| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hi guys,
I'm currently DMing a sandbox campaign in my homebrew world, with a huge emphasis on exploration and wilderness adventure. (Insane amounts of work, BTW, but immensely rewarding in my experience). One of the concepts that I want to implement is the idea that the setting is the home of some legendary masters of the arcane or martial arts, living in the wilderlands as hermits, wanderers or reclusive loners (such as a mythical, reputedly immortal shaman; a legendary elven archer; a lone and eccentric wizard in his remote tower; an old heroic swordsman; etc) and that upon finding them, they might train the PCs, passing their secrets unto a new generation of heroes. I think it's a cool concept, one that might interest my players and give them additional incentives for exploring the vast wilderness. The part that keeps me struggling is the rewards to be gained from such training. With casters, this is not difficult (access to rare spells, etc), but martials require extra thought. Some of the ideas that are bouncing in my head:
1) Restrict the access to some of the feats in Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, APG, etc, adding as a prerequisite "being trained by master whatever". If so, would you keep these rewards within the normal feat progression, or would you find acceptable to give the new feat as a special reward above and beyond the normal class-and-level feats? I'm partial to the former, but perhaps this is seen as unsatisfactory after a long quest to find the reclusive master.
2) Make the training an essential requisite for Prestige Classes. With the rejection of PrC in favor of archetypes (at least in my group and at the current levels), and the added amount of work that designing or adapting the classes would mean, this is not an ideal option, but flavor-wise it makes a lot of sense.
3) Award optional mechanics that are not usually allowed in the campaign (hero points, for example) to those trained by a legendary master.
4) Additional combat maneuvers such as those found in The Secrets of Martial Mastery by Rite Publishing. The problem I find in this is that I see those maneuvers as tricks and stunts that everyone should be able to try, most of all veteran warriors and rogues. Too pedestrian for a "legendary" master, in a way.
That's mostly all the options I'm considering right now, and not a single one fully convinces me. What do you think, fellow Paizonians? Ideas? Suggestions?
Well you could just prohibit advancing past a certain level in any given class. say lv 12 unless you find a legendary teacher in that class.
I would say #2 is the best choice. However it will PROBALBY bite you either way. Odds are that if you limit someone leveling up... then they won't do it. Prestige Classes are questionable choices ANYWAY... but making them harder to get to, makes them even LESS attractive.
I played in a game where we had to 'train' to level up, and frankly I HATED it. NOT having bonuses... that you already EARNED, just feels like a punishment.
Having to stop the quest because OOC you know you need to train breaks the 'reality' of the game. YEAH... we're trying to rescue the princess... but This seemed like a good time to take a week off to train with the master...
I got frustrated that killing 400 goblins and surviving encounters that EARNED the xp... wasn't enough to give you bonuses... that sparring with a guy in the backyard for a couple of days DID...
REAL battle is more useful than 'fake' battle. If you EARNED the XP, you should be able to USE it...
THAT said... I think you SHOULD find SOME way to incorporate 'masters' into the game. PrC are 'specific' enough that it doesn't make much sense for people to 'learn on their own'... And i also like the idea that there new fancy things you can learn ONLY from that guy.
Myself, I'd find some way like #3. Find new fancy things that ADD to the level he already took from the xp.
Players LOVE getting EXTRA things... they DON'T love having to jump through hoops that are not RAW, or have to work twice as hard to get the same stuff they would in any OTHER game.
This is how it was in 2nd edition, that you had to go train with people at a certain level in order to level up and gain that new knowledge. I know for druids, you had to go find and defeat a druid of the same level you are in combat in his own forest, all the way up to beating the head druid of the continent.
I like this way but having to quest every level (which is essentially what you're doing) kinda sucks. I would say once every 5 or 10 levels, that way you can say hey, here's something really cool, you get to fight with the headmaster of your region, gain xp and level at the same time and it would be a perfect time to introduce the next main quest, especially if one just finished..
hope this helped!
How about granting a bonus combat feat (selected by the master) or a slotless magic item that is turned into an inherent ability of the character? In other words, training with a master gives you abilities beyond what you are entitled to from simple level advancement.
Another possibility is to use the playtest rules for Mythic Adventures that should be coming out very soon. Assume that each master is a mythic character, and that training with him gives a character his first mythic level in the master's mythic path. How well that would work can be determined once we get those playtest rules.
