Hell's Rebels Documentation

Campaign Primer

16 min read

This document is meant to be a (relatively) concise primer explaining the goals, assumptions, and rule adjustment going into the campaign. You can always ask the GM questions or request further adjustments where necessary.

Campaign basics:

Rules and System

The campaign will use the Remastered rules of the 2nd Edition Pathfinder Roleplaying games, including errata and with some house ruling. All rules and errata are available for free on Archives of Nethys. Pre-remaster rules and items/spells are still considered legal unless/until remastered. Exceptions are only available on request. We will be playing using the Foundry Virtual Tabletop, if you are having trouble running Foundry in your browser please say so and I’ll try and arrange a solution.

Discord and voice chat

During session we will voice chat over Discord. I will not require the use of cameras. Voice changers are allowed but please make sure they aren’t grating on the ears. Please do not abuse Soundboards and stop when requested. ASMR and other auditory stimulation is bad and I hate it. Do not do it, I will mute you.

Schedule

We will run weekly 3-hour long sessions on: Saturdays 11AM PST / 2PM EDT / 7PM GMT / 8PM CET (my time zone). We will run as long as there are at least 3 players. Absent characters will not miss out on levels or loot.

Character Progression

We will use milestone progression, meaning we will level up at specific points and not use Experience Points. Depending on the pace of play you can expect to level up every 4-5 sessions. Characters start at level 1 and the will reach level 15 by the end of the adventure. You do not need to have your build fully planned out in advance but are requested to prepare your choices for level up in advance, given our limited time I would like to avoid spending it levelling up during the session. (I am always available outside session if you have questions or need guidance for levelling up). Use of Pathbuilder is not required for play but I highly recommend it for planning purposes.

Module and Story

For this campaign I will be running the official Paizo Adventure Path module Hell’s Rebels, converted to run in the 2nd edition remastered rules, and further modified by me. This means the campaign will be mostly linear, having pre-determined openings, beats, and an ending. The majority of the module is set inside of the city of Kintargo and there will be plenty of opportunities for roleplay and interaction but this is not a sandbox or an exploration campaign.

The story and setting will be using Paizo’s official Lost Omens campaign settings with some modifications specified below. Most official Paizo setting guides, including 1st Edition ones, are considered canon. If you have doubts about a story or setting element please ask me, I will be happy to discuss it.

Gameplay

Combat is considered a given in Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and while creative non-combat solutions are always appreciated and encouraged combat is and remains the primary focus of the system. We will use a variety of subsystems, including a dedicated Rebellion subsystem. If players find the latter cumbersome or boring we will handwave it or delegate it to an NPC. Subsystems we’re unlikely to use are Hexploration and Wilderness Survival (The Survival skill can still be used in an urban setting but in a much more limited capacity). The Crafting subsystem is available to players, though I won’t require it and don’t particularly encourage its use (I think it’s really underwhelming)

Source Material and Player Options

Rarity:

PF2E uses a system of rarity tags, a good shorthand to their meaning is:

Common

These options are always available, without needing to inform or discuss with me

Uncommon

These you can assume are available but please check in with me when it comes to uncommon Feats, Spells and Items.

Rare

Rare options generally incur some difficulties, I will ask you consult with me when picking these. I will generally not say no but I’d like to know beforehand as I might need to adjust things.

While it’s not their only purpose they are intended to indicate literally how common an option is. To give some examples: an uncommon spell is something you shouldn’t reasonably expect every magic shop or school to just have. Playing a rare Ancestry likely means you’re the only member of said Ancestry in a million mile radius.

Supported Materials

  • All options from official, published Paizo materials are allowed. This includes all setting books and rules supplements published for Pathfinder 2nd Edition. First Edition materials are not compatible and cannot be used. Materials from other Adventure Paths are allowed but are often tagged as Uncommon.
  • Third party options published by Team+ I will generally allow, within reason. I’ll provide some of these upon request, but I’ll not hand all of them out straight away to avoid overcomplicating character creation.
  • Other Third Party materials and homebrew I am willing to consider in consultation. If only because I need to know if I can support it in Foundry.

Character Creation

Ancestries and Heritages

All Common and Uncommon Ancestries and Heritages are freely allowed to be picked. Rare ones are available in consultation with the GM.

Please note that Rare ancestries tend to come with lots of caveats, for example undead ancestries cannot be healed conventionally and will need to disguise themselves within the city as undead are generally considered evil and stinky. Please consult with me before locking in a Rare choice

Hellspawn Nephilihm (Tieflings), Halflings, and Strix may experience some extra difficulties in Kintargo, we will discuss whether or not we will handwave race and discrimination issues before starting.

Backgrounds

Note: You gain the Additional Lore feat for your background-specific lore, as this will make it auto-scale and keep it more relevant.

