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Twin Crowns, Age of Exploration Fantasy
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<blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 2009389" data-attributes="member: 2209"><p>The Twin Crowns Campaign Setting is a $24.95 304 page softcover book. It sets out the world of Ptalmanar and a host of material for almost every aspect of the d20 system from new feats and spells to new rules for ship travel and combat, and a system of high powered ritual magic. The book contains black and white art which is plentiful and topical but suffers from heavy scanning pixilation.</p><p></p><p>Ptalmanar is a world of high magic with an emphasis on naval power and divine interactions.</p><p></p><p>The ritual system works off of skill rolls for a pair of new ritual skills (arcane and divine) with set DCs for succeeding at the rituals. There are possibilities for critical successes and critical failures, and if the DC is only passed by a marginal amount the ritual succeeds but has a flaw in its effect. Rituals require no expenditure of xp or gold, but they do require a new type of item, a ritual scroll, a magical alchemical substance known as korba (somewhat similar to spice from the Dune books) and generally a long casting time. There are 84 rituals presented in the book divided into arcane, clerical, deity specific, and druidic. DCs run from 16 to 50. While I do not really care for the ritual scroll requirement which seems like a spell book all over again, I really like the epic feel of many of the rituals such as creating a permanent fortress or wizard's tower in a single day. Among the divine rituals there is an initiation one which can make any character a god's champion giving him a bonus feat and access to a list of significantly powerful divine feats. All clerics and paladins in the game start off automatically initiated to their god but any character can have the ritual performed upon them. There are 96 divine feats presented in the book, many with no save abilities, or ones that offer complete immunity to an attack form. These are more powerful than standard feats in general and show that gods in this setting give tangible power to their champions. This divine favor is not balanced against non-champions but against other champions of the same level of initiation and character level.</p><p></p><p>There is a set pantheon of 12 gods for the entire world. Each has a position around a divine wheel and is opposed by a balancing god. Many have dual aspects and paths for their followers, such as the war goddess having a chaotic path for individual warriors and a lawful path for commanders. There have been changes in the pantheon, such as the development of the gods' different paths, a deicide, two nature gods merging into one portfolio, and the ascension of two mortals to deity status. Each god has their own named domain and those with paths often have different domains for the different paths.</p><p></p><p>Some of the gods have surprising aspects to their faiths or church histories. The peace god, for instance, is known for granting his clerics death spells for use after peaceful negotiations have broken down, and the church of the paladin god of justice is responsible for miserable work prisons in one of the countries to handle the lower class. I found the evil deceiver god to be the most interesting gods, his initiates can gain access to divine feats that allow them to mimic another faith’s feats or domains so they can impersonate good priests and cause all sorts of havoc.</p><p></p><p>Druids are actually a recent phenomena in the world as many followers of the nature gods who were originally antithetical to each other did not accept the merging and developed a magical tradition to tap the residual natural power left over from the change. </p><p></p><p>Death is handled a little differently from most campaigns. Each sentient creature gets five "gifts." When they die, they generally lose one gift and their bodies fade leaving their equipment. The spirit then travels to the nearest consecrated area. A priest can cast a ritual at these areas and bring back every spirit gathered there. Losing a gift is considered to wipe away all past sins and all secular past crimes. Spells like raise dead bring a character back without losing a gift, but they do not work on a character that loses its fifth gift. There are also new magic spells, feats and a domain for dealing with spirits and gifts.</p><p></p><p>Another magical setting quirk is recharge. Spellcasters must go to either an arcane nexus or a divine shrine to gain recharge for a few days to be able to prepare spells. This makes spellcasters more place dependent for their powers and adds an extra level of complexity for accessing spell powers, which I do not really like, but which is easy to add or take out of a campaign setting as desired.</p><p></p><p>There are 82 new spells including such additions as a range of spell deflections and reflections and a set of clerical blessings that grant temporary hit points.