Monkeygod and I have been talking about several ideas for a high level 'more-stalt' campaign, and I'm going to throw out some ideas here as well as open up the possibility for input.
We've talked about 16th level quadralt as the basic build concept (though we've also mentioned 18th level tristalt).
Here are some ideas
Everyone has a +6 skills per level class in their array (Unrogue, Ninja, etc., we have an entire list), and we focus on trying to use all the rules from Ultimate Intrigue, and everyone is a member of a thief or assassin guild of some sort.
Various campaign concepts:
Forgotten Realms Ideas:
-The syl-pasha of Calimport has mysteriously disappeared; everyone is a secret agent of some sort trying to figure out the mystery.
-Everyone is in the Moonsea area, maybe a zhentarim or other moonsea area organization (blades of mulmaster, etc.).
-Something in Kara-Tur?
-Something underwater?
-Something underdark?
Golarion Ideas
-Everyone is part Winter Witch in their array, and are daughters or sons of Baba-Yaga. Something about Igwilz. Everyone rules a province or city in Irrisen (or maybe they're children of a previous, deposed Witch Queen?).
-Something in Nidal.
-Something in Tian-Xia.
-Something where everyone has an occult class in their array, and we try to use all the rules from Horror and Occult adventures. Ustalav something?
-Something set one of the other planets like Castrovel.
-Something underwater?
-Something underdark (orv vaults?).
Other ideas:
Scarred Lands
Everyone is a demigod, literally a child of one of the divine victors. Somehow, the Titans have reversed the current state of affairs, and all the other gods are asleep. You wake up without any knowledge of what happened and have to figure out the mystery. We'd use the god rules from the 3.5 Immortals Handbook, so everyone would have a cult and followers they'd also interact with.
Council of Wyrms: everyone plays a dragon.
Other ideas....
surely, there are some interesting ideas in there, like the Winter Witch thing. But I played in a high level tristalt once and it was a mess tbh.
There are other systems that do the (demi-)god PC better, e.g.Exalted, than PF. PF can already get out of hand if you have end-level single class PCs, so I'd be very careful with this.
I'll keep an eye on this, but anything beyond Mythic Gestalt ~15th level I'll drop out.
Gestalt is cool and in theory morestalt sounds cooler but I agree the rules start to fall apart at high level. IMO the pathfinder 1 sweet spot is 3-12 ish.
Anyway all this talk of the realms got me thinking of Baldurs Gate and Baalspawn. That's neat but how about Aroden-spawn come to reclaim Cheliax one way or another?
Baldur's Gate is definitely one of my touchstone RPG inspirations -- I played all of those and Icewind Dale back in the day.
I remember there was a tristalt game here in the forums just with monsters. The GM wanted to give the campaign a feeling of redemption, so he selected a list of monster races and created a little point systems (if someone selected one of the weakest monsters, they were able to compensate).
Like my colleagues here already said, however, it just worked well because it was low level (1 through 4 I believe). Pathfinder is already on the powerful side; gestalt is already a high power creep; tristalt makes it insanely hard to balance and weird on the players. More than that, and I'm not sure if it even makes sense, as in terms of economy I don't see much being added (and the characters start to look a lot like each other with too much overlapping).
In my opinion, you could try something like an E6 tristalt (that would be fairly cool to be honest), or maybe limit it to like level 12 gestalt.
There was a good idea going around too (a game was made of it, but it died) of doing Wrath of the Righteous without mythic level, but all characters being gestalt (or tristalt) built with 25-point-buy. With some adaptation of the current AP (for example, changing the enemies that can only be harmed by mythic sources) I think it'd be awesome.
As for the skill points, I don't think you should change it. The -stalt part of it already takes care of this issue - if a player wants more skill points, just make sure one of the classes gets more skill points.
Last but not least, I'd by far prefer a game if you keep the system within Paizo only with no third party stuff.
I don't own Wrath of Righteous, nor do I have any interest or intention to purchase it, so that's definitely not on the table as an option.
Right.
