Home Ground Advantage

[Aron Times]

Hey folks, I've been playing a lot of Vampire: The Requiem, and one of its core assumptions is that vampires generally stay put in their territories instead of being wandering murderhobos like in D&D. For example, in the recent Requiem rules update (Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle), vampires benefit greatly from establishing their territories. Three merits in particular, Safe Place, Haven, and Feeding Grounds provide a home ground advantage, and for added fun, the party can pool their merit dots together to enjoy greater benefits from the first two (Feeding Grounds is a solo thing that can't be shared).

Anyway, I was wondering if there is support for non-murderhobo PCs in 3.x. While I enjoy the traditional wandering, dungeon-delving, dragon-slaying game as much as anyone, I like to mix things up a bit from time to time. In Vampire, for example, I sometimes play a nomadic vampire for a change of pace. I'd like to play a 3.x game where the party, or maybe even just my character, gets an incentive not to go out and look for adventure but to stay put and actually establish himself within an area or community.

So, any suggestions? I'm open to homebrew and third party content.

[lytokk]

I know of the Dungeon Lord prestige class, which gives bonuses so long as you are within your dungeon/home, as well as bonuses to your underlings or even maybe allies, but beyond that stretch nothing mechanical comes to mind.

Most of the benefit would be from a RP perspective. Having an actual home turf where people know you, getting discounts on merchandise, having a place for downtime, or even a forge if your character is a blacksmith.

[Promises Kept]

Well, in theory the intended use of Sanctum Spell is for stuff like this, though it's usually used for major cheese of different sorts. There are some types of magic that are tied to a particular location, like (I think) Node Magic. And, if you're Epic (or close enough to Epic you can pay for another caster to do it, though that requires a DM very friendly to the idea), you can make a Mythal (Lost Empires of Faerun). They're incredibly powerful (semi)permanent stationary spells that can basically do anything you want them to, including things like constant-effect buffs for everyone in the area and selective antimagic. Definitely something you want the DM totally on board for, though. If you slip one past him, he may start constructing his own, which can end quite badly.

[Coventry]

Hmmm.

For city-sized locations, everyone that is a permanent resident gets a small morale bonus for staying within their city (say, +1 to skills, BAB, damage), a +0 in nearby areas, and a -1 at long distances.

For smaller areas, like a newly established castle on the borderlands, the bonuses are higher, and affect more things - HD, Caster Level, ability scores ... giving a party a reason to establish a new home base, but then stay put. "Founding families" retain the larger bonus as the site grows, while new immigrants get lesser and lesser bonuses over time as th location grows into a city.


There is precedent in Eberron - the high priestess of the Silver Flame gets something like +15 levels of cleric when she is inside the main temple, and loses them outside the walls.

[Telonius]

Interestingly enough, it's most commonly used regarding undead: Consecrate/Desecrate spells being the biggest ones. If the area you're talking about contains an altar dedicated to a good (or evil) god, it can make it easier (or harder) to turn undead in the area. Hallow/Unhallow can offer more powerful benefits.