4e Swashbuckling campaigns?

Afrodyte

Explorer
Right now I'm in a mood for some romantic swashbuckling adventure, but I still want to use the 4e system.

Does anyone have some suggestions about how to adapt the system to facilitate this? GMing tips for pulling this off? Player hints for making it work?

Or better yet: Is anybody running a game like this right now in the New York area?

Psssst . . .
I know about Blue Rose. But I prefer the system for 4e.
 

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Restrict your players to human race only, and martial classes only, with arcane and divine classes available only via multi-classing.

Give PCs a +2 unarmored AC bonus to compensate for a less armor-intensive setting.

Tool your game to be focused more around Quest and Story xp awards than around combat xp.

Watch a couple of your favorite swash-buckling movies for inspiration, and then brainstorm some cool stroylines for your campaign.

Sit down with the DMG for a couple of hours and design a wide variety of human "monsters" with an array of different powers and abilities to challenge the players.

Brainstorm a few "recurring" NPCs and villains for your campaign - NPC intereaction and RP is far more important for Swashbuckling campaigns than they are for a simple dungeon-crawl.

Hope some of that helps!
 

Swashbuckling is a lot more about gaming style than it is about gaming rules. Encourage players to improvise constantly. The DMG has some great guidelines for you to handle this. If your group is constantly spamming powers without improvising, put arbitrary restrictions on them for the first few battles, like they can only use an At-Will power every other round. They'll catch on soon enough!

The most important thing is making sure your players are on board. If they want to do swashbuckling adventures, you shouldn't need to tweak anything; they'll gravitate towards the 'right' choices. If someone picks a heavily-armored dwarf fighter, they'll eventually pay their own consequences when they get knocked into the ocean. :)

-O
 

Not sure what you are looking for here. The 4e system is already pretty good at that sort of thing. Both the Ranger and Rogue can be pretty swashbuckly in play.

Do you want a more involved social resolution system? If so I would come up with a system you like (I'd suggest either a merit/flaw system or a set of social skills like sedution and poetry) and tack it on over the top of the existing system. So frex if you have a social skill system do not integrate it with the existing set of skill picks but have a seperate pool to draw from.

Do you want more swashbuckly action? Design your spaces with lots of tables to jump up on and chairs to throw and (of course) chandeliers to swing on. Award action points for dramatic action and creativity.

Do you want you players to get into it properly? Host an Errol Flynn movie party before charater creation. ;)
 

Stick to the proper weapons for your idea of a swashbuckler?

Maybe use those flying ships in Adventure Vault?

Have a planet of lava that you cannot set foot on to make travel require those air ships and the cities are on mountain peaks?
 

Give all important NPC's the "Cowardice" power.

When they get blooded, they shift twice their speed towards the nearest exit, cackling manically about how "this isn't over yet" and "I'll get you next time" and so on.

Recurring villains are a must - but they won't recur unless they get away the first time!

Although, should the PC's ever kill one of these recurring villains - have them come back as an undead...
 

Right now I'm in a mood for some romantic swashbuckling adventure, but I still want to use the 4e system.

Does anyone have some suggestions about how to adapt the system to facilitate this? GMing tips for pulling this off? Player hints for making it work?

I would do the following things:

Martial characters only, although multiclassing into arcane or divine classes should still work.

Limit armors, while compensating fighters (and perhaps warlords) for it. If you limit it to leather and hide, I would suggest at least +2 or +3 for those who can wear heavy armor.

That's it for changes I can think off of the top of my head, but the single most important thing to remember would be this:

The fluff of powers means nothing, and can (and should, especially in a swachbuckling campaign) be changed as you want. Brutal Strike is so boring when it is always a huge hit to the head. Make it a kick in the groin instead. Tide of Iron might as well be that you trip the guy and he knocks his head into the wall, or whatever is handy. Lots of possibilities if you forget what's already written.
 

