[3.5] custom campaign setting

[questionmark693]

So my brothers and I like the legend of Zelda. We also like Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. So I thought about putting together a Zelda based campaign. Thoughts?

[ArcturusV]

Well, the first one that pops to mind is a problem with a lot of Fan Setting stuff. Your players will "know" the plot. And generally you'll have at least one player who tries to "Win" the plot. In this case dealing with Ganon and the Dark World, etc. And you run into a point where either the characters feel superfluous to the setting (They can never solve the plot upon which all revolves), or they solve the plot and suddenly you go... "Well... crap... now everything the setting is about is broken".

This has been a problem for me in Star Wars, Star Trek (sometimes but not as much), and Dragonlance RPGs.

Magic in Hyrule works nothing like Magic in DnD. So you would be well off to scrap the usual Wizards, Sorcerers, and Clerics. I mean yeah, there is Magic. But it's more of a ritualistic variety, powerful but slow to use and requiring work that makes it hard to spam. So you'd have to rebalance the game for a low spellcaster setting. Which might be hard with DnD 3.5. Not saying it's impossible.

But the worst mistake you could do is balance for low magic, then leave wizards, clerics, and the like untouched.

[Gildedragon]

I agree with arcturus, drop spellcasters and add Invocations (UA, also in the SRD).
Rangers and ToB classes seem as if they would fit in nicely.

[questionmark693]

I didn't even think about it being low magic...and everything I've heard about people who mixed low magic with 3.5 was not good. Also, the plot thing makes sense...I could see that as a problem. We could just only take the campaign to a certain point though, and I can twist it enough to make it longer than the games themselves were.

[ArcturusV]

Mostly because without magic you start to see just how much they shafted mundane characters option wise, like whoever wrote mundane characters spent a bare minimal effort designing them... Now I'm not saying No-Magic. For example a Paladin could easily fit into a Zelda-verse, as it has a history of things like "Smite Evil" arrows in Silver Arrows/Light Arrows, and minor magics like Din's Fire and Nayru's Love. The Hero of Time would probably be a Paladin (The Master Sword is very much like a Holy Avenger Longsword). Shiekah are typical ninjas with some slight supernatural abilities. Magic items exist, obviously.

But you don't QUITE have Wizard/Cleric style magic. The powerful sorcerers/wizards in Zelda are typically like that guy who's name I always butcher from Link to the Past (Aghazadim?)... who was chucking lightning bolts and such like a Blaster Wizard, but it was also a case where he had a room specially crafted and ritualized to fight inside. And his ritual to rip open the seal between the Light World and the Dark World was something that took place over weeks and months, not seconds and minutes.

[Gildedragon]

You can have magic users, but most the magic in the games seems to come from stuff. A magic sword, a magic hat, triangles, pools... etc

Getting a couple of SLA's as feats would not be a bad option to give players magic.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Also, since you're playing in an established setting, make it an Alt-verse. The backstory's the same, but anything past the first second of the first session is in limbo.

For example: If one of your players decides to murder Ganondorf the second he makes a cameo, have it turn out that this Ganondorf was a saint, and your player is now being hunted for murder by 9,001 Hylian Soldiers. If they try to find Link, have him never been born, or he was turned into a SKull-kid. Or he was eaten in the first dungeon. Or he's the BBEG. Doesn't matter.

In short, if a player tries to beat the game using Lore: Destroy him. Humiliate him. Drive him before you and drink in the lamentations of his women!

The Low-Magic suggestions are right on as well. Hope it works out well for you.

[questionmark693]

I definitely agree with changing the lore of the universe. There's no reason for my players to know what's going to happen, or that they're guaranteed success :p but since the point of the campaign is to be reminiscent of the games, most everything major will stay the same, short of me removing Link and replacing him with the party.

[Kuulvheysoon]

One vote for making this an E6 campaign.

E6 just seems to fit (especially since I just beat Spirit Tracks/Phantom Hourglass again).

[questionmark693]

Now seems like a great time to ask-what is E6?

[Kuulvheysoon]

Now seems like a great time to ask-what is E6?

The maximum character level is 6. As you continue to gain experience, you accrue additional feats instead of levels. Works well to equalize casters/mundane, and makes some options (Shifter race, for example) much more attractive.

Also good for low-magic, as the maximum CL for any item is 8 (for Artificers) or 6 for everybody else.

[questionmark693]

So you can continue to gain feats...but not class levels? I don't totally follow.

[ArcturusV]

Also things like Sha'ir Cheese I've seen mentioned where an E6 one can end up with something like level 12 Spellcasting in both Divine and Arcane. But yeah.

Any idea which of the many split/alternate world timelines you're basing your Zelda Campaign on? If it was up to me I'd vote for the Link to the Past era/world. The Light/Dark World is an interesting mix. You have a more fleshed out Hyrule than in some of the games. And it has a slightly darker tone to the world than some other games like Minish Cap for example. Course it's missing some things most people associate with Zelda now like Gorons, Shiekah, etc. But it's also really easy to add them in. Have the Shiekahs live on Death Mountain and be the guardians of the entrance to the Dark World, the Gorons a lost race in the rocky mountains to the Southeast, with few survivors (Or maybe only a race in the Dark World). The Zoras living in Lake Hylia or up near the Great Falls, etc.

[Karnith]

So you can continue to gain feats...but not class levels? I don't totally follow.
You can find a fuller explanation of how E6 works here (http://esix.pbworks.com/f/E6v041.pdf) (or here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?200754-E6-The-Game-Inside-D-amp-D-%28new-revision%29) is you'd rather not look through a .pdf file). The basic premise is that no character can advance beyond character level 6, but for each 5,000 experience points you get beyond that, you get a new feat.