Campaign Setting -- Eberron

Ashen Kingdom Setup

Set in 4e Eberron, the campaign picks up where John’s Seekers of the Ashen Crown adventure left off:

The pieces of the Ashen Crown have been collected, through both treachery and force, by the nefarious (psycho-undead-bitch) Demise. Having slain the previous characters, Demise has disappeared (and the Ashen Crown with her), but her objective achieved, she left her changeling co-conspirator, Tikulti, to the tender mercies of the Breland’s King’s Citadel—the very organization he betrayed.

Having sponsored the dead characters, the King’s Citadel and (to an even greater degree) Korvi ir’Leone went to extraordinary lengths to uncover the truth about their deaths…

Now, Korvi has organized another group of “uniquely talented individuals” and tasked it with two goals: 1) to help protect an “asset” of vital importance to the future of New Cyre and Breland and 2) to track down Demise and recover the Ashen Crown.

Character Backgrounds

The characters are sponsored by the wizard and black-market profiteer, Korvi ir’Leone. In practical terms, this means that he pays for their day-to-day expenses and can even be counted on to provide more substantial assistance should the need arise.

Korvi is based (rather transparently) on Vito Corleone of the Godfather. He’s not quite as criminal-minded and is much more patriotic (toward New Cyre and Breland), but he’s a wealthy and powerful man who got that way by doing favors for people who needed them and by calling those debts to account when the time was right.

The characters in this game should have backgrounds that reflect their allegiance to Korvi (perhaps through an allegiance to New Cyre or Cyran heritage) or their indebtedness to him. Korvi is not above extortion, but it’s doubtful he would use such a tool to purchase a character’s loyalty. More likely, as with most of his “associates,” he has done the characters or their families a great service in the past, and has now called upon the characters to do him the favor of “assisting him in this endeavor of great personal and national importance.”

Players should feel free to use characters of any Eberron race/nationality, but you can help make our lives easier by refraining from envisioning any backgrounds that would place the characters’ overt goals at odds with Korvi’s. In other words, since Korvi will be asking the characters to undertake a mission on behalf of New Cyre and, to a lesser degree, Breland, creating a character fanatically loyal to Aundair not only immediately creates a conflict with the successful completion of this mission, it also makes it hard to imagine a situation where such a character would find himself in the retinue of Korvi ir’Leone.

If you’d rather not play a character “beholden” to Korvi, that’s perfectly fine. Cyran patriots might willingly join his cause (and remember, in Eberron every nation has citizens of every race, especially metropolitan Breland and pre-Mournland Cyre; nationality is typically a stronger bond than racial heritage in Eberron). He might have “connections” from other nations who put their loyalty to him over their loyalty to nation.  Maybe you were related to one of the last batch of characters and you’re looking for revenge. Or perhaps your character just doesn’t give a rat’s ass about politics and is only in it for the money and loot (plenty of mercenaries and soldiers out there find themselves looking for a patron now that the Last War has ended).

In any case, this shouldn't feel like background restrictions; instead it's a kind of “common cause” so that the characters share similar goals and have a reason to press on even when it seems like the smart move would be to just call it quits (John’s 1-5 mini-campaign in the Moonshea Isles and Tom’s Giants campaign are excellent examples of this kind of shared background, examples we're trying to replicate here.).

That said, this is Eberron, land of intrigue, and we don’t want to discourage anyone from having hidden motivations. Just remember to let us in on those so that we can figure out how they fit in the story before you turn around and kill Darren’s character for being an undead son-of-a-bitch.

Bonus Background Feat:  For going through the trouble of making an intriguing and rules compliant background, every character will get a bonus feat at first level. However, this bonus feat will be chosen by the DM and will be related to the character’s given background. It will be interesting and fun, but it won’t be a min/max tool.

Note: Please use Eberron or General backgrounds on the Character Builder. You may have up to 3 backgrounds (although only 1 will give you a character sheet bonus). Backgrounds you choose in this way might get you in-game benefits (e.g. if you choose Profession: Sailor as a background—even your 2nd or 3rd—you might get a +2 in a skill challenge that involves boats). In other words, don’t neglect your background just because it doesn’t change any numbers on your sheet. You might still get mileage out of it later.