Here's the monsters campaign with tristalt that I mentioned - CaveToad made a great game, a pity it ended. But he was running like eight tables at the same time!
Here's what I mentioned about E6 - I think an E6 tristalt would be the best!
Honestly, I'm more interested in discussing campaign ideas before nailing down rules, I was giving a ballpark of what Monkeygod and I have discussed.
I guess I should also clarify I'm not interested in doing an AP for this -- I'm going to make something up myself.
An idea for a high level game: characters are avatars or paragons of deities. A council of gods was put together because of problems caused by some other rogue deity, and each one sent his avatar to a mission.
Another one: characters are an elite group that actually hunts "other" heroes of the past that grew too much in power and got corrupted.
Another cool one would be something inspired on Rift where each part of the -stalt is a soul within the body of the characters ("ascended"). Maybe fighting for control?
I loved cavetoads game. Building a 16th level tristalt character is extremely daunting. I would prefer to if it started at like level 2-3, but anything sub-10 sounds awesome. If you're not giving extra feats and the like I guess quadstalt might work.
Perhaps some powerful artifact or magical radiation caused mutations and extraordinary abilities to explain the extra classes?
Oyzar that reminds me a bit of ascending in the Malazan universe. All sorts of things could trigger an ascension which enabled signifiant power ups up to demi-god level.
I think 'Stalts over two lose a lot because of the action economy, tbh. Even if you have 40000 things you can do, you can still only do 1-3 per turn.
Almost all of these sound interesting to me, but I'd be most into the Thief/Assassin game, being Witches, an Underwater or Underdark game, or the Ustalav horror game.
Here are my thoughts on the proposed concepts, which I sent privately to Seb:
1)For the Moonsea game, perhaps we're all high ranking members of the Zhentarim looking to expand our power into other nations? After all, one of the main goals for them/Bane is to conquer all of Faerun. This would allow us to explore a lot of the other countries of the Realms, allying with various other evil organizations, building armies, etc.
2) Tian-Xia is a setting rife with all sort of crazy potential. Lots of really interesting regions and countries.
3) Underdark Adventures in the Orv Vaults could be wild, as there's all sorts of crazy nonsense within them, and you could easily add in your own custom ones too.
4) Scarred Lands.
5) Calimport.
Personal preferences:
1) Moonsea game where we're all Zhents. I have an awesome inquisitor of Bane concept in mind.
2) Underdark Adventures in Orv. I could play my all time favorite PC, a Drow Necromancer.
3) Calimport mystery. Would likely play the Zhentarim from 1, just different background.
4) Tian-Xia/Casmaron. Both are wildly different settings, but they can both lend themselves to some great ideas.
5) Scarred Lands.
I played in CaveToad's game as well and it was really fun. I don't like playing evil characters so I wouldn't be interested in anything of that sort. I did like the idea of all being champions of a god. I'll think some more on this and see if I have any ideas.
Oyzar that reminds me a bit of ascending in the Malazan universe. All sorts of things could trigger an ascension which enabled signifiant power ups up to demi-god level.
Malazan is a really interesting case study for power levels. Theoretically, there are these entities like Anomander Rake, Eleints, and C'hain Chemalle Matron Mothers that seem to be on the level of Mythic entities, but they're also somehow vulnerable glass canons in certain contexts.
As a corrolary to the council of wyrms idea, all the PCs could be members of a monstrous horde that was trying to sweep away civilized lands.
I'm thinking of the Council of Wyrms Blood Isle of Io setting from the 2e expansion -- the characters are dragons and the enemies are frost and fire giants and dragon slayers from beyond the sea.
I'd love a Level 18, or even level 20 Tristalt game. Not so sure on anything more than that though, never really made any quadstalts. I kind of fear that it might dilute the theme of the character a bit too much by that point. But I'm still open to trying it out, I guess.
What I'm going to do to try to sort out the power level, based on Monkey's suggestion, is we're going to use 2 tools.
(1) We're going to look at a bench pressing table of AC, saves, etc. values everyone needs to approximate.
