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[Let's Read] The Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea: Dungeons & Dragons, Prehistoric Style
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9250882" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/nzAjH3o.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/427037/Planegea-5E-Standard-Edition-The-StarShamans-Song-of-Planegea-Planegea" target="_blank">Drive-Thru RPG Link</a></p><p></p><p>Although most strongly associated with the feel of medieval times, Dungeons & Dragons is no stranger to settings going for far older or newer eras. From Pharaonic Egypt to Victorian Steampunk, official and third party settings alike created worlds of magic and monsters across time and space, trading in knights for gladiators or crossbows for muskets as befit the intended setting. But there is one particular era that rarely gets any significant play: the Stone Age.</p><p></p><p>Planegea is the brainchild of David Somerville, <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/introducing-planegea-a-stone-age-setting-for-5e.876729/" target="_blank">beginning as an idea pitched on the RPGnet forums</a> but eventually got picked up by Atlas Games who saw promise in turning it into a proper published setting. Inspired by media such as the movie 10,000 BC and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, Somerville aimed for a prehistoric sword and sorcery feel set during the mythical past of your Generic DnD setting. The planes of existence aren’t fully formed, the gods are local spirits holding sway over surrounding environments and haven’t fully ascended/descended to otherworldly realms, and common fantasy tropes are reimagined. A rural feudal settlement may become a stone-punk village of tent-platforms built on the backs of titanic beasts, a wizard’s tower may instead be a cavernous sanctum home to cave paintings brimming with arcane power, while dungeons can include pits housing Lovecraftian aberrations or thick forests home to an apex predator.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/2Jjz6aA.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><strong>Chapter 1: Welcome to Planegea</strong></p><p></p><p>Apologies for the larger-than-usual images, Imgur kept giving “we don’t support that file type” error when using a compressed version even though it was PNG.</p><p></p><p>The first chapter, <strong>Welcome to Planegea,</strong> goes over the major points separating the setting from others on the market. It begins with the idea of the world being new and unexplored, with few things set in stone. The common fantasy races still bear the influences of their mythical creation such as dwarves bearing obvious marks of having been fashioned from stone, or mighty wyrms who gave the dragonborn their race’s name still being recent ancestors. As the Multiverse is still a singular contiguous entity, a traveler can physically journey from the world’s heart of Blood Mountain and its moon-birthing volcanic eruptions to the distant Sea of Stars encompassing the lands. Most civilizations are hunter-gatherer, with the majority of humanoid races settled in the relative center of the Great Valley. Each clan has a central fire that is kept burning throughout the day and night, serving as a social gathering spot, a place of light and warmth in the darkest of nights and the center for magical ceremonies.</p><p></p><p>Another common fixture of the setting is that the gods of the world aren’t omnipotent beings in remote extra-dimensional realms. Gods instead are spirits just coming to understand their powers and the world in which they hold sway, being closer to animist entities of the land tied to physical locations. Gods are bound to sacred spaces known as hallows where they can enact wondrous powers, but as they cannot depart such places on their own they must rely on mortals to influence their agendas in the wider world. Through mortals, gods can command their followers to seize more territory, destroy sacred sites of rival gods, and even devour the essence of other gods and take over their hallows.</p><p></p><p>Finally, there’s a concept known as the Black Taboos, certain forbidden technologies and concepts. Enforced by supernatural entities known as the Hounds of the Blind Heaven, those souls inventive and brave enough to rouse their ire have been met with calamitous misfortune that is most often certain death. The Black Taboos include a prohibition on the written word beyond the most rudimentary patterns, no numbers over nine (numbers beyond this value are referred to as “many”), and fiat currency and wheels with axles are banned. Planegea’s inhabitants are capable of mentally conceiving ways to understand these technologies and concepts, but most deliberately avoid their study or production to avoid the Hounds. Basically it’s only when an individual acts on this knowledge to produce or spread it do they invite disaster. The Hounds are more or less an unknown force whose specifics are determined by the DM, but they do appear to be intelligent and make their judgments based on keeping society in a sort of primitive status quo.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/xi3qJWs.