A few ideas come to mind:

Martial classes only, plus swordmage and paladin available via multiclass. Be stingy on the items with significant special effects, but generous with basic +n magic items, and things like flensing weapons or veteran's armor.

Light armor and small shields only, but change how the proficiencies work: instead of cloth/leather/hide/chain/scale/plate, use cloth/leather/hide/githweave/drowmesh/earthhide (the latter three from the Adventurer's Vault. This would mean that ACs would be a little lower, but there would be very few check penalties and no speed penalties for any armor. To compensate for the lower ACs, every military and superior melee weapon has the Defensive property, giving +1 to AC. If it already has the Defensive property RAW, then up the bonus it has to +2 AC. Allow rangers to wield two rapiers, as if they were versatile weapons.

Skill checks during combat never require a move action or a standard action, only a minor, free, or no action. Any skill check that would normally require a standard or move action becomes a minor action instead. This means that, yes, you can move your full movement, then make an Acrobatics or Athletics check to slide down a banister or leap onto a chandelier to get the drop on the enemy. In fact, allow any particularly clever use of a skill check in combat to add +2 to the player's attack roll for that turn. This goes for the obvious (Acrobatics, Athletics, Bluff), and the less obvious (Stealth to slip behind the tapestry when no one's watching, only to leap out and run one of the count's henchman through with your blade; History to recall that keeps from this era were notorious for their terribly-made floors, making it possible to stomp one end of the floorboard to send the other end up, unbalancing the guy on the other end).

Use an awful lot of minions, and a whole hell of a lot of skill challenges. Until the final momentous duel you have planned with an major enemy, the players should not be able to kill him/her. Depleting the foe's HP should, until the final confrontation, result in the enemy cursing the heroes' names, lineages, and meddling nature, all while beating a hasty retreat (that the PCs cannot fully stop, only complicate). I can't decide if critical hits or depletion of HP to zero should result in a major foe acquiring a scar/lasting injury from the attack, but there really must be some way to allow for that.

And here's an idea off the top of my head, that would obviously need some refinement: Divide the value in GP of all treasure parcels by 100, rounded as in math class instead of the "always round down" in the RAW. Instead of treasure, each party member gains that many "Romance Points" at the appropriate time in the adventure. Now, look at the values listed for each item in the RAW, and divide them by 100, and round them the same way--a level one item has a "cost" of four romance points, a level two item has five, etc. By investing a number of Romance Points in an NPC, the PCs can thus charm that NPC into falling in love with them, and giving them an item of cost corresponding to the number of Romance Points invested. "Oh, you dashing rake...! I could never allow my husband, the Duke, to have you killed! Here, let me unlock those chains--now, take this sword, and make your escape!"

The obvious question is "Why divide everything by 100? Why not just keep the costs as they are?", and the answer is that swashbucklers have no time to deal with three-digit numbers! There's adventure afoot, and villainy to thwart!
 

Thanks for the tips, guys! Keep 'em coming!

I really enjoy character-driven campaigns. I want PCs and NPCs driven by strong passions and a heightened sense of style. Now that I think about it, what I have in mind is sort of like Steven Brust's Jhereg series with a touch (OK, a huge wallop) of shoujo ai (at least for some NPCs). Hm. Maybe I should just start with that?
 

Thanks for the tips, guys! Keep 'em coming!

I really enjoy character-driven campaigns. I want PCs and NPCs driven by strong passions and a heightened sense of style. Now that I think about it, what I have in mind is sort of like Steven Brust's Jhereg series with a touch (OK, a huge wallop) of shoujo ai (at least for some NPCs). Hm. Maybe I should just start with that?

*snort* "That guy must be a total bad-ass!" 'Really? What makes you think so?' "He's so pretty?" 'Oh, him? That's a guy?'

Of course the trouble with that set-up is it doesn't allow Cyrano deBergerac to be a bad-ass. Any setup that disallows Cyrano deBergerac can not be considered a true swashbuckling system. :lol:
 

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