The City of Emirikol

[subplotkudzu]

Here are my operating thoughts to date


* 1st edition DMG P193, Emirikol the Chaotic, more specifically the city represented. The game is set there.

* There are also docks with a high seas trade, if you guys decide to go privateering for some sessions.

* The empire has no emperor - the last emperor, who lived well over a century, ascended to Godhood and left a republic in his wake.

* Most of the noble houses admit this is for the best, and they are not without power in the republic, of course, the mercantile class is burying up the lesser houses lands (OK, purchasing a lien into perpetuity, as only the emperor can permanently strip a noble of his lands).. The nobles pay off their debts, try to invest and have lots of landless nobility as children.

* There was some time of troubles in the past, from which the empire was founded. The nobles lines of that time grew chaotic and decadent, building elaborate hidden tombs for themselves and their possessions. Most of those lines are now gone, having turned against the emperors, embraced chaos and been stripped of their lands. Their tombs, when found, are fair game.

* The children of landless nobility take dueling very seriously. There are schools of fencing masters, guilds of sword-saints, the church and republican armies and of course, the Paladins - once the personal guard of the emperor, with the last emperor's ascension to godhood, these incorruptible swordsmen are beacons of justice. (Paladins are now a prestige class, requiring 2 ranks in Know Religion, the Iron Will feat and a +4 or better BAB, along with an invitation to join).

* Like fencing, magic is taught and taken seriously. Hard to master past a certain level, arcane magic is still around. There are those who study individual spells so obsessively they can perform them in their sleep, and those who have a broader interest, but who have to prepare more before acting.

* No heavy armor. Classes that would have the heavy armor proficiency get 1 extra skill point per level instead (so fighters, paladins and clerics get 3 skill points per level).

* There are firearms - single shot guns that do d6 or d8 damage, but have a threat range of 17-20 and a x4 crit multiplier. It might do very little. It might kill you.

* Legal duels require a witness (preferably a paladin), and can be fought to first blood or unconsciousness. With a Paladin and Lay on hands present, it means legal duels are seldom fatal - though the Paladin will heal 1 point to keep you from bleeding out and you can heal the rest on your own....

Comments

[mylescorcoran]

Your mention of a Prestige class suggests it's D&D 3.x, but I don't see any mention of a level cap like you suggested in the previous post. How are you going to keep the feel of danger in duelling and more generally combat, if you allow the HP escalation that's inherent in the vanilla rules?

I like the firearms gamble introduced by the high crit multiplier, but again that only works for HP totals below a certain level. You could introduce a saving through (Fort or Ref?) on a critical hit to reflect the basic lethality of firearms if you wanted them to remain a threat past a certain level.

Do you see this setting having the same quantity and ubiquity of magic items that D&D assumes? If not, do you think you'll compensate for this in any way, or are most of the threats going to be other humans working under the same assumptions anyway? It would make some magic more effective, for starters.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Level cap is easy - I start the game at 1st level, I run it monthly for a year. No way they're getting past 6th. Problem solved - at 6th level they should be joining the army, starting their own fencing schools, opening their own business, buying back their ancestral lands, or something of the sort. This will change the mode of the game so much that it's something new anyway, and a good time to close it down.

With stopping the game at 6th level, that gives me a maximum HP of 6d10+24 (not that I'm giving them a lot of points to build stats with, so I expect no one will have a Con of 18) and a low of 6d4-6. Likely HP average at the end of the campaign is somewhere around 40 for the fighters. 2 Bullets might still kill, and I don't mind a 6th level fighter being able to reliably dodge or keep moving after the first shot.

As for the ubiquity of magic, I'm not worried about it - I've managed to keep the Russia PCs stocked with the right level of magical gear without the small Russian town they're in being anything other than a small Russian town. Besides, 3E assumes a limited amount of reliable magic for the first 3 levels anyway, and I can control which miscellaneous magic items turn up after that.

[mylescorcoran]

Okay, I see now. The level cap is more a function of the length of the campaign and frequency of play.

You sound like you've a lot more experience of magic items and balance in D&D than I do, so I think you know what you're doing. I'd be interested in see how this goes. Write 'em up!