Eat the monsters. Dungeon Meshi inspired game [PF 1e + Spheres]

[Greenflame133]

This game will be inspired, but not based on Dungeon Meshi. The setting is a homebrew world, more specifically mega dungeon with rooms.

A mysterious build has been found in somewhere off in the woods. It’s a small stone building, somewhat resembling a tomb. It wasn’t there before. Some researcher investigated it, and rumors quickly spread. It’s said to be built by an ancient mage called Wilkomag and rumored to hold great treasures, from an old era when magic was more plentiful.

Be it wealth, rescue, curiosity or running from consequences. You meet in adventuring guild and formed a party to set down.



Submissions deadline: June 18th evening (GMT).
Main teams have been established. Currently recruting late join to expand thier numbers. See

IC Team A
IC Team 1

Spoiler: Big 16

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1. What game system are you running (D&D, Call of Cthulu, Palladium, GURPS, etc.), and if applicable what edition (Original, Classic, Revised, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 10th, etc.)?
Pathfinder 1e

2. What 'type' or variant of game will it be (i.e. "Shadow Chasers" or "Agents of Psi" for d20 Modern)? What is the setting for the game (eg. historic period, published or homebrewed campaign setting, alternate reality, modern world, etc.)?
Homebrew camping, using Spheres.

3. How many Players are you looking for? Will you be taking alternates, and if so, how many?
4~5, possiably with a secound in there is a lot intrast

4. What's the gaming medium (OOTS, chat, e-mail etc.)?
OOTS for IC, Discort OOC, and Google Sheets for battle maps.

5. What is the characters' starting status (i.e. experience level)?
lv 3
With 1 bonus feat at lv 1
2 traits, or 3 with a drawback.

6. How much gold or other starting funds will the characters begin with?
3000gp (wbl) with up to 1000gp available for pregame crafting

Note: I will not be keeping track of food, water and touches.

7. Are there any particular character classes, professions, orders, etc. that you want... or do not want? What are your rules on 'prestige' and/or homebrewed classes?
No class restriction

Note: if your race/classes combinesion has no FCB, I will homebrew it.

8. What races, subraces, species, etc. are allowed for your game? Will you allow homebrewed races or species? 'Prestige' races or species?
All races from allowed sources are aviable, inclouding Sphere Origins but exluding Noble Drow, Munavri, Green Martian

note: d20pfsrd has homebrew races, namely Centaur, Drider and Gargoyle, they aren’t playable.

9. By what method should Players generate their attributes/ability scores and Hit Points?
20 pb
Max HP at every level

10. Does your game use alignment? What are your restrictions, if so?
Loyalties are used in place of alignment. Be ready for gray area morality.

11. Do you allow multi-classing, or have any particular rules in regards to it?
No restrcion of multi-classing, Fractional Base Bonuses
is in play.

12. Will you be doing all of the die rolling during the course of the game? Will die rolls be altered, or left to the honor system? If players can make die rolls, which ones do they make, how should they make the rolls, and how should they report them?
Most rolls will on the form, but there also will be a dice bot in the discord

13. Are there any home-brewed or optional/variant rules that your Players should know about? If so, list and explain them, or provide relevant links to learn about these new rules.
Important systems
Background Skills
Skill Unlocks
Chases
Major Wild Magic Events
Emerging Guns

Optional systems
Stamina and Combat Tricks (Feat access)
Fractional Base Bonuses
Retraining
Variant Multiclassing
Trophies

14. Is a character background required? If so, how big? Are you looking for anything in particular (i.e. the backgrounds all ending up with the characters in the same city)?
Some background is required. Induce where your character comes from, who they are, and why are they going into the dungeon.

15. Does your game involve a lot of hack & slash, puzzle solving, roleplaying, or a combination of the above?
This will be a sandbox style game.

Hack & slash will be the main focus.

There will be plenty roleplaying, many times more in form of difficult questions then debate club with NPCs. I do adore long discussion amongst PCs, but running multiple characters gets taxing, so NPC might be more passive on that front.

There will be a few outright Puzzles. Rather most puzzles will come in form of open ended

16. Are your Players restricted to particular rulebooks and supplements, or will you be allowing access to non-standard material? What sources can Players use for their characters?
Pizo (For casters SoP are preferred)
Spheres [including wiki material, Bear sphere and Veilweaving]
Akashic Mysteries
Kineticists of Porphyra I-IV, Legendary Kineticists I-II

Psionics Unleashed
My homebrew doc
Path of war (SoM is preferred)(Seize the Opportunity (PoW), cannot be used with SoM attack acion. Nor can one attack be augmented by bouth SoM talents and PoW Maneuvers.)
other 3pp or 3.x material may be approved on a case by case basis

Eating Monsters
When stopping for a long rest, you can choose to cook some monsters slain that day. Consuming such meal will grant you a buff not the following day. Similar to Iron Chef's Recipes class feather.

