I have a deep love of Eberron, and have a character concept that seems just perfect for this game:
Elven agent of House Phiarlan, Dragonmarked. One of his goals is to attempt to reunite Phiarlan and Thuranni.
Yes, and yes! Huge Eberron fan, and such a myriad array of character ideas! Do you plan to use any of Nick Logue's adventure trilogy?
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@The Morphling: Either of those two concepts seem solid for what I have in mind. Of the two, I'm more intrigued by the Occultist, but that's based exclusively on what you've written so far.
Yeah, I got excited about it when I typed it out too. And the opportunity to play an occultist is too good to pass up. I absolutely love that class. Occultist it shall be when it comes time for me to submit a character!
Definitely looks like I'll be going with The Bookworm for my campaign trait.
Stat Generation: Twenty Point Buy. Easy enough.
Starting Level and Gold: Level Two, 500 Gold, plus either one masterwork item or assorted scrolls adding up to no more than 350 GP total.
Classes: All Paizo classes, with the following slight modifications.
Summoner: Summoners must be unchained. Additionally, no Master Summoner or Synthesist.
Paladin: Paladins will not fall for interacting with evil in this setting, provided they can demonstrate some rationale for why they’re doing it.
Gunslinger: Misfire will be rolled, guns are “emergent”. Early firearms are available at the listed prices, and Advanced firearms are somewhere between rare and unheard of.
Racial Archetypes: If you wish to use a racial archetype for a race that doesn’t exist, you must PM me beforehand. Some archetypes (like Naga Aspirant, due to its very Nagaji-specific flavor) are not allowed, period, but others (like Cat Burglar, which has no specifically Catfolk flavor aside from the name) may be useable. Additionally, the Racial Substitution Levels on page 120 of Races of Eberron are to be treated as racial archetypes.
Two-Skill-Point Classes: These classes now have three skill points per level.
Artificer: The Eberron Pathfinder conversion linked in the Primer will be used.
Races: The following races will be legal on startup: Changelings (Eberron), Drow*, Dwarves, Elves, Goblins*, Gnomes, Hag-Born (Golarion Changelings), Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, Halflings, Hobgoblins*, Humans, Kalashtar, Shifters, and Warforged. In an ideal world, I’d want between two and three of the core races, one to two of the Eberron races, and 0 to 1 of the other races, but that’s likely to end up different in the final selection. Additionally, Drow, Goblins, and Hobgoblins all have different fluff than the standards in many settings, and you should be aware of that when writing their backstories.
Traits: All Paizo traits are available, with the exception of Campaign traits. You may take two, with a drawback available for a third at my discretion.
Bonus Feat: Everyone starts with one bonus feat. This feat must be used to expand your character away from their primary focus. For example, if you pick Power Attack as your first level feat, do not choose Weapon Focus (Melee weapon) as your bonus feat but rather Point Blank Shot or Amateur Investigator. I want to see characters who are capable in multiple areas of the game both within and outside of combat. Other bonus feats may be awarded as circumstances warrant.
Sources: The source material for this game will be divided into two lists. Note that neither of these lists include rd party material published by neither Paizo nor WotC.
Paizo Material: All Paizo material is open for play, though I reserve the right to veto certain feats and traits.
Eberron Campaign Setting Material: I own the following material, all 3.5: City of Stormreach, Eberron Campaign Setting, Explorer’s Handbook, Five Nations, Races of Eberron, and Sharn, City of Towers, from Wizards of the Coast. Other sources will only be legal if they can be found in an online database, and only after review.
What I’m Looking For: I’m not against optimization, but if I don’t see weaknesses and flaws somewhere, there’s going to be a problem. These aren’t high fantasy heroes; they’re pulp heroes. If you literally cannot play a character with mechanical weaknesses, at least have some RP ones, and try to demonstrate that they’ll show up in play.
I want to see a character sheet on the forum. It can be Hero-Lab or whatever you want to use, but it has to exist in your alias somewhere. I’d also like, at minimum, two paragraphs of backstory, a brief description of appearance (both in and out of battle gear), and a suggestion of what your character’s personality will be like. Finaly, think about between two and three NPCs that I can play with. Former employers, members of the Sharn Watch, or a tavern girl at your favorite inn, all that matters is that there are NPCs who know you in the world.
I’m trying something different with the traits. Here’s my five. Once you’ve found one you like, talk to me about it and list a couple bonuses you think you’d like. We’ll find one that works for both of us. Why am I doing it this way? I’d rather you play the character you like, and tying mechanics to the traits could restrict that.
