Need some help with a new campaign setup.

[Gamereaper]

I kind of want to go in a different direction from traditional D&D. I was thinking of a musically based campaign where the party is a touring band. They battle using music, so think Metalocalypse or Tenacious D and The Pick Of Destiny or along those lines.

Some of the classes will have to have some slight changes to them. Somatic components will use instruments for example. I'm thinking about changing the sneak attack to a burst of speed that plays a ton of notes to increase your perform rank (and in turn do more damage or something) up to 1D6 per appropriate D6 of sneak attack per encounter.

Some of the Bard abilities will be free for all. Bardic Knowledge won't be but I'll probably switch it to freestyle or something (searching through your common and obscure knowledge and vocabulary to come up with lyrics).

Anyone have any cool ideas?

[Geddy2112]

Skalds. Skalds everywhere. That said, not everybody needs to be a bard-several other classes have perform as a class skill, you could give it to all the classes you want. While a lot of famous musicians are likely bards, there are plenty more that are not. All of the deities should have a favored instrument in addition to a favored weapon, giving proficiency to paladins and clerics.

One of my players did this once-his backstory was that he was the lead guitarist of the band Deathork, and he went off adventuring for inspiration to help write their next album. That said, I don't think having the band start off as Deathklok(high level), the richest most powerful band ever is the right way to go. Not saying they have to be a garage band(level 1) either; something in between.

Pick of destiny would be a good classic "go find the ancient artifact" style quest.I would have other metal bands touring the world, who could be "battled" and who would also be looking for the super item of ultimate magical music power.

May want to consider looking into the words of power stuff for a musical magic thing.

Overall, this is pretty metal(even if the party plays as Death Cab for Cutie). Also, please make Babymetal a trio of Kitsune bards. And cameo of Tenatious D is required-they accidentally summoned a devil, then using the best song in the world banished him. However, they forgot how the song goes(potential side quest to find the best song in the world of ultimate banishing?)

[DrMotives]

Dragon #345 has the Crested Sea Serpent, which is a dragon that uses a perform (crest harmonics) check to set the DC every time it uses it's SLAs, and of course its breath weapon is a line of sonic energy. Even if a sea dragon isn't going to fit in, allowing other things to use a perform check for SLAs could really put your monsters in a musical theme. Also, someone should be questing to hunt the Tarrasque so they can cut off a horn and make an Alp horn from it.

[Gamereaper]

Dragon #345 has the Crested Sea Serpent, which is a dragon that uses a perform (crest harmonics) check to set the DC every time it uses it's SLAs, and of course its breath weapon is a line of sonic energy. Even if a sea dragon isn't going to fit in, allowing other things to use a perform check for SLAs could really put your monsters in a musical theme. Also, someone should be questing to hunt the Tarrasque so they can cut off a horn and make an Alp horn from it.

I like those ideas. I think spells will have a perform DC. The skill spellcraft will be split between Knowledge (Arcana) and Perform.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what rogues could do aside from backstab. I'm thinking of like a very fast string of notes that boosts their perform or something.

Perform will do damage on a similar scale that iaijutsu focus does.

But that leaves the fighter types with a disadvantage. Maybe they get a bonus to perform equal to half their level or something.

[sovin_ndore]

If you are trying to move to a skill based casting system, you might want to investigate Truenamer (ToM). It has some issues but it and potential fixes are going to provide alot of insight regarding what you can get out of similar mechanics.

[Gamereaper]

If you are trying to move to a skill based casting system, you might want to investigate Truenamer (ToM). It has some issues but it and potential fixes are going to provide alot of insight regarding what you can get out of similar mechanics.

Truenamer is stupid broken. I might incorporate the "truenaming that doesn't make me cry myself to sleep at night" fix for some things.

[sovin_ndore]

Truenamer is stupid broken. I might incorporate the "truenaming that doesn't make me cry myself to sleep at night" fix for some things.
Without help, Truenamer doesn't hardly operate. With TO tricks, it can be rediculous (though I still don't think it is Tier 1). I was just suggesting it as a research point as there has been a vast amount of effort put towards skill based check-for-effect relative to its mechanics.

[Nibbens]

But that leaves the fighter types with a disadvantage. Maybe they get a bonus to perform equal to half their level or something.

Poor fighters - they can't even get love in the music version of D&D.

Maybe some of the stamina pool (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/stamina-and-combat-tricks-optional-rules) shenanigans from PF unchained could be adapted for fighters... then adapted again for your music... power... thingies...

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yeah.