Cave Man Story

[Ashtagon]

This is basically cavemen and dinosaurs, but with a twist.

Back in the period of approximately 8 million to half a million years ago, there was quite an astounding variety of humanoid species. Quite a few of them make for playable races. And some of them bear more than a passing similarity to various fantasy races. Homo floresiensis, for example, were basically seafaring hobbits.

So we take all these species, play fast and loose with historical time spans of when each species was extant, throw in dinosaurs, and some primitive magic. Let's say, have mostly non-caster classes. Rangers must use an alternate class feature that removes their spells. Spells can be taken as feats by any class. Seeing as how this is a fantasy stone age, a lot of weapons simply won't exist. However, in order to establish a basis for a solid campaign, let's have some level of urbanisation and large scale social organisation (at least for the more advanced species), although not to the level of The Flintstones.

Caster I

Prerequisite: Intelligence or Wisdom 11
Benefit: You can cast a single 1st level spell 3/day.
Special: GMs should feel free to veto specific spell choices.

Caster II

Prerequisite: Intelligence or Wisdom 13, Caster I
Benefit: You can cast a single 2nd level spell 3/day.
Special: GMs should feel free to veto specific spell choices.

[Calliope121]

Looks interesting so far. How are you planning on laying out the world? Would the present classes be majorly affected? Have lots of questions, but looks good so far. The only thing I would think of changing is that anyone can cast spells. Especially if you are planning on reducing the spellcasting classes magic.

[Shpadoinkle]

Almost every primitive culture believes in magic of some kind, and lots of them believe that while anyone can do "basic" magic, only the wise man or the elders or whatever can do more complicated things with magic.

I think those feats are great, if a little easy on the prerequisites (especially the second one.) What I'd do is use the NPC classes and make adept a prestige class, though I don't really have any suggestions for entry requirements beyond having to study under someone (either a tribe member or a spirit guide or something) who's more experienced in the study of magic.

[Calliope121]

Okay sounds good. As for the npc classes that seems like a very good fit. Maybe you could have a prerequisite of having so many ranks in spellcraft?

[Shpadoinkle]

Not that I'm trying to steal your thunder or anything, but I was bored, so I figured I'd see which spells would be appropriate for this kind of thing, so my choices are in the spoilers.

Level 1
Alarm
Animal Friendship
Bane/Bless
Bless Water
Burning Hands (a little iffy)
Cause Fear
Change Self
Color Spray
Command
Cure Light Wounds
Curse Water
Deathwatch
Detect Animals or Plants
Detect Secret Doors (not that I expect there would be many secret doors in a campaign like this, but it's thematically appropriate)
Detect Snares and Pits
Detect Undead
Divine Favor
Doom
Endure Elements
Entropic Shield
Expeditious Retreat
Feather Fall
Invisibility to Animals
Jump
Mage Armor
Magic Fang
Magic Stone
Magic Weapon
Mount (maybe)
Obscuring Mist
Pass Without Trace
Remove Fear
Shield of Faith
Shillelagh
Sleep
Spider Climb
Summon Monster 1
Summon Nature's Ally 1
True Strike
Unseen Servant
Ventriloquism

Level 2
Aid
Alter Self
Animal Messenger
Animal Trance
Arcane Lock
Augury (probably a very important spell in everyday life)
Animal Trance
Barkskin
Bull's Strength
Calm Emotions
Cat's Grace
Consecrate (might extend it to affect anything evil)
Continual Flame
Cure Moderate Wounds
Daylight
Death Knell
Delay Poison
Endurance
Entangle
Fog Cloud
Gentle Repose
Ghoul Touch
Invisibility
Lesser Restoration
Locate Object
Misdirection
Obscure Object
Produce Flame
Protection From Arrows
Pyrotechnics
Remove Paralysis
Resist Elements
Scare
See Invisibility
Shield Other (brothers or a pair of good friends spur each other on in battle. Might make a level 1 version of this spell that only applies to a specific person)
Silence
Soften Earth and Stone
Speak With Animals
Suggestion
Summon Monster 2
Summon Nature's Ally 2
Summon Swarm
Tree Shape
Warp Wood
Whispering Wind
Wood Shape
Zone of Truth


You'll notice that flashy stuff with obvious effects (Magic Missile, for instance) isn't included, nor are many spells that affect people other than the caster or the caster's allies. That's because I'm thinking that magic should be subtle- is the enemy tribe's champion REALLY that strong, or did the tribe's shaman use magic to make him stronger? Did that fog that rolled in just in time to cover your escape when you're severely outmatched show up because you cast or spell, or do the god have your back, or was it just luck? It can be pretty hard to say.

Misdirection, using nature to one's advantage, favor of the gods (or at least effects that seem like it), and enhancing one's natural abilities are what I see primitive people turning magic towards, not blowing stuff up. Almost all of the spells up there do things like that, and the ones that don't are mostly second levels spells- only usable by people who have attained some degree of mastery over magic. Stuff like Produce Flame, for instance; it's a second level spell, meaning the only people who can use it are (relatively) powerful. You see a guy throwing around fire, you know he's not somebody to mess with.

