Original thread: http://severantos.webs.com/apps/forums/topics/show/6594948-one-off-pug-walpurgis-night

I still have everyone's character sheets from the first game, and having talked to Dave off and on the past year and finding out there's interest in doing another game, I've spent time these past months working on it.  And doing other things.  But the important part is that I do have the next installment.

I'm not 100% sure when I'll be running this, but it will not be over Skype, it will be in-person, sometime around the time of Dave and Diane's wedding since I will be there for that.  Everyone who played before will have the option of returning to their original characters.

Character Creation Details

1.   Adjust your character to level 10.  Racial penalities to multiclassing (if any) do not apply.
   
2.   Standard races out of PHB and level-adjusted races 1 are acceptable races.  Level-adjusted 2 and beyond are disallowed.
   
3.   No one may take a race or class that requires dragon, fey, outsider or any other unusual lineage.
4.   Alignments: No Evil or Chaotic Neutral.
   
5.   Classes that are alignment-restricted Evil have that restriction waived.  Classes that are alignment-restricted Chaotic Neutral are reclassified as Chaotic Good instead.  However, all feats and bonuses that any class has against good will remain as is (such as Smite Good).
   
6.  Gestalt is not only approved, but highly recommended.
   
7.  Spells, abilities or items with an XP cost will have a half-gold cost instead (meaning if something cost 500xp to use, it costs 250gp instead).  Clarification: If performing a task has both an XP and GP cost, do the XP conversion, and add it to the overall cost.
   
8.   No level drain/gifting abilities, spells or items.  None.  Zero.  Not happening.
   
9.   Returning characters only: In lieu of gaining levels, you will have the option of redoing your character builds.  You must retain the same person and concept of the build.  You may adjust feats, level spread of classes, ability scores, etc.  These adjustments will be accepted with little/no question.  Optionally, you may rebuild the character with new classes, but choosing to go this route, you must be able to show that this is conceptually a similar build as the original.  This is a subjective rule, meaning that if you make a relatively obvious design change, such as reducing levels of Rogue to add levels of Assassin, you'll have little to justify.  But if you go from a Fighter/Rogue build to Paladin/Greyguard/Assassin (somehow), you'll have a lot more explaining to do.
10.   New Characters: Calculate gold as per standard level 10, and add an additional 20% to that (Returning characters have items that were picked up in the first campaign, so this is to offset that a little bit).  You may buy magical gear that has up to +3 bonuses or equivalent as per the Arms and Equipment Guide and PHB, and one item that can go up to +5 or equivalent.  If you want to pick up an item that has unique properties that don't follow the standard rulesets, run it by me first, and that item will count as your one +5 item.

This is done under PUG rules.  If you did not play in last year's campaign, you can still join this year!  Bold!  Underline!  Big text!

For all players

The Centennial War

  Two of the three major continents of the world are in their hands.  We are outnumbered by orders of magnitude.  They can fly.  They're stronger, faster, more intelligent.  But they're uncreative.  That has been their greatest weakness: their unwillingness to adapt.  Perhaps they have felt no need to do so in the past when their tactics won them victory after victory, but that lack of evolution in their doctrines have given us an edge.

  In the hundred years since this war began, we have grown leaps and bounds, and now the tide has turned.  We have Spelljammer warships that defend the skies and bring the war to their territories, the best trained ground forces ever, and siege weapons that could easily break the old Black Citadel like a house of cards.  In the last ten years, we have won far more battles than we have lost, and today our war losses are the lowest they have ever been.

  We have destroyed their largest naval fleets, and we practically own the skies over not just Paragon Soul, but the open oceans.  They are still rebuilding their shipyards at Detorid, Perrigen Falls, Black Rise, and The Forge.  Our shipyards are building more Galleons and Valiant Skyships every day.  We have struck at the heart of their war machine on many occasions: the hatcheries.  Hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers have been killed where they are weakest: still in the egg.  Time and again we have conducted ground skirmishes in Delve and Feythabolis and have returned home with supplies meant to be used against us.

  None of this would have been possible if not for the artifact we hold: the Codex of Eden.  We have discovered it can send small groups of people into years before, and make changes to history.  If not for the Codex, everything that we have accomplished and more would never have been possible.  We have used it to save long forgotten tech like the Spelljammer, improved siege weapons, and other inventions that were mere ideas that we have since put into practice.  We continue to use it in hopes of finding a fatal weakness of the enemy that we can exploit and send them back to whatever Hell they crawled out of.

