Dragonbane Campaign Notes - Concept Design June 10, 2005

Original Cast of Players Brian B., Chris H., John O., Greg P., Brad R. Campaign Mission Statement The party has gathered together with the express purpose of hunting and slaying dragons and their minions. Members of the group could be motivated by a variety of factors, including hatred of dragons, thrill of the hunt, greed for dragon treasure, desire for magical knowledge, or virtually anything else that would cause a person to seek out dragons and kill them. Thus, characters can have a vast variety of backgrounds, races, and classes to form the party. Because of the wealth of dragons and their fantastic abilities, players can expect great wealth and high-magic in equipment. Some suspension of disbelief will be required when so many magical items are available. This campaign will use gestalt rules. Starting Level PCs will begin with 11 gestalt levels (a total combined 22 race and class levels). Characters will have 66,000 gp each with which to purchase equipment. Allowed PC Races Any race with a racial cost up to and including 2 levels. Allowed Alignments Any non-evil. Disallowed Classes Paladin of Slaughter, Paladin of Tyranny. Allowed Deities Any which allow non-evil worshipers. Favored Foes The party will encounter dragons. Creatures commonly allied with dragons, such as humanoids, giants, monstrous humanoids, and magical beasts, are likely candidates for encounters. Non-Player Characters The Leadership feat and its variants (such as Dragon Cohort) are allowed; thus, cohorts may be in the campaign. They will be built the same way as PCs, but they will be constructed and leveled up by the DM. Hirelings are also allowed, and they can be paid by individuals or the party as a whole. Again, these will be built and advanced by the DM. It is possible for a single player to have a character, a cohort, and a hireling, all at once. No player may control more than three combined PC and NPC characters at once. If a player has more hirelings, another player will be asked to control that character. Some useful cohort and hireling specialties to consider include: animal or vehicle handler, archer, bodyguard for spellcasters, front line fighter, guide, healer, and scout. Special Campaign Rules Experience Progression—Experience will be awarded based on average party level (PCs only, not NPCs such as cohorts or hirelings), and not on the number or type of creatures killed. After every game session, the average party level will be determined (dropping all fractions). The experience chart will be consulted to see how many total points it takes a character of the party's average level to advance to the next level. This number will be divided by four and given to all PCs. Thus, a player whose character is the same level as the average party level can expect to gain a level every four game sessions. People who miss games will eventually bring down the average party level, meaning less experience for other players. Players who spend GEM points to gain additional levels benefit everyone by increasing the average party level (and the number of points everyone gets each game session). Leveling Up—When a character reaches sufficient points to advance his level, and his player does not level him up, it hurts the other party members. The character in question is underpowered and cannot fully pull his own weight. To ensure the party does not suffer, any character who is not leveled up by the day of a game is subject to being leveled by the DM. Multiclass Restrictions—It is the DM's desire to see players explore more prestige classes than they are typically wont to do. Also, many players will pick up one or two levels of a class, not because they want that class, but only to gain a class benefit. To encourage the use of prestige classes and avoid taking classes for the sake of abilities only, this campaign will enforce the favored class system of multiclassing. Because this campaign is gestalt, multiclassing is much more complicated than normal. Under normal rules, if any two of your multiclass levels are more than 2 levels apart, a character suffers a -20% penalty to experience earned. For example, a 4th-level wizard/3rd-level rogue does not have an experience penalty. However, a 5th-level wizard/2nd-level rogue does. There are two exceptions. First, if one of the classes is your favored class, you ignore it for purposes of determining experience penalties. Second, prestige classes never count against you for experience penalties. So, if your favored class is wizard, you can have a 5th-level wizard/3rd-level rogue/1st-level fighter with no penalty, because you ignore the wizard levels. The same character would have a penalty if he chose to take a 4th rogue level without increasing his fighter level, because he would now be a 5th-level wizard/4th-level rogue/1st-level fighter, and there are more than 2 levels between his rogue and fighter levels. With gestalt rules, the 2 level restriction is a bit complicated. For this campaign, we will use a 3 level multiclass restriction and always ignore prestige classes. What this means is that all of your core classes must be within 3 levels of one another; otherwise, you suffer a -20% experience penalty. All races list their favored class in their description, and some-like humans and half-elves-use their highest level class as favored. In addition, some backgrounds can change or additional favored classes to your character. Point-Buy Abilities—Although it can be exciting to roll your ability scores, you always run the risk of ending up with a crappy score where you really need a good one. This can be a fun challenge to play, but most of the time it just causes frustration. Rather than rolling ability scores, each character will be given 105 points to divide up among their seven ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, and Luck). An ability score costs 1 point for scores 1 to 15. Scores of 16 and 17 cost 2 points each. Going from 17 to 18 costs another 3 points. No score can begin above 18 (although racial bonuses and such can increase a score above 18 total). As an example, 105 points could buy you Str 10, Dex 16, Con 15, Int 18, Wis 16, Cha 12, Luck 12.