E6 3.5 The Motley Crew

Campaign Setup

This is the wiki page for the campaign setting of The Motley Crew, an odd band cast into dangerous times at the end of the world.

E6 Rules

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=352719

Handy links

Feats from all the above-mentioned books are available to view at : http://realmshelps.dandello.net/datafind/feats.shtml.

Crystalkeep provides a summary of most of 3.5 at this site: http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/index.php. Check out the variant base classes [but note only the ones from the abovementioned books will be considered], races and some of the Alternate Class Features.

The Motley Crew: Campaign Background

Welcome to Motley and Odd Arbage, a Manor town and Village port, respectively. They are located at the end of the world in a Dark age.

Recent history

When the Grand and High Powers finally fell to arrogance and insane magics in the Great Age, they took much of the Light out of the world. Whole peoples, races, outsiders, and divine beings became pieces and pawns in their elaborate, ritual wars. They bent time and space, plane and cosmos to their bidding, summoning Eldritch horrors to their own amusements, stocking and populating grand territories with their own creations, violating ancient precepts and slaughtering their avengers. They bent the very fibre of reality to accommodate their increasing perversities, and as all things do, the Wheel finally turned. So much so that the Moon, it’s mother, spun a tear from the sky to finally quell the Dark.

The Grand and High Powers, in their arrogance unrepentant, were destroyed in a Light that decimated the Known lands. Only places like Motley survived at all - subject towns and cities far, far on the borders of the world, nestled in the lee of mountains that stood between them and where the Moon’s Tear touched the Earth.

Even more recent history

That was a long time ago as the Sages tell it, a generation even to an Elf. But the world still feels small this side of the mountains that saved the remnant populations of the hundreds of different types of subject peoples left behind when the Grand and High powers were consumed and used to rebalance the world.

Motley is an isolated manor and market town and has been for nearly 120 years - although two kingdoms and three empires have come and gone, Motley has been Motley through all of it. The same with Odd Arbage, one of several villages and clans owing taxes and loyalty to Motley. It is a Cliffside fishing town and deepwater port, home, like Motley, do well over a dozen races, clans and bloodlines from the last age. It has a small manor and residing Knight, a Church, and a small collection of houses and homes. It is also home to the adventurers.

The area is ruled by the Baron Motley, Lord Eastport - a title that has changed hands more than once. The current Baron hopes to establish a legacy, but then so did the last three.

Between them, the Town and Villages provide shelter for 2 000 souls, and support the surrounding 10 000 who work the land. The barony is sheltered between the Saviour Mounts to the East and North and the Karstfells to the West, and has very little flat, open land, except around the rivermouth. Odd Arbage sits East the mouth of the Aird river, which flows North and East through rugged, unnavigable twists and turns, all the way to the Lee Plateaus and the Monarchy of which Motley is currently a far-flung arm.

Not that it is an ignored subject - the fisherfolk bring in exotic southern fish and other things, dyes and shells the sell well in the north. The same with the local fruit and root crops - all have a market far away, which means coin and exotic goods, and the folk of Motley grow barley and wheat enough only for their own needs. Even the peasants do well by kingdom standards.

Add the odd merchant ship that ventures into Odd Arbage from the Lesser Isles or Moonburn, and the place is fairly cosmopolitan for a village of 350 odd.

Current situation.

Bandits - or worse. Thats what the knight said when he gathered all he could - men at arms, the village mage, the local priest, the woodsmen, the militia - and rode out to hold Airdsford crossing. Fully two thirds of the fighting force of the Barony, leaving behind the sick, the older, the ill trained and the young. Now it is dawn two days later and there has been no word. The local Squire, left in charge, barely has enough stubble to rub in indecision - and no word comes from the North.

Someone has to do something...

Characters and Players

What I'm assuming is that you are the right folk in the right place at the right time. The 36 point buy is to reflect your inner Skywalker/Galahad/Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Part of adding gestalts to the mix was the need it creates [generally] for a range of decent Attributes rather than one or two whoppers. 36 points gets you a flat 14 in all attributes, which makes you better than average at everything, and from there you build your strengths and flaws.

I can't stress enough that the characters are supposed to be special, in the sense that they are going to be thrown in over their heads and need the capabilities to deal with it.

I think this style of game relies far less on niche protection...in fact, I'd say covering the bases as many different ways as possible would be handy. There will be sandbox elements to this game and as a GM I only 'balance' encounters in terms of availablity of avenues of retreat. If you encounter four Ogres, you need to make some quick decisions.

Ummm, just a thought, but of the players we have potentially, who actually relies on the SRD for their 3.5 rules? I'm looking at who is interested and seeing at least three people I think own more of the rules than I do. I made it SRD to keep it simple and easy, but if everyone owns their own copies of stuff, I can allow a limited amount of trickle.

By 'stuff', I mean the Core books II, the Races of and Complete books. nothing else, thanks. And only in limited ways. No new classes or spells*, but ACF's and feats, substitute levels and races would be fine.

• Except as a database for creating your own 'unique' spells.

Basically, just the bells and whistles that add choice to character gen.

House Rules

Basic changes

• Rule 1: Fighters get two good saves [pick the other] and a feat every level. If this seems overpowered, well boo-hoo casters, the shoes on the other foot.
• Rule 2: Forget cross class skills costs. Characters can buy any skill they like.
• Rule 2a: Gestalts get the skill points from both classes. Fighters get 4sp in this system.
• Rule 3: I'm going to use the optional Armour as DR rule from Unearthed Arcana, but on top of normal AC.
• Rule 4: It is quite legal to make a gestalt character that is the same class twice. To be effective, however, you would want a class that can trade out all of its class features for ACF's.
• Rule 5: Bugger AoO's. They are bollocks. Assume initiative is now static [not rolled] and that things that previously triggered AoO's now allow interrupts in initiative order. We will keep it simple and gentlepersonlike.
• Rule 6: Druids must trade wildshape for some form of ACF, or their animal companion drops to 1/2 level, as per a ranger.
• Rule 7: Casters can pick and choose from their memorized spells. [If you have two different 1st level spells memorized, you may cast one of them twice].

And that's it rules wise.

What does fixed initiative mean? where'd my AoO's go?

• What does this [initiative] mean?

It means everyone gets to state what they intend to do each turn [using the standard descriptors], and higher initiative gets to play out their actions first after statements are made. Interrupts occur when actions happening would normally trigger an AoO. Everbody in this system gets one 'round' of action - there are no free attack's from AoO's.

• So if I have a lower initiative than someone who drinks a potion next to me, I can take my turn as an interrupt to their action?

Yes you could, but that is your 'attack' action for the round. You dont get to belt/trip/push/jump on them and then get an attack in later.

• Does the interrupt still have to be a melee attack? And I won't get my turn on my normal Initiative score in that case?

No and yes. You might bung a brick at them, yell abuse, fire off a quick spell or missile...but thats your attack for the round.

It might feel odd, but it simplifies combat a lot [for me] and stops ogres from backing away endlessly with longspears.

Mechanics wise, it'd be quite low level 3.5, along the lines of the E6 rules modifications, and stay within this framework for the length of the [forseeable] game... [for those unaware of E-6, it is basically a set of alterations to 3.5 so as to halt level progression at sixth level - further abilities learned through an expanded feats list bought from every 5k of extra xp ]. Resource poor due to setting and the general removal of high level characters and their opponents...so there's a lot less magic, but a lot less need for it. A definite need for social skills. Alchemy and healing skills become more important, and that +1 dagger becomes a handy find indeed.

Experience points

One thing...as gestalt characters, you will need +50% experience for each level increase. Experience beyond 6th level will be 7500xp per new feat. Levelling up will be pretty much instant [the first 5 minute break past your last xp earning].

