Since this is, in all likelihood, a really niche idea for a campaign and people may utterly love or loathe it, this thread is nothing more than an interest check.
Death is an inescapable truth of existence and one that nothing- not heroes, gods, or even the planes themselves- can truly escape. Despite the universality of death itself, every cosmology has it's own cycle of life, death, and souls: Golarion has it's River of Souls, Athas has The Gray, et cetera. Every being lives goes from the cradle to the grave accepting that this is how things must be. But every system has it's flaws and the immortal cycles are no exception. Sometimes a soul loses it's way along it's final journey and becomes lost, drifting beyond the bounds of the cosmology it was born into. Other times, a soul is rent apart by forbidden magic or ravenous fiends and it's tattered fragments seep through the cracks in reality to parts unknown. And, as practitioners of pact magic would tell you, on very rare occasions a soul is intentionally cast out from, or rejected by, reality itself. In all of these cases, a lost soul will inevitably find itself beyond the realms of the infinite multiverses in a realm called Kisarta.
Kisarta is both the name of the plane-sized Pale Sun and the collective eight infinite planes called the Dominions which revolve around it. Within this world, ruled by a group of godlike beings collectively known as the Black Circle, lost souls are given a second chance with reconstituted souls of aether that mimic their mortal forms. It is in this place that your characters will ultimately find themselves and the game will begin as they wake up from their own deaths, crawling from their own graves within the Cemetery of Lost Souls with the memory of their final moments still fresh in their minds.
That's the backdrop of the campaign I have in mind. You don't need access to the setting or books since your characters are going to be freshly awakened within this world and will be getting setting lore through their interactions with NPCs and the campaign world itself, but if you the player simply want more information, the kickstarter page has a free quickstart document with rudimentary information here: LINK. You'll probably have to scroll down the kickstarter page to find the quickstart document link, but it is still there.
The beauty of the setting is that it allows characters to be from any cosmology or age within that cosmology. You could play a wizard from Netheril, a gladiator from Tyr, or nearly anything else. Almost any character can be rationalized in Kisarta. You were a mythic hero in Golarion? Your death and the rough transition to Kisarta stripped you of most of your power. Want to play as the ruler of a powerful kingdom whose treasury could have bought an entire world? None of that came with you in death and so there's no cause for me to deny that on grounds of party balance. Because Kisarta is completely disconnected from the spacetime of other cosmologies, you could even play as a character from a potential future that has yet to take place within your world's timeline.
I'm not really getting all that deep into rules discussions right now, but I'll give you the high notes. All first party options are good, although Leadership options are going to leave you high and dry since cohorts and followers are not bound closely enough to a character where they follow them on this journey. Third party content is subject upon selective approval and I will require the precise book name and page number of every single thing you plan on asking for. Level 8 gestalt. Animal Companions, Familiars, Eidolons, Spirits, et cetera will make the journey with you due to the deep bonds surviving beyond death. You can craft at select times in this game, but nothing more than 1/3 your total WBL at the start of the game and you obviously can't have things crafted for your other party members at that time either.
Dotting for interest. Though the link to the quickstart document on their page doesn't work right now?
Also dotting for interest, yet I noticed this kickstarter mentions this product is for 5e. I saw this kickstarter when it was running, then saw it was for 5e, and closed the webpage.
Also checked the italiano publisher's website, yet not finding the Kisarta product there.
This campaign has some great concept to explore. I'd like to be a part of it.
Very curious Seer of Shadows I've got a couple 8th level characters whose games ended abruptly, and I would enjoy playing them again. So, I will also dot for interest's sake.
Dotting for interest! This seems really cool!
My first thought for a character for this campaign would be The Tragic Hero.
This paladin lead a snowballs-chance-in-Hell excursion down the Circles of Hell, with himself being the only survivor to make it to the Ninth Circle. In a titanic mythic battle, the paladin fought an arch-fiend bent on invading the paladin's planet on the Material Plane. Through Faith and Personal Sacrifice, the paladin was able to stop the invasion; purchased with his own mortal life and soul. The paladin's dying thoughts was wondering where or if his soul would go to Heaven, stay in Hell, or who knows where. After what seemed like an Eternity in Darkness, this paladin's consciousness awoke in Kisarta; exhausted, angry, and deeply confused.
