Okay, I'm making a 3.5e campaign here. The original idea for this was when I was talking to I-Binary the other day about when I was getting my other campaign started, and I responded that I already started it and are just waiting for the next person in the turn order to post.

(Negligible Note: This undead campaign takes place on the continent of Relistan from my past campaign, but it takes place in a different time period and in a different region, so you don't really need to read up on that if you don't know anything about the continent. I just thought it would be interesting for my Relistan players to know that.)

This campaign takes place on an unnamed continent (it's called earth by the denizens, for it was before anyone discovered their world on the material plane was round). Due to the huge amounts of undead, technology has been at a standstill at an equivalent to medieval times (like standard DnD games), and there is a high abundance of magic in the world to be focused on and expanded upon to try to defeat the undead masses.

The undead compose of many SRD monsters, but there is a homebrew undead monster that is being introduced called the Tomeraith. Tomeraiths are a hivemind undead that exist in a heirarchy of ranks for purpose and power. Their creation process is unknown. A Tomeraith is a lifeless body being driven around by some source of pure knowledge, and all the cuts, scrapes, and any other wound in the body at the time of death is being held together by eldritch stitching that is in the shape of runes, which give Tomeraiths some Invocations along with some manifesting or spellcasting (but never both). Since a Tomeraith's talents are powered from their runes, which hold their bodies together, a Tomeraith's spell/power save DC is modified by its Constitution modifier. One thing to understand, however, is that a Tomeraith is not the body- the body is merely a vessel being controlled by the Tomeraith. Outside the body, a Tomeraith is an incorporeal form that is pure knowledge, and is actually quite harmless. Upon leaving a body, the Tomeraith is scattered. Since it was a being of pure knowledge that was part of a hivemind, defeated Tomeraiths are flushed back into the overall Hivemind, and its power is distributed evenly amongst all the other Tomeraiths that still inhabit bodies. Therefore, for every Tomeraith defeated, the other Tomeraiths become stronger because of it. There are theories of a "Queen Mind" of sorts, but no progress has been made on this idea. Since Tomeraiths can inhabit any dead body or form, there have been Tomeraiths of all shapes and sizes. Over the past couple centuries since Tomeraiths have appeared, they have begun to create bodies specifically for "Entomer," as it is called, or the process of a Tomeraith gaining possession of a corpse. These Tomeraith-designed bodies/corpses are very Lich-like in appearance (but are in no way as powerful as a Lich, unless a Lich is possessed somehow).

CAMPAIGN SETTING-SPECIFIC MECHANICS

Due to the Tomeraith dilemma, the world is rather run down, and doesn't function at the same form of lawful structure as most kingdoms did in the medieval ages. You will rarely ever use gold pieces in this game. While you will roll to see how much gp you can spend on starting equipment, you are not allowed to start off with more than 15 gp, or with 50 gp if you are at least at a Complex age. Furthermore, the Profession skill doesn't work in the same way. Instead of receiving gp, you receive bonus XP. You always gain 1 XP on a successful Profession check. (See how I handle XP in my second post).
If you have Skill Focus (Profession), you may use your profession to pay off receiving an item through your service. The DM (me) has to agree that the seller would like help that your profession would provide, but the DM also needs to be creative in what things the seller could have the buyer do. For example, a sailor doesn't know a thing about wandmaking, but he could certainly help a wand seller ship stock overseas. The DC for the Profession check is determined by the difficulty of the tasks asked of the one in service, not the "price" of the item received. If you have Skill Focus (Diplomacy), you may use diplomacy checks to improve barters and servitude evaluation in your favor (DC 13).

As one can imagine, there is a high mana concentration in this world, so it's extremely unlikely for anyone to not have some sort of magic, psionic, or withcraft talent on them (monk abilities count as a mana-related talent). Every character has some sort of spell allotment, power point allotment, or invocations to use at their disposals. If your base class does not provide such mana-related talents, you may apply them as described below:

1.) Cantrips and orisons may be cast indefinitely. Any spellcaster can cast cantrips even if they haven't gotten to first level spells yet. These characters know 4 cantrips.

2.) Manifesters don't have cantrips, but they can choose to have a number of 1st level powers known equal to their key ability modifiers that can be manifested without a display.

3.) You can choose to have your ability be innate, trained, or divine. If it's innate, your instinct fuels it, so your key ability is Charisma. If they're trained, use Intelligence as your key ability. If it's divine, use Wisdom as your key ability.

4.) If you're a spellcaster, you can choose to have your spells be spontaneous or prepared in advance. If you have to prepare them, you learn spells as a wizard does (with no school specialization). Spontaneous spellcasters learn spells at the rate of the Hexblade or Bard, depending on your BAB progression.

5.) Spellcasting: Your spell allotment is determined by your BAB.