</p><p></p><p>There are five new prestige classes. There are the five level divine and arcane ritualists who only gain two levels of spell advancement but gain major bonuses and advancements in casting rituals, and a 10 level bounty hunter, privateer (which I did not like their powers and empty levels) and diplomat with a select bard-like spell list and casting ability (which I think complements the bard niche well) </p><p></p><p>Naval power is a big concern of the world. Most cities are based on major rivers or coastal ports, and there are colonies across a 3,000 mile ocean that send vast riches back to the two main empires of the world. One nice way the setting supports the naval emphasis is that there are constant epidemics of a major horse disease so overland travel and trade is not as easy as on most worlds.</p><p></p><p>The world’s two empires have developed gunpowder, but it is expensive and unstable, so it is mostly reserved for a wealthy captain or general's pistols, and cannons for war ships. If gunpowder is going to be thrown into a standard medieval to renaissance technology level D&D game, this is the level that appeals to me the most. Cannons seem right for heroic ship battles similar to the Hornblower series of books, but prevalent personal guns among an army really change the emphasis away from swords and magic.</p><p></p><p>The naval rules really impressed me. They use profession sailor, pilot and navigator skills as the basis for running ships and the numbers have meaning. The rules incorporate weather, sail type, speed of the ships, wind direction, etc. They model ship sailing very well in a manner that is useable in game. They have ship stats for ten separate realistic ships and a hex combat system for ship chasing and tactical ship combat and finally for boarding actions. There are different types of cannon shot from standard to heated to sail cutting chain to antipersonnel grapeshot. There is information on getting lost, sailing coasts versus open ocean, and how much food is necessary to keep the crew going and how much cargo space that food will take up. The only thing not covered seemed to be press ganging actions. The system seemed to break down a little for smaller craft such as canoes and it has a weakness in making viking fighters and barbarians the worst sailors of any class due to the cross-class profession skill availability, but overall it is quite a good system. If you want to run a ship based campaign, this is an excellent system to use.</p><p></p><p>Note that cannons and ballista/catapults use profession artillerist and siege engineer instead of a weapon proficiency, so again fighters lose out on all ship combat except boarding actions. Also there is a new skill called sea legs which handles shipboard balance and avoiding getting seasick. These situations could probably be handled better by use of the balance skill and con checks or profession sailor checks modified by con, but those are easily modified by a DM.</p><p></p><p>The setting has one historical empire that absorbed almost every culture it came into contact with and then split into two empires due to a civil war. The empires now have trans-oceanic colonies which send over vast wealth to support the old empires. Many of the world’s countries are historical earth culture analogues (Renaissance European, Eqyptian, Japanese, Viking, Arabic, etc.) I feel these allow quick roleplaying and knowledge hooks for portraying them, and it allows the use of outside material to add to the setting. The new world is interesting because besides the two empire colonies there is also an empire of militaristic elves opposed to the humans and an orc federation that is allied to the humans. Much of the world is an unmapped unknown which is almost begging to be explored deliberately or as ships are blown off course going to the colonies.</p><p></p><p>The world is predominantly human but there are most of the standard player races, only Gnomes and Halflings have been conflated into the fat, prankish, thieving, hairy footed Khestra. There are also two new subraces of elves, a cat-man race, and a hermaphroditic merman race that can go in or out of the water without problems. There are eight new monsters introduced and brief information about the world’s drow and dragons (standard and unstatted epic evil ones).</p><p></p><p>The writing of the world sections is one area I wish had been more to my taste. I did not like many of the myths or developed history of areas. Most of the ways that countries joined the empires or how they handled internal issues seemed irrational to me and I was hoping for better world consistency support ideas. For instance, why are nearby countries so culturally dissimilar without intervening isolating factors like mountains. Why is the southern Russian country plagued by harsh winters? If all the Egyptian rulers are descended from the creator god's avatar, how does this gibe with the revolt that lead to a change from human to cat-men dynasties? Where are the countries of Tang Su and Vairo?