idea for a campaign, rolls and alignment special rules... thoughts?

[Calthropstu]

I have an idea for a campaign and I thought I'd get some ideas and thoughts from the giant community.

The premise is a law vs chaos war in the form of free roaming nomadic barbarians and a roman style law heavy society.

The party has a choice of siding with either based on their alignment. The whole party must be either lawful or chaotic.
Stats start at 12 for everything, and everyone starts as 1st level warriors. As they play, they will gain access to trainers who can give them access to new abilities, swapping out their first level warrior and adjusting stats based on a predetermined amount on what special trainers they have.

For example, a wizard trainer could adjust their stats as follows: +4 int, -2 str and con, +2 wis.
Different trainers will have different training styles, so where one wizard trainer could have the above, another could have a completely different bonus set.

In addition, they may raise one stat by 2 by lowering another stat by 2 as well (optional) at each stat set.

Leveling will require access to trainers of the appropriate type, requiring side quests and payment just to advance.

Instead of a single point to distribute at lvl 4, once you get to 5th lvl in a class, you repeat the class stat changes. Thereafter, you get a 2 point stat boost to your primary every 5 levels.

Multiclassing recieves the adjustments from both classes, but like all bonuses they won't stack. So a wizard/barbarian could cancel out. Basically you train yourself to use your mind at the expense of your body and vice versa in this instance.

Race will be limited to human only, with non-humans being extremely rare. They will be possible to get training from (the very few who do exist in the chosen land) but their fees will be exorbitant.

The ultimate objective of the party will be to win the war. The party starts as lvl 1 warriors in a squad. Their starting quest will result in disaster beyond their control leading to the outbreak of the war.


Thoughts? Improvements? I welcome all comers.

Forgot to mention, this is for pathfinder.

[BowStreetRunner]

Let's see if I have this straight...

Pathfinder campaign involving lawful roman style society versus chaotic nomadic barbarian society. Party begins involved in a battle that causes the outbreak of war, and then must try to find a way to win the war. Mostly human with rare non-human NPCs. So far, so good?

Okay, this is where it gets confusing. The party all begin as 1st level warriors (NPC class), all together on either the lawful or chaotic side.. Each has a 12 in every ability score.

At some point (not sure when exactly - maybe after the initial battle or maybe when they reach 2nd level) they gain access to trainers who can retrain their first level to a different class. Each trainer also provides an ability score adjustment similar to the way racial ability score adjustments work - bonuses to some abilities and penalties to others. At this point they can also choose to raise one (or more?) stats by simultaneously lowering a different stat.

They have to continue to access trainers to level, but at 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th levels they also go through another major stat change. If they are multi-classed somehow they don't get the modifiers of the trainer for the current level, but get a mixed modifier based on the classes they have taken.

So besides needing some clarification on the points you've already made (When do the first adjustments kick in - at 2nd or before? How do multi-class modifiers get decided - like do I declare that I intend to eventually multi-class and get those modifiers or do I only base them on classes I already have or do I just take the one for the current level?), I think there are a few other issues that need to be cleared up in advance (I have a feat with an ability score prerequisite [combat reflexes, etc.] and my trainer will cause that ability score to drop below the prerequisite level, can I retrain the feat or am I now stuck with a dead feat? My Intelligence score just dropped, do I lose skills that I have already learned? ).

Another concern is how many points of increases are going to be given overall versus how many points of decreases. If the total +/- comes up significantly different from a normal campaign it may alter the game balance. If, on the other hand, the totals come out the same as any other game then balance shouldn't be the issue.

My biggest question here, however, is what do you expect to accomplish by using this system? Since the game is designed around an established system and the law of unforeseen consequences suggests using caution when rewriting the rules, you should have a clear understanding of the goal behind changing things up. It's hard to tell if the cons outweigh the pros of changing if we don't even understand why you want to change things in the first place.

[Uncle Pine]

I have an idea for a campaign and I thought I'd get some ideas and thoughts from the giant community.

The premise is a law vs chaos war in the form of free roaming nomadic barbarians and a roman style law heavy society.

The party has a choice of siding with either based on their alignment. The whole party must be either lawful or chaotic.