--+15 capstone BAB: Your daily spell allotment is identical to the Bard.

--+20 capstone BAB: Your daily spell allotment is identical to the Ranger.

6.) Psionic powers known, power point allotment, and maximum power level known is determined by your BAB.

--+15 capstone BAB: You have two options- you can choose to learn 1 power per level or learn powers as a wilder does. If you choose the first option, your maximum power level known increases identical to the psychic warrior. If you choose the wilder option, your max power level known increases as a wilder does also. Regardless if you choose one option or the other, your capstone of power points is 127 (see the Psychic Warrior class).

--+20 capstone BAB: Power points and max power level known increase in the same manner as the Lurk class. Powers known increase at the same rate as the Wilder. Soulknives automatically receive this option, even though they have a BAB capstone of +15.

IF YOU DIDN'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THAT, PM me what class you want to be, and I'll email a spreadsheet to you along with a spell or power list.

IF YOU DON'T WANT ANY SPELL OR POWER STUFF, that's okay- instead, you gain Spell Resistance, Power Resistance, or Energy Resistance (choose 1 type of energy other than Force) equal to half of your HD (rounded up) plus your base fortitude bonus.

Many base classes function differently or have new variant abilities for you to use, and there are also some new prestige classes. The effected classes are the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Ninja, Paladin, Ranger, Warlock, and Wizard.

BARD- Spells may be prepared in advance instead of spontaneously cast. If this is done, then the bard need not perform a song for the verbal component of the spell.

CLERIC- Good Clerics gain a bonus domain (healing). Evil clerics gain a different bonus domain (destruction). Good clerics may expend a daily use of Turn Undead to add a +1/four levels circumstance bonus to attack and damage rolls against undead.

DRUID- druids may choose to take a variant ability to Wild Shape, called Necroshape. Necroshape allows a Druid to literally turn undead, transforming into a walking corpse. In this form, a druid and her animal companion gain the undead subtype. In this form, they gain Master of Disguise, allowing them to take 10 on all bluff and disguise checks on any creature that didn't see them transform or know of their transformation. Creatures that know of their transformations add their Intelligence bonus to the DC's for the druid's disguise and bluff checks. Master of Disguise cannot be applied to feint attempts.

FIGHTER- If arcane spellcasting is added, they can cast their spells learned as a Fighter without arcane spell failure in masterwork armors. They also add Bluff and Tumble to their class skill list.

NINJA- Ninjas are..well, ninjas. They can make a reflex save (DC 20) to jump an extra number of feet equal to their total number of ranks in jump (plus their Acrobatics bonus).

PALADIN- Paladins get a bonus fighter feat at every third level.

RANGER- Obviously, they have some new Favored Enemy options. However, you cannot choose "Tomeraith" as your favored enemy. When it comes to selecting your favored enemy, treat "Tomeraith" as a subtype, the same as you would treat Outsider, Goblinoid, and so on.

WARLOCK- Warlocks in this world can be creatures that used to be under the influence of a Tomeraith, had an exorcism, and were then resurrected in such a way that they lost their class levels of whatever it was they had before. If this background is chosen, replace "Fiendish Resilience" with a bonus feat. You can choose between Toughness, Improved Toughness, Psionic Body, or Improved Natural Armor. You need not meet the prerequisites for those feats. Most importantly, Warlocks use Constitution for their key abilities, not Charisma.

WIZARD- Wizards are part archaeologist: since society doesn't exactly have the means or funds to provide magic schools, these hardy folk need to dig around for tomes of magic and spellbooks to learn spells on their own. They add Appraise, Forgery, Profession (Archaeologist), Search, Speak Language, Survival, and Use Rope to their class skill lists.

1.) See above for how selling and bartering is handled, along with adding spellcasting/psionics to your class.

2.) Due to possible difficulty of accessing manufactured arms and armor, a character may forfeit all martial weapon proficiencies (must have proficiency in at least 5 martial weapons) in order to gain the Monk's Unarmed Strike class feature.

3.) Multiclassing doesn't inhibit XP.

4.) XP required for each level is that level number multiplied by 10. For example, level 1 requires 10 XP that you start with for free. Level 2 requires 20 XP, and so on. At the end of each encounter, you gain 1 XP. If you performed exceptionally well in the encounter, or became victorious despite what seemed to be unbeatable odds, you may receive more XP (but never more than 3).

5.) Due to how gold isn't really used and how XP works, magic item creation and some magic components don't work in the same way. All XP costs are reduced to 1 XP/2 spell levels (for example, Wish costs 4 XP to cast). XP and Gold are also not required for creating magic items. Instead, you must roleplay out getting the needed materials, and can only craft as many magic items whose cumulative CL requirements add up to less than or equal to your own caster level. If a spell has a material component that isn't that expensive (such as jump requiring grasshopper legs), that material component is treated as a focus component instead of a material component.

