I have a campaign idea where the only town nearby gets destroyed. The PCs will have to survive on whatever they find out in the wilderness. There will be little to no "buying stuff"
Some "rules" in the campaign:
Money will be effectively useless (unless the PCs want to make something out of platinum/gold/silver/copper).
I plan to replace gp rewards with random gear or raw materials.
I plan to offer an NPC who can craft just about anything if the PCs bring them the raw materials. (A Dwarf Wizard) Any spells they want him to learn will have to be found in a spell book or a scroll, or taught by a PC or NPC.
I am using the background skills variant to give my PCs extra points to spend on Craft Skills and the like. I am also encouraging that they do so.
It may be possible for the PCs to barter materials with NPCs. (I'll probably use this to help fill any gaps in resources)
Any pitfalls I should be aware of?
thflame wrote: I have a campaign idea where the only town nearby gets destroyed. The PCs will have to survive on whatever they find out in the wilderness. There will be little to no "buying stuff"
Some "rules" in the campaign:
Money will be effectively useless (unless the PCs want to make something out of platinum/gold/silver/copper).
I plan to replace gp rewards with random gear or raw materials.
I plan to offer an NPC who can craft just about anything if the PCs bring them the raw materials. (A Dwarf Wizard) Any spells they want him to learn will have to be found in a spell book or a scroll, or taught by a PC or NPC.
I am using the background skills variant to give my PCs extra points to spend on Craft Skills and the like. I am also encouraging that they do so.
It may be possible for the PCs to barter materials with NPCs. (I'll probably use this to help fill any gaps in resources)
Any pitfalls I should be aware of?
Be careful with the abilities of what you face them with.
RDM42 wrote: thflame wrote: I have a campaign idea where the only town nearby gets destroyed. The PCs will have to survive on whatever they find out in the wilderness. There will be little to no "buying stuff"
Some "rules" in the campaign:
Money will be effectively useless (unless the PCs want to make something out of platinum/gold/silver/copper).
I plan to replace gp rewards with random gear or raw materials.
I plan to offer an NPC who can craft just about anything if the PCs bring them the raw materials. (A Dwarf Wizard) Any spells they want him to learn will have to be found in a spell book or a scroll, or taught by a PC or NPC.
I am using the background skills variant to give my PCs extra points to spend on Craft Skills and the like. I am also encouraging that they do so.
It may be possible for the PCs to barter materials with NPCs. (I'll probably use this to help fill any gaps in resources)
Any pitfalls I should be aware of?
Be careful with the abilities of what you face them with. More than a normal campaign? If so, could you explain?
If you limit their equipment, you need to limit their foes a little bit to take note of the power differences.
RDM42 wrote: If you limit their equipment, you need to limit their foes a little bit to take note of the power differences. They will have access to anything via crafting. There will just be more downtime in the campaign to craft stuff.
In case it isn't clear, they do have their starting equipment.
You could let them start with a level in a class such as expert, in order to give them more of a self sufficient feel.
I made a grippli for a game like that he likes creatures with long hair to craft his nets from....
This might be the ideal campaign for the automatic bonus progression rules from Pathfinder Unchained. This would free the PC's from having to worry about the "big six" magic items, though the dwarven wizard craftsman would still be useful for scrolls, potions, and such, as well as weapon and armor special abilities.
Automatic bonus progression is great. It frees you up to hand out interesting loot without it getting tossed over a Big 6 slot conflict, and means that enemies can be competent without needing to haul around a ton of duplicate loot.
thflame wrote: RDM42 wrote: Be careful with the abilities of what you face them with. More than a normal campaign? If so, could you explain? In particular, ailments could be a problem. For example, let's say someone gets hit with Ability Drain, and nobody in the party has the ability to cure it. Unless you introduce an NPC with it, that could be a permanent drain on their power.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
I'm looking at doing something along these lines, in a homebrew setting that's a little bit Walking Dead and a little bit Mad Max. Global civilization has ended, though small settlements still exist. I'm using the automatic bonus progression, and a pretty generous ability array so characters can hopefully be more self-sufficient. I'm also looking at Carrion Crown for inspiration and possible adaptation, but I'm worried the elements of history and civilization are too intrinsic with my vision to be useful. Anyone have any suggestions for things to do, or APs that might be useful?
Honestly, a lot of things can be done simply by reflavoring existing rulesets to match your theme. ^^ Try starting there and seeing what you can come up with.
QuidEst wrote: Automatic bonus progression is great. It frees you up to hand out interesting loot without it getting tossed over a Big 6 slot conflict, and means that enemies can be competent without needing to haul around a ton of duplicate loot. Thanks. I'll see what everyone thinks.
