[Announcement: I am going to be on a High Adventure camp from Thursday to Sunday..]

BRIEF OF CAMPAIGN SETTING:
Relistan is the name for the civilized portion of a vastly unexplored continent, with the civilized section being located on a peninsula jutting out of the middle of the continent's east cost.

There are a total of 5 kingdoms and 1 tribal alliance, in addition to many colonies along the Frontier (name of the unexplored sections or the colonies settled outside the civilized peninsula)- Arcania, Drania, Felingar, Psiona, and V'jaal. The tribe's "nation" is calling itself "Blood".

Thirty three centuries ago, the Peninsula had ended a siege that had lasted since the beginning of time, where a powerful devil lord kept the denizens locked away from the rest of the continent via a neverending wall of Hellfire, and only a select few devil cultists were allowed to pass through. The nations formed a truce in Drania's single public town called Babel, where they united to banish the devil's powers from the lands, in which they succeeded. On Relistan's timeline, this event marks the new year and is labeled Year 0.

Babel: Babel is a large trading city on the outskirts of Drania. In the center of the metropolis is a large tower, called the Tower of Babel. The Tower serves as a university for aspiring students of any craft, be it arcane to divine teachings to combat. Psionics is reserved for the nation of Psiona. 15 floors from the top of the Tower of Babel is the City of Upper Babel- this is a diplomatic city in which the Council of Babel (equivalent of the UN) meets to discuss international endeavors. Upper Babel is state of the art, containing over 90% of all the steampunk technology in all of Relistan. The Council of Babel meets in their own private floor atop the Tower of Babel, and every single member is a Gnommish (gnomes with no magical potential). The council's room is sealed by a powerful enchantment that prevents anything capable of magic to enter, therefore only the Gnommish can actually be there to discuss anything. This has elevated the status of the Gnommish greatly, and are always treated with respect and high class in any of the five kingdoms.

The only international law that is to be noted here is the magic and Psionic ban to use the following spells/powers: Miracle, Wish, and (insert the Psionic version's name here), due to the Last Wish Massacre of 44 AR (After Redemption)

A brief description of each nation:

Arcania- Arcania is a simple yet cruel place to live. The country is ruled by a monarchy, but the real power lies in the Wizard's Court, a chair of 9 advisors that are all masters of arcane magic. Ascent into the court is difficult even for the rich nobles that can afford the schooling. Oddly enough, Arcania bans schooling for any of its citizens to be done in the Tower of Babel. They mostly export raw materials of all sorts to be used by other nations. It is strongly rumored that Arcania's wizards actually practice Witchcraft, the forbidden supernatural magic of fiends.

Drania- Absolutely nothing is known about Drania, save for It lays claim to the soils that Babel is on. An unpassable wall of some sort of magic or witchcraft surrounds the kingdom, with only the natives knowing the secret to getting inside. This barrier glows a solid violet radiance that makes it impossible to see through, including any Scrying-related attempts. They never let outsiders inside their walls, but they have been known to make exceptions for Sorcerers and some various types of Shaman, but no one ever knows why this is not how these people know to enter the nation. Occasionally, strong individuals are sent out to do trade and such.

Felingar- a theocratic nation this is, Felingar notably represents a religion-oriented Parliament with a High Priestess as a permanent prime minister. The High Priestess, Asha Celeste, is supposedly immortal, and worships no deity due to her claims to be one herself. Many political parties exist in their politics, with each being based on a different deity/religion. Felingar, appropriately, has a main export of potions and alchemical products. While Felingar does ironically allow a freedom of religion, the churches there still are very much like churches of other D&D games, having their blasphemers, exiled members, clergy, and so on.

Psiona- throughout the continent, there are those who are born with the Wild Talent- gifted with a mana source being part of the newborn's brain and body, and can manifest powers through the psychic, mind-magic practices known as Psionics. Every single denizen of Psiona has the wild talent and encourages all Psionically gifted individuals to emigrate there. It's often tempting, for most with the wild talent are often feared and shunned if they have trouble controlling their powers (this is usually due to the mana source being located in the brain's emotional section or hormone glands). Psiona used to be a haven for such people, but now their reputation is much more negative (and therefore ruining reputations of the wild talented), due to their increasing death rate and constant raiding of caravans that go near their borders. Psiona used to export livestock and plants, as well as a lot of philosophic literature written by their Ardent community, but their somewhat anarchic state has ruined this relationship of good exchange.