Just because a people are primitive doesn't mean they're stupid- primitive peoples have accomplished some remarkably clever things, considering the resources they had to work with.

Anyway, moving away from the subject of magic, you need to consider animals. They will be VERY important to a caveman's way of life. They may hunt or fish or keep a herd, but a fair part of daily life is going to involve dealing with animals. Your first session could involve your PCs learning how to hunt before the real plot kicks in (I think it'll also help them get into the setting.) Even if you don't do that, you'll probably want to consider how the PCs' tribe regards and interacts with other animals.

Also: wolves. Up to you whether the PCs' tribe has domesticated wolves or not (this was kind of a natural progression historically- humans would leave bones and food scraps behind, and wolves would come along and scavenge. Wolves gradually began following people closer, until the two species came to a sort of understanding- wolves help us fight and hunt, and they wake us up when they hear a bear or whatever approaching at night, and we help them fight and hunt as well, along with helping their sick or injured better than they can themselves, plus they're able to eat more consistently.) It's going to depend pretty heavily on the type of setting you're using. If the PC's tribe lives on an archipelago then wolves being around is going to be pretty unlikely.

[DodgerH2O]

I've actually got a "Stone Age" campaign on a back burner, so I've thought some of the pertinent issues over. I kinda like the Magic as Feats thing, but also feel that a dedicated spellcasting class (probably Adept, as others have mentioned) should exist, even if limited to NPCs. In a world where a lot of things are MUCH bigger and stronger than humans they need every advantage they can get,

One thing I'd suggest, allow for basic weapon and armor "enchantments" done by say a simple ritual to allow stone/flint/bone/obsidian gear to substitute for the standard (iron/steel) gear. If the ritual needs to be done fairly often (weekly or monthly) then it helps tie the PCs to civilization and provides a sink for loot, alternately a PC spellcaster may learn the ritual. Having to constantly worry about your flint spear breaking or having a halfling with a bone dagger that deals a single point of damage may be something you want for your players, but CRs and such assume availability of gear of a certain quality.

For a more "Fantasy world" feel... in such a setting most likely a great deal of monstrous opponents will have natural weapons (teeth, claws, etc) that do not suffer damage, AC, and durability penalties like caveman technology does. Fangs can serve as daggers and spearpoints, shells can be used for breastplates and shields, etc. This also gives the PCs reason to return to civilization and means that some of the nastier beasts may give "loot" in the form of a usable corpse.

Just my two coppers. Any more specific things you'd want to work on, feel free to ask, I know I enjoy developing worlds as much or more than using them, wouldn't want to take that away from someone else.

[super dark33]

Weapons availabe should be:

Club and its size variations.
Axe and its size variations (not sure about greataxe though.)
Mace and size variations
bows?
Spears,throwing spears, half spears and maybe longspears.
Sling? or maybe rocks that do damage by weight, needs a table.
hammers and size variations.

[Howler Dagger]

i dont know too much about the prehistoric ages, but i think there should be mostly hide, leather, studded leather, and padded, also no steel shields or tower shields . I agree with super dark about the weapons, but you might want to add quaterstaff, and maybe change bolas to a martial weapon(they were used for hunting).

[super dark33]

i dont think they used querterstaves, as they are double weapons. maybe they used it as a club that needs exotic weapon profincy to use in one hand.

Bolas can work.

[The Anarresti]

i dont think they used querterstaves, as they are double weapons. maybe they used it as a club that needs exotic weapon profincy to use in one hand.

Bolas can work.

I don't see why primitive peoples couldn't have used double weapons, especially a quarterstaff as it is a simple, eaisily made weapon.
I have a question: is the running system D&D Xe or D20 modern? If the first, than I see no reason for not just making the adept a simple 1-20 level PC class, or reworking the adept a little bit, possibly by making it a spontaneous caster, to fit the flavor of a shaman. If it is D&D, than magic already is assumed to work much better than in the real world. Besides, being the shaman was a full time job for a tribe, so it makes sense to have it as a 20-level class.
If, on the other hand, it is reworked D20 modern, than by all means have extremely limited magic, with magical prestige classes, a la The Giant's New World.

Either way, I see no reason to have stone, wood or bone weapons suffer in damage dealing capacity. All the primitive weapons were designed as metal-less weapons, and there is no point in making iron weapons much more desirable if there are no iron weapons in the first place.

And is this going to be Paleolithic or Neolithic? Paleolithic was the very long period of hunter-gatherer lifestyle, "typical caveman." Neolithic was the period in which humans developed simple farming, but is still before most recorded history and the advent of metal tools.
Personally, I'd prefer Paleolithic: the vast majority of human history occurred in that period, and human culture was very different then, significantly more egalitarian, with no group of humans larger than a few hundred. I could go more in depth about this, but that would make this post far to long. Take a look, though, in the book "guns, germs and steel."

By the way, on the point about dogs, if this is a fantasy stone age setting instead of a realistic stone age setting, we could put in Worgs as a major race, tending towards neutral instead of evil and often allied with some humanoid.