Doot.
Im kind of fond of the idea of playin an amnesiac Aroden.
Dotting for interest. Though the link to the quickstart document on their page doesn't work right now?
Also checked the italiano publisher's website, yet not finding the Kisarta product there.
Perhaps they removed it after the Kickstarter officially completed? Whatever the case may be, I should have checked to see if the quickstart link on Kickstarter was still functional since quite a bit of time has passed following the campaign's conclusion. That's my mistake and I apologize for it.
Also dotting for interest, yet I noticed this kickstarter mentions this product is for 5e. I saw this kickstarter when it was running, then saw it was for 5e, and closed the webpage.
Don't worry, this campaign will not use anything but First Edition Pathfinder rules. Kisarta caught my interest some time ago because it reminded me of both the old Ghostwalk setting and Dark Souls, both of which I adore, and I purchased it for the fluff alone.
I've got a couple 8th level-ish characters whose games ended abruptly, and I would enjoy playing them again.
There are few better places to explore one's past characters than in a game with this premise. That's something I feel those who are more prolific in creating characters can appreciate to one degree or another. Every tabletop roleplayer I know has a veritable graveyard- pun intended- of shelved ideas and TPK'd favorites. Breathing life back into old ideas can be cathartic in it's own way.
Don't feel like you are only limited to those characters who are already eighth level though. If you want to re-explore a character who was formerly sixteenth, or even twentieth, level, scaling down a character's power is easily explained with Kisarta's metaphysics. Scaling upwards requires a bit more work, but I'm confident in my ability to find some way to rationalize it.
My first thought for a character for this campaign would be The Tragic Hero.
This paladin lead a snowballs-chance-in-Hell excursion down the Circles of Hell, with himself being the only survivor to make it to the Ninth Circle. In a titanic mythic battle, the paladin fought an arch-fiend bent on invading the paladin's planet on the Material Plane. Through Faith and Personal Sacrifice, the paladin was able to stop the invasion; purchased with his own mortal life and soul. The paladin's dying thoughts was wondering where or if his soul would go to Heaven, stay in Hell, or who knows where. After what seemed like an Eternity in Darkness, this paladin's consciousness awoke in Kisarta; exhausted, angry, and deeply confused.
I will admit to having a soft spot for tragic heroes, whether Byronic, Orphic, or otherwise. It would be interesting to see how a tragic hero such as yours would react upon realizing he was denied both the heavenly afterlife he had hoped for and the afterlife of undeserved torment that he feared might come to pass after dying in Hell. His reaction to the Crucible of the Damned or the Radiant Citadel, when the party visits those Dominions, might also prove interesting.
Im kind of fond of the idea of playin an amnesiac Aroden.
An interesting idea. I myself had plans to incorporate the Last Azlanti into the setting. Spoilers await below if you were interested in reading more into that.
Since Aroden was a mortal man who was artificially gifted divinity by the power of the Starstone, I reasoned that his mortal and divine essence might not stay enmeshed in Kisarta. The plan was that the divine part of his essence would have reformed as a Starchild within the Nameless Abyss, while his mortal form would be somewhere within Limbo. Your idea provides an interesting way I could twist that scenario: the amnesiac mortal half of a god, potentially played by you, awakens in the Cemetery of Lost Souls (along with the other PCs of course) long after his divine half, whose memories are intact, has incarnated and established a sizable presence within the Nameless Abyss. Who is the real Aroden: the man with a soul but no memories of his past or the godly reflection of that man with memories of his past, but no soul? The philosophical quandaries that question poses seem like they might be fun to explore.
Multiple ideas floating around already. Had a ranger that died during the Time of Troubles and came back later, she'd be ranger/fighter. Had an oracle who at this point was studying with some monks, but might go oracle/sorcerer since Scaled Fist monk doesn't offer much for class abilities. Couple ideas for bard/magus or bard/hunter....
I have a few ideas initially as well! My first is a Wild West cowboy, probably a gunslinger/cavalier but maybe gunslinger/something else.