(2) I'm going to post some sample monsters I want everyone to build towards being able to beat 50% of the time in a 1-1 combat.
Of all the ideas for where, Golarion would be my choice, though the Council of Wyrms campaign was always fun.
Tian-Xia, Irrisen and Nidal would be great. There's so much to do in Varisia. Cheliax for evil.
As per usual, I'd petition for the inclusion of Rogue Genius's godling classes, because Seb don't do low-level. And possible inclusion of overpowered feats.
If I was going to do low level, honestly, I'd use a different system like Castles and Crusades or DCC (the funnel with the 0 level pcs sounds hilarious).
At least for the ultimate intrigue idea, we'd definitely be using 3pp. to have classes like the guru and other +6 skill point classes as options.
For the Irrisen idea, what if everyone was a jadwiga of Igwilv/Tashana (or whatever her Golarion name is), and they're trying to find her for some reason? That quest would involve adventures in Irrisen and the Land of the Linnorm Kings and Mammoth Riders, as well as mythic ancient Russsia on Earth, and Greyhawk.
I like the Council of Wyrms idea, and the Calimport idea. Tian Xia would be interesting to me personally, and Scarred Lands sounds cool.
As for the power level... Definitely need some kind of benchmark / goal to reach for on this. I'd personally love to build up some high level-quad stalt. Depending on campaign / class allowances, I'd probably do something like a Sentinel (or other full BAB attacker - there's several I like, legendary fighter, urban barbarian, bloodrager, etc) / Incanter / Voyager (Psionic) / URogue, and if it fit do some kind of firearm / sniper focus.
The biggest concern I have about playing in games like this is that it becomes easy to be mechanically identical between characters - everyone has the same bonuses to stealth, disable device, knowledges, etc. There's no niche protection (not that that's a bad thing), so teamwork / non-competitive RPing needs to be worked out deliberately.
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I'm also imagining at least for some of these ideas something more like the domain management/kingdom building exercise imagined for high levels in 1e.
For instance, using some kind of mass combat rules to have armies clash. Domain management -- like mapping your stronghold and spending time building extensions or managing an uprising or siege. Part of PC creation would be designing your personal stronghold or domain, etc. and would be part worldbuilding exercise, part character generation.
I like the idea of morestalt, but the higher the level, the more of a mess it seems. I mean, just look at high level spells ... so much book-keeping if someone has to juggle 3-4 high-level spell lists. I tend to like the 6-12 range, personally, no matter how many parallel classes.
I dont know campaign settings very well, so I can only speak to play styles and general ideas.
I like the hidden faction idea as one possibility. A group dedicated to infiltrating and subverting factions and their leaders, people who are too strong for the group to take on directly. Perhaps magic is banned, except for government agents, similar to rogue psykers corrupting Imperium plans. Players can have plenty of abilities, but have to hide them, and play discretely.
Alternatively, have a campaign the encourages a number of duels. I mean, the only competition who might be a 1v1 match, would be other archmages, so perhaps a demiplane hopping group? Like the previous suggestion, moderate on the intrigue, but when the knives out, the player being called out better be on their A-game.
I just wanted to point out, since there may be some confusion:
For any of the intrigue focused games, 1 of your classes must be one that grants 6+ skills per level(Bard, Rogue, Investigator, Inquisitor, Ranger, etc).
As Seb pointed out above, this game will definitely make use of 3pp systems like Path of War, Psionics, Spheres of Magic/Might, and Akashic to allow a broader selection of classes to pick from.
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Tian Xia would highly interest me, as would some of the other options.
What would be important for me ruleswise is, that the game can be at least halfway balanced and we have meaningful and faster moving combats etc.
On a sidenote:
I think it would be really good when templates and anything similar are left away and a 25 point buy system is used.
In most games we now have it seems to me at least some of the discrepancies come from having too high stats.
And too many feats. Make it 1 feat per level or 2 feats per level for everyone, but then leave it at that.
This way, everyone still has to focus on 1-2 things to mainly do and AC, saves, attack and damage will be way closer together.
