Running a Tome + PF game. Anything to look out for?

[Bihlbo]

I'm planning on running a game with this premise:

Long ago the Empire sent scouts to your world, but the Portals(TM) were destroyed when the Empire fell, leaving your ancestors stranded. On a hostile world where everything was out to kill you, some of the original scouting party wanted to isolate themselves while others thought it best to make allies with the intelligent people of this world. Those who left taught some of the ways of the Empire to the savage aliens, while the rest stayed to create a fortress kingdom of advanced warriors dedicated to preserving civilization.

(Edited for clarification) The PCs are the Isolationist descendants and will be using Tome. They are high-tech descendants of people who made sure every single baby born went straight into the war engine. The aliens, originally trained by those Imperial turncoats seeking alien allies, are using PF build rules with PF limitations built in (e.g. NPC rogues get sneak attack that specifically states that it cannot be used with flasks, etc). The idea here is that the players should approach things as though they are super tough since they'll be outnumbered mostall the time.

Yeah, this makes things complicated, but only for me. The players only need to concern themselves with Tome, and probably don't even need to know that their enemies regard fighters with Combat Focus as high-tech shenanigans.

What are some things I need to look out for? What are some good changes to make? Because of the basic design goal, should I further nerf PF casters to bring them back down to 3.5-level strengths?

[Lokathor]

I'm unclear on if the players will be on the Tome/Imperial side or the PF/Rebel side. Either way, Tome has at least two systems written for it for how non-magical armor works, and at least two systems for magical item pricing, effects, creation, etc. So you'll have to pick what your game is going with.

Also that decision will probably affect both sides because while it might make sense for class features to not be the same among everyone, it'd be almost-insane to have items (which can be handed from person to person) not be the same among everyone.

[Bihlbo]

I edited the description to make it more clear. Imagine Cortez among the Aztecs, only his ships were burned and Spain said "To Hell with you, we didn't want you there in the first place." Then half his army goes off with the natives who were allied with Cortez to kill the Aztecs, leaving Cortez and his army isolated, alone, and forced to fight nearly all the time.

Those Spaniards who left Cortez eventually get killed and only some of what they know gets passed on to the natives, meanwhile Cortez declares this to be Cortezia and tells his people that Europe has been destroyed. A hundred years later, what happens? The Aztecs and others, not having been conquered by Spain (let's assume), have gotten a little better at war, while the people of Cortezia have known little other than war and have gotten much better. The PCs are citizens of Cortezia trying to expand the borders through violent conquest and whatever else they come up with.

Now set all that on a fantasy version of John Carter's Mars.

Okay to be honest, I'm not even keeping it straight in my head at this point. Purpose: Tome for PCs, non-Tome (PF or 3e or something) for NPCs because the only way to get the training for Tome classes/feats/rules is to be a member of the more advanced, militaristic culture.


Magic items, check. Thanks. I could see giving every Tome character a "You know how to use magic items better than the savages can" ability. Or tack on a requirement that a certain secret spell has to be cast on magic items to "upgrade" them.

[Whipstitch]

If you're using tome materials I'd go with just 3.x stuff in order to save yourself headaches when it comes to things like concentration, spell versions and CMB/CMD vs. Grapple. And yeah, letting the NPCs rock Caster Edition while the PC wizards still have d4 hd does indeed seem like it'd run counter to your goals. If NPC inferiority is really your bag than I'd stick with giving the opposition vanilla non-scaling feats while the players get to rock out tome classes, scaling feats and high ability scores.

[Lokathor]

If magic items should be better for Tome characters, make them only scale up for Tome characters. Then others would be forced to invest huge amounts of money into paying just for the higher bonuses while the Tome characters spend their money paying for actually cooler special abilities. Or something like that. Tome guy finds a PF item, might as well throw it out. PF Guy finds a Tome item, it might be a cool special, but they'll be gimped since they won't get enough bonus from it since it's just +1 for them instead of +(Level/3 rounded up).

[spongeknight]

I think you're going about this the wrong way.

It sounds like what you want is to have PCs be waaay better than NPCs who fill the same role, to the point where a PC fighter will have no problem carving his way through a dozen NPC fighters of the same level. Using Tome is definitely the right idea, but forcibly divorcing Tome mechanics from the enemies is not really going to work. Instead you should just have everybody use Tome rules for feats, armor, items, magic items, ect, but limit NPCs to having less or no feats and be stuck in shitty NPC classes like warrior, adept, commoner and expert. Hell, there's an optional rule in the Tome books that gives NPC warriors a small bonus instead of gaining feats at all, which should work wonderfully for you.

You can still call your enemies wizards, but they'll be adepts. Enemy rogues will be experts, enemy soldiers will be warriors, and your players will feel like badasses when they take apart armies of conscripted commoners at level 6. That's kind of what NPC classes are for- making sure PCs are better at their role than the available unimportant NPCs that happen to be around.

[Previn]

You can still call your enemies wizards, but they'll be adepts. Enemy rogues will be experts, enemy soldiers will be warriors, and your players will feel like badasses when they take apart armies of conscripted commoners at level 6. That's kind of what NPC classes are for- making sure PCs are better at their role than the available unimportant NPCs that happen to be around.

I would worry about the curtain on that being pulled back really quickly with a savvy group of players. An expert is never going feel like a rogue in combat, an adept is going to have a pretty blatant spell list/power discrepancy.