ZEITGEIST The Gyre as a Campaign setting

[Andrew Moreton]

An idea which came to me while sorting out the rest of my players time in the Gyre is using the Gyre as a campaign setting.
It would be a post apocalypse or maybe Survival Horror setting with the characters coming from worlds newly arrived in the Gyre and trying to save either just themselves or what remains of the community in this new environment with limited resources and unpleasent rivals. It lets your players have a very wide range of characters as each could come from a different newly consumed world.
You would probably want to extend the size of the Gyre and maybe cut back on how powerful and mobile the Golden Legion are so they are less of an overwhelming threat to low level characters, you may also want to work out the origins and nature of the Gyre if the purpose of the campaign is going to be to survive/Escape the Gyre rather than a plundering/Exploration trip by a band of high level heroes.

I doubt I'll every do anything with this idea ,it will go the way of 90% of the ideas for campaigns I have, not enough time

 

[RangerWickett]

I ran a Pathfinder campaign where the party was all paladins.

In Pathfinder, the great evil adversary of the setting is the god Rovagug, who tried to destroy the world (and who had destroyed other worlds in the past). An alliance of all the gods trapped him in a demi-plane cage inside the world, though Rovagug killed several gods during the fight.

When the party got to seventeenth level, they found a crack in that cage and had to venture inside to seal it, which also gave them a chance to rescue some people who had been sacrificed as offerings to Rovagug.

I tweaked the backstory a bit, and added a long forgotten dreaming dragon god (basically plagiarizing myself with Trilla from War of the Burning Sky) whom one of the evil gods betrayed and killed, then hurled into the cage to help lull Rovagug to sleep and make him easier to contain. But the result was that Rovagug fed upon her divine power, and when he slept, his dreams would become real within the cage.

And Rovagug dreamed of the worlds he had destroyed.

Which is how I got to reuse The Gyre in my home game, even after my original ZEITGEIST 4E playtest campaign sputtered out after Schism.

 

[Lylandra]

so... make this basically Ravenloft in space without Strahd? And you end there with your whole world? I actually like this idea!

(To be honest it would have been a perfect mid-to endgame setting for my first campaign "Nightfall/Riftwalkers" which was basically throw a bunch of young adults from Faerun into a parallel world created by AO's jealous overgod sibling who so desperately wanted to one-up their "brother" that they effed up hard with gods forced to walk the earth and no one able to understand why or how this all happened)

Oh and I also love your remix of ZEITGEIST, WotBS and SMITE EVIL. Sometimes I'm trying to figure out what would happen if we combined some of the campaign worlds we played in and how certain characters would react to each other...

 

[Andrew Moreton]

I quite like the way of linking it to the Golarion setting.
I do think that this would be similar to Ravenlot but without the overwhelming forces of evil dominating the world. I also think part of the fun would be letting each player or combination of players design their homeworld , the doom that befell it and how their characters relate to that and to the other survivors iif any from their world and have all of them be new worlds arriving at the same time. Depending on how you wanted the game to go you would have to decide on the nature of the Gyre and if there is some conciousness or beings running it or if it is just a force of nature. It would have the potential to be a fairly fun sandbo campaign , however as I already have 4 or 5 more campaigns planned it would need me to find time and players for another gaming slot and I just don't see that happening.
However I suppose if my players ever mess up so badly the campaign world gets destroyed I have a new way. to save the campaign.

 

[imeannoharm]

I ran a Pathfinder campaign where the party was all paladins.

In Pathfinder, the great evil adversary of the setting is the god Rovagug, who tried to destroy the world (and who had destroyed other worlds in the past). An alliance of all the gods trapped him in a demi-plane cage inside the world, though Rovagug killed several gods during the fight.

When the party got to seventeenth level, they found a crack in that cage and had to venture inside to seal it, which also gave them a chance to rescue some people who had been sacrificed as offerings to Rovagug.

I tweaked the backstory a bit, and added a long forgotten dreaming dragon god (basically plagiarizing myself with Trilla from War of the Burning Sky) whom one of the evil gods betrayed and killed, then hurled into the cage to help lull Rovagug to sleep and make him easier to contain. But the result was that Rovagug fed upon her divine power, and when he slept, his dreams would become real within the cage.

And Rovagug dreamed of the worlds he had destroyed.

Which is how I got to reuse The Gyre in my home game, even after my original ZEITGEIST 4E playtest campaign sputtered out after Schism.

Statting Rovagug and having the players kill him somehow somewhere in the level 40s would be the most epic campaign ever.