I'm not promising or committing to stuff about rules right now beyond what I put in my first post, I'm mainly talking about campaign ideas. I still need a really solid plot for any of these concepts.
For instance, for the Tian-Xia idea, who would the characters be, and what would they be doing?
That probably depends on where exactly the game should take place.
In Tian-Xia there are a lot of interest and tension points.
Like the elf and hobgoblin empire conflict.
Or the underdark city of monstrous spiders.
I have to pull out my pdf of Dragon Empires again, as I missed all of that the one time I looked at it.
What I'm going to do to try to sort out the power level, based on Monkey's suggestion, is we're going to use 2 tools.
(1) We're going to look at a bench pressing table of AC, saves, etc. values everyone needs to approximate.
(2) I'm going to post some sample monsters I want everyone to build towards being able to beat 50% of the time in a 1-1 combat.
this sounds reasonable.
Even if we played dragons, for comparison the highest CR dragon is CR23. There would be no canonical justification to be stronger than that.Same for demigods or divine avatars: Great Old Ones, which are basically deities, top out at CR 27-30. Their Divine Heralds are CR 15.
Usually Gestalt is defined as +1 APL...
I'm not confining myself to those metrics -- that's the canonical, published mechanics for the PF setting. That's not a constraint for me that limits anything, I'm perfectly willing to reset and rebalance those numbers -- like maybe a divine herald will be CR 30, etc.
Honestly, there's almost no chance we're limiting this to what you expressed interest in (limit of 15th level), so this may not be the game for you. I'm certainly not going to commit to any such constraints .
If I could offer some suggestion to help narrow things down Sebecloki, it seems like you want to run another game, but you're unsure what you want it to be. If I may be so bold, might I offer my 5 question method for helping you to settle on things? Here is the basic gist:
Ask yourself five open ended questions about the game you want to run, with the premise that there were no limits on players, time, ability, or energy to play the game. Ideally, should lead from one question to the next organically, so it should be something like this (from a 4th edition DND game I ran over a decade ago).
1) What is special about the setting that I'm running?
The world has about a half dozen continents on it, each ruled by a Dragon.
2) Are there smaller dragons, or is it just the rulers, and why?
There ae smaller dragons, but they're still incredibly rare because only the ruler dragons are old and powerful enough to breed.
3) How do the sentient races fall into this?
Most ruler dragons don't even bother letting the lesser races know that the dragons are dominant. They just live in 'forbidden' areas, and for the most part leave well enough alone, interacting with the larger world through their servant races. Basically, a hidden master sort of thing.
4) What other forces are at play in the campaign as a whole?
The theme of light vs. dark. Light is represented by a (to be) reborn deity, who is potentially brought back to life through the player's actions. The darkness is a recently sentient being who will, via happenstance, begin interacting with the PCs in a variety of ways, including an Otyugh (which as a species can speak and understand common). What it learns through interacting with the PCs will have an impact on how it grows; think of it as a petulent child who has power (yes, like that one episode of original star trek) that learns from the first minds that it interacts with that aren't mindlessly worshipping it. Finally, how the meta theme is told is via a prophesy (which are a p.i.t.a. to pull off as a GM, but pretty satisfying when it works) that warns of the coming conflict.
5)Given the above, what are the differences between the standard DND races and their equal number in this setting?
The Dwarves focus heavily on their mercantile prowess, and the clans run the Dwarven lands like corporations. The Elves live in a small forested area, and are xenophobic in the extreme (Cause they know of the bigger truth about dragons ruling the world, and they're secretly training their people to wage war against the dragons for an ancient imagined slight, but they would never share that information, and all such plans are magically locked into their minds to prevent mind magic from prying it loose. Both Humans and Halflings each live in their own city state; the Halflings are super dedicated to education and learning, and so their city is a massive university, and the Humans are from a different planet that ended up purchasing a completely worthless plot of land for excessive prices from the Dwarves, who also sold them what they thought were played out mines and they turned out to not be. The Human city is a trade city.
