Hey all!
Today, I'm starting my fourth attempt at a Kingmaker campaign. The first two were when I was a complete rookie, the third was good, but nearly all of the players dropped out, and now I'm finally trying to do it again. I'm using a variety of subsystems for this game, including a few of my own. They include:
- Armor as DR: I'm trying to run a gritty, semi-realistic campaign using the Pathfinder rules set, so this and Vigor and Wound Points seemed a natural choice. Essentially, whenever an attack makes it past Vigor points, the DR kicks in for wound points.
- Armor HP: I'm keeping track of the HP of armor. The HP of any given armor piece is equal to 10 x the DR it gives, and any time an attack makes it past the armor's DR, it takes damage equal to the player. Repairing armor costs 1 silver per hit point.
- Limb HP: Each limb has wound points equal to half the character's CON, the torso has wound points equal to the character's CON, and you subtract damage from the character's wound points as a whole and the limb's wound points. Whenever an attack hits, I roll d100 to determine what part of the body it hits: 1-50 is the torso, 51-65 is the sword arm/right arm, 66-75 is the shield arm/left arm, 76-85 is the right leg, 86-95 is the left leg, 96-100 is the head. When a limb runs out of wound points, it is crippled. A crippled arm gives -4 to attack and -2 to damage, or halving the shield bonus to Defense (depending what the limb is holding), a crippled leg gives -10 to movement speed and -2 to reflex saves, a crippled torso is 1d6 bleed damage per round until it is patched up with a DC 15 Heal check, and a crippled head means decapitation.
- "Piecemeal Armor:" I'm using my own, simpler variant of piecemeal armor: light armor gives DR 1/armor to limbs, medium armor gives DR 3/armor to limbs, and heavy armor gives DR 5/armor to limbs.
Here's the basic campaign info:
The player characters are all noble scions of some standing in one of the following three noble houses: House Forrester, House Winterhavyn, and House Whitehill. The three houses have been in alliance for as long as anyone can remember, standing against the wild frostkin from the north and acting as the first line of defense from the foreign legions of the mysterious and sinister realm of Thikas from across the Virden sea. All of the houses are fiercely loyal to the old line of the Sunborn kings, who have lead the kingdom of Wyrd for two thousand years. Seven years ago, however, a rebellious, powerful noble family called the Saerkasen (Old Speech for "the Proud and Mighty) staged a coup against the Sunborn with the support of two of the other noble houses, Ithara and Othasdin. They slaughtered nearly every member of the family, and have been hunting fervently for the few that survived.
Ever since then, the assaults from Thikas and the frostkin have ceased, with only a few scouts sighted now and then. This coupled with the Saerkasen's brutally efficient scare tactics against the barbarians which have made them all but cease their raids, the northern houses of Forrester, Winterhavyn, and Whitehill have been made redundant. In addition, the new King Lithiras knows of the northern houses loyalty to the Sunborn, and is rather suspicious of them. On the verge of being merged with Ithara, Othasdin, and Pnumi (a house that stayed neutral in the coup, but has since allied itself with the Saerkasen), the northern houses are making a dangerous gambit. Their resources stretched thin due to Lithiras' ridiculous demands, they are sending their most promising scions (ages 16-20) north of their territory, in a bid to scout out the fuzzy region between frostkin lands and Wyrd under the pretense of searching for more darkwood that the Forresters have a talent for shaping. In reality, they are scouting out the Frostlands in an attempt to discover whether they are suitable for settlement. The northern houses hope to establish a power base up there on the pretense of logging darkwood that they know is up there and then have it "unexpectedly" declare sovereignty a month before the date for the the northern houses are to be merged with those that are loyal to the king.
-House Forrester: One of the oldest houses, it primarily exists for its lumber industry. Its craftsmen are legendary, able to create the finest shields out of the darkwood that is found primarily in their lands. However, their supply is dwindling, and they are desperate to get more.
-House Winterhavyn: A house of almost entirely soldiers, it has been in existence ever since Wyrd was founded by the Sunborn to protect its borders from the frostkin up north. Legendary for its warriors, not so much for its political savvy.