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><strong>Chapter 2: Clanfires & Wilderness</strong></p><p></p><p>The next seven chapters are player-friendly. The first one of these takes a bottom-up viewpoint on the setting from the perspective of the “common people.” That is, the humanoid civilizations to which the PCs belong. The chapter starts out with covering the three primary themes of Planegea:</p><p></p><p><strong>Kinetic Action,</strong> where combat should be over-the-top and take place in volatile locations where the environment can be a threat to avoid or be exploited to waylay one’s foes. Adventurers leaping across the backs of a herd of stampeding mammoths, outmaneuvering arctic predators on a river of cracking ice floes, and wild winds whipping through forests and pushing over trees are hallmarks of this theme.</p><p></p><p><strong>Primordial Horror,</strong> where the unknown lands hold creatures that have yet to be named or seen by mortals, where humanoids are but one of many beings in a vast world and far from being the top of the food chain. Even in familiar lands, strange sounds at night outside the tent flap can signal a creeping threat, and most people live in a world where the surrounding lands are a great unknown.</p><p></p><p><strong>Mystic Awe,</strong> which focuses on the positive side of living in a new world that has yet to take its final form. It is a world where the legends bards sing of are going to come about by heroes of the present, where common fantasy tropes taken for granted are made new again.</p><p></p><p>Speaking of old tropes being made new, this chapter notes that a lot of common fixtures in a Medieval Fantasy world need to be rethought in a Prehistoric Fantasy realm. We get a table of sample comparisons: for example, spell scrolls become enchanted talismans, gold and coins are replaced by salt and trade goods, the comfy inn and tavern becomes a village’s clanfire or shaded pool, and knowledge found in books are instead preserved in paintings and song.</p><p></p><p>The bulk of this chapter covers daily living in hunter-gatherer clans. With most being nomadic, they travel around the land to forage for food and find safe places to sleep at night. Most personal goods are crafted from what can be found in the wild, with a creative variety of combinations. For example, the leathery wings of a beast can be fashioned into a pouch, and blades and other weapons with sharp implements can come from reworked bone, scales, and teeth taken from the carcasses of dead animals. Clans often seek the protection of gods and their hallows, using shamans as interlocutors for negotiation. The central gathering spot housing the clanfire is known as a camp, and tends to be an arrangement of huts, tents, or other shelters that can be quickly dismantled when it’s time to get on the move. Some areas have more permanent dwellings, particularly dwarven stone buildings, which are left during seasonal migration and returned to later.</p><p></p><p>While just about everyone knows a thing or two when it comes to outdoorsmanship and acquiring food sources, there are roles with specialized labor: children are responsible for gathering clanfire fuel, cleaning up areas of detritus, and helping out adults and looking after younger children. Hunters are tasked with stalking and overcoming animals, and typically conserve their energy until scouts who report the location of prey back to the rest of the hunters. A gatherers’ eyes for detail scan areas for plants and other bounties of nature, as well as going along predetermined routes to check on traps and fishing nets. Shamans (reflavored clerics) often meditate for much of the day and make use of their spells as befits the situation, but often have nonmagical duties such as resolving disputes or meeting the local god in their hallow.</p><p></p><p>Crafters are the best when it comes to fashioning the bounties of nature into various tools, and tend to remain at camp the most as other people bring them things. Most clans have various leadership positions: this can take the form of a chieftain who calls all the shots but can also be a council of elders, and the other occupations have senior members with years of experience who pass on their knowledge to others and are looked up to for guidance. And of course the various character classes reflect specialized training for certain tasks. There’s a diversity of variation in how clans govern themselves and assign labor, and these details are meant to be guidelines rather than a universal rule. Explanations are also given for various cultural details, such as holidays taking the form of festivals based on important events, or that shamans name newborn babies rather than parents due to the belief that names carry magical power and thus shamans are best suited for this role.</p><p></p><p>Planegea gives several fantastical spins on the hunter-gatherer concept. For example, magical portals connected to realms of dreams and nightmares can let someone rapidly cross great distances. The more reliable portals are a favored means for migration, as clans who would otherwise be trapped in a realm of heavy winter can use such portals to arrive in warmer climates. Portals typically work only under dream-based logic, such as being open only to those under certain emotional states or being passed through only when a traveler least expects it. Additionally, a concept known as Clan Magic exists where people gather around the clanfire and are led by a shaman in a ritual ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, the clan either gains a number of bonus spell slots to spend depending on the level of the shaman or strata (power) of a god. Alternatively, the ceremony can enchant a weapon whose enhancement bonus is also dependent on the shaman/god’s level of power. Only one such weapon can exist for an individual clan at a time.