Secondly, I’m going to try my best to take one character with each trait. Be aware of that. They’re based on the 5-Man Band from TVTropes (link withheld to maintain your sanity).
The Spy—You and the War Hero had different ideas of what it meant to serve the Brelish Crown. Shortly after he joined the military, you found yourself on the lightning rail to Thrane, Aundair, or Karrnath with orders to find out what you could about troop movements, supply lines, or anything else you could. Your return from the Last War was unheralded. Perhaps you slipped back into the life you’d lived before, or perhaps you tried to build a new one, but either way, when a friend suggested investigative work, you leapt at the opportunity.
The Bookworm—Your friends may have gone to war, but you stayed for one simple reason; none of the services would have you. It was only later that you found out just why that was. Your family, the wealthiest of your friends’, had purchased two years’ education at Morgrave University, and you spent the war studying relics from Xen’Drik and Aerenal instead of fighting, marching, and dying. After the war, you had something none of your friends did; a degree. However, when an acquaintance pointed you in the direction of investigative work, the opportunity to work with your childhood friends was too much to resist.
The Machine—Like the War Hero, you served in the Brelish army. Perhaps you were forged for that purpose, or perhaps the call of battle filled you, but you not only served, but did so with pleasure. After the war, your reputation as someone who liked fighting followed you, and the best you could do was fighting in the Burning Ring, wounding and killing monsters and men alike for the crowd’s pleasure. A friend saw your lack of satisfaction and pointed you in the direction of investigative work, and you took the opportunity to serve with childhood friends for a purpose more meaningful than pleasure.
The Aid Worker—For you, the Last War began in earnest shortly after the Day of Mourning, when Cyran refugees began pouring into Sharn. Your family had always taught that everyone had a responsibility to help others, and your childhood had been spent providing biscuits and juice to your friends when they grew tired, but now your family threw themselves into helping the hundreds of refugees suddenly living in a strange city with no friends or, in many cases, family of their own. After the war, an acquaintance pointed out that investigative work offered an opportunity to continue helping those refugee, and to do so with your childhood friends.
@Nomad Sage: I've got most of my plotlines homebrewed out to two or three "episodes". The setting is really, really rich with little hooks, especially for something like this, so I don't think I'm going to run much in terms of published material.
@Everyone: This is still not a recruitment. That'll be a different thread, probably posted tomorrow or the next day.
Sounds great. Looking forward to the recruitment thread. Merry Christmas all!
Campaign Traits and Explanation
This gets better and better...
I've ditched the 'silver-blooded, Thrane patriot' concept; I don't want to start what's going to be a very competitive recruitment process with something the GM has some 'concerns' about. :)
I'm now looking heavily into someone 'arcane' from Aundair (but still researching someone from Valenar).
So my question is: can we reskin the campaign traits?
Meaning, can I take the 'spy trait' and have that spy be from the Royal Eyes of Aundair or work for Valenar or do these traits necessarily have to be tied to the Breland?
Can 'the machine' have been a warhero in another army other than the Brelish Army?
Looking forward to this.
@Everyone: This is still not a recruitment. That'll be a different thread, probably posted tomorrow or the next day.
I would hate to miss this chance...
This is looking good. I've found a concept I'd like to try out for this game which will allow me to play an archetype I've been keen to use: The Constable Cavalier.
Thinking a Dwarven Officer of the Sharn watch, son of a rich merchant dynasty, who always saw his position in the watch as a business opportunity. However he was bought by the wrong people and now finds himself in opposition to his families goals.
Not only does this pose a moral dilemma for him but he's now in a situation in which he can neither trust his business associates nor his family.
GM Aest, here are the two concepts I'm most interested in. :)
"Ceilidh (Kay-LEE, with a super soft 'dh' at the end, almost silent) is a hard woman to love. She's brilliant, and believes she is on a mission to civilize the world, one person at a time. She believes that society is doomed because of the way people treat each other, and the way the species treat each other. She believes that there is a problem with the rich crushing the poor, even though she doesn't believe that there is something inherently wrong with being rich.
She distrusts magic, feeling it is only abused, and dislikes religion, feeling it is a big con. The conundrum of her life lies in the fact that she seems to seep magic from every pore. She would prefer to just read a book, cook an extravagant meal, enjoy an expensive scotch and cigar, and live out her life in a warm place overlooking the sea.
Calculating and thoughtful in her planning, she often doesn't think about what she is going to say before she says it in conversation. She believes in the best of mankind, but also believes that most people are idiots; sheep, with no willpower to make an informed choice for themselves, bent on treating each other poorly simply for a lack of understanding, or because they want a cookie.