Will there be a problem if PCs want to craft in addition to these effects? Should I disallow magic item crafting?
thflame wrote: Will there be a problem if PCs want to craft in addition to these effects? Should I disallow magic item crafting? The only problem is the generic 'reagents' normally hand-waved by the system. You may need to come up with a list of plausible items that require harvesting or time to go fetch.
Not every requirement should 'the heart of a ancient wyrm' but even simple scrolls typically require rare inks and such. Even if they need to spend time catching and milking squids and mixing salamander eyes themselves instead of just assuming they bought it at a specialty shop.
So, in the absence of just paying coin, a player may need to mention what they're trying to craft and you may have to come up with suitable items. This isn't bad if your campaign is based on this and has plenty of downtime where taking a detour to hunt down a displacer beast or harvest troll blood isn't derailing the story. Basically, you make the effort for the ingredient equivalent to what you think the monetary value should be or you give some alternative smaller ones that are easier but will take more time and effort. Instead of the 'heart of an invisible stalker' for a ring of invisibility they could gather the blood of three different pixies, or they could use the crushed petals of 100 waterlilies gathered during the light of a full moon, which could take many months to accrue.
Also, mundane crafting is sloooooooooooooow. So if they need to craft their own set of platemail, make sure you give them the months/years they will need to do it.
Make sure players want to do this. Keeping track of survival necessities can get tedious. And having to complete mission to get materials to create things are only fun for the people creating them (and only sometimes).
Certain builds depend on particular gear. If you are going to keep that mind in your drops or be fairly liberal with the crafting, then I think it'll work. A dwarf crafter is a classic sort of character, always fun. And no civilization can be fun too. But really limiting items and making them random can hamper a lot of characters and turn some people off. I would make sure the group is okay with it as well.
Created one world where the players were in a city filled with dungeoneers guilds. Basically the economy ran off adventurer's going into an infinitely sized, quasi random, nearby dungeon and bringing back monster body parts to be used for creating magic items. Basically the players had to either buy the materials needed or go hunt for a specific monster. Worked pretty well as when I threw a weird monster at them they got exited. "Oooo. What do you think we can turn this into :D" Just be sure to let them craft faster than by RAW. When you have to craft everything it really is a bummer specially for the martial people. At least the wizard gets to think hes doing something cool. Typically I houserule to let them craft at a speed based upon level or bonus to the relevant skill
The biggest problem I see is when a particular build requires equipment more expensive than starting gold can afford. Archers for example will be particularly hard hit because a bow with a STR bonus is way beyond what a first level character can afford. Heavy armor is also very expensive for a first level character. If you are starting the characters at higher than first level this will not be much of a problem. If you are starting at first level you may want to start them with more starting gold. Beyond 3rd level this is not a problem so maybe starting each character out with 3,000 gp. This would also allow characters with spell books to purchase extra spells. In this case I would allow them to purchase some higher level spells they cannot cast yet but are in their books for when the gain access to those spell.
Second is that the characters are going to need a lot more equipment and have to lug it around. Make sure your players know this so they don’t dump STR. Most of the time purchasing a handy haversack or bag of holding takes care of this. Doing so in this campaign is going to be difficult and would kind of go against the feel of the campaign.
As several other have suggested using the ABP rules will work very well for a campaign like this. . Between the ABP and your dwarf NPC they will probably have the permanent magic items covered. Crafting of magic items will also be useful but more for consumable items like potions, scrolls and wands. Having a character that can make the seldom needed, but important items will be almost necessary. An alchemist or a cleric with scribe scroll or craft potion would work well for this
I agree in making sure players want to play this type of game a it can get very boring and some items are super good vs the standard game. But for a mini-campaign of 2-4 sessions it could be a lot of fun.
For info I would look at any post apocalyptic game out there for info and see how they run the game. Also there was show on the History Channel about Life Without People that may or may not help you out depending on your game idea (ie teleport-ed into the future after city destroyed vs city gone now what do we do). Also any show that deals with hunting and or gathering will give you and idea on just how hard it generally is to keep yourself feed, clothed and sheltered.
Problems?
Well think of all the basic things players buy, now they will have to find those and or make them themselves. Also players will have to spend quite a bit of time hunting/foraging/using magic to grow things. And move on when things have been hunted/fished/grown out.
Also one you have stuff you have to defend it from those who do not have it and get desperate.
Just thinking about the above to ideas lends the campaign to a lot of panning and some players will not like it at all.
MDC
How do you plan on handling material components? It seems like Eschew Materials would be king here, or simply avoiding arcane classes in general.
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