</p><p></p><p>The rest of the chapter focuses on the <strong>Wilderness,</strong> which is more of a series of unrelated articles. For example, much of the world of Planegea is mobile in more ways than one: trees of a forest may move of their own volition across the land, while stars are intelligent beings who move across the night sky and form into constellations based on the stories they wish to tell. The landscape at large is more or less fixed, but alterations both mundane and supernatural can occur at the smaller scale. People often use magic to direct their course but various skill checks and saving throws are listed for means of finding one’s way, such as History to recognize altered landscapes. Becoming lost isn’t necessarily a penalty as the book suggests that it can be used for plot devices: for example, some gods and dream-portals only appear to the lost, so it’s a custom among certain clans for individuals to intentionally wander off into unfamiliar territory.</p><p></p><p>Day-to-day survival is of increased importance than in other campaigns, and further detail is given on rules for Travel, Gathering, and Hunting, usually taking the form of skill checks and skill challenges with stakes. These are more guidelines than explicit rules, but there are certain inedible foods that discourage eating just about anything you come across: the three “rules of food” are to not eat anything rotten, not eat anything that speaks to you in a language you can understand, and not to eat anything “made of many” which includes most bugs and are anything with more than 9 sets of eyes or appendages. A random table is given for those who violate such rules, such as the Poisoned condition or suffering a temporary madness effect.</p><p></p><p>Concurrently, there are suggested in-game rewards for a successful hunt. Prey animals successfully harvested and eaten can grant the effects of the Enhance Ability spell in line with its nature based on DM Fiat. And we get a variety of sample skill checks that can be useful for harvesting, such as Medicine to determine which parts are safe to eat, Sleight of Hand for nimble and careful handiwork, or Religion in preparing a meal in honor of a local deity.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/jAhOPsO.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><strong>Chapter 3: Prehistoric Characters</strong></p><p></p><p>Whereas other DnD settings and sourcebooks would provide the crunchy mechanics for PC building up front and leave the fluffier roleplay details at the end, Planegea does the reverse. This relatively short chapter provides a series of questions about major life events your PC experienced before the campaign’s beginning. They include things such as the circumstances of their birth and if it was in a place of significance, the first time they encountered a god, their nearest brush with death, or if a certain creature, number, or color has relevance to a personal superstitious omen. The omens in particular are a means for the DM to provide gentle nudges to get a PC’s attention or inform them of something of significance with meaning only to them. This chapter ends with a d100 table of Trinkets suitable for a Prehistoric Fantasy world, such as a necklace made of lion claws, turtle shell knee pads, petrified wood from a forest fire that still smells like it’s burning, or an inedible mushroom that slowly multiplies whenever it’s set down.</p><p></p><p>This chapter also has a page-long sidebar of <strong>Planegean Player Options</strong> as variant rules. The first one, Star Magic, lets a character spend an action to find a constellation via Nature, where the stars tell a story or song based on one of the six ability scores. At the end of the story the PC makes a Performance check, where if they succeed the story inspires them and grants +1d4 to a future check or save of that ability for the next 24 hours. Star Magic can only be used once per day. Also, stars being intelligent entities can communicate with people down on the ground, so via an Arcana check as an action a character may learn of news from them, albeit unlike some divination spells stars are fallible beings with their own biases.</p><p></p><p>The following three Player Options are specific to certain classes. Weapon Shatter is only available to the martial classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue) and lets them shatter a magical melee weapon once per short or long rest, turning a successful hit into a critical hit. Raw Magic is only available to arcane casters that aren’t subclasses (Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard) where they can cast a spell without expending a spell slot in exchange for giving up part of their own life force. For 1st to 5th level spells this is one level of exhaustion per spell level, but 6th level and higher causes them to suffer 5 levels of exhaustion, fall unconscious and automatically fail a number of death saving throws. A 9th level spell outright kills the caster. Blood Offering is only available to the remaining three divine classes (Cleric, Druid, and Paladin). Such a character can spend a bonus action to cut themselves, spending one hit die per spell level and taking that amount rolled as slashing or piercing damage which ignores resistance and immunity, and gain either grant advantage on the next spell attack or check, disadvantage on a target's roll against a spell you cast, or treat a cast spell as 1 level higher.