Well thinking of options for the cowboy I also was reminded of an older character I had who died around level 8 which was a gunslinger/swashbuckler ratfolk who was a close quarters fighter in a modern fantasy game living in NYCs sewers.
Another idea was coming from our world as a fortune teller who would end up as an oracle/cartomancer Witch. How that scaling up from a street fortune teller to someone with real magic might be a problem but possible what they were doing was right the magic just wasn’t in our world.
The final one would be reliant on 3.5 sources so I was wondering if those would be possibilities? If so the idea is a build focused on a companion using either Arcane Hierophant (Races of the Wild of 108) prestige class or Devoted Tracker (complete Adventurer also 108 strangely) feat which combine familiars or paladin mounts with animal companions respectively. The idea for that concept would be that upon the death of their companion the character ritually killed themselves in order to join them in the afterlife but their passion pulled them out of the standard order of things and into Kisarta.
Would it be possible to have a no-known-background character show up? Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of characters I've never been able to use or could come up with something new with little effort, but I've never played an amnesiac and depending on how our past lives may or may not impact this story, I feel like an open-ended book could give us some sort of plot-within-a-plot and also giving you a way to feed relevant info into the group.
Sadly most of my characters hardly make it past level 5, and I am generally terrible in building gestalted characters. Wish I had even a level 8 character even if a plain normal one.
Though my idea would be a shifter-???, perhaps shifter-druid for a very primodial feel hunter. Though I see you have not mentioned allowable classes and races, I would be aiming for the legendary classes (by Legendary Games) as they are very thematic in design.
perhaps shifter-druid
Isn't shifter already an alt class of druid? Would it be worth it to combine them in gestalt?
See, I am terrible in putting together gestalted characters. :)
Though the theme of the setting is unusual at best. Dark place of anarchy, which is what makes this one interesting. I guessing with gestalt characters, this is going to be a deadly adventure of survival.
I've got a couple 8th level-ish characters whose games ended abruptly, and I would enjoy playing them again.There are few better places to explore one's past characters than in a game with this premise. That's something I feel those who are more prolific in creating characters can appreciate to one degree or another. Every tabletop roleplayer I know has a veritable graveyard- pun intended- of shelved ideas and TPK'd favorites. Breathing life back into old ideas can be cathartic in it's own way.
Don't feel like you are only limited to those characters who are already eighth level though. If you want to re-explore a character who was formerly sixteenth, or even twentieth, level, scaling down a character's power is easily explained with Kisarta's metaphysics. Scaling upwards requires a bit more work, but I'm confident in my ability to find some way to rationalize it.
So the character I had in mind, was a bloodrager/oracle aasimare named Wuflgar From an alt-earth game in the 15th century. I really enjoyed writing his backstory and ended up playing him to seventh level. But when the gm combined tables I needed to cut back games due to a change in employment. Later MJ66 and I had discussed putting him back in a 'third chapter' at a higher level but that game never transpired.
Suffice to say I'd really like to play him again. I'll keep following along in the 'Interest' check watching to see if it turns into a 'recruitment' thread, or if you create a new one. Once that happens, I'm sure I'll have more questions.
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The final one would be reliant on 3.5 sources so I was wondering if those would be possibilities?
I am avoiding rules content from outside of 1st Edition Pathfinder. That may seem at odds with me touting this campaign as being one where you could play as a character from essentially any cosmology, but there are a multitude of comprehensive Pathfinder fan conversions out there in the wild that cover rules for settings like Dark Sun, Eberron, and Ravenloft. Pathfinder also has a wealth of content that could be used to reproduce most things all on it's own.
Would it be possible to have a no-known-background character show up?
Yes, that is possible. A number of Kisarta's residents have varying degrees of amnesia, mostly with those whose souls were damaged or "destroyed" before their migration.
Though the theme of the setting is unusual at best. Dark place of anarchy, which is what makes this one interesting. I guessing with gestalt characters, this is going to be a deadly adventure of survival.
