ZEITGEIST Adventures in ZEITGEIST: Preview Thread

[RangerWickett]

As for contents, there's:

• About 60,000 words of player-oriented character information like heritages and cultures tied to the setting's nations, new background and class options, new equipment, and character themes (including feats and prestige classes) that give PCs a connection to the major trends of the world.
• About 80,000 words of setting gazetteer focused on the six great nations, key cities, history, looming conflicts, and adventure hooks. (This part I tried really hard to present in phases, so you can get the basic gist of the setting in one page, and then when you're ready you can get the general overview of each nation with two pages each, and then if you're looking to dig in each nation gets a few pages of history, a few pages explaining the current day, and then a few pages each for three cities per country.
• A 10,000-word overview of the planes and planets.
• About 16,000 words of magic items and rewards PCs can acquire. About a third of these were previously included in the Gears of Revolution adventure path, but the majority are new.
• About 20,000 words on monsters, foes, and guidance to include them in your campaigns.
• And finally, 20,000 words on advice for Narrators on how to plan and run adventures in the setting, with a focus on solving mysteries as constables, performing secret missions as conspirators, or influencing factions as revolutionaries.

 

[MegaloRob]

Lizard folk are my favorite! I am so happy to see them presented as something other then mindless savages! Thank you.

 

[Morrus]

 

[Anselm]

View attachment 147131

Oh I am just so happy...

 

[Anselm]

That feat is really solid as a recreation of the crossbow expert while also feeling very thematically distinct. Kudos to whomever did the design work on it.

 

[Anvel_Tianhold]

They're mostly unchanged from that version, though I implemented some balance and playability recommendations from my collaborators on the setting book.

One more question if you don't mind a bit offtopic. Last saturday we played with updated classes and keeping the old prestige classes on top, which they got recently. For the polyhistor we made all the feats that provide maneuvers available, as most of those feats in 5E are the ones that fill the requirements for the polyhistor. We noticed something with the way the polyhistor focus points work (emphasis mine):

You gain a number of focus points equal to your polyhistor class level. This is your focus point reserve. In addition, at the end of any turn in
which you take hostile action against a foe, a foe takes hostile action against you, or you witness a foe taking or being targeted by a hostile action, you add 1 focus point to your reserve, to a maximum of 10 focus points. (For the purposes of this ability, a hostile action is defined as a natural, spell, or weapon attack against another creature, or the casting of a spell that deals damage or exerts control over a target.)
Whenever 5 minutes pass without your having gained any focus points, your focus point reserve resets to a number equal to your polyhistor class level (1, 2, or 3).

With 5 players and 3 enemies, most of which take hostile actions on their turn,he was starting every single one of his turns with ~7 focus points. Even if he used 2 of them on feats, he'd get one back just for taking hostile actions and never run out of focus points. If he had level 2, he could have used Perfect Aim in every, single, one of his attacks. Are we missreading something? Did we play it right? Everybody agreed pretty much all his turns overshadowed the rest. Has this changed on the new version? I checked the old Pathfinder version and you got 3 points/encounter, having to use your turn on Total Defense to get 2 back, which seems way more restrictive.

 

[Faolyn]

Bit confused about the lizardfolk torpor. Does this mean you're stable at 0 hp, unless you take additional damage?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Bit confused about the lizardfolk torpor. Does this mean you're stable at 0 hp, unless you take additional damage?

I read it as you dont have to make saves as long as you're in torpor, but technically you're not stable, since once you stop you start making saves again. In practice, you would sit until you can get help, so it would be the same as already being stable.

 

[Faolyn]

I read it as you dont have to make saves as long as you're in torpor, but technically you're not stable, since once you stop you start making saves again. In practice, you would sit until you can get help, so it would be the same as already being stable.

Sounds good to me.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

I just discovered this thread and I’m so happy