[PF-1e] A Great and Terrible Burning

[CatCanCook]

Yes, you get 2 ordinary traits plus one campaign trait.

You should take your traits (and feats for that matter) with an eye toward what you want your character to be in the future. So a trait that substitutes Disciplines likely wont help you today but will make a difference later.

(If you make a mistake, you can retrain later, it is just fairly costly.)

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If anyone wants some structure around your application you can use this. (Use the "Quote" button then strip away everything unneeded. This is optional.

Application Template (Optional) Name: Campaign Trait: (unique) Ability Scores: (15 point buy; think ahead to 25 point-buy at the end of Chapter 3.) Str: Dex: Con: Int: Wis: Cha: Ethnicity: Size: Medium (but optionally Small if Str < 10) Age: Alignment: Faith/Patron: Level 1 class: Traits: (2 in different categories, excludes campaign traints) Bonus feat: (if commoner) Level 1 feat: (Note that this may start your first Greater Stance) Description: (1 paragraph) Personality: (1 paragraph) Background: (1 paragraph)

The following are OK to defer to later: Fort: Refl: Will: BAB: HP: (maximized at 1st level) Skills: FCB: Spells: (if any) Gear: Feat tax fix or bonus feat?: (choose when you have an adventuring class) Planned level 2 class: Planned level 3 class: Planned level 3 feat: (Note that this may start your second Greater Stance: 2 + 2 feats) Planned level 5 feat: (Note that this may start your final Greater Stance: 3 + 3 +3

[PsychicNomad]

This Greater Stance mechanic is not entirely clear for me.

If I'd like Alertness for Dorita, for example, should I declare I want to put it in a Greater Stance, and that's it, I have my first Greater Stance?

[CatCanCook]

This Greater Stance mechanic is not entirely clear for me.

If I'd like Alertness for Dorita, for example, should I declare I want to put it in a Greater Stance, and that's it, I have my first Greater Stance?

Yes, that works.

At Level One you have one Greater Stance, and it contains just Alertness.

At Level Three -- assuming you don't take a feat outside of a Greater Stance (like an animal companion for example), then you can take a second Greater Stance. You would get 1 feat into the existing first stance AND two feats into the second stance. Of course you only get to use once stance at a time.

Examples:

• First Greater Stance: Alertness, Improved Initiative.
• Second Greater Stance: Combat Reflexes, Bodyguard.

I'm saying whether or not this is a good build, but such a character would go around in their default stance, ready to perceive risk and then with a good initiative take action quickly in response to risk.

Then this character (just hypothetically) has Combat Reflexes (to act as an area defender), and Bodyguard (which relies on Combat Reflexes as a prerequisite.) So, while combat is under way, the first stance is no longer particular useful, but the second stance is specialized to a certain combat style.

Then Level 5 is a big payoff, 3 stances with 3 feats. You effectively get +5 new feats all at once. Thereafter, you get no more stances, but could keep improving the stances up to level 9, where they plateau.

Does that help illustrate how it works?

[PsychicNomad]

At Level Three -- assuming you don't take a feat outside of a Greater Stance (like an animal companion for example)

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

[RasterFarian]

I was going to ask many of these same questions so I'm glad I perused the thread a little bit before posting. But that leaves this question:

1st Level commoner = Human bonus feat
2nd Level NPC = no additional feat
3rd Level is 1st level Adventure Class = 1 bonus feat (or feat tax) + 1st level feat

Is that correct? or is it just a single feat at 3/1?

(I noticed the quoted questions do not show up here...)

Originally Posted by CatCanCook

Yes. 5 years pass per chapter, and you get to grow old in this game (albeit with humanity having a shortened lifespan now due all the nukes, pollution, disease, etc.). So you get to influence the next generation of societies, and maybe in some ways redress problems facing the Southland. (If you survive....)



Only if your starting class is Commoner.

Your other source of bonus feats is: with your first adventuring class (usually level) you either get the Feat Tax Fix or 1 bonus feat.



Yes, so it costs you almost nothing at 1st level, so to speak. Then if you do that again at 3rd level, you are at 2+2 feats.



Only via retraining. Otherwise, plan on your 1st feat going into your 1st Greater Stance as being the backbone of your default stance.

[CatCanCook]

I was going to ask many of these same questions so I'm glad I perused the thread a little bit before posting. But that leaves this question:

1st Level commoner = Human bonus feat
2nd Level NPC = no additional feat
3rd Level is 1st level Adventure Class = 1 bonus feat (or feat tax) + 1st level feat

Is that correct? or is it just a single feat at 3/1?

(I noticed the quoted questions do not show up here...)

I will enumerate the cases:

For Canny Hunter or Black Sheep starting builds:

• Level 1: 1st level feat. Gets first adventuring class. Either Bonus feat or feat tax fix.
• Level 2: NPC class. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior.
• Level 3: 3rd level feat. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior..

For builds using campaign traits other than Canny Hunter or Black Sheep:

• Level 1: 1st level feat. NPC class. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior.
• Level 2: NPC class. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior.
• Level 3: 3rd level feat. Get's first adventuring class. Bonus feat or feat tax fix.

And -- given the build rules, 90% of the time you want your 1st and 3rd level feats going into Greater Stances ... unless there is something very specific you are trying to achieve with them.

[RasterFarian]

Ok, that's clear.

[17fromgreatness]

@Cat - Maybe it’s already been posted… but how many years since the “end times”? I know there was a “generation” of “starvation and cannibalism…” but how many years total? Just curious for backstory and character etc.

[CatCanCook]

It's around 2125. People in the Canyon lost exact track of time but the current generation is about the 4th since.

[17fromgreatness]

@Cat - The “bonus Feat” for Commoner - is this only achieved when the Commoner is taken at 1st level?

For Canny Hunter or Black Sheep starting builds:
Level 1: 1st level feat. Gets first adventuring class. Bonus feat or feat tax fix.
Level 2: NPC. No bonus feat.
Level 3: 3rd level feat.

[CatCanCook]

Ah, I did not clarify that. Yes, Commoners get a bonus feat each level. They are bad at *everything* -- BAB (just +0.5), HP (just 1d6), saves (all poor), skills (just 2 and poor access), and no spells. So they get a feat as compensation for losing in every other dimension.

Since Commoners are rewritten to clarify that case, I'm repeating the cases one more time:


For Canny Hunter or Black Sheep starting builds:

• Level 1: 1st level feat. Gets first adventuring class. Either Bonus feat or feat tax fix.
• Level 2: NPC class. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior.
• Level 3: 3rd level feat. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior..

For builds using campaign traits other than Canny Hunter or Black Sheep:

• Level 1: 1st level feat. NPC class. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior.
• Level 2: NPC class. Bonus feat if Commoner, no bonus feat for Adept, Aristocrat, Expert or Warrior.
• Level 3: 3rd level feat. Get's first adventuring class. Bonus feat or feat tax fix.

[RasterFarian]

Hmmm, there are 2 deceased characters folders... Should we be concerned? How high are the casualty rates going to be?

[CatCanCook]

Hmm, two deceased folders?

That's not right.

The flow is Alive => Dead => Undead => Destroyed => Reconstructed as a mechanical simulacrum in pale mockery of the original. So really there should be five folders.

But for now, I renamed one of them to "Workbook", a place to keep private notes before turning them into shared posts.

[CatCanCook]

Oops, I realized I miss-answered a question earlier -- I omitted some options.

Maghnius wrote:

Could one take Alternative Human traits that replace bonus feat, if they are not a commoner?

You can take an Alternative Human trait, but you just need to trade away a feat at first level to do that.

A previous post explained a couple of ways you can get feats at 1st level so as to be able to trade them away. They would be:
1) be a commoner at 1st level, trade that bonus feat way
2) via the two campaign traits mentioned above, be an adventuring class at 1st level:
2-a) that gets feat tax fix or a bonus feat; choose the bonus feat and trade that away
2-b) that gets a bonus feat because of its class (e.g. a Fighter) and trade that away
3) trade your level one feat away [the one you'd normally use to start a Greater Stance]

Were you to go down this path, search the page here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/core-races/human/ for "bonus feat" and you'll see what human racial traits are allowed by performing the swap.

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Elsewhere, Magnius wrote:

Cat

If you go with a Dies the Fire type campaign, please ping me. I have run a very similar campaign for over 35 years. In fact, since a couple years before Dies the Fire was published. My magic was more D&D, but otherwise Stephen and I came up with pretty much the same physics and politics.
My Campaign was Minnesota centered, although players have been from 5 or 6 different countries.

I'm indeed curious what you've run for 35 years!

I'm making a few key ideas obvious about this world from day one, and for sure they will make it very different from your Minnesota campaign, no doubt!

1) Like "Dies the Fire", a Change strikes down technology and replaces it with magic. (What was the cause of the Change? In this world, the cosmology and cause of the Change is not the same as in Stirling's story. Maybe the cause of the change might be important.)

2) Like "Empire of the East", the Change has the effect of halting a nuclear war in progress: but the fireballs of detonations-in-progress themselves came to life as sentient beings.

3) There are little bits of the Fallout computer game series that will be cropping up, because a meaningful number of radioactive devices actually detonated before the Change.

4) I'm taking magic as wish-fulfillment, and there's the rub. People wish for dark desires sometimes. What fools these mortals be! Nightmares then take on a life of their own. To have a world exposed to a deluge of media -- priming a planet of people with expectations - shapes what unconscious wishes are presented to and made of the magical field. To get what you want by wish fulfillment invokes the law of unintended consequences. And once the wind of magic is blowing across the face of the earth, does it just fulfill human will, or its own? What is the will of the wind?

So ... that's a range of ideas we will be playing with.

[Acathala]

Application Template (Optional) Name: Siegfried Campaign Trait: (fantasy buff) Ability Scores: (15 point buy; think ahead to 25 point-buy at the end of Chapter 3.) Str: 14 Dex: 10 Con: 14 Int: 16 (racial mod) Wis: 10 Cha: 10 Ethnicity: white Size: Medium (but optionally Small if Str < 10) Age: 20 Alignment: neutral good Faith/Patron: atheist Level 1 class: aristocrat Traits: (magical lineage shocking grasp, orphaned. ) Bonus feat: (if commoner) Level 1 feat: (toughness) Description: Siegfried is a tall drink of a man. Long white-blond hair, with eyes of blue. He is aware, if Trina knew how he was going to turn out, she would have called him "Legolas". Wears a long leather coat, a relic of olden times. His scimitar was found in the buried remains of a building long destroyed. Personality: Siegfried was a good kid. Trina never had any trouble with him. His quietness is often mistaken for aloofness. The quietness also hides a snarky side. Those whom do know him, would agree the trope the snark Knight applies, if tropes were still a thing. Siegfried is a voracious reader of books. He's often the second reader behind Trina, of new material. Learned Tolkien elvish fairly easily. Likes learning languages. Or any kind of learning really Background: Siegfried was believed to have been orphaned, but the grim truth his parents were the leaders of a tribe, and through mystic means, determined if Siegfried was allowed to live, he would destroy the tribe. Delegated the murder to another tribe member. However she was lazy, and left the baby to die of exposure. Siegfried's original tribe then left for pastures new. The boy's story did not end there. He was found by scouts, brought to Trina, then adopted by her. Siegfried was quiet and obedient, a perfect son. His quietness did not endear him much to other children, but it did give him lazer focus on his education. Whether that was with weapons or books. He found out he was adopted early on when his adopted sister Lucy spitefully told him, when he had passed a school test. Lucy got away with a lot of things because Trina loved her. Siegfried was realistic about Lucy, did not. Things had a tendency to disappear in her presence. Whilst he could never could prove she was a thief, he was certain that it was her. Lucy also had a very carefully hidden mean streak. When she disappeared, Siegfried breathed a sigh of relief. She had probably joined a bad lot. Sadly if he gets picked to be one of the scouts, Siegfried knows that Trina will ask him to keep an eye out for her. He can't refuse Trina this. She's his mother, and just on the off chance Lucy isn't doing anything evil.

The following are OK to defer to later: Fort: Refl: Will: BAB: HP: (maximized at 1st level) Skills: FCB: Spells: (if any) Gear: Feat tax fix or bonus feat?: (choose when you have an adventuring class) Hexcrafter(magus archetype): Planned level 3 class: Planned level 3 feat: (Note that this may start your second Greater Stance: 2 + 2 feats) Planned level 5 feat: (Note that this may start your final Greater Stance: 3 + 3 +3