Stryyke
2016-12-28, 04:27 AM
Next Saturday is session 0 for my new campaign, and there are just a few niggles I want to make sure are ironed out.
Being a very low magic campaign at the beginning, the biggest issue has been PC motivation. Namely loot. What I've come up with is that for the entire first chapter, the players will be struggling just to get a complete armor set. They'll start with nothing but a weapon of their choice, in a very small town where the only smith has never made armor. They'll start with only a few silver, and the nearest place to procure actual armor is weeks away. The enemies they will be fighting will have large armor only, so the medium size PCs cannot just put it on. I figure loot-wise, that should keep them busy for a few months.
The feat system will be the primary means of advancement. For the first chapter, the PCs should be able to learn new feats every 2-3 fights, or 1-2 sessions. I've balanced the feats to be more appropriate to the system, so that should give them a fairly steady feel of progression.
Later in the campaign, magic becomes much more acceptable, and so at that point I can give out magic items a little more traditionally. The part I'm a bit unsure about is the in-between time. There will be several months between when they have a complete set of gear, and I can start introducing magic items. My thought is that they could spend their funds on hiring lackeys and equipping them for 2 or 3 months of weekly games before they start having problems with the loot.
That will be an ongoing expense, but it should fade into the background as the campaign starts sending the group out on specific missions. It will be slightly too early at this point to introduce more than one magical item, so what kind of loot would PCs at this level be interested enough to chase after, other than magical items? If they already have a small army, I'm unsure what kind of loot would interest them. Maybe epic weapons that give them an edge in small group battles is all I can really come up with. But I'd like a few different types of items. I can't have them search for the 5 epic swords from thousands of years ago. That would get boring in the middle of the second quest.
Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks
Being a very low magic campaign at the beginning, the biggest issue has been PC motivation. Namely loot. What I've come up with is that for the entire first chapter, the players will be struggling just to get a complete armor set. They'll start with nothing but a weapon of their choice, in a very small town where the only smith has never made armor. They'll start with only a few silver, and the nearest place to procure actual armor is weeks away. The enemies they will be fighting will have large armor only, so the medium size PCs cannot just put it on. I figure loot-wise, that should keep them busy for a few months.
The feat system will be the primary means of advancement. For the first chapter, the PCs should be able to learn new feats every 2-3 fights, or 1-2 sessions. I've balanced the feats to be more appropriate to the system, so that should give them a fairly steady feel of progression.
Later in the campaign, magic becomes much more acceptable, and so at that point I can give out magic items a little more traditionally. The part I'm a bit unsure about is the in-between time. There will be several months between when they have a complete set of gear, and I can start introducing magic items. My thought is that they could spend their funds on hiring lackeys and equipping them for 2 or 3 months of weekly games before they start having problems with the loot.
That will be an ongoing expense, but it should fade into the background as the campaign starts sending the group out on specific missions. It will be slightly too early at this point to introduce more than one magical item, so what kind of loot would PCs at this level be interested enough to chase after, other than magical items? If they already have a small army, I'm unsure what kind of loot would interest them. Maybe epic weapons that give them an edge in small group battles is all I can really come up with. But I'd like a few different types of items. I can't have them search for the 5 epic swords from thousands of years ago. That would get boring in the middle of the second quest.
Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks