Blog on my Roughdraft of a Capaign

Not sure where exactly to put this as while this is mostly bouncing ideas off of you to better tune the home brew campaign, I will also be talking about items, classes, and enemies and what I learned at this point.

This is here to bounce ideas off people and frankly see what works, and with some of this, give people a chance to laugh. Will try to do this weekly. Every Monday or so, give or take. 

Couple things I want to do with it in general before I get into too much details. 

You can gain experience for not just combat. Doing a successful check on something can get you 25 points. Negotiating with a group of thugs or knights can net you the XP you would have gained from fighting them. Gives roleplaying a chance.

The other will be a Reputation system. Going from the most basic of organization based on Species and town, guards, criminals elements and so on, to specifics Like Fort Cobra, Thieves Guild and so on. Goes up or down based on actions such as main and side quests and events at the Bastion (also experimenting with that). 

Name: Crime City Cava Austura

Background: Fantasy Medieval/Renisaunce equivalent of a world war happened with a powerful litch. Now that the war is over, and numerous kingdoms destroyed, there is a mass migration to any city state still Stading. Cava Austura is one of the larger ones that have remained relatively untouched. Vast farming communities, The Wild Wood where Wood elves rule, and a a vast city split into  a dozen official districts. But 5 criminal Organizations run it.

Sea Crates (named them after the variety of ocean going snake) rule the docks with an iron grip, and deal with contraband and an illegal slave trade. Run by a pirate Admiral.

The Pleasure District run by a foreign prince who is really a disguised Rashaska that wishes to taste the flavors of the world, and all its vices. They supply the Sea Crates with a number of slaves that cannot pay their gambling debts, or the next group.

Lotus Dens: Its an Opium Den citation, run by Yuan-Ti looking to gather slaves for their sacrifices and ritual. They use the Sea Crates mostly for ordering supplies for their dens, and the Pleasure District to supply their mind altering substances and gain potential slaves.

All three make use of the Assassin's and Thieves Guilds; the Assassin's guild for taking out targets, and is run by a Rakshasa wanting to create the perfect assassin devil. The first two groups use the thieves guild for getting rare goods for the black market and payment for debts respectively. 

Other issues include a few doomsday cults. And a couple groups in the higher echelons taing advantage of weak leadership.

If at all posible, the final battle can involve a 4 way fight between Yeenagu, a Tarrask, an Ancient Black Dragon, and a Pit Fiend and depending on the player's actions some of them won't be here, while others will be severely weakened. 

Your Party finds out most of this as they progress, starting off as refugees that come in one of the many caravans. From there you can be one of the forces of good or ill for the city. Have fun.

The actual playtest. 

Trying to figure some things out, 1 as a way to figure out more of the 2024 and where the breaking points are as my current group was still playing 5.0 rules. 

And because boredom. 

Things I am adding:

Libari Gnolls. Much like how Baphomet claims to have created the minitour race and demands their loyalty regardless if they give it to him or not, Yeenagu claims the same with the gnolls. The Libari are a branch that split from him, becomeing humanoids again. There is great amnisty between these gnols and their fiendish kin. A new Species, they  have much growing pains. They are modled more on actual hyenas in interactions and governing

They have  Dark vision, a D4 Piercing Bite attack that can use either their strength or Dex. And Rampage. Thinking it starts off at 1/day, then goes up by 1 at Levels 5, 11, and 17.

Bone Bow: D10, Requires one to be a Gnoll or Strength 15 to use. Same Masteries as longbow.

I will have 6 characters to deal with social situations, but will split combat into two versions: One with only 3 and one with 6 to see what the difference between a large and small group is. Spoiler: 6 man team makes alot of this MUCH easier. 

Main Group:

Vellen: A Ranger Gnoll. Personality he is on his own for the first time, exploring the world to either find his own clan and or bring back knowledge and allies to his old one. He's curious adn eager to learn but not the smartest guy out there and a little nieve (starts with an Int of 9). That said he is a fierce fighter and the best guy around when you need to thrive in the wilderness. Also generaly has food on the brain 60% of the time

Mostly to see first hand how good or bad the Ranger is, and will be useing the Beast Master build. His land animal is named Pooky, and is based on the Hyena (despite being able to climb and whatnot). Spoiler: he dies alot. Also spoiler, but Spike Growth is my new favorite spell.

Fera: A 9 tailed fox themed Shifter Sorcerer with Wild Magic. Spent her life with her Dad's caravans, and has seen alot but she also wants to see more so leaves after this last Caravan trip to settle down and explore this new city. 

Roran: Based on a character i take out of retirement every now and then Named Ronan (mostly for pathfinder but oh well). A bit of a cad that grew up in a tavern. He's a High elf, but the original character was a half elf and kept much of his background. Mother a human tavern wench, father a Mafioso that left her when he grew tired. He still had a good childhood, and his step father was an orc that tought him a thing or two. He's here to see about dismantling some of the remnants of his Father's organization as his biological father has been nothing but trouble.  He is a smart mouthed assassin. 

When I wish to have a 6 man group, I add the following

Butch: An orc fighter and former soldier. He served ten years and got out the first chance he got. He is an Eldritch Knight, though I haven't have much need for most of his spells save for Tassen's Disk and Ray of Frost. So far with his great ax, he deals the most amount of damage at any given turn.