I wouldn't force the whole party to be either Lawful or Chaotic, as long as all of them decide to join the same side of the war. I find it much more interesting to have a group composed of a LG firm believer of the Empire, a LN erudite who hopes to set the illiterate swines straight, a NE jackass who likes to relieve people of their guts and possession and decided a military career was a good excuse to be entitled to do so, and your average LG good-willed stable boy who left his house in the dirt looking for fortune compared to the same group but with a LE creepy monk wannabe or something like that. The reason behind this opinion is that, as long as you give the players reasons for their characters to cooperate, every little agency you give them to customise their character is going to enhance their experience and keep them more hooked to the campaign. "These are your character sheets, all of you are 1st-level Chaotic or Lawful Warriors" also sounds terribly dull.



Stats start at 12 for everything, and everyone starts as 1st level warriors. As they play, they will gain access to trainers who can give them access to new abilities, swapping out their first level warrior and adjusting stats based on a predetermined amount on what special trainers they have.

For example, a wizard trainer could adjust their stats as follows: +4 int, -2 str and con, +2 wis.
Different trainers will have different training styles, so where one wizard trainer could have the above, another could have a completely different bonus set.

In addition, they may raise one stat by 2 by lowering another stat by 2 as well (optional) at each stat set.

Leveling will require access to trainers of the appropriate type, requiring side quests and payment just to advance.

Instead of a single point to distribute at lvl 4, once you get to 5th lvl in a class, you repeat the class stat changes. Thereafter, you get a 2 point stat boost to your primary every 5 levels.

Multiclassing recieves the adjustments from both classes, but like all bonuses they won't stack. So a wizard/barbarian could cancel out. Basically you train yourself to use your mind at the expense of your body and vice versa in this instance.

Race will be limited to human only, with non-humans being extremely rare. They will be possible to get training from (the very few who do exist in the chosen land) but their fees will be exorbitant.

The ultimate objective of the party will be to win the war. The party starts as lvl 1 warriors in a squad. Their starting quest will result in disaster beyond their control leading to the outbreak of the war.


Thoughts? Improvements? I welcome all comers.

Forgot to mention, this is for pathfinder.

You might as well decide to play GURPS instead, since this seems to be the kind of approach you want to use for this particular campaign.

[Calthropstu]

The goal for the system is to roleplay the training, and have the different training styles MEAN something. Training should be arduous and beneficial. There's a REASON mages are thought of as weak bodied individuals... it's because their training requires them to spend huge amounts of time inside reading books. This increases their knowledge and wisdom, but leaves little time for training your body.
Likewise, there is little time to train your mind when you spend all day every day swinging weapons. And if you don't use it, you lose it.

I may make it an overall net gain for each class, not exactly sure. I need some testing. I may also give 4 free floating points to be used as desired.

But not all the trainers will be available. The sorcerer trainer and wizard trainer will be on opposite sides for example.

[Uncle Pine]

The goal for the system is to roleplay the training, and have the different training styles MEAN something. Training should be arduous and beneficial. There's a REASON mages are thought of as weak bodied individuals... it's because their training requires them to spend huge amounts of time inside reading books. This increases their knowledge and wisdom, but leaves little time for training your body.
Likewise, there is little time to train your mind when you spend all day every day swinging weapons. And if you don't use it, you lose it.

I may make it an overall net gain for each class, not exactly sure. I need some testing. I may also give 4 free floating points to be used as desired.

But not all the trainers will be available. The sorcerer trainer and wizard trainer will be on opposite sides for example.

Trust me, use GURPS. It does exactly what you're looking for.

[Sam K]

As a player, I would ask myself "what's in it for me"? I can see from a GM perspective that you get a world with more emergent characters, have to spend less time thinking of how the world reacts to "odd" PCs, and a strong central storyline. But what's the benefit for the players? This campaign seems to rob me of a lot of agency over my starting character, and of my character development as well. I lose out on lots of character options in exchange for... the GM having more control of my character development?

Some people may not care about this. A few may even enjoy it. But assuming that most people who play 3.5/PF in this day actually LIKES 3.5/PF, you're taking away (or delaying) a lot of character development choices. If you want this to be appealing to a wide selection of players, including the ones who enjoy the character building aspect of the game, you need to give them something in return for giving up a lot of choices at the start of the game.

That said, the campaign sounds like it could be a lot of fun. If you have a group of players in mind who do not care about character building options, I can def. see it working. If you want it to be accessible to players who DO care about character building options, you may need to add a few things.

Best of luck with it!