The setting isn't quite one of anarchy. The Dominion of Limbo, where characters will awaken, has a city nearly as large as the infinite plane it is built upon and has it's own series of spoken and unspoken laws. Other Dominions may or may not have laws, with various complexities in those who do.
The game isn't specifically going to be about survival, at least outside of specific Dominions. Rather, it's going to be about the party's exploration of Kisarta, their interactions with it's inhabitants, the secrets they discover, and the mark the leave upon the world through their actions. I am setting the game up as a semi-sandbox that the party can engage with as they choose to. There will be challenging combat without a doubt, but it's not the fulcrum around which the rest of the experience revolves. Besides, souls on Kisarta can (usually) come back from death, albeit with increasing amounts of damage to their memories and souls that have dire ramifications once it reaches a certain point. But that's a topic for another time.
I'll keep following along in the 'Interest' check watching to see if it turns into a 'recruitment' thread, or if you create a new one. Once that happens, I'm sure I'll have more questions.
The thread has hit a threshold where I believe enough interest has been noted. The game has officially entered the phase where the character creation rules and other details are being finalized. After I finish drafting a recruitment, it will be given two lookovers to ensure that the rules language is clear and unambiguous and that no important character creation rules are accidentally omitted. Once those two lookovers are complete and any mistakes are corrected, I will post a separate thread for the recruitment.
I assume this would be noted in the recruitment post once it's up but I'm gonna ask anyway just in case so that I don't forget: do you have a preference for character creation starting point?
1. Total new character with memories
2. Total new character amnesiac
3. Migrated character with memories
4. Migrated character amnesiac
An interesting idea. I myself had plans to incorporate the Last Azlanti into the setting. Spoilers await below if you were interested in reading more into that.
And then you have to god bit. Coming from a mysterious killer meteor summoned from the black void by a cabal of terrified Aboleths and none of human experience to guide that. So there's a horrible thought.
Thanks for clearing up about the setting. Sure is pulling me in.
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I assume this would be noted in the recruitment post once it's up but I'm gonna ask anyway just in case so that I don't forget: do you have a preference for character creation starting point?
1. Total new character with memories
2. Total new character amnesiac
3. Migrated character with memories
4. Migrated character amnesiac
The answer to that question is multipartite.
A character's status as freshly made for this game or adapted for it is one that I have no preference for.
I do have something of a preference for characters with their memories intact, if only because it provides more for me as a GM to work with and gives me a better idea for your character. But a well-written amnesiac character won't be automatically written off.
*Spoilers*
That setup provides fertile grounds for a wide range of ideas that both you as a player and I as a GM could work from.
Thanks for clearing up about the setting. Sure is pulling me in.
You're welcome. There will be a small section in the recruitment detailing a few of Kisarta's rather unique eccentricities that may prove even more interesting.
Well for the one half of the gestalt character, I definitely like to go with 5 legendary shifter (normal) with 3 polymorph savant (prestige class for l shifter) for total of 8 levels. The other half of gestalt I am more open, could be unchained rogue (sneaking about), sorcerer (arcane power, and even bloodranger), or druid (divine), and thus choose to fit the composition of the party to give more coverage in abilities.
The background I formulating is largely based for the lshifter, and is rather flexible to pick up any class, to compliment the primary.
Now to wait for the recruitment thread to pop up.
Oh do we as the players need to get Kisarta even though it is 5e product?
I'll be expecting the recruitment thread with hope in my eyes!
How friend are you to multiclassing in the gestalt?
I'll be expecting the recruitment thread with hope in my eyes!
How friend are you to multiclassing in the gestalt?
Do you have a software tool that can handle gestatlt character, yet alone multiclass gestalt? Else it is going to be a manual mind bomb to manage.
I was thinking of gestalting as a clever godling. Not to claim deific parentage, but abilities used by the Greatest of Heroes.
Oh do we as the players need to get Kisarta even though it is 5e product?
Not at all. One of the reasons I designed the campaign to start with the party freshly awakening in the Cemetery of Lost Souls was to accommodate those who did not have the books. There is no pressing need have a deeper knowledge of the campaign world if your characters are new arrivals to it and will be learning about it along the way through interactions with NPCs, exploration, et cetera.