  • AP-specific backgrounds are highly encouraged though not required (You can find them in the Community Remastered Player’s Guide and I’ve put together a file that lets you import them into Pathbuilder as well). These tend to provide a good tie-in to the established story and setting. I’m willing to consider alternative ability boosts and/or skills and feats if a Background doesn’t fit quite right.
  • Backgrounds from other APs are not allowed, these are generally not intended to work with the story, or offer benefits that only work within the context of another module.
  • All Common and Uncommon Backgrounds are allowed. Rare ones available in consultation Players are allowed to create a custom background, when creating a custom background please pick:
    • Two ability boosts
    • A skill to become trained in that ties in with the background
    • A skill feat tied to the skill you become trained in
    • A lore skill that ties in to the background

Classes and Archetypes

  • All official classes are allowed with the exception of the Exemplar class.
  • Third-party classes are available in consultation.
  • All common Archetypes are allowed.
  • Uncommon Archetypes are generally ok but please tell me you’re picking it up, sometimes they’re weird setting-specific things(Pathbuilder doesn’t/can’t tell you this)
  • Rare, 3d party, and AP-specific Archetypes are available in consultation.
  • Homebrew classes and/or Archetypes are not allowed.

Deities and Alignment

Alignment is no longer a mechanic in the Remastered 2nd Edition rules. In terms of using it as a guideline: The ruling regime you’re trying to overthrow is extremely Lawful Evil. Do with that information as you will.

With the removal of alignment Deities mostly matter for flavour reasons or to specific classes like Clerics, Champions, Vindicator Rangers and Avenger Rogues. There are almost no restrictions on which deities you can worship, with the big exceptions of Zon-Kuthon, Asmodeus and the Archdukes of the Hells. Characters worshipping these entities will very quickly run into problems participating in the rebellion.

In terms of campaign setting you will be in a country where the worship of most entities is outlawed and the worship of Hell is state-mandated. This doesn’t mean nobody worships anything other than Devils, just that people tend to do it in secret. I will provide a setting and story primer that goes into more details on this.

I will not disallow evil characters or the worship of evil entities, I only ask that you exercise discretion and common sense if you do wish to play one.

Backstory

When creating your character you should aim to answer the following questions

  1. How long has your character been in Kintargo? Are they long-time citizens or recent arrival
  2. Do you have connections in the city? Are they friends, relatives, colleagues, rivals? What defines your relationships with them?
  3. What is it your character does in their day-to-day (this can tie in to your background)?
  4. Where do you live or are you staying? Additionally do you have a place of business you go to?
  5. What is your character’s relationship with the regime, and in particular, the church of Asmodeus?
  6. What would motivate your character to organize a rebellion against the regime?

Reason for protest

The campaign will open at the scene of a protest, which will be your first chance to interact with each other and/or the world. What’s your character’s motivation for attending? You can choose from one of the Reasons for Protest from the Player’s Guide, this will grant you a small bonus for the scene itself. You may re-flavor or rewrite your actual reasons as you see fit, just notify me so I’m aware.

Expectations

Players and characters

As mentioned before the campaign is largely linear and happens mostly in and around the city of Kintargo. I expect us to stick mostly to the AP’s story and not go too far off the rails. I will do my best to try and tie in character choices and backstories and provide fun side-adventures but I ultimately have a destination in mind I want to work towards.

In service of this I request you avoid the following

  • Making “lone wolf” characters who are unwilling to work with the party or help anyone.
  • Making characters who refuse to participate in the rebellion, or worse, are super jazzed to join the fascists and betray the party. If you want to make a bastard murderhobo please try and keep it reasonable and fun. In general please try and be mindful of your fellow players.

PF2E is a team game, and nobody can go at it alone. Disagreements and conflict is fine, but I want to avoid a split party or players doing their own thing off to the side without anyone else (unless it’s something we’re all invested in as players).

Note: having to juggle a lot of character names and pronouns I will occasionally make mistakes. If I do, you may correct me and give yourself 1 gold piece for your trouble.

Non-Character Roles

It would be nice to have players, in or out of character, keep track of some of the following:

  1. Session notes to summarize what happened and to share with people who couldn’t make it, or to consult again later
  2. Money, loot and other items (it will be up to the players to determine if they want to carry their own money or pool it)
  3. The Rebellion sheet (if we use the system)
  4. Names, places, and relations (so the note-taker doesn’t have to do it all)

Attendance and Preparedness

I understand we can’t always make it, and I don’t mind if you miss a session if you tell me beforehand. But I do request you try and make it as much as possible. If the campaign schedule and your schedule no longer fit we can try and work it out but please say so instead of not showing up.

As mentioned above please come prepare with your level ups, new spells, items you wish to buy etc. so we can focus on the rest of the game during the hours we have. If it’s too much homework or you’re not sure ask me or your fellow players.

Metagaming

Looking up creature statblocks before or during play, reading the AP beforehand or using information your character would not have is just bad sport, please don’t do it. If you’re not sure your character would know something ask me beforehand.

