House Rules
Contained here are house rules to be used for use with Pathfinder: Traildust. While these rules are up for discussion and revision if necessary, justification for each of them is listed below with the rule itself.
- Create Water is now a 2nd Level Cleric and Druid Spell: There are several reasons why I am elevating this spell from 0th to 2nd level. The first part is that as a 0th level spell Druids and Clerics who prepare it are essentially able to cast it over and over again with rampant abandon, allowing them to create (albeit slowly) literal oases in the plains and deserts of the campaign setting whenever they want. While not permanent unless consumed, a spell that creates a minimum of 2 gallons of water (scaling up per caster level at a rate of 2 gallons per level) that can be recast in perpetuity allows for options in an arid landscape that I would prefer to restrict to higher levels, to give the game more of a gritty feel.
The other reason for this spell is that water can be used to easily ruin firearm weapons if the gunslinger isn’t careful, which leads us to rule 2…
- Guns: Guns are an emerging thing in the world of Pathfinder: Traildust. While not commonly used due to expense (For purchasing one must first find a seller and then expect to use prices similar to those for Early Firearms out of the Ultimate Combat book: See your DM if you don’t have access to these rules) They are also exceedingly powerful compared to other types of weapons available presently and use the following rules:
1. Guns use exploding damage dice. This means, in short, that if someone shooting you with a gun rolls maximum damage on their die roll, they roll that die again and add the two values. Each time the maximum value on a die roll is made (Up to 4 times) the player may roll again and add the next resulting value to the first.
2. When firing a Gun, the attack resolves against the target’s touch AC when the target is within the first range increment of the weapon. This type of attack is not considered a touch attack for the purposes of feats and abilities such as Deadly Aim. At higher range increments, the attack resolves normally, including taking the normal cumulative –2 penalty for each full range increment. Unlike other projectile weapons, early firearms have a maximum range of five range increments.
Although this does make it seem like Guns are inherently the best nonmagical weapons available, and if this turns out to be unbalanced either in the player or the DM’s favor they will be adjusted, also keep in mind that those who prefer to use Guns suffer from the following 3 drawbacks:
1. Guns rely on ammunition which is expensive and in limited supply. While any capable alchemist (Those with enough ranks in Craft: Alchemy and the time and supplies) can make Black Powder, consider that making actual bullets, or cartridges, is both expensive and time consuming to make and requires trained experience that isn’t always necessarily available. Gunslingers, like archers, will be required to work with the DM and keep track of how many bullets/clips/cartridges they have.
2. Using Guns without penalty requires the exotic weapon proficiency feat, which means anyone using them must sacrifice a valuable feat in order to use them intelligently.
3. Guns can misfire. Unlike other weapons, guns use a critical failure table devised by the DM. A critical failure MIGHT just damage your gun. Or it may cause other undesirable results.
Other house rules of note follow below:
- 2 new knowledge skills: Elven and Orcish Lore: Sequestered away on their own continent and only recently discovered by the other playable races of Traildust, the tribal elves have knowledge, perspective, and insight into the continent that other races largely lack. Likewise, their distant Orcish cousins have similar untapped avenues of knowledge about the goings-on of the New Continent. The Skills Elven and Orcish Lore both work similarly to Knowledge: Arcana or Knowledge: Religion, but offer different areas of focus, and cover a lot of the specialized lore of these two races. They cover the same subject but may offer different perspective. Elven Lore may be taken as a class skill by elves of any class, while Half-Orcs may take Orcish Lore as a class skill regardless of their actual class as well. Both Lore skills use Intelligence as their corresponding attribute, and are also new Class Skills for Bards, Wizards, or Sorcerers.