</p><p></p><p>Overall, there is a lot of very good material in the campaign setting. I feel the rituals and the naval rules particularly stand out, but there is a lot here for people who want to add material to their own campaigns or to try this setting of naval, imperial, and divine power.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Voadam, post: 2009389, member: 2209"] The Twin Crowns Campaign Setting is a $24.95 304 page softcover book. It sets out the world of Ptalmanar and a host of material for almost every aspect of the d20 system from new feats and spells to new rules for ship travel and combat, and a system of high powered ritual magic. The book contains black and white art which is plentiful and topical but suffers from heavy scanning pixilation. Ptalmanar is a world of high magic with an emphasis on naval power and divine interactions. The ritual system works off of skill rolls for a pair of new ritual skills (arcane and divine) with set DCs for succeeding at the rituals. There are possibilities for critical successes and critical failures, and if the DC is only passed by a marginal amount the ritual succeeds but has a flaw in its effect. Rituals require no expenditure of xp or gold, but they do require a new type of item, a ritual scroll, a magical alchemical substance known as korba (somewhat similar to spice from the Dune books) and generally a long casting time. There are 84 rituals presented in the book divided into arcane, clerical, deity specific, and druidic. DCs run from 16 to 50. While I do not really care for the ritual scroll requirement which seems like a spell book all over again, I really like the epic feel of many of the rituals such as creating a permanent fortress or wizard's tower in a single day. Among the divine rituals there is an initiation one which can make any character a god's champion giving him a bonus feat and access to a list of significantly powerful divine feats. All clerics and paladins in the game start off automatically initiated to their god but any character can have the ritual performed upon them. There are 96 divine feats presented in the book, many with no save abilities, or ones that offer complete immunity to an attack form. These are more powerful than standard feats in general and show that gods in this setting give tangible power to their champions. This divine favor is not balanced against non-champions but against other champions of the same level of initiation and character level. There is a set pantheon of 12 gods for the entire world. Each has a position around a divine wheel and is opposed by a balancing god. Many have dual aspects and paths for their followers, such as the war goddess having a chaotic path for individual warriors and a lawful path for commanders. There have been changes in the pantheon, such as the development of the gods' different paths, a deicide, two nature gods merging into one portfolio, and the ascension of two mortals to deity status. Each god has their own named domain and those with paths often have different domains for the different paths. Some of the gods have surprising aspects to their faiths or church histories. The peace god, for instance, is known for granting his clerics death spells for use after peaceful negotiations have broken down, and the church of the paladin god of justice is responsible for miserable work prisons in one of the countries to handle the lower class. I found the evil deceiver god to be the most interesting gods, his initiates can gain access to divine feats that allow them to mimic another faith’s feats or domains so they can impersonate good priests and cause all sorts of havoc. Druids are actually a recent phenomena in the world as many followers of the nature gods who were originally antithetical to each other did not accept the merging and developed a magical tradition to tap the residual natural power left over from the change. Death is handled a little differently from most campaigns. Each sentient creature gets five "gifts." When they die, they generally lose one gift and their bodies fade leaving their equipment. The spirit then travels to the nearest consecrated area. A priest can cast a ritual at these areas and bring back every spirit gathered there. Losing a gift is considered to wipe away all past sins and all secular past crimes. Spells like raise dead bring a character back without losing a gift, but they do not work on a character that loses its fifth gift. There are also new magic spells, feats and a domain for dealing with spirits and gifts. Another magical setting quirk is recharge. Spellcasters must go to either an arcane nexus or a divine shrine to gain recharge for a few days to be able to prepare spells. This makes spellcasters more place dependent for their powers and adds an extra level of complexity for accessing spell powers, which I do not really like, but which is easy to add or take out of a campaign setting as desired. There are 82 new spells including such additions as a range of spell deflections and reflections and a set of clerical blessings that grant temporary hit points. There are five new prestige classes. There are the five level divine and arcane ritualists who only gain two levels of spell advancement but gain major