Choices

Edit: Lets just play it by ear...we have enough experienced rules types here to make cogent suggestions, and there are indirect ways to check out the extra rules I'm allowing [ACF's, Feats, Races and racial substitution levels only] from Core Book II's, the Complete... series and the Races Of... series.

Feats from all the above-mentioned books are available to view at : http://realmshelps.dandello.net/datafind/feats.shtml.

Crystalkeep provides a summary of most of 3.5 at this site: http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/index.php. Check out the variant base classes [but note only the ones from the abovementioned books will be considered], races and some of the Alternate Class Features.

Apart from that, there's suggestions and help here, of course...

NPC Classes

NPC's PC's are the only Gestalts of PC classes, apart from major villains. Most NPC's will be single classed, though some may be PC/npc gestalts.

NPC types are expanded slightly to allow for the fact that you may actually need some [ hirelings, militia, packcarriers, etc]

Commoner - Slave/urban/sedentary BAB 1/2, Sk2+; 1 simple wpn, one skill focus. Rural/primitive BAB 3/4, Sk2+; Lt Arm, 3 Simple wpns. [most of the villagers] Expert - Sedentary BAB1/2, Sk 8+; Skill focus, 1 simple wpn. Will good [ a scribe or scholar] Active BAB 3/4, Sk 6+; Lt arm, all simple wpns. Will good [a herbalist or Craftmaster] Warrior - Regular BAB 1 Sk 2+; All simple, martial wpns, all armour, all shields. Fort good [men at arms, sergeantry,] Irregular BAB 3/4 Sk4+ All simple, martial, lt/med armour, lt/med shield. Ref good. [archers, scouts, light cavalry] Adept - Arcane/Divine BCB 1/2, Sk2+ Simple wpns. Adept spells, Good will [a Priest or Mage] Witch BCB 1/2, Sk2+ Simple wpns. Witch spells. Good will. [a witch...what else?] Aristocrat - Leader - BCB 3/4, Sk4+ Simple, Martial wpns. All armours, shields. good will, fort [a knight type/sometimes gestalted with Paladin or Fighter] Ruler - BCB 3/4 , Sk6+ Simple, martial, all armours, lt/med shields. good will [more a baron or entourage type; gestalted with rogue for a spymaster.] Councillor - BCB 1/2, Sk8+ Simple. Skill focus, Bard spells. good will [somes a gestalt with cleric, wizard or sorceror. Astrologer, advisor, vizier, keeper of the keys, etc].

Magic vs Skill: The annoying thing about Arcane Lock.

I'd like to impose a fiat. Anything spell like up to third level that has an absolute skill-blocking effect (see arcane lock) has a way around it that is [relatively] mundane. In arcane lock's case, cold iron lockpicks allow a rogue to suppress the spell temporarily, and a cold iron prybar can be used to open open it if need be. This information will only be available to Knowledge checks under special circumstances. Each mundane weakness normally has to be worked out individually, of course. [why do you think they call it Experience points...?

This will fit in nicely on the Eastern edge of the Karstfells...and Bladhame becomes the reason for Odd Arbage receiving the merchant ships that occasionally call there.

Local Knowledge

A map of Motley and the EastMarch

The Eastmarch lies in a Wet Mediterranean climate zone, with long dry Summers, stormy and wet Autums and Winters that only bring snow to mountainous areas, though they will be wet in the lowlands. Frosts are confined to the highlands, so there are two different growing seasons for two types of produce. Local vegetable and fruit production is pretty much continuous over the seasons and the area has a diverse food base, enough so that famines are rare.

The Eastmarch produces: Exotic citrus, grapes and wines, apples and cider, olives and olive oil, 'southern' fish, pearl of shell, purple and blue dyes, inks, high grade shale, southern hardwoods and herbs/spices. Local wheat and barley/rye only.

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r14/drifterne05/Motley.jpg

For a rough sense of scale, it is 50 miles [82km]as the crow flies between Motley and MiddleMount.

Major Features.