Finally, as a change of pace, the Goblins are considered a sacred race by the Dragons, and each Dragon has a speaker that is a Goblin (even if they don't really have many Goblin protectees).
That's just an example, obviously, but I find it really useful when I know I want to run a game but I'm not sure what sort of game I want to run.
I played in Cavetoads Tristalt monster campaign a few years ago.
I think it is good to have one portion of the 'stalt devoted to the campaign setting.
One advantage to the underwater ideas is that one class can be devoted to giving the character the ability to survive underwater.
With the dragon campaign idea, then one portion can be a dragon class.
In an underwater campaign there are a bunch of underutilized villains like aboleth to use as bad guys.
I also have the whole line of Cerulean Seas stuff I've been wanting to put to use for a long time...
I also have the whole line of Cerulean Seas stuff I've been wanting to put to use for a long time...
I've no desire to play in an underwater game. Don't ask me why, but such games hold zero appeal for me. So if that gets chosen, I will bow out.
I also have the whole line of Cerulean Seas stuff I've been wanting to put to use for a long time...I've no desire to play in an underwater game. Don't ask me why, but such games hold zero appeal for me. So if that gets chosen, I will bow out.
I agree with Monkeygod. Sorry.
Agree on the underwater game as well.
It's kinda difficult in my eyes. So many resources get spend just to make underwater stuff work like normal, which you have to do.
Overwater with a dash of underwater is something different.
But i would heavily favor Tian Xia.
There's really so much lore and stuff and places in the setting which are a bit defined, but leave more than enough room to fill with you own ideas.
I think that's a golden spot. You can build on the existing stuff, but form most of it yourself without too much of a burden.
Personally i would keep the scope a bit tighter though, focusing on 1 or 2 regions mainly and on the micro game there. Macro and meta information aren't as important for the game flow.
Recently i also rediscovered a very cool website about game prepping and gming. I can link it if you want.
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... hmmm. Tian Xia, 16th level quadralt / 18th level tristalt ...
Okay, look.
These sorts of characters, this sort of power level, is flat-out ginormous, no matter how you slice it. Mythic, non-mythic -- and make no mistake, I'd love the 6/6/6 rules, just amped up to 12+ -- you need stunningly godlike enemies to face in a campaign like this.
So give us them.
Sure, we can have fortress-building, and kingdom-handling, and massive armies clashing with each other. Give us a reason, though, to a) work together, and b) use all of that. Give us great and terrible enemies, a vast nigh-endless sequence of them, each with veritable armies against which ours can clash.
Give us Pacific Rim kaiju monsters for the armies' 'generals', and swarms of lesser monsters (such as those in the relatively-horrible Matt Damon film 'Great Wall'), or armies of more normal soldiers, for our armies to fight against. Tactics and strategy, encouraging the health and well-being of the nation(s) of which we are the rulers and/or heroes, salvaging what we can from a battle's loss, retreating to prepared defenses, etc. etc.
If you intend to bring in all the court stuff, let there be a third kingdom/empire that is currently neutral, in whose court and territory both parties (ours as well as the kaiju-masters) are maneuvering, trying to get the leadership of said neutral third nation to side with us. That'd allow us to enjoy general skulduggery (assassinations of semi-important assistants in our enemies' staff or of 'bought' assistants to influential people in the neutral government, theft of critical messages, that sort of thing) and subtle political games without automatically removing the pressure of the kaiju+army onslaught. A breakdown in negotiations on one side or the other, or perhaps we're 'winning' the negotiations -- but the scouts reveal that another army is approaching, and we have to break off negotiations to rush home and prepare our forces to defeat the WorldBreakers, giving the other side a chance to regain lost negotiation territory.
Definitely set some RP / background / drive ground rules, such as you have for the Mongol campaign: 'you are all part of X'. Definitely do NOT allow direct or indirect back-stabbing, and create a direct, IC methodology to penalize such; perhaps we're the Emperor's favorites, but screwing around with each other (and with our side's chances and such) means that the Empress withdraws some of her favor from that PC, dropping them a level or two, or a Mythic tier or two.
Agree on the underwater game as well.