Kya: A Drow that came to the surface after receiving Dreams from the Spinner of Stories (an entity based on the Trickster Anansi of African myth). She seeks to explore and see what's out there. Her training as a Cleric only went as far as her background, its all Great Old One Warlock with a Great sword and Whip as her pact weapons. Bit sassy but quick to use intimidate if you threaten her besty Fera, or her boyfriend Butch.

Duke: A member of lesser nobility, or at least he used to be before his kingdom fell apart. Now he is hoping to see what's out there as he continues down the path of Evoker Wizard. He does more than fireball, I swear.

The start: I would go over some of the background, the great undead war has ended, and there is still much devastation. Cava Austura is seen as a shining beacon with the streets paved in gold. 

The caravan has a pitstop for lunch, and tend to any repairs and the players can now introduce their characters to each other if they are not already a group by this point anyways. 

Vellen, Butch, and Roran joined as guards to help protect the caravan to pay for the way to their new home. Duke was picked up along the way and is also acting as a guard. Fera grew up in the caravan and Kya has been acting like a big sister to her for a couple of trips. 

At this point the DM can roll on a on a chart to see what random things happen before the first real fight.

Roll on Event table 1 to see what you get (D6

1 A Family of Goblins are found on the road and need help. 

1. A Deer Goes through Camp and some half cocked mercs are trying to hunt it and are dangerous with their shots
2. Wild Hyena wonders into camp near the food scraps
3. Your wagon needs fixed

5 A child wanders into your camp because he’s lost

6 A woman is about to give birth and they need someone with passable medicine checks.

If 1. You can reassure a widow and her young children things will be ok. You can help them by putting them in your wagon and salvaging their meager possessions. 35 XP. Can do this once, repeats are reroll

If 2, get the mercenary's attention and try to get them to stop. As long as its not  illegal, your just about any solution works. XP for 2 guards (human)

If 3. Its weary, but hungry hyena approaches and might follow you if you feed it. XP for Hyena

1. Do a DC10 Crafting Check with Wood Working tools (Intelligence or Wisdom is your stat) cast mending, or another spell to deal with damage XP 10

1. Comfort a wondering toddler and find mommy. XP 25

1. Woman needs a DC 15 Medicin check. If failed i go down a peg, but she might do a couple HP of damage to anyone that she holds the hand of. Or you can give her medication from a first aid kit which adds +2 to the Medicine Roll. All further failed rolls continue to go down to 1, where she will blame her husband, blame you, swear, maybe even curse a few. You eventually get a healthy baby girl. XP 50

At this point I rolled a lost child. Kya, being a charisma based character, uses that to calm the child down, and Velen uses survival to sniff out the boy's mom.

Then the Gnoll attack. They saw the caravan as easy prey. You are in charge of defending one part of it. After like three or four TPK's I had to reduce it to D4 Gnolls and D6 Hyenas. Used the max of both. Was originally going to have Demoniacs, against a group of level 1's you can Imagin how that went. Once they were removed I had to remove the packlord riding a Giant Hyena. Again Imagin the obvious massacure happening. And had to reduce the dice size for the Gnolls more and more till I got this. Sometimes added a handful of guards with light crossbows to help because I realized after one or 2 rounds this was bad. Low armored units like Assassins need to be using wagons as cover or they are dead. Same with Vellen. 

Small scale, this could be a very tough fight and I might have to again scale it back to maybe just three gnolls. needless to say this fight upped the group to level 2, but still need to work on this come second draft.

With the dead being burried or burned (depending on religious needs and in the case of the gnoles, whatever one's Vellen isn't gorging himself on is being thrown to the fire so they don't feed the others.). You can help out for a little XP for helping treat the wounded or takeing care of the dead.

Loot wise, I took the hide armors to sell, and Butch and Vellen laid claim to the Bone bows. Other 2 get sold in town

At this point I can do a second encounter form the above table and got the goblin family. The ones with actual strength to use help them out.

After traveling they take a long rest for the night Sunrise and another lost child the group moves and they  see smoke in the distance. Group investigates and sees a gnoll camp that had been torn apart.

Doing appropriate checks reveal 

Survival or Investigation test tells you what happened

Scores of

10=Attacked by a large animal, predatory, fast, smart, and hangry.

15=most of the attacks seem areal of some kind. Lots of hit and run attacks. Others it seems like range attacks with the barbs.

20+: Its a Manticore attack. 1 Perhaps more attacking.

You can get +1 or 2 bonus to these checks after looking at the evidence such as claw marks, signs of struggle, medicine checks to see the bodies were toyed with like a cat, and barbs like a porcupine. 

A random encounter from the above mentioned chart (dealing with guards. Also Deer are easy to kill as Vellen did one in with his scimitar. )

And then the first boss fight.

Was going to have 2 manticores for the first boss fight, one at the average HP and the other being a big brother teaching his little bro how to hunt and being at the max potential. But you can imagine how well that went for the group. So instead of one being smarter until the kid brother gets killed and the other being impetuous, one impetuous loner. The strategy is he stays in the sky throwing barbs from its tail until bloodied where it lands. 

Even with the larger group and Kya getting a great sword pact weapon, its not helping. Its a tough fight and I might have to reconsider a monster here. So much so had to use the original reward for this to revive the Warlock. 

Still this gets the group to level up to 3, and they can get their subclass.

Thoughts, questions, rude statements? I am open to all.