Beyond the Last War
The medieval world of Eberron is a place of magic and monsters where arcane energy infuses the landscape and greatly influences society and industry. Thanks to a master of the arcane arts the great cities of the continent of Khorvaire contain skyscraping castles, elemental-powered coaches and carriages, and all manner of enchanted conveniences. Magic is industry across the face of Eberron the innovative spark that propels society forward.
The advances and conveniences made possible by magic augment the trappings of a medieval world. Magic and the arcane arts allow for effects that in some ways mimic technological marvels that did not appear in our world until the 1800. Something resembling a magical telegraph provides communication between two locations. An arcane analog of the railroad connects defined routes among the more civilized regions of the world. Magic exists to accomplish tasks otherwise impossible—if you can find the right spell wielder and you have enough gold to pay tor the privilege.
Over two decades ago, the world of Eberron emerged from a long and devastating war. The nations of the continent of Khorvaire were once part of a great kingdom of legend, the nighty kingdom of Galifar. When King Jarot died, his five hers, each in command of one of the Five Nations that comprised the kingdom, refused to bow to tradition. Instead of allowing the eldest scion to take the crown the siblings rallied their vassals and individually vied to take control of the kingdom. Over time this decades-long conflict became known as the Last War, for everyone imagined that when it finally ended, the taste for bloodshed and battle would be wiped from the face al Khorvaire.
The Last War continued for more than a century with each of the Five Nations alternately fighting against or alongside one or more of the others as animosities and alliances shifted like the wind in the Shargon Straits. In time other nations formed as deals were made and opportunities presented themselves. After 102 years of fighting the leaders of the recognized nations of Khorvaire (which now numbered twelve) met at the ancient capital of Galifar to draft a peace. With the signing of the Treaty of Thronehold, the Last War came to an end.
In the aftermath of the war, the nations of Khorvaire have been enjoying a period peace in the land as each nation has been attempting to rebuild. Minor skirmishes have broken out every so often especially in the more remote sections of the continent and on the most hotly contested border. However, no large scale war has been seen in the land for over two decades. Espionage and sabotage are the preterred method of diplomacy, since the nations engage in trade and discussion in public while working intrigues and double-crosses in the shadows.
Game System
This campaign uses the Pathfinder 2E Remaster (PF2e) rule system. The Eberron setting is owned by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) with no official published content for PF2e. Consequently, this campaign uses a fusion of content from prior D&D versions back to the first publication for D&D version 3.0.
The "home brew" rules for this campaign are listed below.
Ancestries
The creation of a new player character (PC) includes the random generation of their place of origin and ancestry. This may result in a number of unusual ancestries. If you do not want to play the randomly generated ancestry you have the option to select from the common ancestry in Eberron: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-elf (Aiuvarin), Halfling, Half-orc (Dromaar), Human, or Warforged.
In PF2e each ancestry also has a heritage, so if you decide on playing a common ancestry you will also need to select a heritage for your character. Note that in PF2e "half-elves" have the Human ancestry with the Aiuvarin heritage, and "half-orcs" have the Human ancestry with the Dromaar heritage.
For flavour the character vital statistics of height and weight will be generated randomly, along with the character birth date on the Calendar of Galifar.
All of the ancestries listed below, with the exception of Warforged, are uncommon or rare and may only be played if they are generated randomly.
The Warforged ancestry is common, and this campaign uses the Automation ancestry rules from the Guns and Gears Remaster source book for them
Eberron Changelings are created using the Changeling heritage with the added ability to shift their shape to take on the appearance of someone else.
Eberron Shifters trace their ancestry to werecreatures and retain some native shifting abilities.
Those of Kalashtar ancestry are humanoids with the Nephelim heritage with the added psionic ability to link minds.
The goblinoid races of Bugbear, Goblin, and Hobgoblins are also possible. In Eberron, goblins dwell in most of the major cities of the Five Nations. The Ghaal'dar (Hobgoblins) often serve as mercenaries and are seen infrequently in the Five Nations. The Marguul (Bugbears) are considered savages and the rarest goblinoids found in the Five Nations.
Other races like Orc, Gnoll, Kobold, or Lizardfolk are possible if generated randomly. Orcs, Gnolls and Lizardfolk are seen as savage brutes and ravaging barbarians, but may be tolerated in the Five Nations - though playing one may be difficult in urban settings. Kobolds are seen as pests.
Backgrounds
Each character background will be generated using the optional Deep Background rules outlined in the 2E Gamemastery Guide. This will require making some choices for the PC that add lore and skill feat options.
Classes
You may play any class listed in the Pathfinder Player Core and Player Core 2 Remaster source books.
Additionally, the Inventor class from the Guns and Gears Remaster source book is available as a player character.
When the Eberron setting was first published in 2002 under the 3rd edition rules, it included two classes distinct to the world: Artificer and Wandslinger. The PF2e Inventor is this campaigns replacement of the Artificer. Guns do not exist in Eberron, and there is no equivalent of the Wandslinger. However, wands in the campaign will be fairly common and any character picking up an archetype with sufficient magic training can use wands.
Languages
In Eberron there are some unique languages and many of the default Golarion languages from the core rules do not exist. All the languages have been adjusted in Foundry VTT as homebrew elements and also include the new core rule versions of the language names.
House Rules
The items below are modifications to the official game rules used in this campaign.
Class Level
Each PC joining the party will start with 0 XP at the current level of the lowest level PC in the party. Due to the nature of rewards in the game, a party facing appropriate challenges for their level will result in all members converging to the same level over time.
Critical Damage Rule
In this campaign when doubling damage from a critical hit you roll the dice twice and double the modifiers, bonuses, and penalties instead of doubling the entire result. Benefits you gain specifically from a critical hit, like the extra damage die from the fatal weapon trait, aren't doubled.
Critical Hit & Fumbles
This campaign will use the critical hit and fumble cards. This applies to all monsters, including critical hits even if the creature or hazard's level is less than the target's level. Note that Foundry VTT handles the card-draw automatically but only reveals it to the GM.
This is a summary of the critical success or failure results for combat:
- Natural 20: Improves success by 1 step. If this is already a critical hit that player draws one card from the critical hit deck, and applies the result. There are special rules for using the cards - see below.
- Critical Success: Double Damage. There are feats and weapon traits that can have additional effects.
- Success: Normal Damage.
- Failure: Nothing.
- Critical Failure: Nothing.
- Natural 1: If this is already a critical failure that player draws one card from the critical fumble deck, and applies the result.
Critical Hit Special Rules
Whenever a PC or foe scores a critical hit due to a natural 20 on the die roll, they draw a result from the critical hit card deck and the GM applies the effect appropriate to that attack's type (bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing in the case of a weapon or unarmed attack, or bomb or spell for either a bomb or spell attack roll).
The following special rules apply to critical hit card effects:
- A critical hit still deals double damage to the target unless the card's entry says it deals normal damage or triple damage, or if the entry's effect doesn't apply to the attack used.
- Any effect listed as a Crit Effect replaces your attack's critical specialization effect (Pathfinder Core Rulebook 283), if it had one. You can disregard the card effect and use your attack's existing critical specialization effect if you prefer.
- Any card effect using a critical specialization effect follows the rules for that effect unless stated otherwise.
- Effects that scale by level use the attacker's level. The save DC for an effect inflicted by a PC is their class DC. For other creatures and hazards, use a hard DC for the creature or hazard's level.
- An effect that lasts until healed ends once the target has Hit Points restored with Treat Wounds or is restored to full Hit Points and rests for 10 minutes.
Critical Fumble Special Rules
Whenever a PC or foe gets a critical failure on an attack roll due to a natural 1 on the die roll, they draw a result from the critical failure deck and the GM applies the effect appropriate to the attack's type (melee weapon, ranged attack, unarmed attack, or spell).
The following special rules apply to critical failure card effects:
- Effects that scale based on level use the attacker's level.
- The save DC for an effect applied to a PC is a hard DC for the target creature or hazard's level. Effects applied to a foe use the PC's class DC.
- An effect that lasts until healed ends one the recipient regains Hit Points from Treat Wounds, or is restored to full Hit Points and rests for 10 minutes.
- If the PC, NPC, or other creature has a master proficiency rank in the attack that they fumbled, they can draw two fumble cards and apply one of the two listed effects.
- If the PC, NPC, or other creature is legendary with the attack, they can draw three fumble cards and choose one effect to apply from the three listed effects.
Minimum Damage
This rule allows for the possibility of doing a single point of damage when minimum damage is rolled instead of the damage being guaranteed to be a large number with positive modifiers.
Whenever minimum damage is rolled for damage another die is rolled from 1 to that amount and that becomes the final result for damage. For example, if an attack does 1d8+6 damage and the player rolls a 1 for damage, instead of doing 7 hit point damage they roll a d7 and whatever that result is will be the damage dealt.
Recovering Spent Ammunition
Under the default rules, all items with the ammunition trait are automatically considered destroyed when used.
In this campaign it may be possible to recover some spent ammunition. As a general rule, after combat there is a 50/50 chance any spent ammunition will be recoverable. This is situationally dependent as ruled by the GM - i.e., if you are shooting in a room with stone walls, most misses will almost certainly be spent but items that hit soft targets may be recoverable.
Hero Points
Each PC gets 1 Hero Point at the start of each session, but only if the player is present.
Hero points are only awarded during a game session when a character has a particularly heroic moment, at the GMs discretion.
Non-Player Characters (NPCs) never get hero points.
You can spend your Hero Points in one of two ways. Neither of these is an action, and you can spend Hero Points even if you aren't able to act. You can spend a Hero Point on behalf of your familiar or animal companion.
- Spend 1 Hero Point to reroll a check. You must use the second result. This is a fortune effect (which means you can't use more than 1 Hero Point on a check).
- Spend all your Hero Points (minimum 1) to avoid death. You can do this when your Dying condition would increase. You lose the dying condition entirely and stabilize with 0 Hit Points. You don't gain the Wounded condition or increase its value from losing the dying condition in this way, but if you already had that condition, you don't lose it or decrease its value.
Low Magic
In Eberron magic is wide, not high. In other words, low-level magic is common, with many devices being powered by it. High-level magic is quite rare.
Spells up to 3rd rank have the standard rarity. The rarity of 4th-5th rank spells increases by one step (i.e. common spells become uncommon, uncommon spells become rare, and rare spells remain rare). The rarity of all common and uncommon spells of 6th rank and higher are rare. This is a general rule-of-thumb and could be modified by the GM.
Uncommon Spells
The Game Master (GM) controls the availability of uncommon spells. Player Characters (PCs) typically will not have any uncommon spells at the start of their career or granted to them when advancing a level. They will need to learn/acquire them during play.
Rare Spells
The GM controls the availability of rare spells. PCs will not have any rare spells at the start of their career and will have to acquire them during play.
Slow Advancement
This campaign will use slow advancement where a character levels up after gaining 1,200 experience points (XP) instead of the default 1,000. This will reflect a grittier world focused on lower-level beings.
Awarding Experience Points
In this campaign the party is a team, but experience points (XP) are only awarded to those who participate in the activity generating the reward. If a character does not participate but is a passive observer they may be awarded partial XP at the discretion of the GM.
To use an example from the core rulebook, if the party wins a battle worth 100 XP but the party rogue was off stealing treasure during the battle, the rogue would not earn the 100 XP. Similarly, if the rogue earned XP during the battle by defeating traps to steal some treasure, the rest of the party would not gain those XP.
In those instances, the party level is calculated for all those who participated in the event earning the reward (see Adjusting Encounters).
Proficiency Without Level
In this campaign the rule variant known as Proficiency Without Level (PWL) is being used.
Rules on how PWL is applied in this campaign is described in a more detail here.
Buying and Selling Items
After an adventure yields a windfall, the characters might have a number of items they want to sell. Likewise, when they're flush with currency, they might want to stock up on gear. It usually takes 1 day of downtime to sell off a few goods or shop around to buy a couple items. It can take longer to sell off a large number of goods, expensive items, or items that aren't in high demand.
If they want to sell or buy items, PCs must be in a location where the markets can support that. They can usually sell a single item for half its Price, but the Price for something already plentiful on the market could drop lower, typically to 25% or 10%, or be refused entirely if there's a glut. Buying an item usually costs the full Price; buying higher-level items (or uncommon items if they're available at all) requires seeking out a special vendor or NPC and can take extra time, as detailed below:
- Non-magical equipment found in the core Remaster source books will be generally available in most settlements at the listed price, subject to availability as determined by the GM
- The total volume of items that can be bought or sold is limited by the ready cash available in a settlement
- Buying or selling magic or valuable items of 1st level or higher requires a Gather Information skill check that typically take 2 hours of downtime (1d4 hours)
- It also requires spending some money by spending coin on bribes, drinks, or gifts - the cost of which is the amount by level for Gather Information skill and the Earn Income activity
- In the case of selling items, it represents finding buyers with the financial resources to pay for the item.
- For buying items, this represents finding a seller who is willing to part with the item for a price.