It's kinda difficult in my eyes. So many resources get spend just to make underwater stuff work like normal, which you have to do.
Overwater with a dash of underwater is something different.But i would heavily favor Tian Xia.
There's really so much lore and stuff and places in the setting which are a bit defined, but leave more than enough room to fill with you own ideas.
I think that's a golden spot. You can build on the existing stuff, but form most of it yourself without too much of a burden.Personally i would keep the scope a bit tighter though, focusing on 1 or 2 regions mainly and on the micro game there. Macro and meta information aren't as important for the game flow.
Recently i also rediscovered a very cool website about game prepping and gming. I can link it if you want.
It would help if you would also give some ideas like where in Tian Xia you want to set the adventures and what we would be doing.
I'm looking through my complete collection of the Pathfinder companions books now. The easiest time I've had imagining something that works for these rules is looking at the entry for the Pit of Gormuz. There are corpses sticking out the side of the pit that have entire settlements built in their rib bones. There are three ruined civilizations on another tier. I don't even think the canonical rules really work for the scale of the setting described in that entry -- stuff so unbelievably massive it's hard to visualize.
There's also an entry for the jungle at the bottom of Tian-Xia with Kaiju in it-- but what would the scenario be -- Kaiju hunting a la Pacific Rim?
What if we treated the hobgoblin empire of Kaoling as the 'Mongols' of Golarion, and the central issue is the expanding khanates of this realm. One of the khanates is trying to conquer one or more of the settled kingdoms of Tian Xia, and the set up would be similar to the netflix series Marco Polo. Another would be trying to conquer some site in Casmaron. There would also be internal politics, where different children of the former khan would be vying for dominance.
Keeping Rovagug trapped in the bottom of the Pit of Gormuz is a task that (a) requires a lot of power, (b) is a goal that people of multiple alignments can agree on.
While I definitely like the idea of delving into the Pit of Gormuz and battling the Spawn of Rovagug,
I'm unsure how to also include all the 'domain management' aspects into that game.
Playing 'Warlords of Kaoling' would be really interesting, and could be a lot of fun, but would we all be hobgoblins?? Or could we be other races that have allied with them?
Also, on a totally personal note, am sad nobody else seems to be on board with the all Zhent Agents game or Vaults of Orv.
Just thinking out loud online -- I could imagine both hobgoblin and non hobgoblin characters. Some might be kellids in a threatened territory, some might be natives of other Tian countries.
Perhaps there's a period of conquest and kingdom management, and then the Pit of Gormuz starts vomiting out new monstrosities, and everyone has to deal with their inherent distrust to confront the problem that threatens everyone.
https://d20npcs.fandom.com/wiki/Brobdingnagian_Teratoid_Tarrasque
This is more what I have in mind for a Spawn of Rovagug. It's two miles long -- it's more a terrain feature than a monster. Imagine that crawling out of the Pit of Gormuz and starting to ravage the Kelleshite Empire.
I gotta admit, I kinda really like the 'Warlords of Kaoling' concept.
I played in a similar game, where the PCs were all Chelixian, who were supposed to infiltrate and subvert other nations for the Infernal Empire to eventually invade and conquer. It was a really awesome game, and I loved the concept.
Course, we were much lower level, meaning we couldn't take over a country on our own. Would be really interesting to play that sorta game a much higher level.
Warlords of kaoling sounds really good. Even though I could imagine playing the other side as well, like the elven empire.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Jinin?
Where's the thing about the spider city?
I gotta admit, I kinda really like the 'Warlords of Kaoling' concept.
I played in a similar game, where the PCs were all Chelixian, who were supposed to infiltrate and subvert other nations for the Infernal Empire to eventually invade and conquer. It was a really awesome game, and I loved the concept.
Course, we were much lower level, meaning we couldn't take over a country on our own. Would be really interesting to play that sorta game a much higher level.
We can probably incorporate something about the Orv -- there's a subterranean portion of Tian-Xia w/ another hobgoblin kingdom in it, so the Kaoling probably have some kind of contacts with them.