She was born to the north of Merylsward in the Eldeen Reaches, in the small village of Little Mingin, a dirty fishing village on Eldeen Bay.
At fifteen her tattoo appeared, growing steadily down her back. She was afraid it was a disease, or infection of some sort. Her fears, it seems to her, were confirmed. She is infected with magical energy. It took the form of a slowly growing upside down tree, made of of thousands of tiny arcane symbols, one by one appearing on her skin, bleeding down her back, slowly over the years. Every time something strange happened around her, the tattoo grew a little more.
Just before her sixteenth birthday, her family sent her away to school in Arcanix because "weird things always happened around her", the final straw being when she gave the mayor's daughter's a purple beard.
She remembers nothing of Arcanix. She vaguely remembers the color of the waters of Lake Galifar, and how the air smelled so different from the sea of her home. She remembers eating a plum pudding at an inn. And then she remembers waking up the next morning, nineteen years old, in a cog outside Urth'hold. She had a few new scars, and her tattoo had definitely grown.
At the age of 21, she awoke in an inn she was staying at in the city of Stormreach in Xen'drik, while working as a freelance researcher for Captain Obo, a mercenary from Sarlonna...or what remained of the inn. Her bed alone stood unharmed, on an untouched rise in a crater where the 'Three Barmaids' once stood. She believes she destroyed it with her magic. That was when her Mark changed from a tiny shoot to a tiny sapling on her back.
She wants nothing more than to control this magic, so it can't hurt anyone else. She can't let this thing inside her destroy everything around her.
Unbeknownst to her, her family's home was destroyed in the same fashion, at that same moment, back in Little Mingin.
Fleeing, she jumped a ship heading across the Straits of Shargon, into Thurim Bay. Over the next year, driven by fear of hurting anyone, she made her way to the Sterngate where the amount of alcohol they served seemed to match her thirst well. Fleeing a misunderstanding and a debt, she boarded a House Orien caravan bound for Sharn. She now hires herself out to local inquisitor agencies freelance, using her powers of reasoning and deduction to put some potatoes on her plate in her hole in the wall flat.
She is a human, although rumor had it her grandmother was a tiefling, being from the border of the Demon Wastes, but she doesn't believe them (no matter what those kids said). She cannot stand racism, and will quickly lose her cool if she see's it in practice.
She is not a hero, and has done nothing she considers special.
Ceilidh's grey eyes are soft and warm, and stark against her bronze skin. Her dark brown dreadlocks grace her shoulders. She has a noble posture, almost challenging. A tattoo of an upside-down tree runs down her neck, spreading across her shoulders. It's actually not one tattoo, but hundreds of tiny magical sygil tattoo's, forming the image of a tree.
Ceilidh is very against inequality. She has been an outcast, and homeless, for good portions of her life, so she feels for the underdog, the marginalized. But she feels she's been "accused" of attacks against people and places, with her magic. She worries she's a bit of an unintended terrorist. So she has latched onto a few incidences she's read about that involved real terrorists...the Valenar elves. Because of her frustration over her own situation, she tends to read the worst in elves, and comes across as mildly racist.
She's brilliant, but a bit of an alcoholic. She can't sleep without a drink. She loves a good cigar, but will complain about someone tracking in dirt, or not washing their face. Calculating and thoughtful in her planning, she often doesn't think about what she is going to say before she says it in conversation.
He left Cyre on the 19th of Olarune, 994 YK.
He grew up the property of a second cousin to a Lord in Metrol, so while not really ever having money, he grew up around money. He was warded to the Lord by his owner, who had got into a spot of financial trouble with a shipping scheme to Sarlonna. He therefore is a bit of a conflict in himself: he's poor, but acts like he's wealthy, mostly from mimicking his owners family, who were spoiled beyond belief, and envying their positions. He feels that poor people are poor because they are lazy, and is a bit prejudiced against the short races, feeling they are not "humanoid", but make great servants.
Bexalock loves a good meal. Ribs, rich pastas, cheeses of all varieties, avocados and seafood...you name it, if it's well-made, he appreciates it, even thought he can't eat any of it. He is a fan of the way they cook in Thrane, although he would never admit it around people from Cyre.
All he wants is to find a place to stick his head in the sand, and make a few coins, which he is dreadfully low on, and perhaps find a woman (he is attracted to bleeders). His days of mantras and katas and martial training and purpose of defending his homeland are done.
He also hopes to wake from this nightmare and have his life back...with purpose. Without the shame and loss he feels for his homeland.