</p><p></p><p><strong>Thoughts So Far:</strong> Planegea is off to a strong start. While many people assume for good reason that prehistoric/stone age settings will lack details and tropes of more advanced eras, the author wisely realized this and came up with both new ideas and spins on existing ones to make the setting fit more easily into standard DnD adventures. Given that the emphasis on a primordial world is going to make people presume that Druids, Rangers, and the Survival skill will take prominence, giving various suggestions for other skills to aid in such matters is a welcome idea. While further chapters go into more detail, explaining the day to day operations of hunter-gatherer societies is also a wise addition, for unlike medieval fantasy settings where PCs are effectively wandering mercenaries who don’t have to enmesh themselves in the rigors of peasant life, in Planegea characters are more closely connected to their local clans.</p><p></p><p>As for the new Player Options, I love the concept of gaining power and knowledge from the stars, although for classes I feel that the martial options get the short end of the stick. As they can only shatter a magical weapon that must be melee, this is going to be either a rare resource rarely used or the party caster uses the Magic Weapon spell to grant effective critical hits to PCs. The book does specify that temporarily magical weapons can also be used this way, so this isn’t really an unintended exploit so much as an intended facet of the rules. As for Raw Magic and Blood Offering, exhaustion is much more deleterious than damage, albeit as it grants effective bonus slots it’s a good means of representing a caster drawing on desperate reserves to get a spell they ordinarily couldn’t cast.</p><p></p><p>For things I dislike, I am not exactly fond of the Black Taboos. While I understand these limits exist to keep Planegea in a relative state of primitiveness, the lines feel inconsistent like the use of salt as currency or how the Druidic and Code languages aren't "written" but still convey meaning in abstract patterns. The can't count over nine breaks down heavily when it comes to dwarven fortresses and that some NPC civilizations managed to transition out of hunter-gatherer society. Given how important mathematics is in architecture, this raises questions of how the Giant Empires managed to build long-standing structures, for example.</p><p></p><p><strong>Join us next time as we get into the nit and gritty of character creation in Chapters 4 and 5: Kinships and Classes!</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 9250882, member: 6750502"] [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/nzAjH3o.jpg[/IMG][/CENTER] [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/427037/Planegea-5E-Standard-Edition-The-StarShamans-Song-of-Planegea-Planegea']Drive-Thru RPG Link[/URL] Although most strongly associated with the feel of medieval times, Dungeons & Dragons is no stranger to settings going for far older or newer eras. From Pharaonic Egypt to Victorian Steampunk, official and third party settings alike created worlds of magic and monsters across time and space, trading in knights for gladiators or crossbows for muskets as befit the intended setting. But there is one particular era that rarely gets any significant play: the Stone Age. Planegea is the brainchild of David Somerville, [URL='https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/introducing-planegea-a-stone-age-setting-for-5e.876729/']beginning as an idea pitched on the RPGnet forums[/URL] but eventually got picked up by Atlas Games who saw promise in turning it into a proper published setting. Inspired by media such as the movie 10,000 BC and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, Somerville aimed for a prehistoric sword and sorcery feel set during the mythical past of your Generic DnD setting. The planes of existence aren’t fully formed, the gods are local spirits holding sway over surrounding environments and haven’t fully ascended/descended to otherworldly realms, and common fantasy tropes are reimagined. A rural feudal settlement may become a stone-punk village of tent-platforms built on the backs of titanic beasts, a wizard’s tower may instead be a cavernous sanctum home to cave paintings brimming with arcane power, while dungeons can include pits housing Lovecraftian aberrations or thick forests home to an apex predator. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/2Jjz6aA.png[/IMG] [B]Chapter 1: Welcome to Planegea[/B][/CENTER] Apologies for the larger-than-usual images, Imgur kept giving “we don’t support that file type” error when using a compressed version even though it was PNG. The first chapter, [B]Welcome to Planegea,[/B] goes over the major points separating the setting from others on the market. It begins with the idea of the world being new and unexplored, with few things set in stone. The common fantasy races still bear the influences of their mythical creation such as dwarves bearing obvious marks of having been fashioned from stone, or mighty wyrms who gave the dragonborn their race’s name still being recent ancestors. As the Multiverse is still a singular contiguous entity, a traveler can physically journey from the world’s heart of Blood Mountain and its moon-birthing volcanic eruptions to the distant Sea of Stars encompassing the lands. Most civilizations are hunter-gatherer, with the majority of humanoid races settled in the relative center of the Great Valley. Each clan has a central fire that is kept burning throughout the day and night, serving as a social gathering spot, a place of light and warmth in the darkest of nights and the center for magical ceremonies. Another common fixture of the setting is that the gods of the world aren’t omnipotent beings in remote extra-dimensional realms. Gods instead are spirits just coming to understand their powers and the world in which they hold sway, being closer to animist entities of the land tied to physical locations. Gods are bound to sacred spaces known as hallows where they can enact wondrous powers, but as they cannot depart such places on their own they must rely on mortals to influence their agendas in the wider world. Through mortals, gods can command their followers to seize more territory, destroy sacred sites of rival gods, and even devour the essence of other gods and take over their hallows. Finally, there’s a concept known as the Black Taboos, certain forbidden technologies and concepts. Enforced by supernatural entities known as the Hounds of the Blind Heaven, those souls inventive and brave enough to rouse their ire have been met with calamitous misfortune that is most often certain death. The Black Taboos include a prohibition on the written word beyond the most rudimentary patterns, no numbers over nine (numbers beyond this value are referred to as “many”), and fiat currency and wheels with axles are banned. Planegea’s inhabitants are capable of mentally conceiving ways to understand these technologies and concepts, but most deliberately avoid their study or production to avoid the Hounds. Basically it’s only when an individual acts on this knowledge to produce or spread it do they invite disaster. The Hounds are more or less an unknown force whose specifics are determined by the DM, but they do appear to be intelligent and make their judgments based on keeping society in a sort of primitive status quo. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/xi3qJWs.png[/IMG] [B]Chapter 2: Clanfires & Wilderness[/B][/CENTER] The next seven chapters are player-friendly. The first one of these takes a bottom-up viewpoint on the setting from the perspective of the “common people.” That is, the humanoid civilizations to which the PCs belong. The chapter starts out with covering the three primary themes of Planegea: [B]Kinetic Action,[/B] where combat should be over-the-top and take place in volatile locations where the environment can be a threat to avoid or be exploited to waylay one’s foes. Adventurers leaping across the backs of a herd of stampeding mammoths, outmaneuvering arctic predators on a river of cracking ice floes, and wild winds whipping through forests and pushing over trees are hallmarks of this theme. [B]Primordial Horror,[/B] where the unknown lands hold creatures that have yet to be named or seen by mortals, where humanoids are but one of many beings in a vast world and far from being the top of the food chain. Even in familiar lands, strange sounds at night outside the tent flap can signal a creeping threat, and most people live in a world where the surrounding lands are a great unknown. [B]Mystic Awe,[/B] which focuses on the positive side of living in a new world that has yet to take its final form. It is a world where the legends bards sing of are going to come about by heroes of the present, where common fantasy tropes taken for granted are made new again. Speaking of old tropes being made new, this chapter notes that a lot of common fixtures in a Medieval Fantasy world need to be rethought in a Prehistoric Fantasy realm. We get a table of sample comparisons: for example, spell scrolls become enchanted talismans, gold and coins are replaced by salt and trade goods, the comfy inn and tavern becomes a village’s clanfire or shaded pool, and knowledge found in books are instead preserved in paintings and song. The bulk of this chapter covers daily living in hunter-gatherer clans. With most being nomadic, they travel around the land to forage for food and find safe places to sleep at night. Most personal goods are crafted from what can be found in the wild, with a creative variety of combinations. For example, the leathery wings of a beast can be fashioned into a pouch, and blades and other weapons with sharp implements can come from reworked bone, scales, and teeth taken from the carcasses of dead animals. Clans often seek the protection of gods and their hallows, using shamans as interlocutors for negotiation. The central gathering spot housing the clanfire is known as a camp, and tends to be an arrangement of huts, tents, or other shelters that can be quickly dismantled when it’s time to get on the move. Some areas have more permanent dwellings, particularly dwarven stone buildings, which are left during seasonal migration and returned to later. While just about everyone knows a thing or two when it comes to outdoorsmanship and acquiring food