-House Whitehill: When a young Winterhavyn noble was exiled for having an affair with a minor Pnumi, she gathered her most loyal followers and set up a fort on top of an ancient cairn. The stones of the cairn were bleached white by some unknown force, and proved unusually strong. After many generations of building and expanding, the Whitehills were finally recognized as a house of their own, and are now on amicable terms with the Winterhavyns. The Whitehills have discovered the secret to "stonebleaching," as they call it, and are the best masons in Wyrd.
Some basic information that I have so far:
-The frostkin are not one cohesive creature, rather, they are various fae (some monsters from the Beastiary have different types, but they are all fae for my purposes) who all belong to the Winter Court. However, due to the small amount of survivors from their raids on northern villages, and the fact that those under siege in forts want to fight them at a distance, they all view the frostkin as one species.
-Oleg's trading post is now an unnamed fort that primarily exists to guard the only crossing across a broad, wild river from the barbarians. Although the soldiers there have been growing complacent in recent years due to the lack of raids, on the day the PCs arrive the barbarians will return in force to assault the fort. Oleg is the captain of the fort, and Svetlana is his young daughter.
-The attacks from Thikas and the frostkin have ceased due to a profane pact between the Saerkasen and Thikas. In return for a guaranteed success for the coup, the Saerkasen would act as puppets for the Thikans and the Thikans would bind the portal leading to the Winter Court to a frozen pool in an ancient temple to the Norns (the primary religion in Wyrd), thus preventing the frostkin from entering Wyrd.
-The frostkin only enter Wyrd to make assaults on the Sunborn, whose ancestry to the Summer Court gives the sun fae a foothold in the Prime Material Plane.
-The barbarian's new activity is because they were drawn together by one woman, Okatha Saerkasen, an exiled princess who, bitter from her family abuse and exile, is determined to strike a blow against them. This makes the barbarians a valid ally, if the players choose to think. This is my replacement for the Stag Lord and his bandits, although the Stag Lord is a lieutenant of her's.
-The Frostlands have been a prison for an exiled Winter Court king, the central glacier serving as a binding point. With the recent buzz of activity in the Frostlands, he connives to break free.
The Lakara and Fintas tribes, although well within Okatha's domain, have largely been left alone. Most likely because when scouts were sent into their strange forests, none of them returned.
In truth, the forest of Lakara and Fintas are the legendary lost grove of darkwood the party is allegedly looking for. The Lakara are the equivalent of the kobolds, and act like a tribe of Loraxes: they keep the trees happy and healthy, tending to their needs. Their leader, an adept named Ulana, is somewhat troubled by a newcomer who lives on the fringes of the tribe's territory. Named Tiniri, he has been leading some of Ulana's tribe to the worship of a strange creature named Sharptooth. Having seen the terrible effects of "Sharptooth's curse," (in reality just a particularly nasty poison), now the Lakara tribe is an even split between those who worship Sharptooth out of fear and those who still venerate the Wild Court of fae.
Ulana's troubles are doubled by the fact that the neighboring tribe, the Fintas, have started desecrating the corpse of a massive darkwood tree, which used to be a portal to the Wild Court. Ever since Wyrd's ties to the courts have been cut off, the tree has been withering. Recently, however, it started growing again, while still maintaining that strange withered look. The Fintas have recently turned to the worship of the vile, exiled Void Court (the equivalent of the Cthulhu Mythos), and are releasing and corrupting the trapped energy within the ancient tree to summon a portal to their domain.
Another problem in the darkwood grove (I guess forest would be more accurate) is that mites, sensing the arrival of their masters, the Winter Court, imminent, has been setting their insectile army on the roots of the darkwood tree in the hopes of presenting a gift of a despoiled place of beauty to the court. These insects have been empowered with the spare magical energies from the ritual the Fintas are performing, allowing their jaws to become powerful enough to actually be harmful to the trees.
The two players who have actually created their characters are:
- Sherlock Shirogane Whitehill: The apprentice spymaster for the Whitehills, Shirogane (Sherlock is his title) is roguishly charming and has a rather dry wit, and has taken on the responsibilities of his master due to the fact that he is often away on missions (NG Sleuth Investigator 1).
- Miserix Winterhaven: An up-and-coming officer in Winterhavyn's small army, he is completely ruthless, serious, and somewhat amoral, but he uses these traits for the greater good. (LE Warmaster 1).
I'll post updates as more people join us.
Dotting so I can read as it appears. Looking forward to it!