  The Paragon Soul Army maintains a special division that handles all matters regarding the Codex and missions used with it.  They are called Fringe.  Due to limits of how many people could use the Codex at any given time, the changes made in the past were only on the fringes (hence the name), but once the changes started adding up, the war changed drastically.  Saving the lives of a few people fourty years ago resulted in scores of people coming into existence today as they made their way from the old homelands to Paragon Soul and starting new families.  Redirecting a ship that sank to a typhoon thirty years in the past with several hundred people onboard resulted in....you get the picture.  Minor victories that were originally defeats have had a profound impact on the course of history.  The majority of Paragon citizens don't notice the changes as they happen, but there are those who have seen firsthand what happened, and the recordings of these changes help us understand how significant Fringe is.

  In many ways, Fringe is the most crucial element to the ongoing war, but to date there's still no workable plan to beat the enemy here in the now or in the past.  The enemy, despite being on the defensive, is too well-entrenched in Feythabolis and Delve.  Even in the past where the enemy is significantly weaker, there are other factors that prevent victory.  One of the biggest hurdles involves making changes beyond fifty years ago.  The Second Battle at Detorid, in the nation formerly known as Malapis, is a keystone historical event that is severely influenced by changes made before that event.  This has forced Fringe to focus on observation rather than change beyond fifty years ago, and any changes made before that battle are extremely careful.  As such, it seems that ending this war before it began is not an option.  There are many variables that are still unknown about the early years of the war, especially since records of that time are extremely rare.  Most everyone involved in those early years died quickly, and did not pass on much useful knowledge.

For New Characters

  Whether you've already served your four years or are still serving your time, the military-industrial complex is more a way of life than an institution.  These days, more and more soldiers are coming home on two feet rather than in a pine box.  Gone are the days when only the lucky ones made it back to these shores.  You've seen battle, you know the enemy you face, and you know as well as the next soldier that despite being outnumbered by orders of magnitude, it's imperative that the war still be fought, and the enemy kept off the shores of your home, lest Paragon Soul share the same fate as Delve and Feythabolis.

  Through your friends in the military, you've heard of some unusual events coming from Fringe Division.  People who showed up out of nowhere talking about a world without this war, this nation never supposed to exist, that sort of thing.  Fringe and the government in general are rather tight-lipped about who these people are, but it has sparked some rather interesting conversations about what this world is supposed to be like.  Maybe without this war, your parents would have met different people and had children that were not you.

The Enemy

  They call themselves the "Children of Daimakaicho".  As best as can be figured out, Daimakaicho (Great Demon Lord in an unknown foreign tongue) is the so-called lost god of the Pantheon, the one deity that did not cross over with the mortal to Eden when it was first opened up.  She was originally known as Tiamat the Keeper, a goddess of knowledge, with domain over dragons.  Dragons were considered only a myth until the war began.

  The Children of Daimakaicho are not full-blooded dragons, but the mongrel descendents of such beings.  They can be cross-bred with just about any of the Humanoid races, which gives such an offspring similar proportions of their Humanoid side, only much larger.  Depending on how close the dragon lineage is, the child can grow to be massive (thought not dragon massive).  Most all of the warriors have wings, and some of them even fly.  Due to their relatively unchanging military doctrine, there is a great deal of literature on the breakdown of their units.

• Warriors -- Clad in armor, these fighters are the most basic bruisers of the enemy forces, though they are the most numerous.  One-on-one, a Warrior can fell just about any other infantry that Paragon Soul can produce.  In theory.
• Marshalls -- These are the enemies field commanders.  The presence of one on a field can greatly change the course of a battle.  Standard procedure is to isolate or kill these as quickly as possible.  However, they tend to fall back much quicker than normal Warriors, if only to draw our own soldiers into ambushes.
• Scouts -- Despite calling them scouts, these are flying killing machines.  They prefer to drop behind enemy lines and disrupt their opponents, espeically to kill an obvious officer or field Cleric.  These are the reason webs throwers are standard armaments for everyone, especially onboard Spelljammer warships, who have to deal with them more often than anyone else.
• Clerics -- There are two kinds of Clerics that are regularly discovered: the field medics and annihilators.  Field medics usually don't engage the enemy up close; instead have primarily defensive spells so their allies can peel off enemies as they reposition.  Annihilators, on the other hand, charge in alongside the Warriors and Scouts.  Many times they mingle in and disguise themselves so they can catch their enemies off-guard with well-timed spells.
• Magi -- These ones disrupt enemy casters rather than unload a glass cannon arsenal.  For them, it is considered very unwise to deprive the Warriors from their victory by destroying the battlefield.  When Magi do cast offensively, it is because there are many more Magi there, and the objective is a slaughter, not a victory.  Because of the not-so-subtle differences between the two, when you see a Fireball come from an enemy Mage, pray you're far away from the target zone.  But chances are, if you're close enough to see the first fireball, you're not far enough away.
• Other, Larger Dragonkin -- The presence of larger enemy units is rare, and means there's something important going on.  Standing orders are to immediately report sightings of one of these, and not to engage by yourself.  Either Fringe or a suicide Spelljammer fleet will engage it instead.  If you're not a part of either of these organizations, than your deity.  If you are, you'll be able to tell your deity yourself what a bastard he is for letting you join that organization.
• Dragons -- Only once have we fought a full Dragon, or at least we think we did.  Ten years ago, an earlier generation of our Spelljammer warships engaged it over the Lower Delve capital, The Forge.  Out of the fifty ships involved in that battle, all but three were destroyed, and the dragon remained.  Fringe deployed with a fleet of seventy additional ships in a suicide operation to bring that dragon down.  At this point details are classified, but needless to say the dragon is no longer with us. 