6.) Add Appraise, Profession, and Survival to your class skill list if I haven't had you do that already.

7.) If you do not post your response when it is your turn within three days, I will post for you or "voluntell" someone else to post for you.

8.) We start at level 8, but all races have a level adjustment of +2. These two levels are filled with your race's favored class (you may substitute barbarian, bard, druid, fighter, monk, ranger, soulknife, or warlock instead of your default favored class. For purposes of animal companion or familiar abilities, you may add your main base class's level to your effective Druid level or whatever-level for terms of tricks and what animals you can use and bla bla bla.). If you don't want to do that, then your +2 level adjustment can instead grant you 2d8 HD, +2 STR/CON/DEX, +2 WIS, and an extra feat. With this bonus feat, everyone taking this option would then have 4 feats minimum and two +1 stat growths, for those of you that didn't want to have to figure it out on your own.

9.) Going through cities will be pretty similar to going through dungeons.

10.) Don't be that selfish character or hopeless bum, please. Most of the world around you will already be full of either selfish people stealing from others or hopeless mopers that think all has gone to hell/that the world is ending. Be someone that stands apart from everyone else. This campaign is dark, for sure, but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to be (occasional) comic relief or a beacon of hope.

So this is what you were thinking about when we spoke yesterday! I may sound desperate, but would absolutely love to join, as I have really nothing going for me right now. The undead campaign idea looks really attractive-- with my join request, I gotta say I have always wanted to do something like this, some sort of cross between a World of Darkness game and Pathfinder/DnD, where survival is key and money isn't really an object.

I'd like to try being a barbarian for this game, some kind of big raging guy who is so tired of everything being so bleak that he will force himself upon his environment to instigate his own version of change. I figure it would be a good way to break out of my usual cleric mould, and I can try out some new mechanics.

As a barbarian, I would naturally focus upon physical forms of combat, likely of the usual "rage, charge, and hit" routine common to the class. Seeing as there is so much mana in Relistan during this time, I might be interested in adding a few spellcasting keys to my character alongside the physical stuff, likely to buff himself more than anything else.

Does that sound all right? That, and is there a point-buy system for this game?

Many thanks for starting up a new campaign-- I am looking really forward to this!

All right, I'll PM you your spell list. I'm assuming that your spells are innate?

And yeah, you can use a 38 point-buy for this (DnD rules, aka your stats are at 8 by default).

If you limit yourself to 25 points, you receive 4 more skill points.

If you limit yourself to 32 points, you receive 2 more skill points.

Yeah, I'd think so. I couldn't imagine any barbarian having the patience to be trained or the conviction to seek divinity.

Wonderful-- again, thank you very much! I might have more questions over the course of character creation, and may ask you more questions here if that's all right with you.

Bildard (a Wilder Dwarf) is in the works, so who else is joining a Barbarian and a Dwarf for an adventure in an unknown land vs the UnDead ?????

Well lets see......

SirSadaar might be joining, and if he does he will have this Fighter/Rogue build that was pretty slick.


Archangel517 expressed interest to me when I talked to him in person, but he's still yet to log in and post to confirm.

Tell Archangel that Hammer is playing!

Is that a different Archangel ?????

There's the first Archangel that I haven't met, and then there's Archangel517, who's my friend that I dragged on here since he was complaining about how difficult it is to get enough players to be regular attendees to sessions.

Yaaayyy- Sir is always great fun to RP with in games. I'll get the barbarian in the works, and I do hope he and Archangel can join us. I think this will be a lot of fun.

Axio, are we assuming that equipment costs the same in this world as it does in the core rulebook? And, if we take ranks in crafts which enable us to build our own equipment (eg. weapons, armour, etc.), are we allowed to build a set amount of such things for ourselves?

Thank you in advance! I'm getting about halfway done, and my char. sheet is on Mythweavers for ease of access.

Due to some Real Life Interruptions my Origin/Back Story for Bildard has not been written yet, so I will try to get it done either late tonight when I return home, or sometime Sunday afternoon before our GM gets back home from his weekend away from home!

For your question, I-Binary, the amounts that you craft count towards the total amount of stuff that you start with. I just don't want someone spamming craft and then saying he has like a million things because of things. And things.

Oh and I'm back. ^.^ I'll be answering stuff on the car ride home, but once I get home I have a tent to clean and homework to finish.

I have a rough draft that is hand printed, so I have to type it into a document with edits and adjustments and then will send it to Axiomatic in a PM hopefully later tonight

You're okay. Honestly, I've got all the time in the world, and do not want you to stress or feel obligated to anything.

All in all, I hope you had a fun and relaxing camping trip.