V'jaal- The first-world nation of its day, V'jaal is a human-led democratic monarchy. With a government system almost identical to the United States, their system for "electing the monarch" is rather odd- once a generation, the next in line to be king/queen runs against another candidate that represents another family to be elected into power. This other candidate is determined by previous voting sessions called "nominations," where potential candidates are announced, and the "primary," in which the citizens vote for which candidate will run against the heir to the throne. V'jaal is quite prosperous, owning 7% of the work d's steampunk technology and most of its artificers. Currently, the congress is deadlocked on a debate over the rights to minorities, such as ogres and elves. Life for non-humans in V'jaal is actually not that terrible, and they receive racial scholarships to get schooling in either an apprenticeship or the Tower of Babel.


Backstory: You have been hired, along with some other individuals (the other PC's), to find and capture an enemy of the Church of Baal, and your search has led you to the City of Upper Babel, where you are currently located at an Inn. Your agreed upon reward was paid travel to find the criminal (aka you're staying at the inn for free) and an amount of gold for the enemy to be brought back alive and conscious. (More details on the backdrop to where you are and stuff will be given once we start actually playing).


CURRENT HOUSE RULES

1.) Hit Dice: Let's assume that you rolled the highest number possible on first level.

2.) More in-depth wand crafting. (System already made)

3.) All characters begin play at level 10.

4.) Characters start with 4d6x1000 gp, except for the Savage Warrior, who starts with 10+4d6 extra items. If you start out with any levels of Monstrous Humanoid, then you gain +1d6x100 gp per level of Monstrous Humanoid, if you take any class that goes for schooling stuff.

5.) If the special category in your class's level advancement is empty (does not include racial level adjustments), then you may gain a Prestige class's special in place of the "empty level" special. You are considered to be level 1 in that Prestige class, even though on the next level you'd have the option to take on the next level of your base class as if you didn't do any prestige stuff to begin with. Upon filling a level this way, you replace your HD with the new class's HD (for that level only) and you gain the class skills of that new class. You only get the new class's skill points on levels you fill with the new class.
5a.) If you don't qualify for any prestige classes, then you may gain a Bonus Feat.
5b.) If you don't qualify for any prestige classes, and you don't care about no bonus feat, then you may gain the special of the entry level or the next level you would get from another base class.
5c.) If you fill an empty level with a Spellcasting class (using the bard as an example), you would not gain the bard's Spellcasting features, but you would gain the bard's HD in place of your base class and the bard's class skills.
You essentially "add" the bard's class skills to your class skill list, but you only get the bard's +6 skill points on that dead level. You could put fighter skill points in bard skills on later levels though.
However, you do get some Spellcasting ability. You know as many spells as a first level bard, and can cast as many Cantrips per day as a first level bard. You don't gain any other spells per day other than the bonus spells per day that you would receive from a high Charisma score.

6.) Kobolds do not exist.

7.) Your character has to want to be a member of the party because of party bonding stuff- no selfish mercenary-types that either get a bigger share of the spoils or ditch the game.

8.) No Chaotic Stupid, Lawful Stupid, Stupid Good, Stupid Evil, or True Stupid characters. In addition, the Chaotic Neutral alignment is NOT the alignment of psychotics- those of the Chaotic Neutral alignment do not get away with bad behavior just because of chaos. Just like players can have two alignments, so can actions and choices. Therefore, if your action is chaotic, there's no guarantee that it'll be taken as ONLY a chaotic choice and keep you from being evil. This applies to all alignments, but I like to make an example out of Chaotic Neutral because I see that alignment waaaaaaaaaaay too often.

9.) [This is not a rule] Please, to make my life and your life so much easier, please fill out your character sheets on www.myth-weavers.com, and friend LegendaryLegend (that's me) and share your sheet with me so I can see it. This way, you don't have to PM me it every time you change it, bla bla bla....

10.) Once per level gained of your original base class (therefore a maximum amount of 10 times before play), you may exchange 3 skill points for a bonus feat. You may not choose Open Minded for feats gained this way.

11.) If you gain the Leadership feat, your Cohort is not allowed to have the Leadership feat (yes, that is actually legal to do in standard games). Also, you do not gain a Follower army to be at your disposal. Instead, you get more Cohorts. You get another Cohort (as in, in addition to the cohort you normally get from Leadership) for every 12 levels of the total level of all the followers you'd qualify for added together. Each extra cohort is 1 level less than the last Cohort you just qualified for. (For example, if my first cohort is level 8, my second one would be level 7. My third Cohort would be level 6, and so on.) Cohorts cannot be below level 4. If you still are "entitled" to more cohorts after having a 4th level cohort, then suck it, you don't get any more. You already have like 4 or 5 of them.

12.) Because I think it would be fun to do, you can become proficient in Improvised Weapons (like chairs, ladders, tankards, etc). Normally, you take penalties on attack rolls from using a weapon you're not proficient with, and you can only deal 1d4 nonlethal damage with it. When you're proficient with them, however, you don't take the nonproficiency penalties, and can do lethal damage. The die size is equal to 1/3 of the object's hardness, rounded down to the nearest whole number, and then rounded up to the nearest even number (if not already an even number). For example, an object with a hardness of 20 would deal 1d6 damage. 20 divided by 3 is between six and seven, so round down to 6, and since six is an even number, we don't do anything further. However, a Hardness of 21 would be a 1d8. 21 divided by 3 is seven, and the nearest even number above 7 is 8.

Question 1: Do you have any questions?

What are your thoughts on monstrous characters? (Thinking about the Lizardman) and what are the implications in society with monstrous characters?

You can be a monstrous character, sure. Be sure to calculate in the Level Adjustments, however!!! I will NOT accept racial levels as prestige class levels for the sake of the one house rule I mentioned earlier about prestige classes.

In society, monstrous creatures are either barbaric, living in the tribes in Blood, or are frontiersmen, colonists in the (or from the) Uncharted lands (imagine fantasy-western world with any unsettled terrain), or are living in Cornelius. Cornelius is a human-ruled nation, where all the minorities are in the awkward position that all the minorities of America are in today. You'd start out with extra gold if your class involves schooling, like the Wizard, because you got minority scholarships.

I do believe I am going to play a Lizardman Savage Warrior.

Another question...

How much money do we have to buy our equipment?

I put the House Rules on here.

My account name is Lord Sadaar. My character's name is Brikea Athtar. I hopefully will have her finished within the hour or so. I think I have her linked correctly to my profile, but I don't know yet.

My account is called IBinary; I haven't started a sheet yet, but I am progressively working on a cleric for the game.

He's a pretty typical cleric who worships Pelor (chosen domains are good and healing); I'm not very experienced with this sort of thing and thought a more conventional approach would be best as a learning curve. I hope that's okay with you.

My account is Padre J Roulston. I have (barely) started a character. I'm hoping to have more time later today, or tomorrow to actually work on it.

I'm almost done, I just have a couple of quick questions.

Drow gain a +2 perception bonus. Would this mean I gain a +2 bonus to listen, spot, and search, or just one of these?

How do favoured class bonus's work? In Pathfinder, every class can be selected as a favoured class. From what I've read, in 3.5 each species gets it's own single favoured class. Which one would be a Drow's?

I'm not on my computer right now to be able to look it up... but check under Elf sub species, in the Monster Manual... it has all the racial bonuses and character creation information for Drow in 3.5

I'm using the Pathfinder Drow, since there is a less powerful version (of a drow) in it. I'll take a look at the MM one though, since it might have the favoured class stuff. Thank you.

The Drow's favored class in MM is either Sorcerer or Wizard. I can't remember. If your rogue has empty levels, then go for the arcane stuff, but I would highly recommend not doing that at all.

Ah, too bad. The Pathfinder rogue, doesn't have empty levels, so I guess I'll just stick with what I've got then.

I'm sorry I didn't see this earlier, I-Binary.

I really hope you're using the Pathfinder cleric if you're going for Good and Healing. In DnD, the good and healing domain spells are already in the generic cleric spell list. The benefit is that you cast healing spells at +1 caster level. I forget what good does. Just keep in mind that there are lots of domains out there, and you could easily go Protection and Healing or War and Healing. I'm not going to dictate your character, though.