 

[RangerWickett]

It's amazing what 17th level paladins can do with a smite and a whole hell of a lot of healing. I ended the campaign with them having to beat back a sort of dream avatar of his - not the full god, just a psychic manifestation of his will to awaken - which emerged through a rift in the city of Oppara, capital of Taldor.

The combat lasted, I think, eight rounds. I set up a map of the city, with prominent locations to defend and a couple locations where they could get allies to help out. The battle climaxed with one of the PCs using the Worldbreaker (a truly massive cannon some previous king had made to break a siege) as his weapon while smiting, after another PC had lured Rovagug into the cannon's path.

ROVAGUG (CR 30)

HP 760 (DR 20/epic), regeneration 100
Limbs can be targeted to disable certain attack options. If you deal 100 hp to a tentacle, leg, or tail in one round, or 200 hp to the mouth in one round, that attack weapon can't attack on Rovagug's next turn. Damage to limbs also applies to bodies; this is just to give some flavor to fighting a kaiju so it isn't a big bag of undifferentiated hit points.

AC 51, touch 6, flat footed 46

Fort +36, Ref +31, Will +23, SR 41

Titanic Use a battle map where 1 square = 100 ft. (The PCs' mounts could all get them at least 1 square, and potentially 4 squares of movement.) Rovagug moves 2 squares per round, and does not provoke opportunity attacks for moving. His body is three contiguous squares - the head which is the only space that can bite, the body, and the tail which is the only space that can tail hurl. His tentacles and stomps can originate from any space of his body. He has reach 100 ft. for his attacks.

Weakness susceptible to song

He makes all these attacks each round.

• Bite +41 (4d12+50, 18-20/x4, plus grab +41, free action on next turn to swallow whole) plus godkiller and great destroyer
• Two Tentacles +36 (4d12+25) plus great destroyer plus knockdown
• Crushing Leg chooses an adjacent 100-ft. square and anyone in that space at the start of the next turn takes 100 damage (Ref DC 37 half). If you fail, you’re trapped in an avalanche.
• Tail Fling He cracks a building with his tail and hurls it 200 ft., everyone in a 100-ft. square takes 100 damage (Ref DC 37 half)
• Meteor Strike target a 200-ft. square: at the end of the next round, 10d6 damage (half fire/half impact)

Godkiller Whenever it hits a target, the target must make a Will DC 37 or lose all divine power for three rounds, and be immune to divine magic.

Great Destroyer Target must make Fort DC 37 or armor is broken.

Knockdown Rovagug makes a Combat Maneuver check with a +36 bonus. If he succeeds, he knocks the target prone, which causes flyers to land.

Aura of Devouring Doom Aura 200 ft., 20 damage per round if you’re on the ground, as it writhes with millions of chitinous carnivorous bugs. (This keeps the NPCs from participating in the fight, but rewards the PCs for their various flying abilities, or for climbing up his body.)

Shattering Carapace When Rovagug is struck with a melee weapon, Fort DC 37 or your weapon breaks.

Mighty Cataclysm When combat begins, an earthquake shakes the region, and a supernatural tsunami will strike in three rounds, hundreds of feet high, knocking everyone to the ground.

Susceptible to Song Use a Perform (song) check to set a Will save DC. On a failure, Rovagug is enraged, and on his next turn he'll move up to 200 ft. toward the singer. The millions of bugs are pacified temporarily, so his aura of devouring doom goes away until he succeeds a save at the start of a turn.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The problems with very high level pathfinder, it would take a level 20 mythic 10 paladin less than 1 round to kill that avatar he may be able to do it in one none vital strike blow if he uses as many abilities as possible and crits. I think my modified end boss for Wrath of the Righteous had 16000 hp and lasted 3-4 rounds.
None of the published demigods can survive vs a mythic party. The problem is that it is very hard for the party to survive them it is a shootout by Glass cannons with tactical nuclear warheads. So coming up with something to represent the inner soul of Rovugog or something to explain him having stats would be very hard if you also wanted a fun fight.
So you are restricted really to level 20 and maybe very low tier mythic and you would still probably want to give rovugog multiple bodies or allies. At the moment I am trying to setup the vocie fo Rot to put up a good fight and its a similar problem. Unfortunatly a lot of his best abilities the pc's know about and have hard counters for

 

[RangerWickett]

Yeah, high level PF certainly wasn't designed well, which is a carryover from 3e. If you want superheroic characters to play well, you have to intentionally design the game for that power level, not just assume that something that works at low levels will scale comparably.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

It is just viable at level 20, mythic is the tipping point. The synergy between Mythic and High level boosts offense (and resistance of magic oddly) exponentially and defense cannot even keep in sight of it . At level 20 win fast or die, at level 20/10 against a mirror of yourself win initiative or die. I enjoy high level pathfinder but Mythic broke me as a GM I lost interest in the campaign despite a great story and characters about 2/3 of the way through it. I still finished it but then I put the mythic rules for pc's in a cupboard and left them there.

