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I'm currently working on a stone age campaign and was wondering if anyone had experience with this they could share or any knowledge of resources that might prove useful to me. Ive already selected available races and classes but I was looking for any input regarding other changes people would suggest.
Don't worry I'm experience as a gm and my players aren't new to the game so the setting won't be an issue for the group just in case anyone wants to suggest avoiding awkward/different campaign settings.
I'm currently working on a stone age campaign and was wondering if anyone had experience with this they could share or any knowledge of resources that might prove useful to me. Ive already selected available races and classes but I was looking for any input regarding other changes people would suggest.
Don't worry I'm experience as a gm and my players aren't new to the game so the setting won't be an issue for the group just in case anyone wants to suggest avoiding awkward/different campaign settings.
I just wanted to mention as well that all of us waiting to play this campaign are excited to play, and have no issue with restricted classes, races, weapons, or low magic settings with slim to no magic items.
As weapons and armor will be worse I'd ban or nerf spellcasting.
Generally combat will be much more deadly with less armor and most likely less healing so I'd give everyone toughness for free. Early men had to be tough to survive after all.
Then I'd raise most knowledge skill DCs except perhaps knowledge nature. Same with craft. (Raising DCs is easier than reducing, forbidding skills)
Perhaps exchange the literacy skill with one that lets you remember stuff better because people with a pure oral tradition always have guys who remember the stuff everyone else writes down.
If you're pre-agriculture, remind your players that everyone should have at least some survival skill as you're goinng to be spending a good portion of your time keeping fed.
If you're willing to do a little conversion, you might look at Dreamtime from BTRC. It's for the CORPS system but could be converted to Pathfinder or simply mined for ideas.
Ya I'm not banning spellcasters but removing some and limiting others to some extent based on what seems appropriate for the setting.
In this campaign, is there a more advanced culture that existed before? Finding ancient relics would be alway to introduce better equipment and magic.
I would not ban all spellcasters, but disallow classes that depend on research and written language.
Agreed, but I'd simply create new archetypes for various spellcasters that didn't require literacy. And some archetypes can be tweaked to work as well. In Rite Publishing's Way of the Yakuza, I've developed the Horimyo (designed by Jonathan McAnulty, at my direction) which is a tattoo wizard - I think can easily fit into a Stone Age setting.
Although the Kaidan setting guides won't be released until Oct 2013, the treatment that Yokinto (Kaidan's version of Shinto) regarding localized kami spirits and the relationship between kannushi (cleric/oracles) and such spirits seem to be a better way to build divine classes and relationships to spirits than standard PF.
But yeah, bards, druids, oracles, sorcerers, witch, even magus (altered to not require research of spellbooks) easily fits into such a setting. Some wizards, as in my horimyo above. Ranger spells are great, thus rangers of course. And agreed, paladins have no place there.
Another thing to consider to primitive man, much more of the natural world was steeped in magic - since much more was unknown then to now.
I'm not allowing wizard, cleric, fighter, paladin and most of the other advanced classes. Only casters will be sorcerer,witch,druid and oracle.
There are no real civilizations, though some small villages and things of the like. Most people will be nomadic or semi nomadic. There will be an emphasis on survival and I intend to create a simple herbalism system or something of the like.
I'm adding a slightly altered Neanderthal as a playable race.
Ive debated cleric but removed them based more on the themes of the class. They serve a god like a profession and live to spread the word of the deity generally which are ideas/lifestyles that I don't see in my setting.
I do however intend to allow most any class if built using a variant or build that properly suits the setting so a cleric of nature could be allowed. Another example would be a variant for bard that lets them fit in as someone who chants and plays war drums and things like that.
How about instead of nerfing spellcasting you make it imperative for everyone to start out with one or two levels of warrior to represent the hardships everybody must go through before reaching adult age?
True clerics don't need to worship a god and thats why I said I would be allowing things like clerics based on nature but not clerics outright. My players are all experienced and I've told them that any other classes may be allowed so long as built in a way that suits the setting well enough.
I like the idea of a warrior level, giving toughness was suggested but I think this might work to give the PCs a little more strength and hp which seems appropriate for the setting.
hmm I may give the PCs Self-Sufficient and toughness as opposed to warrior levels.
what I'm curious about is the following:
How do you plan to balance martials vs the full casters? The martials will be strongly nerfed by the lack of decent weapons and armor.