Added Information

Special Order 11705: If a Dragon is sighted in any of the realms of Eden, an officer may invoke this order.  All other orders and mission parameters are rescinded, and the officer is directed to return to Paragon Soul to notify Command immediately by any means possible.  Standards of Ethics will be overlooked if the actions directly lead to completing this special order.

(Fringe) Special Order 1024: If evidence of Dragon activity is detected while on operations within the Codex of Eden, the Fringe Agents' first priority is to determine scope of threat, and report back immediately.  Fringe Division will then allocate all necessary sources, including Quarantine protocols, to eliminate the threat through the Codex.

Quarantine Protocols:   A classified procedure within Fringe.  Supposedly used to isolate and destroy specific targets.  Side-effect of quarantine is rendering the immediate area uninhabitable for an indeterminate amount of time.  Quarantine protocols are explicitly banned on Paragon Soul except at the direct authorization of the Prime Minister along with at least two of his Cabinet co-signing on the order.  To date, no use of Quarantine on Paragon Soul has taken place.

The Original Group

The last thing you remembered before arriving in Paragon Soul was destroying the summoning ritual and watching the energy already in place feed back on itself and implode with no chance for escape.  As best as anyone could tell you afterwards, you were pulled back into the newly made present from the Codex of Eden.  However, no one has given a satisfactory answer to who did it, or how.  All that is known is that you are now out of place in this new world, a result of your actions to stop Daimakaicho's apocalypse.

It has been 2 years since the day you were pulled from Detorid.  No one you knew from your old life seems to exist anymore.  Paragon Soul, once called the Last Untamed Frontier, is now the last free land in the world.  After your involvement, the remant armies of Feythabolis managed several temporary victories, but the enemy eventually emerged victorious on the continent.  Over the next ten years, survivors and escaped slaves from Delve and Feythabolis began to settle Paragon Soul and gathered together.  At first, the settlements argued over petty issues, but the constant threat of discovery by the enemy won over all other concerns.  A new nation was founded on mutual cooperation of all remnant countrymen, named after the continent itself.  Disparate armies and navies were integrated.  Ideas were put together to evaluate and improve upon the old ways of doing war.

In many ways, these young, quickly explanding cities that comprise this nation are similar to what you knew, but in many other ways quite alien.  Never before have Humans, Elves, Gnomes, and other demi-Human races co-existed without barriers between them.  There are no Dwarven shantytowns in a predominantly Human city.  Collective identity is based upon the nationality of Paragon Soul; this comes before old nationalities or racial identities.   This has led to some rather profound changes in many races.  Elven smug superiority has significantly died down.  Human supremacy movements are all but non-existent.  Dwarven paranoia about other races is also muted (though not entirely gone).  It seems like a lot has changed for the better.

Except that there's still a massive war against an intractable enemy.

Important details:

You and Fringe: Fringe Division was the first to encounter you after you arrived through the Codex.  They debriefed you on the events you were involved with in Detorid.  You were not treated harshly, and allowed you to leave as you wished.  They arranged for rather comfortable places to stay for each of you and handled all government paperwork on your behalf so you could be generally left alone.  However, over time you did figure out that they kept tabs on you.  If you left the main city, there was always someone following you.  No matter where you went, even out into the wilderness, there was always someone there.

You and Family/Friends:  If you ever tried to track down someone you knew, such as a parent or close friend, your search ended up turning over nothing.  As best you could tell, your family died during the war on another continent many years ago, or you had a grandparent who ended  up marrying someone else and creating a different family tree.  For intents and purposes, you have no family any longer.