• The Burned Mounts. These low mountains burst into flame during the Moons Tear. Their people and places are forgotten.
• The Bad Lands Mostly desert and patches of fused sand, there are oases and patches of seasonal green in this dry land. Temperatures vary considerably on this high, wasted plateau but run to the chilly, and only the various warm blooded saurian species seem to thrive there.
• The Savior Mounts. High and jagged mountains that are impassible at all but two points, both treacherous. These mounts protected the river valley and places beyond from the direct effects of the moons tear, and have provided a barrier to the strange creatures that have grown in the Bad Lands since.
• The Lesser Sea A warm and shallow ocean protected by landforms and island chains from global currents. Home to much of the Eastmarches wealth and the trade route to the Lesser Isles [a collection of large and small island colonies] and Moonburn [the last true Citie].
• The KarstFells

A map of Odd Arbage

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r14/drifterne05/arbage.jpg

Just a little picture of Arbage. fully brown buildings are covered longhouses. The others generally have gardens and reflect three or four odd styles from around the races/cultures settled since the Moons Tear.

There is not a lot of fine detail, but brown = mostly wood, grey = stone and black=Grand Age Architecture [read: unbreakable.] The black dots near the deepwater groyne are spikes that never move or wear.

Old Odd is the centre of the village, despite being smaller. It is here you will find the market once a week, and the few buildings devoted to anything other than living and working.

The manor is made of logs. Here is a map of sorts.

A map of Odd Manor

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r14/drifterne05/arbagemanor.jpg

Nearby Places and Facts

Bladhame

Bladhame, "Son of the Stones", was a dwarven fortress at some point in the distant past; a mountain hollowed out through unknown magics or unimaginable labor. A handful of dwarves dwell today, along with elves, gnomes, and a great many humans. Precisely what killed the original inhabitants of the city remains a mystery, but stories and theories abound. Ask any two Bladhamers, and you'll hear half a dozen tales between them.

It remains, however, one of the few remaining gateways to the World Below. Behind enormous stone doors, sealed with runes and sigils of obscure and arcane power, Taggit Dal Uggrit ("The Road That The Sun Never Sees") still runs deep into the earth, bringing the occasional caravan from the peoples who dwell below.

The trade in strange goods and stranger knowledge, these merchants, and none can truthfully claim to have seen their faces. But they deal honestly and well, and their occasional presence has drawn folk from great distances with the hope of learning...or acquiring...something that will give them a bit of power.

The Menfish

Premise: Kuo-Toa are evil aztec fishmen from a different, older evolutionary path before Man.

Late on the quietest winter nights, some of the shormost residents of Odd Arbage say that they can hear, just for a moment in the dead of night, a strange bell tolling out across the waters. By day, the stories are ridiculed, dismissed; but on those nights, the people of Odd Arbage shutter their windows tight and keep a roaring fire.

The oldest among them speak tales, when in their cups, of a time when the bells were answered by bells from the shore, and when they were they drew closer, and dark happenings took place at the shoreline.

But that hasn't happened for nigh-on twenty years, they say, though they glance fearfully at the odd gold trinkets that are in some family heirloom collections: little-worn and ill-favoured by all but the most brazen, who often come to a bad end.

Have new trinkets been seen around the town of Odd Arbage? None are sure. Perhaps the stories are so long-forgotten that the pieces are no longer seen as cursed. Perhaps some benighted jeweller is replicating them out of ignorance or misguided curiosity.

But the fishing this year has been the best ever; better even than the year before that, which was better again than the year before that... and some of the old folk wonder to themselves, and stoke roaring fires...

The Movealong Shadows

Once there were villages in the foothills of the Karstfells, to the west. Some of the elders can still remember when they were burned out, or found empty. Now only wild men, the nomads, dare to dwell there, and even they speak of enemies that come in the dark, through some moonless night or thick fog, leaving behind only empty tents to be found in the morning. None know who or what they are, but they move through the rocky hills like ghosts, evading watches and guards. Each dark night you camp in the same place you risk them finding you, and then you are never seen again.

