in hexes with other things.
Cities themselves are much the same. A city doesn't fill the whole hex. An official-sized city district is a bit less than a square mile, so even a huge multi-district city occupies only a tiny fraction of a hex. IOW, there's no problem putting a city in a hex that already has other improvements (or vice versa).
P.S. The deletion of the asterisk from the Farm is not official errata, though; it's there in the final text, so if you're playing RAW then by all means use it. If you're interested in RAI, I intended for it...
Jason, there is another clarification needed (at least in my mind)... can multiple improvements of the same type that have asterisks be put in the same hex? So, can you put multiple roads in a single hex? Since the watchtower specifically says you can not put it in a hex with another watchtower, then that would lead me to believe that other ones CAN be stacked with them selves (roads with roads, canals with canals, etc.). Is that true? Or is it intended that only one of each type of improvement can be put into any one hex?
That has been clarified, not sure if here or on another thread.
But basically, each improvement can only be done once. Either the hex has the improvement or it doesn't.
The published rules have a small error though regarding which improvements can stack with others or not. Each hex can have any number of improvements that have an asterisk, and only one improvement without an asterisk. But this improvement without asterisk can be built on the same hex that has improvements with an asterisk.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber
So I was looking at the Alternate Profession Rules, and I cannot seem to find any benefit to having more than the minimum number of Employees once you have a Medium or Large size business. It seems that all they do is provide a penalty once you hit a certain point, is there something missing that got cut?
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber
What you write in a fugue state, stays in a fugue state.
Jen Page
Media Specialist, SmiteWorks USA (Fantasy Grounds)
Happy October, everyone! Just so you know, this is now available for purchase from Fantasy Grounds or on Steam. Sync your account first to get it a discount equivalent to the PDF Price ($9.99)