First of all, thank you people for your ideas and opinions!
Well you could just prohibit advancing past a certain level in any given class. say lv 12 unless you find a legendary teacher in that class.
Thanks for your suggestion, but it does not work for me. Limiting PCs goes against my intentions. I hated level caps back in 2E, and do not plan on bringing them back in any way. The rewards for training with a legendary master should be cool and feel like... well, like a reward.
things I mostly agree on.
Agreed. Fluff-wise, Prestige Classes seem the perfect solution... mechanically, not so much. If for the pains of digging up the whereabouts of a legendary master of the martial arts, preparing an expedition to get there and after surviving the hazards of wilderness travel and passing the arduous tests of the cranky old warrior, I tell my players: "congrats, you now will be able to take levels in this awesome PrC that is mechanically inferior to the highest levels of your base class and will prevent you from ever acquiring your capstone abilities"... well, I'm with you there, this option seems good but in practice it doesn't work either.
I have never considered training to level up, for pretty much the reasons you exposed. We never used those rules in 2E, either. However, this campaign is, in some way, "old-schoolish" in feel (but not in rules), a hexcrawl where the characters write their own stories and have absolute freedom to explore in any direction they want. The world has to offer incentives for the PCs to explore and wander, and that's what these "legendary masters" are. Finding one and persuading him/her to teach you is no mean feat, and I want some benefit that the player can enjoy mechanically and at the same time comes with a cool story behind, not something that looks like a bonus but comes with attached limitations.
This is how it was in 2nd edition, that you had to go train with people at a certain level in order to level up and gain that new knowledge. I know for druids, you had to go find and defeat a druid of the same level you are in combat in his own forest, all the way up to beating the head druid of the continent.
I like this way but having to quest every level (which is essentially what you're doing) kinda sucks. I would say once every 5 or 10 levels, that way you can say hey, here's something really cool, you get to fight with the headmaster of your region, gain xp and level at the same time and it would be a perfect time to introduce the next main quest, especially if one just finished..
hope this helped!
Yeah, I remember those druid duels of old! Cool concept, but really impractical in actual play imho... I doubt I implement something like this for several reasons, the main being that it doesn't fit with the main premise of this campaign. If I ever do something like that (in another kind of campaign), probably it would be a once-in-a-PC's-lifetime thing, but right now I don't see it happening. But you're right, handled properly it could be one of the coolest moments in a PC's career! I'm saving this one for the future...
How about granting a bonus combat feat (selected by the master) or a slotless magic item that is turned into an inherent ability of the character? In other words, training with a master gives you abilities beyond what you are entitled to from simple level advancement.
Another possibility is to use the playtest rules for Mythic Adventures that should be coming out very soon. Assume that each master is a mythic character, and that training with him gives a character his first mythic level in the master's mythic path. How well that would work can be determined once we get those playtest rules.
The bonus combat feat or the benefit of a slotless magic item are the kind of mechanics that resonate with my basic idea, something special that rewards the player in a unique way. If I take the feat route, I guess giving a bonus feat is probably a better idea than just saying "next time you gain a feat you'll be able to select the X feat". However, the Mythic Adventures idea may just be a bullseye. I didn't know much about it, but with the scarce info I had I was planning on using them to recreate the feel of the Silmarillion-like Dawn of Times of my campaign world. After your suggestion, though, I read more about them and man! those rules may be perfect as a training reward! This option seems very interesting to me and it fits neatly with the "legendary masters" concept. The bits about magic items that grow with the character is also of enormous interest to me, since I'm sure that the Pathfinder crew will implement it infinitely better than WotC and their Weapons of (Disappointing) Legacy. I guess Paizo just got one more playtester!
I like the bonus feat idea, or maybe specifically the Additional Traits feat.
If I implemented "mentor-student" system, I think I'll use that as a basis for retraining (class features/feats/skills/etc), sort of like how one has to "unlearn bad habits" when learning something new. Maybe additional class skills to go along with skill-retraining? A more elaborate training system would be to swap out levels of 1 class for another.
I would suggest something outside the normal progression.
As said above, if Mythic Adventures is out in time, and it fits for you, give them a mythic tier from training. (Though you're probably going to need to make sure everyone can get at the training with the same effort and somewhat near the same time.) If Mythic isn't out, or it doesn't suit you, hero points, additional feats, traits, or skill ranks are suitable. From what I've read so far, Mythic or hero points are the best suited, largely because that's a matter of the legendary master teaching the PC essentially how to be awesome, rather than a specific technique that may not apply to the character. After all, you don't want to have one PC lacking the bonus because there's no master that suits his style... or to actually have a perfectly suited master for every character.