House Rules

1.    Characters – We’ll start this campaign with level 3 characters. Everything legal in the Character Builder is legal in the campaign (this excludes MM “races” unless you have a compelling story reason for playing one). Please limit your Background choices to Eberron or General. Use standard 22-point buy system for attributes. Please turn “Inherent Bonuses” on in the Character Builder (on the Manage tab under Details). Starting characters get level appropriate gold and 1 magic item of their level or lower.

2.    Action Points – Action points allow players to have a bit of “narrative control” over how a scene plays out. In addition to spending an action point to take an extra standard action in any given round, PCs may spend an action point to gain any one of the following benefits:
a.    Desperate Accuracy – Gain a +4 bonus to the next attack roll you make before the end of your next turn
b.    Inner-Strength – Make an immediate saving throw as a free action with +3 bonus to the roll (death saves included)
c.    Clarity of Action – Immediately regain the use of one encounter power that you have already expended
When an action point is used in one of these ways, any feats, class features, paragon path features, etc. that trigger when an action point is used are resolved normally.

3.    Skill Challenges – In order to create more tactically interesting skill challenges, the following options will be available to each player in every skill challenge (unless otherwise specified):
a.    Action Points – A player may spend an action point during any skill challenge to take an additional standard action or to immediately re-roll any single d20 check.
b.    Critical Success – Rolling a natural 20 on any skill check for a skill challenge success or failure (not an Assist Another action) results in 1 additional skill challenge success.
c.    Skill DCs – All skill check DCs (classified as Easy, Median, and Hard) will be individually determined on a case-by-case basis, but as a rule of thumb, Easy DCs will be 5 lower than Median and Hard will be 5 higher. Typically, each roll for a skill challenge success will be made at Median difficulty.
d.    Assist Another – As a standard action, a character may make an Easy skill check in an attempt to aid an ally on his/her next skill roll. Any skill can be used in this attempt, but the player must explain how the skill will aid the other character to the DM’s satisfaction. A successful check grants the next player to roll (and only the next player) a +2 bonus on his/her next check. A failed check results in a skill challenge failure. Only 1 character may choose this option in any given round.
e.    Extra Effort – As a standard action, a character may spend a healing surge in order to treat the DC of his/her next roll as Easy rather than Median. If the check succeeds, he/she is awarded a skill challenge success, but a failed roll results in 2 skill challenge failures. Only 1 character may choose this option in any given round.
f.    Desperate Measures – As a standard action, a character may treat the DC of his/her next roll as Hard rather than Median. If the check succeeds, he/she is awarded with 2 skill challenge successes (this will stack with a critical success for 3 total successes), but a failed roll will only result in a single failure.
g.    Unburdened (stolen from Stalker0) – Any character who receives a penalty to a skill check due to wearing armor may spend a healing surge to reduce the armor check penalty to 0.

4.    Character Death – A character that dies and is brought back to life does not suffer the –1 penalty to attacks for 3 milestones. Instead, that character receives 1 Action Point at the beginning of the next session, but can gain no more (not even after an extended rest) until that session is over.

5.    Changing Characters – While it’s preferable if you keep the same character, you may create a new character for the campaign if you choose. The character will start at the same level as the rest of the party, but will use the starting gold and 1 magic item of a 3rd level character or of a character 3 levels below the lowest party member, whichever is higher.

6.    Retraining – Players will be allowed to “retrain” their characters after every session rather than every level. I don’t want you feeling “stuck” with something that isn’t good or that doesn’t work the way you thought it would. More substantial retraining will be allowed upon request when new books/options are made available. Bonus feats granted through these houserules cannot be retrained.

7.    On-Time Bonuses – Players who are at the game table within 5 minutes of start time will be awarded one “re-roll.” At any point during the session, the player may opt to re-roll any single d20 and take the second result, even if it is lower.  The on-time bonuses for different DMs may change.

8.    Character Sheets – Players are required to send a copy of your characters to me prior to the start of the campaign—the earlier the better—but do not need to do so prior to individual sessions unless the character is new or a new level has been attained.

9.    Rules Adjudication – We're going to try to live by the DMG suggestion to “say yes,” so don’t be afraid to remind us of that if you want to try something crazy.

10.    Expertise Feats – At 5th level, everyone gets 1 Expertise feat as a free bonus feat. This is the only way to gain such a feat and they are otherwise banned (i.e. no taking it multiple times). Paragon Defenses is a free bonus feat that everyone gains at 13th level. It will be automatically retrained to Robust Defenses at 23rd level.