Ancient languages
There will be some Ancient languages, each will have associated language and linguistics DC to decipher the message. Knowing associated language will give you +5 bonuses on decipher rolls. One's failed, new rolls to decipher the same message cannot be attempted until characters gains a new permanent rank in linguistics.

Planar travel
Planar travels will be present, more or less, as normal. However, the destinations might will differ.

Custom sphere traditions
Feel free to pitch any custom sphere tradition, as long as it doesn’t have more than two sphere-specific, each for a diffrent sphere.

Spoiler: Camping Traits

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Rescue Party
Somebody important to you went down before you. They did not return, and so you send down to recover them. The thought of finding them again keeps you motivated

Benefit: Gain +1 bonus to will saving throws and ones per day you may reroll a failed saving throw against mind-affecting effect

Explorer
You know your way around the underground. Exploring unknown dungeons does not intimidate you

Benefit: Gain +1 bonus on knowledge (Dungeoneering) and it’s always a class skill for you. Additionally, gain Artifice Sphere

Researcher
You are a cruise individual, the miseries of the stranger dungeon are irresistible to you.

Benefit: Gain +1 bonus on Linguistics, and it’s always a class skill for you. Additionally, gain Study Sphere.

On the run
You made some enemies, and hope to lie low while you hide underground. Surely, they will not follow you inside.

Benefit: You have some people after you. Gain +1 bonus on Disguise, and it’s always a class skill for you. Additionally, gain +1 on reflex saving throws.

[5ColouredWalker]

Posting interest. I was thinking someone who came to the dungeon to hide, and you already have a trait for it.



Thinking on the 'eating monsters', there's a martial tradition for it for Steel Serpent. Do you allow the Monsters as PC rules from the d20pfsrd? I'm thinking it might be interesting playing a ghoul. 'There's lots of monsters coming from nowhere, not much food, and you all started eating monsters. Of course Ghouls started showing up!'

[Ghoul is optional to my ideas. I'll probably nab some other race that could easily eat people though.]

[Athaleon]

Count me interested! I'm a sucker for magic warriors, and eyeing up that Veilweaving Sphere. I've played Akashic characters before, but not via Spheres.

[Merilan]

I'd like to pitch my interest with an unarmed ninja-like character using the Striker class! I'm thinking that they're pursuing someone important to them, like a child they're raising or is sworn to defending, into the dungeon.

[Greenflame133]

Posting interest. I was thinking someone who came to the dungeon to hide, and you already have a trait for it.

Thinking on the 'eating monsters', there's a martial tradition for it for Steel Serpent. Do you allow the Monsters as PC rules from the d20pfsrd? I'm thinking it might be interesting playing a ghoul. 'There's lots of monsters coming from nowhere, not much food, and you all started eating monsters. Of course Ghouls started showing up!'

[Ghoul is optional to my ideas. I'll probably nab some other race that could easily eat people though.]

I would rather no do monsters PC as diffrance in ability scores get's a little much. I much prefer you use a diffrent race or some homebrew that has more typical ability scores. Even jsut taking speical ablties from stack block and using +2 dex as ability modifer could created a viable race. Although idealy it would something with a mix of combat and untility recial traits

Count me interested! I'm a sucker for magic warriors, and eyeing up that Veilweaving Sphere. I've played Akashic characters before, but not via Spheres.

Sure. Regular vailweaving is also aviable.

[5ColouredWalker]

I would rather no do monsters PC as diffrance in ability scores get's a little much. I much prefer you use a diffrent race or some homebrew that has more typical ability scores. Even jsut taking speical ablties from stack block and using +2 dex as ability modifer could created a viable race. Although idealy it would something with a mix of combat and untility recial traits

Looking at Dhampir, would a Nosferatu variant re-fluffed as Ghoul based be fine? Spell would be replaced by bite attack, weakness is already changed away from daylight, should be fine mechanically.

Given someone else is already looking at Akasha, I think-
Ah. Path of War isn't listed, I is boo the clown. Any chance of Path of War (PF Blade Magic/Martial Initiating) allowable? If not, I'll need to think for a bit, but probably some sort of Ranger varient.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Posting interest and a question:

So Spheres are allowed, are they required or preferred? AKA use traditional PF casting?

[Greenflame133]

Looking at Dhampir, would a Nosferatu variant re-fluffed as Ghoul based be fine? Spell would be replaced by bite attack, weakness is already changed away from daylight, should be fine mechanically.