 

[imeannoharm]

It's amazing what 17th level paladins can do with a smite and a whole hell of a lot of healing. I ended the campaign with them having to beat back a sort of dream avatar of his - not the full god, just a psychic manifestation of his will to awaken - which emerged through a rift in the city of Oppara, capital of Taldor.

The combat lasted, I think, eight rounds. I set up a map of the city, with prominent locations to defend and a couple locations where they could get allies to help out. The battle climaxed with one of the PCs using the Worldbreaker (a truly massive cannon some previous king had made to break a siege) as his weapon while smiting, after another PC had lured Rovagug into the cannon's path.

ROVAGUG (CR 30)

HP 760 (DR 20/epic), regeneration 100
Limbs can be targeted to disable certain attack options. If you deal 100 hp to a tentacle, leg, or tail in one round, or 200 hp to the mouth in one round, that attack weapon can't attack on Rovagug's next turn. Damage to limbs also applies to bodies; this is just to give some flavor to fighting a kaiju so it isn't a big bag of undifferentiated hit points.

AC 51, touch 6, flat footed 46

Fort +36, Ref +31, Will +23, SR 41

Titanic Use a battle map where 1 square = 100 ft. (The PCs' mounts could all get them at least 1 square, and potentially 4 squares of movement.) Rovagug moves 2 squares per round, and does not provoke opportunity attacks for moving. His body is three contiguous squares - the head which is the only space that can bite, the body, and the tail which is the only space that can tail hurl. His tentacles and stomps can originate from any space of his body. He has reach 100 ft. for his attacks.

Weakness susceptible to song

He makes all these attacks each round.

• Bite +41 (4d12+50, 18-20/x4, plus grab +41, free action on next turn to swallow whole) plus godkiller and great destroyer
• Two Tentacles +36 (4d12+25) plus great destroyer plus knockdown
• Crushing Leg chooses an adjacent 100-ft. square and anyone in that space at the start of the next turn takes 100 damage (Ref DC 37 half). If you fail, you’re trapped in an avalanche.
• Tail Fling He cracks a building with his tail and hurls it 200 ft., everyone in a 100-ft. square takes 100 damage (Ref DC 37 half)
• Meteor Strike target a 200-ft. square: at the end of the next round, 10d6 damage (half fire/half impact)

Godkiller Whenever it hits a target, the target must make a Will DC 37 or lose all divine power for three rounds, and be immune to divine magic.

Great Destroyer Target must make Fort DC 37 or armor is broken.

Knockdown Rovagug makes a Combat Maneuver check with a +36 bonus. If he succeeds, he knocks the target prone, which causes flyers to land.

Aura of Devouring Doom Aura 200 ft., 20 damage per round if you’re on the ground, as it writhes with millions of chitinous carnivorous bugs. (This keeps the NPCs from participating in the fight, but rewards the PCs for their various flying abilities, or for climbing up his body.)

Shattering Carapace When Rovagug is struck with a melee weapon, Fort DC 37 or your weapon breaks.

Mighty Cataclysm When combat begins, an earthquake shakes the region, and a supernatural tsunami will strike in three rounds, hundreds of feet high, knocking everyone to the ground.

Susceptible to Song Use a Perform (song) check to set a Will save DC. On a failure, Rovagug is enraged, and on his next turn he'll move up to 200 ft. toward the singer. The millions of bugs are pacified temporarily, so his aura of devouring doom goes away until he succeeds a save at the start of a turn.

That's his avatar! Wow! Just increase his HP and DPR 10x and you have a challenge for mythic characters! Now on to the God himself! Not today, 20th levels!I
IMO the guidelines for party challenges (+3 CR over APL is a deadly fight) should still be followed. That doesn't mean the guidelines for 24+ CR statistics aren't drought with problems. Making a revised version of the system is the best bet. If they say it should be deadly, it better be. A CR 26 monster should be an all but impossible fight for the average level 20 party, but it isn't.