The Karstfells

The Fells have a bad reputation, getting steadily worse the further west you go...which pushes Bladhames trade route undergound, where these attacks, oddly, never occur.

Your character might have been driven out of the Karstfells as a child...or know more than he's telling.

Considering the Karstfells as the fantasy equivalent of Bolivia/Central America cave system wise, this creates an environment where the surface is bleak and dangerous and the underearth is possibly safer and a more diverse, vibrant ecology...probably connecting to underwater rivers and ocean openings [a sunless sea or two?], where ancient marine races have found their contemptuous conquerers to now be a thing of history...

The Hellas clan

The Hellas clan has been in Motley since the world changed...though their circumstances have changed somewhat. The result of twisted, magical crossbreeding between higher and lower outsider bloodlines, the Hellas were magical accessories, bred much as pets are in some cultures. Those few in Motley at the time of the world change were part of the retinue of a minor local Power. When he vanished in a flash of light along with his inner circle, those Hellas left banded together with a few refugees to form their own clan - specialising in otherworldly magics.

There is only one family of Hellas clan in Odd Arbage - Natt the healer, his wife Eleanor the Herber and their daughter Bough - who seems to have a way with spirits and such.

The Order of the Blessed Bolts

The Brotherhood of the Blessed Bolt

This organization of wandering ranger/paladins formed after the Fall of the Moon's Tear to deal with the monstrosities that still roamed the land.

They do not crusade. They hunt and protect.

As monstrosities declined, so did the Brotherhood. Most went on far-ranging journeys to find evil, and few ever came back. Those that stayed became more like knights-errant, wandering and dispensing justice as they saw fit. Those few though kept the memory of the traditions alive, the techniques of monster-hunting, of the various weaknesss and vulnerbilites of demons, devils, lycanthropes and worse.

They revere the Father Sun, whose face watches and judges them by their actions everyday.

A fallen Brother is said to have forgotten the face of his father.

They train not so much in direct combat, as in stealth and attack from a distance, using specially crafted repeating crossbows.

The Archivists Order

They call themselves, in their clandestine meetings, the Archivists. Others call them thieves. Some few refer to them as the Bookwyrms, and regard them with a special sort of loathing.

The Archivists feel that is their divinely appointed task to accumulate as much knowledge as possible, in any and all possible form, and to cache it in hidden places to keep it from being lost forever the next time that the Moon sheds a tear.

Some, it must be admitted, take this sacred duty rather more seriously than others.....

The Sambaqui Mounds

Dotted along the coast of the Lesser Sea are barrow-like mounds known as Sambaquis, mostly overgrown and unnoticeable. The Church maintains that they are simply piles of refuse, shells and broken pottery, from ancient primitives who once lived here.

The common people know better, however. The Sambaqui are burial mounds for the first of the Kuo-Toa kings. Any man who sets foot on one of the mounds is blighted - he will never raise a son to take his place and his dreams will shrivel. A woman who steps on a Sambaqui will have her children taken by the Kuo-Toa but will be blessed with unnatural health.

It is said that the Barons, ignorant of common wisdom, have all stepped on Sambaqui and have even taken taken some of their wealth from the mounds. But they have paid the price.

• Characters are part of a small community who lose the majority of their defenders in a conflict - the PC's are the apprentices, squires and initiates who were left behind to provide a skeleton guard. Now they are all that is left. Using a 'points of light' [more a 'dark ages', really] background for the setting, the game becomes about dealing with the outcome of most of your workforce [and family] being dead, keeping the community alive and replacing all the lost resources that losing most of its fighting population results in. This will be hard to do in a resource poor world [if you consider population as a resource].

• The concept is fairly different to 'normal' [in the loosest sense] D&D, in that the characters start with a vital objective [save the village] and a resource poor environment to do it in [no high levels, no magic traders]. The community itself becomes the 'treasure' and the characters need to defend it from bands of looting orcs, various baddies and other adventurers... and the replacement of people in a small community is a long term objective, inclined to tie the party to one area.