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Well on the concerns of wizards id allow it but instead of writing u can do what i did with y goblins and go for pictures. A picture book would be great for this style of play on wizards. Now clerics imo should be allowed as long as they worship an ideal or go kinda the Druid wrought of drawing there power from the spirits of nature or the gods of the sun, moon, earth, sea, ext. The only classes i can rely see that are not rely in the mood of the game from what ive heard is Monk, Cavalier, Gunslinger, and Inquisitor. Monk because u need monasteries rely to make it work. Cavalier is fighting from horseback and that did not get effective or rely heard of since Genghis Khan. Gunslinger is an obvious. Inquisitor is imo a class that is for games were gods dont like each other and though i dont know much about ur game i dont see y any good will be at war with each other if there is any.
what I'm curious about is the following:
How do you plan to balance martials vs the full casters? The martials will be strongly nerfed by the lack of decent weapons and armor.
Hmm, this is true...
What if he gave martial classes bonus feats to make up for it? Or natural armor/ damage bonuses every couple of levels?
Anyone know of any good resources for this setting? Also anyone have any suggestions about skills? I've stated which classes I'm going to allow and said that any other class will be allowed but only if built to fit the setting so I don't intend to change that ruling.
I intend to try and maintain a large variety of weapons by using alternate material for some and also by scrounging up every primitive weapon I can find from 3.5 books and whatnot.
I'd look at the various low-magic threads for suggestions on how to balance things/build encounters.
Allow the use of low-level magic to strengthen stone and/or wood so that you can maintain the ambiance of stone age weapons and shields, but you can use existing stats for them.
It all depends on how much you want to recreate actual stone age culture. There were no "swords" in the West until the advent of bronze weapons, but Mayans and Incans used wooden "swords" with embedded obsidian edges which were quite deadly, if somewhat fragile.
I like what you have put together so far. It sounds like fun. I have a stone age culture in my world and have offered my players the chance to play a stone age campaign but so far they have decided to play a more traditional setting.
My stone age culture is modeled on Native American cultures of the Northwest coast and Alaska.
I noted about what class you want, but the martial artist variant of the monk might fight, early unarmed fightingto get around armor and weapon issues, and bards work great especially focused on oritory or singing. But I understand your reasons. UC has some good info on primitive weapon/armor materials. But yeah, casters at higher levels are going to really shine.
You should probably drop all knowledges except nature and geography.
You might keep Kn(Dungeoneering) if you plan on having any caving going on.
That makes sense Lemon, I likely will remove most of the knowledges though I will go over them and may leave another 1 or 2 depending.
I didn't really have a specific culture to base it on so much as just a mash up of early cultures. I was thinking of using some Mayan weapons such as ones made with obsidian or jade and things like that but in general I was going to try and pull the weapons and armor from several different early cultures.
Also just to be clear, all classes if built appropriately will be allowed so don't worry about trying to convince me that some of my disallowed classes should be playable. What I'm allowing is just a guide and my PCs know this and are all very creative so I'm sure there will be some of my banned classes in the party :P
If I were going to create a prehistoric setting from scratch (depending on how deep I'd want to go) I'd first decide are we talking Old Stone Age, Middle Stone Age or New Stone Age. I probably would choose the end of the Old Stone Age leading into the Middle.
Old Stone Age being the most primitive, caves and nomads, while Middle starts to improve technology, and raising animals instead of depending on following wild herds. New stone age is agriculture, and might be a tad too "modern", but you could have one advanced stone aged culture agrarian based with a primitive cleric based single deity religion, the first step towards modern divinity.
Next I'd consider the distances between necessary resources and their distribution across their ranging region. Something to consider, I discovered doing some of my own geneaology that one branch of the family came from Scotland who fought the Romans and lost, traveled to Norway, then some members were recruited to fight for Atilla the Hun, thus traveled by foot from Norway to Hungary. So even 1800 years ago, people traveled long distances despite doing so by foot only. Nomads would have no problem marching a nomadic tribe a thousand miles to reach an important resource destination - perhaps several resources hundreds of miles apart with localized threats at each place.
Resources might be sources of salt, flint/obsidian, following both growing cycles (for gathering herbs, fruit, vegetables, roots) and hunting seasons - perhaps herds of wild bison, mastadon (whatever your tribe hunts) might have their own unique ranges that the tribe must travel 250 miles to reach their optimal migration regions.
I'd next create various factions, other tribes that compete for the same resources and past 'diplomatic relations' between tribes, and all other defined communities (not knowing what kind of other possible non-human sentients if you're including such - possibly other homonids.) Consider that there might not be anything such as borders, as resources are limited and multiple tribal communities share must share some of the resources, though each tribal 'nation' might have an originating homeland that they winter or visit tribal moots.
While I being an RPG cartographer would no doubt then create my own semi-continental region that includes the entire ranging area of my given tribe. However, if you lack the talent to create such a map (especially at the speed that I can), I'd visit the Cartographers' Guild and search through the Finished Maps forum searching for gridded or none gridded map with no labels, domain borders - some wide open wilderness terrain that fits the whim of your intended setting.
I'm sure there are stone age settings from other game systems that you could adapt to Pathfinder - I just tend to design all my worlds and not to use published settings. The above is just how I'd do it.