Given someone else is already looking at Akasha, I think-
Ah. Path of War isn't listed, I is boo the clown. Any chance of Path of War (PF Blade Magic/Martial Initiating) allowable? If not, I'll need to think for a bit, but probably some sort of Ranger varient.

Refluffed Dhampir works great.

I would rather focus on SoM, since from what I have seen PoW has some blanace issues. Deffively would want to aviod builds that combine SoM and PoW as it can get ridiculous

After some considersion: SoM will be Preferred over PoW but bouth will be allowed. With expesion that two system should not interact. Seize the Opportunity (PoW), cannot be used with SoM. Nor can one attack be augmented by SoM talents and PoW Maneuvers.

Posting interest and a question:

So Spheres are allowed, are they required or preferred? AKA use traditional PF casting?

Preferred

[ProgressPaladin]

Quite interested.

[Red_Stain23]

Interested but I'll need some time to read spheres, I'm familiar with them but haven't actually played using them

And well, there's a lot of material there

[Khosan]

Interested, my first instinct was to make an Iron Chef but I'm checking out Professional now, I haven't used Spheres of Guile before so I'll give that a look.

[Greenflame133]

Interested but I'll need some time to read spheres, I'm familiar with them but haven't actually played using them

And well, there's a lot of material there

There is! I recomend focuing on just a few sphere that sound most appeling.

[namo]

Posting interest!

1/ Do you have a deadline in mind?

2/ Any limitation on how we spend our starting gold?

3/

Custom sphere traditions
Feel free to pitch any custom sphere tradition, as long as it doesn’t have more than two sphere-specific [drawbacks?] and none for the same sphere.

I think your text was missing a word, and I'm not sure I understood the "none for the same sphere" part: could you please explain, perhaps with a quick example?


I also thought about Iron Chef, but some of its bonuses will be granted whenever the party cooks a monster meal, so it's partially redundant.

[Greenflame133]

Do you have a deadline in mind?

Not yet, usually, I wait to when sheets start pouring in and then set the deadline a week from there

Any limitation on how we spend our starting gold?

No, aside from the pre-crafting limit

I think your text was missing a word, and I'm not sure I understood the "none for the same sphere" part: could you please explain, perhaps with a quick example?

Right, I strugggled to phase it, but I tihnk "Feel free to pitch any custom sphere tradition, as long as it doesn’t have more than two sphere-specific, each for a diffrent sphere." will be the best choice

I also thought about Iron Chef, but some of its bonuses will be granted whenever the party cooks a monster meal, so it's partially redundant.

Iron Chef bonuses would stack with monster eating bonuses. However, they definitely lose a lot of their unique flavour in a camping where anyone can bring a pot and cook.

[Shiro_Nogard]

Nice picture. love the light play.

Wanted to ask if you deal with all spheres. Might, power, champion and guile.

Wanted to ask as herbalism has a cooking option.

[Aegis013]

I'd like to apply with a Half-Elven Spearman, Kynigós aka Hunter around non-elves. His Elven Grandmother was supposed to come see him when he turned 25, but never showed up. Hunter has set out to do a wellness check on his Grandmother and it has taken him 3 years to track her to this very dungeon. She's probably inside somewhere. She's a fierce Elven warrior skilled with both blade and magic so Hunter expects she's still alive.

Hunter wields a unique Elven Spear with branching leaf-like blades on one end. He has a combat style in which he also uses the haft of the spear as a shield and secondary weapon to more effectively threaten the area around him. He serves as a front-liner and can help protect nearby allies. He wears a patchwork cloak which incorporates hides from monsters he has slain and tanned. His martial tradition incorporates Piercing Thunder and Iron Tortoise and was taught to him by his Elven Mother, who was taught by his Grandmother. Who knows what lessons she might be able to teach him?


I chose to make this a character a Path of War Warder, and while I don't intend to do anything unbalanced, I know balance considerations were mentioned with PoW so I'm happy to have anything adjusted at the DM's discretion if anything seems too strong. I simply don't have the familiarity with Spheres to make a character and despite my efforts to read through the Spheres rules it hasn't clicked for me yet.

[Greenflame133]

Wanted to ask if you deal with all spheres. Might, power, champion and guile.

Might, Power, Champion, Guile and Origins are included.

For the special spheres
Bear, Veilweaving, Leadership and Tech, are included. Technomancy and Pilot are not.

Wanted to ask as herbalism has a cooking option.

Anyone can cook basic meal.

Profession (cook), Survival or Magic can tell you what can be eaten sefly.