bonuses and advancements in casting rituals, and a 10 level bounty hunter, privateer (which I did not like their powers and empty levels) and diplomat with a select bard-like spell list and casting ability (which I think complements the bard niche well) Naval power is a big concern of the world. Most cities are based on major rivers or coastal ports, and there are colonies across a 3,000 mile ocean that send vast riches back to the two main empires of the world. One nice way the setting supports the naval emphasis is that there are constant epidemics of a major horse disease so overland travel and trade is not as easy as on most worlds. The world’s two empires have developed gunpowder, but it is expensive and unstable, so it is mostly reserved for a wealthy captain or general's pistols, and cannons for war ships. If gunpowder is going to be thrown into a standard medieval to renaissance technology level D&D game, this is the level that appeals to me the most. Cannons seem right for heroic ship battles similar to the Hornblower series of books, but prevalent personal guns among an army really change the emphasis away from swords and magic. The naval rules really impressed me. They use profession sailor, pilot and navigator skills as the basis for running ships and the numbers have meaning. The rules incorporate weather, sail type, speed of the ships, wind direction, etc. They model ship sailing very well in a manner that is useable in game. They have ship stats for ten separate realistic ships and a hex combat system for ship chasing and tactical ship combat and finally for boarding actions. There are different types of cannon shot from standard to heated to sail cutting chain to antipersonnel grapeshot. There is information on getting lost, sailing coasts versus open ocean, and how much food is necessary to keep the crew going and how much cargo space that food will take up. The only thing not covered seemed to be press ganging actions. The system seemed to break down a little for smaller craft such as canoes and it has a weakness in making viking fighters and barbarians the worst sailors of any class due to the cross-class profession skill availability, but overall it is quite a good system. If you want to run a ship based campaign, this is an excellent system to use. Note that cannons and ballista/catapults use profession artillerist and siege engineer instead of a weapon proficiency, so again fighters lose out on all ship combat except boarding actions. Also there is a new skill called sea legs which handles shipboard balance and avoiding getting seasick. These situations could probably be handled better by use of the balance skill and con checks or profession sailor checks modified by con, but those are easily modified by a DM. The setting has one historical empire that absorbed almost every culture it came into contact with and then split into two empires due to a civil war. The empires now have trans-oceanic colonies which send over vast wealth to support the old empires. Many of the world’s countries are historical earth culture analogues (Renaissance European, Eqyptian, Japanese, Viking, Arabic, etc.) I feel these allow quick roleplaying and knowledge hooks for portraying them, and it allows the use of outside material to add to the setting. The new world is interesting because besides the two empire colonies there is also an empire of militaristic elves opposed to the humans and an orc federation that is allied to the humans. Much of the world is an unmapped unknown which is almost begging to be explored deliberately or as ships are blown off course going to the colonies. The world is predominantly human but there are most of the standard player races, only Gnomes and Halflings have been conflated into the fat, prankish, thieving, hairy footed Khestra. There are also two new subraces of elves, a cat-man race, and a hermaphroditic merman race that can go in or out of the water without problems. There are eight new monsters introduced and brief information about the world’s drow and dragons (standard and unstatted epic evil ones). The writing of the world sections is one area I wish had been more to my taste. I did not like many of the myths or developed history of areas. Most of the ways that countries joined the empires or how they handled internal issues seemed irrational to me and I was hoping for better world consistency support ideas. For instance, why are nearby countries so culturally dissimilar without intervening isolating factors like mountains. Why is the southern Russian country plagued by harsh winters? If all the Egyptian rulers are descended from the creator god's avatar, how does this gibe with the revolt that lead to a change from human to cat-men dynasties? Where are the countries of Tang Su and Vairo? Overall, there is a lot of very good material in the campaign setting. I feel the rituals and the naval rules particularly stand out, but there is a lot here for people who want to add material to their own campaigns or to try this setting of naval, imperial, and divine power. [/QUOTE]
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