Epic Path
- A modified Pathfinder campaign, set in the iron city of Fane.
Character Creation
All of the core classes and races are available. If anyone wants to select a class or race outside of core rules, please let me know, and we can look it over to ensure it is balanced with the rest of the classes or races. That said, I will not allow ECL races, and I strongly discourage the truly weird races. If you really have to play a half-grell, and have some compelling reason why you think having tentacles instead of thumbs is a good idea, we can discuss it, but you should expect me to say no.
Do not create a backstory for your character. Instead, please focus on personality traits and quirks, as these will be far more useful to you. All will be explained once we start the campaign.
Stat generation will use a point buy system, with 28 points. Stat costs are:
Stat 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Cost -2 -1 0 1 2 3 5 7 10 13 17
No more than one stat may be below a 10, and no stat may exceed an 18 without a racial mod. For those of you who would like to use a calculator, this web page has a fairly useful one: http://tools.digitalightbulb.com/pbcalc.html (use the first one on the page; the second one uses different numbers).
Starting gold for all characters will be zero.
Classes
- Alchemist -- Added fetishes and tweaking. Revamped mutagens to be much more Hyde-like.
- Barbarian -- No changes. Added a few new Rage abilities.
- Bard -- Massive overhaul. See 'Harmony' for starters.
- Brawler -- New unarmed non-ninja class. Hits seldom but hard.
- Cleric -- Moderate adjustments. See 'Castigate' and 'Channel Divinity'.
- Druid -- No changes.
- Fighter -- Massive overhaul. See 'Warrior's Challenge' for starters.
- Monk -- Improved damage, adjusted Flurry of Blows.
- Paladin -- Moderate adjustments. Now any lawful alignment. Added more Smite.
- Prowler -- A class for the cat burglar types. Movement and spring attacks.
- Ranger -- Reduced number of required stats. Merged combat styles. Replaced spells with poultices.
- Rogue -- Updated daggers, crits and sneak attack. Added a few Rogue Talents.
- Sorcerer -- No changes.
- Warlord -- A defensive pseudo-healer (temp hp's instead of healing) who buffs adjacent allies.
- Wizard -- Added 'powerful cantrips'. Otherwise, unchanged.
New Rules
- CMB Calculations
Small creatures may use DEX instead of STR when calculating CMB. Pathfinder core rules allow tiny creatures to do this, but it makes sense for small creatures as well.
- Melee Weapon Damage
Beginning at 8th level, base weapon dice damage is doubled. This does not double STR, feat, precision or other modifiers to the base weapon damage, just the die of the weapon. This does not apply to classes with fixed damage, such as the monk or brawler unarmed damage. For example, a longsword deals 2d8 base weapon damage after 8th level. This bonus increases to triple weapon dice damage at 15th level and beyond. This change was made after looking over rough damage comparisons between melee and spell classes. If anyone wants to see how these numbers were arrived at, I can provide the data.
- Starting Hit Points
Level 1 characters get full CON SCORE plus max hit die for HP's at level 1. Hit dice are restored to old (lower) values.
- Multiclassing
Multiclassing is permitted, but you must have at least 5 levels in a class before you can change to a new one. If this completely horks up your plan for a particular prestige class, let me know, and I might make an exception. This is primarily to prevent 'class dipping' and saving throw min-maxing.
- Stances
Stances are class abilities which generally take a swift action to initiate, can be sustained for free, but are broken when knocked prone or subjected to a condition which prevents you from taking actions. You can restart the stance once the condition has been cleared with another swift action. Only one stance power may be active at a time.
New Exotic Weapons
- Weapon Properties - Added some new ones, slightly altered Sunder.
- Exotic Ranged Weapons - And ammo listings.
Statistical Nerdery
These are some tables I've been using for reference when tweaking the character classes.
The monster analysis was created by selecting 5 relatively random monsters from each CR and averaging the resulting numbers. In some cases, I avoided monsters which relied on special attacks or spells for their primary damage. I also avoided swarms, since they autohit and have lower damage. As you can see, I'll almost certainly need to do a bit of tweaking to monsters to make them more interesting to fight, given the class changes (primarily more HP's, but I'll also be reviewing damage. AC will remain unchanged, I expect.)
This is a broad estimate of the bonuses the various classes would get from gear, broken out by level, and loosely based on the wealth-by-level table in Pathfinder. This is by no means meant to represent anyone's real gear, or suggest that I would ever actually allow you guys to get decent gear. Seriously, why would I do that?
The character class damage analysis uses a straightforward stat array for base numbers, a common weapon the class would use, and no feats. A flat bonus to attack and damage was given at higher levels to account for magic items. While I fully expect these numbers to increase due to feats, I was more focused on leveling the playing field, and assume that feat bloat will be a comparative wash across the classes.
As you can see, the caster classes have a clear damage advantage (in core PF rules, it's about 30:1), however, I felt that, to really achieve balance between melee and spell damage, I'd need to rewrite the whole game. Instead, I basically tripled melee damage so the ratio is merely 10:1.