sources, there are roles with specialized labor: children are responsible for gathering clanfire fuel, cleaning up areas of detritus, and helping out adults and looking after younger children. Hunters are tasked with stalking and overcoming animals, and typically conserve their energy until scouts who report the location of prey back to the rest of the hunters. A gatherers’ eyes for detail scan areas for plants and other bounties of nature, as well as going along predetermined routes to check on traps and fishing nets. Shamans (reflavored clerics) often meditate for much of the day and make use of their spells as befits the situation, but often have nonmagical duties such as resolving disputes or meeting the local god in their hallow. Crafters are the best when it comes to fashioning the bounties of nature into various tools, and tend to remain at camp the most as other people bring them things. Most clans have various leadership positions: this can take the form of a chieftain who calls all the shots but can also be a council of elders, and the other occupations have senior members with years of experience who pass on their knowledge to others and are looked up to for guidance. And of course the various character classes reflect specialized training for certain tasks. There’s a diversity of variation in how clans govern themselves and assign labor, and these details are meant to be guidelines rather than a universal rule. Explanations are also given for various cultural details, such as holidays taking the form of festivals based on important events, or that shamans name newborn babies rather than parents due to the belief that names carry magical power and thus shamans are best suited for this role. Planegea gives several fantastical spins on the hunter-gatherer concept. For example, magical portals connected to realms of dreams and nightmares can let someone rapidly cross great distances. The more reliable portals are a favored means for migration, as clans who would otherwise be trapped in a realm of heavy winter can use such portals to arrive in warmer climates. Portals typically work only under dream-based logic, such as being open only to those under certain emotional states or being passed through only when a traveler least expects it. Additionally, a concept known as Clan Magic exists where people gather around the clanfire and are led by a shaman in a ritual ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, the clan either gains a number of bonus spell slots to spend depending on the level of the shaman or strata (power) of a god. Alternatively, the ceremony can enchant a weapon whose enhancement bonus is also dependent on the shaman/god’s level of power. Only one such weapon can exist for an individual clan at a time. The rest of the chapter focuses on the [B]Wilderness,[/B] which is more of a series of unrelated articles. For example, much of the world of Planegea is mobile in more ways than one: trees of a forest may move of their own volition across the land, while stars are intelligent beings who move across the night sky and form into constellations based on the stories they wish to tell. The landscape at large is more or less fixed, but alterations both mundane and supernatural can occur at the smaller scale. People often use magic to direct their course but various skill checks and saving throws are listed for means of finding one’s way, such as History to recognize altered landscapes. Becoming lost isn’t necessarily a penalty as the book suggests that it can be used for plot devices: for example, some gods and dream-portals only appear to the lost, so it’s a custom among certain clans for individuals to intentionally wander off into unfamiliar territory. Day-to-day survival is of increased importance than in other campaigns, and further detail is given on rules for Travel, Gathering, and Hunting, usually taking the form of skill checks and skill challenges with stakes. These are more guidelines than explicit rules, but there are certain inedible foods that discourage eating just about anything you come across: the three “rules of food” are to not eat anything rotten, not eat anything that speaks to you in a language you can understand, and not to eat anything “made of many” which includes most bugs and are anything with more than 9 sets of eyes or appendages. A random table is given for those who violate such rules, such as the Poisoned condition or suffering a temporary madness effect. Concurrently, there are suggested in-game rewards for a successful hunt. Prey animals successfully harvested and eaten can grant the effects of the Enhance Ability spell in line with its nature based on DM Fiat. And we get a variety of sample skill checks that can be useful for harvesting, such as Medicine to determine which parts are safe to eat, Sleight of Hand for nimble and careful handiwork, or Religion in preparing a meal in honor of a local deity. [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/jAhOPsO.png[/IMG] [B]Chapter 3: Prehistoric Characters[/B][/CENTER] Whereas other DnD settings and sourcebooks would provide the crunchy mechanics for PC building up front and leave the fluffier roleplay details at the end, Planegea does the reverse. This relatively short chapter provides a series of questions about major life events your PC experienced before the campaign’s beginning. They include things such as the circumstances