Gating PrCs and feats with training requirements is just a bad idea, but you already know that. (I've got a character who is now in a PrC, and it had special prereqs; I spent a lot of time bugging the DM to be sure I would be able to meet those prerequisites by a certain point, because otherwise I would have been left with a different build with either less synergy at some points, or in the worst case, actually having more levels of 3.5 fighter instead of a rather strong PrC.)
We don't use traits in this campaign (we have something similar called backgrounds that I had already concocted when I began working on it before traits were there).
Something outside the normal progression is definitely the way to go, mythic rules or otherwise.
After all, you don't want to have one PC lacking the bonus because there's no master that suits his style... or to actually have a perfectly suited master for every character.
You're quite right, that's a potential pitfall, and I'm also trying to figure out how to do it fairly. On the one hand, this is a sandbox, where "player agency" is of paramount importance. On the other hand, it is unfair to let only one character train with a master if the others are unable or unwilling to find one that suits them. So if the party decides to find a legendary swordsman so the fighter can train under his tutelage, the DM cannot and does not want to force/persuade/railroad them to do otherwise, but the rogue, the cleric and the wizard may find it unfair. What to do?
Maybe create fairly generic masters who could train the whole party? It takes away a lot of flavor but solves the root problem. The disparity between PC classes makes this hard to implement and quite implausible imo. Equally implausible would be to have one master especially tailored to each PC... I mean, I can devise backstories and in-world reasons for three or four of these so-called masters, but more than that and it becomes too cheesy. Dilemmas, dilemmas...
I would keep the masters relatively general. What you want to avoid is a situation where the PCs feel the need to have a master who is an exact match. Make them semi-general; a powerful arcane caster, a powerful divine caster, a melee combatant, and a ranged combatant. One of them is also very skilled at stealth, and so on.
Cover all the core bases, and teach something general enough that it makes sense that the sword & shield wielding legendary fighter can teach it to the two-handed barbarian. And that the legendary ranger can teach it to the rogue, and so on. Based on what I know of hero points (quick skim) and the mythic previews, this is definitely doable.
If the masters are gating prestige classes or feats, or granting specific feats, then it's much more difficult, because it's hard to justify why the sword & shield wielding legendary fighter's specific techniques would be useful to the barbarian, and so on. But if what they're teaching is more general awesomeness rather than specific techniques, it makes perfect sense that they have something useful to pass on.
Beyond that, make sure that all the masters are about the same level of accessibility, at around the same level. That is, the party needs to be able to find out about all of them, get to them, and get their training essentially in sequence, not multiple levels apart. The key really is to make sure that it's not you as GM who is preventing that one PC from getting his training. It's the party being jerks or, more likely, that one PC not being interested in that sideplot. (Which seems unlikely... and in that case, you can look into alternate ways for that character to get equivalent power, or let him suffer.)
That certainly seems the best way to go. Thanks!
|
this is so totally cool! i think you should keep the masters specific. you said you had four or five of them, right? there is the diversity. sometimes some characters get to shine, sometimes others. i would have the bonuses even be just for one character. the one the master 'likes' the most.
and i would say something in the order of three new options to choose from - be it extra skill ranks, bonus bonus feats, or an additional spell known or per day. make it special! if the special thing really goes against the character concept, you could say that training with the master gives them insight into their own style - and award a bonus rank/feat/slot or whatever.
yeah the other people might get jealous, or they might be excited for their adventuring mate. the latter is the proper attitude. especially in a home campaign. besides, all the more incentive and excitement upon finding the next master!
also, if the training is 'free' on top of the standard, 'balanced' rules, then there is no opportunity cost - no tough decisions. i wouldn't even wait until someone leveled. just until they spent enough game-time, with 'learning rolls' or whatever, in order to reap the fruits of the training.
if you wanted to be strategic, you could find the player who is least happy with/most confused about their character, and 'plant' an appropriate master 'nearer' than the others...
either way though, the prestige class could work - but i would absolutely wait for a character prompt. let it be the player's idea. if the relationship is to be long-term, then this makes sense.
cheers.