You and the Codex:  No one's let you anywhere near it in the past two years.  Not for research, not for using, not for anything.  It's tightly controlled, and they keep it that way.

I like it. Very excited.

You mentioned above that we had the choice of leveling or reworking our characters. Im a little confused at what you mean by this. Does this mean that returning characters will be level 11? Or, if I want to rework my rogue, I will be 10?

Edit: I think I understand what you mean now. Instead of our characters gaining experiance in 2 years, we essentially rebuilt our ways. Correct?

Could we adjust old characters to entirely new builds? Keep the same persona and such, but instead of being Rogue(warrior), be Fighter(Baba) or some such? Or, at that point, would we be a entirely new person?

All that I can think of for the time being, looking forward to it

All characters will remain at level 10.  As far as the class spread goes for returning characters, I've been thinking about that particular issue.  I may allow more leeway in rebuilds (removing existing classes, adding new ones) as another expression of change and adaptation to the world, I'm just not 100% sold on it yet.  But we still have a good 2 months before I even show up in Washington again, so there will be plenty of time to visit this topic again.

Question:  Can we keep the same CONCEPT with different classed?

(For example, the paladin/gg, with some different detail stuff?)

Currently, no, but it is something I'm thinking about allowing.  Two years isn't a long enough period for anyone to have a huge shift in indivdiual beliefs and philosophies, or train to be something completely different, but it is long enough to change a bit, and learn a few new things.

edit: Ok, it's a bit wordy, but the answer is now 'yes'.  Rules updates as above, and I closed off an alignment loophole I unintentionally created.  So no Paladin/Bards still.

Oh, I almost forgot

This game isn't just for the people who played last year.  I have material for anyone new to join as well.  It's an open invite for whomever wants in.

Hey Aperion:

Could I get a quick rundown on the essentials on my character for your campaign? Ima start thinkin about the rework (cause I dont have a lot to do for the next couple days) but want my important stuffs:

Race

Stats

Anything else you think is super important

I intend to rework with assassain added in, just for your info.

Also, Im not sure if you have noticed, but we have been discussing recently some reworks of some mechanics and adjusting some skill points in other classes (they are on the Rules Changes page).

Are any/all of these acceptable for use in your campaign?

oh hey that is indeed a page

the accepted ones are fine, I especially like the skills change.  I'll ask for a heads-up when we're closer to the date I'm actually there.

Feat question: Its from dragon magazine, doesn't make a world of difference in the build, but if you allow it, ill take it:

Type: General

Source: Dragon #322

Your sneak attacks with poison are more potent.

Prerequisite: Poison use, sneak attack

Benefit: When making a sneak attack with a poisoned weapon, you may elect to exchange +1d6 sneak attack damage for a +1 increase to the DC of the victim's Fortitude saving throws (maximum 5d6 exchanged for DC +5) You sacrifice outright damage for accurately delivering poison to critical parts of the victim's anatomy.

I really don't want to be looking at and approving/disapproving feats and other weird shit from other sources, so no to Dragon Magazine and other random sources.

If I did allow feats from other sources, that would mean I would get a lot more creative with my NPC builds.  You don't want me to get more creative with them, not with where you're going.

Oh but I do! But I understand entirely

Aperion:  Can I switch my character's base from fighter[marshal]/cleric to Mystic?  Mystic is a CHA based caster, and I think it will fit better with my PAlly/GG concept.

Thoughts?

I'd like to talk more in-depth about this campaign at a later point, right now I've got too much work going on.  Save your questions for now, I'll try to help hash things out when I'm less busy.

Basically, I've got a double-booked weekend that I'm working with my family business, and immediately after that I'm going to be gone for most of July working on finishing renovations on a house in New Mexico before it gets put up for sale.  I'll try to set aside some time while in NM to do some stuff with this, though.

Paladin -- What book does the Mystic exist in?  I can't find it anywhere, and it doesn't show up in the Base Class Index either.

It's a base class from the DragonLance campaign setting....an early form of Favored Soul.  However, I went back and read the class, and fuck it all, it's WIS based.  Fucking, fuckity fuck.

Basically, my goal is to revamp my paladin as a CHA based caster...and take the wisdom requ. for the casting out of it.  This would let me focus the character on the CHA abilities (lay on hands, divine power uses, spells, etc.).

One notion is to make my character a FS5/Death Delver1/PrC Paladin3/Grey Guard 1/Contemplative1 (for an 11th level toon).

That one level's a real bitch, isn't it?