Proffesions (herbalism) can do above for plan type products, including plant typed monsters. For meat, Proffesions (trapper) would be a better fit.

When is comes showing off how good it tastes Profession (cook) would be the main option. Something like Survival could be used to go from basic to a nice meal, not to outstanding. Simularly Proffesions (herbalism) can be used to improve the meal by picking right spices, but it won't be as effective as Proffesions (Cook).

How well you cook, won't effect the buffs you get. It might however impact any combinations you recruit.

[Greenflame133]

After come thought, I won't be using Esoteric Material Components

Rather, I will use Trophies. Some of the Trophies will be usable as matrial compents, simular to Alchemical Reagents. The Trophie system should also help with in weath progression in lieu for bounties and other monotary paymeants.

[Yas392]

Interested. Requesting S-Class Crpytic.

[Greenflame133]

Interested. Requesting S-Class Crpytic.

So a slightly stronger Crpytic, looks fine to me

[Aegis013]

After come thought, I won't be using Esoteric Material Components

Rather, I will use Trophies. Some of the Trophies will be usable as matrial compents, simular to Alchemical Reagents. The Trophie system should also help with in weath progression in lieu for bounties and other monotary paymeants.

Given the Trophies system are there any alternatives to knowledge to identify what can be harvested? My character only gets Knowledge History and Nobility (and Martial, technically) which don't cover monsters, but with ranks in Profession Tanner and Craft Leather I'd think the character would have methods of determining if a hide is usable, collecting it, and potentially mundane ways to preserve them without magic such as Gentle Repose without necessarily knowing exactly what the critter is, at least in some cases.

Will you be allowing any reasonable skill substitutions for the Trophies system?

[Triskavanski]

Oh my. I think I'd want to make my character I've had for a while now. Ted the Chef. one of the small catfolk, but dunno if I'd go iron chef or something else.

Spoiler

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[ProgressPaladin]

I’m going to go Doctor Scholar.

[Greenflame133]

Given the Trophies system are there any alternatives to knowledge to identify what can be harvested? My character only gets Knowledge History and Nobility (and Martial, technically) which don't cover monsters, but with ranks in Profession Tanner and Craft Leather I'd think the character would have methods of determining if a hide is usable, collecting it, and potentially mundane ways to preserve them without magic such as Gentle Repose without necessarily knowing exactly what the critter is, at least in some cases.

Will you be allowing any reasonable skill substitutions for the Trophies system?

Yes, that's also applicable to skills outside the trophy system. Such a climbing ropes with proffesion sailors

As far as other substitutions go.. Some will be possible, but within reson

[namo]

Do you allow Advanced / Legendary talents?

Right now I'm looking at Force Redirection Technique.

[Greenflame133]

Do you allow Advanced / Legendary talents?

Right now I'm looking at Force Redirection Technique.

Sphere legendary, advanced and exceptional talents are available, but their combined number is limited to 1 + 1 per 3 character levels.

Additionally, legendary talents are limited to 1 + 1 per 3 points of magic skill bonus.

[Aegis013]

Yes, that's also applicable to skills outside the trophy system. Such a climbing ropes with proffesion sailors

As far as other substitutions go.. Some will be possible, but within reson

Thanks for the confirmation, I know it'll up to you if a skill can be substituted and any DC adjustments would be up to your adjudication.

[Benoojian]

I want to create a Magical Painter, using the Enhancement (Marking) and Protection (Crystalline) sphere specific drawbacks, as well as the Skilled Casting (Craft:Painting), Focus Casting, Magical Signs, and Material Casting drawbacks.

I would also love to use the Wild Magic drawback using the tables for each sphere rather than the rod of wonder table and Wild Surge boon but I understand if that's too disruptive.

[ProgressPaladin]

Would it be possible to change the researcher bonus to heal? My character is researching forms of medicine derived from flora and fauna.

[Greenflame133]

I want to create a Magical Painter, using the Enhancement (Marking) and Protection (Crystalline) sphere specific drawbacks, as well as the Skilled Casting (Craft:Painting), Focus Casting, Magical Signs, and Material Casting drawbacks.
I would also love to use the Wild Magic drawback using the tables for each sphere rather than the rod of wonder table and Wild Surge boon but I understand if that's too disruptive.

Magical Painter sounds good.

Wild Magic using sphere tables is in play so feel free to add that drawback. Also Major Events are in play so feel free to push the limits.

Would it be possible to change the researcher bonus to heal? My character is researching forms of medicine derived from flora and fauna.

I'm going to say no to this one. You can gain heal as a class skill with a few other traits like Caretaker, but even without class skill bonus putting 4 ranks in should be neought to roll decently well