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There are GURPS books for Ice-Age and Dinosaurs -- you can purchase them, you can even view the PDFs online before you buy, if you search like I did. I think this will help you the most, shouldn't cost much if you bought the PDFs!
There's also a stone age RPG called "Totem" you could look at:
http://www.geocities.com/zozergames/totem1.html
Hope that helps.
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I've just started running a stone age campaign, so some things I've run into;
Classes
Some classes MUST HAVE civilization, but most can be re-interpreted without it. Ordinary wizards and alchemists, crossbow fighters and so forth are out of luck. But you can make an interpretation to let even wizards and alchemists function;
* The oral tradition wizard learns spells as stories he tells, rather than writing them in a spellbook. This is more like a smelly old shaman who knows creepy rituals, instead of the bookish guy with glasses and a pointy hat.
* Likewise, you could make an alchemist archetype focused on herbal potions and animal body fluids.
* The Fighter class is second only to the monk if you want to use unarmed fighting styles; they can be built just fine without advanced gear. Hide Armor and a Greatclub aren't quite as good as Full Plate & Greatswords, but it works.
* Paladins are actually well-suited to this sort of campaign; Smite Evil as a way to get past DR means they suffer much less from lack of equipment than most classes. Lay On Hands and Disease Immunity and good Saving Throws also mean that paladins are quite well-adapted to surviving without civilization as a safety net.
Mundane Equipment
Martial classes are in trouble because there's no advanced armor; hide and heavy wooden shields are probably the best available. That will make them a bit weaker than normal.
Ultimate Combat has rules for pre-Iron-Age weaponry. In the stone age it's generally wood, stone, obsidian and bone. All of those except wood have the Fragile property unless they're Masterwork. Fragile means that on a to-hit roll of 1 it becomes Broken, of if it was already Broken, Destroyed. The funny effect is that wooden weapons (quarterstaff, greatclub) become the best available weapons until you can obtain Masterwork. That's not really all that problematic.
As for other equipment, you may have to go through the equipment list and cut out everything that's not been discovered yet. Also, there might not be a monetary economy; in that case take a look at Trade Goods. In my game, important trade goods will be salt and unprocessed obsidian, as well as silver (needed for many cleric spells) and gemstones. Precious metals I'll hand out by weight, not coinage.
Big Six / Magic items
If civilization is just getting started, there probably aren't many hoards of treasure lying around, unless there were precursor civilizations. Likewise, magic item shops probably don't exist. Trading magic items is hard; the easiest way to get them would be to Craft them yourself. However, there may also not be any convenient way to buy the (undescribed) ingredients for crafting magic items.
* You could allow players to skin and harvest body parts from unusual/magical animals they kill, and sell/use those as magic item components. This has the side effect of changing which monsters have a lot of treasure though.
* You could instead just have a whole lot fewer magic items, and much reduced treasure, and instead award distinctions; feat-like abilities people gain when they gain levels, that mimic/replace the effects of Big Six magic items. That way, characters still stay roughly as strong as WBL/CR assume.
Skills
I don't restrict knowledges. While there's no literary tradition, there could be stories told by the campfire about the various things you can encounter or what's happened to the tribe before.
Expect players to pay more attention to Craft and Profession skills, if that's the most reliable way they're gonna get equipment.
I really like the idea of Distinctions and think I shall put it to practice.
I see what your saying about the knowledges and will look closely at them before removing any.
I've got UC and definitely intend on using stone, obsidian, and bone weapons to aid in maintaining the weapon variety. I'm intending on my players crafting most of there weapons and gear hopefully.
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I've gone through the weapon list and made some decisions about what's available with which materials, because mindlessly applying the UC rules might result in some weird situations.
Basically, swords are unavailable until the bronze age, crossbows are strictly iron age. Flails, scythes and many polearms are weaponized agricultural tools, so don't come into the picture until agriculture is discovered. I've also pegged composite bows as a bronze age discovery.
Which means that slings are suddenly quite competitive, as are clubs and quarterstaves.
One thing to pay attention to: the Mending spell. It's an easy way to repair broken items, but it can only repair items weighing no more than 1lb per level. Take a good look at the weapon listing and apply stone age material effects to those listed weights; many of them can't be repaired easily when Fragile makes them Broken. But obsidian daggers are viable.
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I'm currently working on a stone age campaign and was wondering if anyone had experience with this they could share or any knowledge of resources that might prove useful to me. Ive already selected available races and classes but I was looking for any input regarding other changes people would suggest.
Don't worry I'm experience as a gm and my players aren't new to the game so the setting won't be an issue for the group just in case anyone wants to suggest avoiding awkward/different campaign settings.
Buy a copy of GURPS Low Tech, and watch "Stories from the Stone Age."