How friend are you to multiclassing in the gestalt?
I have no issue with it so long as people can keep the math straight. I would, however, require a breakdown of what was taken at each given level to ensure that there are no problems checking the character's statblock for errors.
I was thinking of gestalting as a clever godling. Not to claim deific parentage, but abilities used by the Greatest of Heroes.
I take it that's an informal request for the class? Consider the class itself granted in that case. Any support for the class- such as class specific feats, additional class options, et cetera- will need to be cleared separately.
Supremely interested in this idea…
Post-death ‘hub’ where times, worlds, and cultures mix… check!
Realm to explore intriguing questions about existence… check!
Gestalt rules to build complex and fun characters… check!
A DM who uses Byronic and Orphic… DOUBLE-check!
I don’t have a specific character in mind right now, but I will offer someone with complexity and (likely) pathos when this becomes a posted recruitment.
Do you have a software tool that can handle gestatlt character, yet alone multiclass gestalt? Else it is going to be a manual mind bomb to manage.I'll be expecting the recruitment thread with hope in my eyes!
How friend are you to multiclassing in the gestalt?
I take some pride in doing ALL my characters by hand. I've made tristalt mythic 12th level characters, 20th level gestalt SoP/SoM, 15th level Mythic gestalt full 3rd party, all of them by pure rule searching with my own hands and eyes. They might not be the most uberoptimized "I kill a thousand universes with a wink" characters, but there's some good feeling in knowing I can manage.
I just didn't want to open a worm can.
I have no issue with it so long as people can keep the math straight. I would, however, require a breakdown of what was taken at each given level to ensure that there are no problems checking the character's statblock for errors.
Thank you. You'll see few characters with the details about when/what options were taken as the one I'll present here, I promise. The idea is to use all levels in the different classes taken, together with the feats and other options, as a whole to get the feeling of an "own class", far beyond just the sum of the parts.
I'll work on it.
I dont think aroden is anything terribly complicated diviner wizard/magus fits him just fine. Just need to figure out the best way to handle defenses.
Do you have a software tool that can handle gestatlt character, yet alone multiclass gestalt? Else it is going to be a manual mind bomb to manage.I'll be expecting the recruitment thread with hope in my eyes!
How friend are you to multiclassing in the gestalt?
I take some pride in doing ALL my characters by hand. I've made tristalt mythic 12th level characters, 20th level gestalt SoP/SoM, 15th level Mythic gestalt full 3rd party, all of them by pure rule searching with my own hands and eyes. They might not be the most uberoptimized "I kill a thousand universes with a wink" characters, but there's some good feeling in knowing I can manage.
I just didn't want to open a worm can.
Wow! I take my hat off to you.
Oh do we as the players need to get Kisarta even though it is 5e product?Not at all. One of the reasons I designed the campaign to start with the party freshly awakening in the Cemetery of Lost Souls was to accommodate those who did not have the books. There is no pressing need have a deeper knowledge of the campaign world if your characters are new arrivals to it and will be learning about it along the way through interactions with NPCs, exploration, et cetera.
How friend are you to multiclassing in the gestalt?I have no issue with it so long as people can keep the math straight. I would, however, require a breakdown of what was taken at each given level to ensure that there are no problems checking the character's statblock for errors.
I was thinking of gestalting as a clever godling. Not to claim deific parentage, but abilities used by the Greatest of Heroes.I take it that's an informal request for the class? Consider the class itself granted in that case. Any support for the class- such as class specific feats, additional class options, et cetera- will need to be cleared separately.
Great!. Though I would not have any hassle to get the PDF, then again, probably be nicer not knowing the setting, and learn it through adventure. :)
I hunger for the details for character creation.
Maybe Jereru is willing to check the stats of characters to be correct *wink*
I'll leave it for those that can get a character done in half an hour.
V interested, I'm toying between resurrecting either a character who was a 1800's robber baron on an alternate earth, a "dragon prince" whose true ancestry is not dragons but kobolds, or writing a now dead mortal citizen of the Outer or Elemental Planes who has never walked the Material
The final draft of the recruitment has been posted. Thank you everyone for your interest!