of their birth and if it was in a place of significance, the first time they encountered a god, their nearest brush with death, or if a certain creature, number, or color has relevance to a personal superstitious omen. The omens in particular are a means for the DM to provide gentle nudges to get a PC’s attention or inform them of something of significance with meaning only to them. This chapter ends with a d100 table of Trinkets suitable for a Prehistoric Fantasy world, such as a necklace made of lion claws, turtle shell knee pads, petrified wood from a forest fire that still smells like it’s burning, or an inedible mushroom that slowly multiplies whenever it’s set down. This chapter also has a page-long sidebar of [B]Planegean Player Options[/B] as variant rules. The first one, Star Magic, lets a character spend an action to find a constellation via Nature, where the stars tell a story or song based on one of the six ability scores. At the end of the story the PC makes a Performance check, where if they succeed the story inspires them and grants +1d4 to a future check or save of that ability for the next 24 hours. Star Magic can only be used once per day. Also, stars being intelligent entities can communicate with people down on the ground, so via an Arcana check as an action a character may learn of news from them, albeit unlike some divination spells stars are fallible beings with their own biases. The following three Player Options are specific to certain classes. Weapon Shatter is only available to the martial classes (Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue) and lets them shatter a magical melee weapon once per short or long rest, turning a successful hit into a critical hit. Raw Magic is only available to arcane casters that aren’t subclasses (Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard) where they can cast a spell without expending a spell slot in exchange for giving up part of their own life force. For 1st to 5th level spells this is one level of exhaustion per spell level, but 6th level and higher causes them to suffer 5 levels of exhaustion, fall unconscious and automatically fail a number of death saving throws. A 9th level spell outright kills the caster. Blood Offering is only available to the remaining three divine classes (Cleric, Druid, and Paladin). Such a character can spend a bonus action to cut themselves, spending one hit die per spell level and taking that amount rolled as slashing or piercing damage which ignores resistance and immunity, and gain either grant advantage on the next spell attack or check, disadvantage on a target's roll against a spell you cast, or treat a cast spell as 1 level higher. [B]Thoughts So Far:[/B] Planegea is off to a strong start. While many people assume for good reason that prehistoric/stone age settings will lack details and tropes of more advanced eras, the author wisely realized this and came up with both new ideas and spins on existing ones to make the setting fit more easily into standard DnD adventures. Given that the emphasis on a primordial world is going to make people presume that Druids, Rangers, and the Survival skill will take prominence, giving various suggestions for other skills to aid in such matters is a welcome idea. While further chapters go into more detail, explaining the day to day operations of hunter-gatherer societies is also a wise addition, for unlike medieval fantasy settings where PCs are effectively wandering mercenaries who don’t have to enmesh themselves in the rigors of peasant life, in Planegea characters are more closely connected to their local clans. As for the new Player Options, I love the concept of gaining power and knowledge from the stars, although for classes I feel that the martial options get the short end of the stick. As they can only shatter a magical weapon that must be melee, this is going to be either a rare resource rarely used or the party caster uses the Magic Weapon spell to grant effective critical hits to PCs. The book does specify that temporarily magical weapons can also be used this way, so this isn’t really an unintended exploit so much as an intended facet of the rules. As for Raw Magic and Blood Offering, exhaustion is much more deleterious than damage, albeit as it grants effective bonus slots it’s a good means of representing a caster drawing on desperate reserves to get a spell they ordinarily couldn’t cast. For things I dislike, I am not exactly fond of the Black Taboos. While I understand these limits exist to keep Planegea in a relative state of primitiveness, the lines feel inconsistent like the use of salt as currency or how the Druidic and Code languages aren't "written" but still convey meaning in abstract patterns. The can't count over nine breaks down heavily when it comes to dwarven fortresses and that some NPC civilizations managed to transition out of hunter-gatherer society. Given how important mathematics is in architecture, this raises questions of how the Giant Empires managed to build long-standing structures, for example. [B]Join us next time as we get into the nit and gritty of character creation in Chapters 4 and 5: Kinships and Classes![/B] [/QUOTE]
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[Let's Read] The Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea: Dungeons & Dragons, Prehistoric Style
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