- When making a check to search for items on sale, the character has a couple of decisions to make:
- Search for the sale of a random magic item up to the settlement level
- Look for a specific item up to 10% of the settlement GP limit, which will vary in difficulty to locate, as determined by the GM (this is typically at least a hard check and may be impossible depending on the level and rarity of the item)
Calendar of Galifar
The Calendar of Galifar is the primary calendar system used on the continent of Khorvaire. The calendar divides the year into 12 months, each of which contain 4 weeks and 28 days. Each month corresponds with one of Eberron's moons. Each day is 24 hours long.
The years are counted from the founding of the kingdom of Galifar by Galifar ir'Wynarn I, using the abreviation YK, which stands for "years of the kingdom".
This campaign begins over 20 years after the great war, on Sypheros 27, 1022.
Time Zones - Basic Geography
The world of Eberron is roughly 2/3rds the size of Earth with an axial tilt and rotation that experiences four seasons similar to our Earth. The Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) goes through the city of Thronehold, which lies roughly in the centre of the continent of Khorvaire.
Every 15 degrees East or West of that line marks the location of a time zone that is +/- 1 hour (positive going East and negative going West). The table below gives a rough guideline of distance between lines of longitude on Khorvaire. Most locations on the continent will lie somewhere between 15° - 50° North latitude.
If your latitude is ϕ, and you travel 1° of longitude either due West or due East, then you have traveled:
p = 40 cos(ϕ) nautical miles (nm)
The conversion is: 1 nautical mile ~ 1.15078 miles. Note: the COS formula in Excel expects radians as input. To convert to degrees multiply by PI()/180 (for example, COS(20*PI()/180).
| Latitude | nm (1°) | km (1°) | miles (1°) | miles (15°) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0° | 40.0 | 74.1 | 46.0 | 690.5 |
| 5° | 39.8 | 73.8 | 45.9 | 687.8 |
| 10° | 39.4 | 73.0 | 45.3 | 680.0 |
| 15° | 38.6 | 71.6 | 44.5 | 666.9 |
| 20° | 37.6 | 69.6 | 43.3 | 648.8 |
| 25° | 36.3 | 67.1 | 41.7 | 625.8 |
| 30° | 34.6 | 64.2 | 39.9 | 598.0 |
| 35° | 32.8 | 60.7 | 37.7 | 565.6 |
| 40° | 30.6 | 56.7 | 35.3 | 528.9 |
| 45° | 28.3 | 52.4 | 32.5 | 488.2 |
| 50° | 25.7 | 47.6 | 29.6 | 443.8 |
| 55° | 22.9 | 42.5 | 26.4 | 396.0 |
| 60° | 20.0 | 37.0 | 23.0 | 345.2 |
| 65° | 16.9 | 19.5 | 19.2 | 291.8 |
Settlements
In the Pathfinder RPG, a settlement's level is used primarily to determine potential jobs on offer for the Earn Income activity, and to determine what level of items are commonly available for sale in that community.
The level of a settlement is also used to determine what items the party might be able to find when looking for magic items available to purchase. This campaign uses the general guidelines from the Kingmaker system. I am expanding slightly on those rules by borrowing some details from the Dungeons & Dragons version 3.5 rules for settlements - notably the rules on gold piece (GP) limit and ready cash.
GP Limit: The gold piece limit is an indicator of the price of the most expensive item available in that community. Nothing that costs more than this limit will be available for purchase in that community. Exceptions may exist with randomly generated items.
| Settlement | Population | Level | GP Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thorp | 20-80 | 1 | 4 gp |
| Hamlet | 81-400 | 1 | 10 gp |
| Village | 401-900 | 2 | 20 gp |
| Small Town | 901-2,000 | 3 | 80 gp |
| Large Town | 2,001-5,000 | 4-5 | 300 gp |
| Small City | 5,001-12,000 | 6-7 | 1,500 gp |
| Large City | 12,001-25,000 | 8-9 | 4,000 gp |
| Metropolis | 25,001+ | 10+ | 10,000 gp |
Ready Cash
Ready Cash represents the amount of money available for immediate use within a settlement. The formula to calculate ready cash is:
Ready Cash = (Population x GP Limit) / 20.
For example, if a settlement has a population of 10,000 and a GP Limit of 1,500 gp the ready cash would be calculated as: Ready Cash = (10,000 x 1,500) / 20 = 750,000 gp.
The ready cash reserves in a settlement will be replenished by 20% every week.