Safety Tools

I intend to use both Lines and Veils and a variant of the X-card. In practice this means:

  • I’ll ask you to specify beforehand if there’s things, themes, or elements you are uncomfortable with and would rather not go into detail on or have mentioned at all.
    • Veils are things you don’t mind in passing, but don’t want to go into too deeply. This can be anything from torture scenes, to mentions of spiders or other insects. In practice this means we won’t discuss them much or have the scene ‘fade out’ when something happens you’ve defined a veil for.
    • Lines are things you absolutely do not want to deal with. Anything from things that are traumatic to you to things that just make you deeply uncomfortable. Again this can be anything from torture scenes, mentions of domestic violence, to spiders or blood.
  • You have the ability, at any time, to interrupt me during session, publicly or privately, if you’re uncomfortable with what’s happening. I’ll try and steer away from it as gracefully as I can but you’ll have to forgive me if it’s a little bit clunky. This is not intended to be a tool for conflict resolution, but purely to give you a means to avoid traumatic or triggering content.

You can tell me these things privately or publicly, and you don’t have to hold back on my account. We’re all here to have a good time and if you aren’t because you’re feeling bad we can adjust to accommodate.

House rules and clarifications:

General Rules

  • Enemies when reaching 0 hp die and do not get death saving throws with the exception of enemies with Regeneration. These enemies will receive the dying and wounded conditions like PCs, and can generally be killed when reaching dying 4. At the GM’s discretion this may be increased or waived for certain monsters (ie hydras)
  • We will not use the massive damage rules
  • Players can spend all their Hero points to prevent instant death by an effect with the Death trait.

Medicine and Healing

  • Every character gets the Continual Recovery feat for free if trained in Medicine or if they have the Natural Medicine feat. Functionally this removes the one hour cooldown on treating wounds and making it 10 minutes instead.
  • Taking the Natural Medicine feat allows a character to qualify for the Medicine-related skill feat Battle Medicine and use their Nature modifier instead of their Medicine modifier, as they would for Treat Wounds.
    • This does not allow a player to sub Nature for Medicine on skill checks universally. Players using Natural Medicine also do not benefit from items or Archetype feats that improve the outcome of Medicine checks, specifically (For example the bonuses from the Medic Archetype).
  • If the party has somebody invested in the Medicine skill, and when not under any immediate time pressure the GM can allow the party to take an half-hour or hour rest, allowing everyone to heal up, refocus, reload etc. without having to roll any skill checks or spend resources. An hour will still pass for purposes of buffs and other cooldowns.
  • Conversely: if no PC is sufficiently invested in healing skills the party will have to keep track of time and resources spent healing up

Attacks and Skill Checks

  • Skill feats like Group Coercion are not required to perform their specified actions, but attempting them without the feat will likely result in a higher DC
  • If a creature(player character or NPC) is prone another creature can spend an interact action to help them back up
  • Creatures can always make a non-lethal strike at -2 penalty, the nonlethal trait removes this penalty (Yes even guns can be non-lethal, go-go gadget magic rubber bullets)
  • When attempting to disable a hazard players can spend a variable amount of actions. Spending one less action increases the DC, spending one more decreases it.
  • When players go prone and drop items they may get up and pick up said items as an interact action.
    • This can be combined with the Kip Up free action as well
  • Locks can be reverse-picked to lock doors instead of opening them, using the same DCs and rules as picking locks. Doors that have no locks can’t be locked, obviously.
  • Defensive reactions like Nimble Dodge, Interpose Earth or Warding Tattoo can be used after the enemy has rolled their attack and the player sees the result of the roll, rather than after being targeted. (other reactions may be included in this, in discussion with the GM)

Adjustments to Items and Spells

  • Common Items and spells 2 levels below party level do not need to be identified
  • Contrary to the text in Player Core Alchemist can choose from both Common and Uncommon formulae when adding them on level up.
  • Copies of items encountered before are automatically identified
  • Detect magic can help you find magical hazards and will automatically roll for a hidden perception checks to search for magic
  • The Ghost Touch and Astral runes bypass incorporeal and/or undead creatures immunity to precision damage
  • The Slow spell gains the following adjustments:
    • Failure: The target becomes slowed 1 for one round and must attempt a Fortitude save at the end of each of its turns; this ongoing save has the incapacitation trait. On a failed save, the slowed condition continues for 1 round.
    • Critical failure: As failure, but the target becomes slowed 2.
  • The Spellhearts Jyoti’s Feather and Phantasmal Doorknob may not be attached to weapons, only to armor
  • The spell Telekinetic Maneuver ignores creature sizes and the spell attack is made against the target’s appropriate DC instead of their AC
  • Oracles have a number of spells in their repertoire equal to their number of spell slots (in contradiction to the paragraph concerning their repertoire in Player Core 2). When they are granted a spell from their mystery this counts as a bonus repertoire entry and does not count against their limit.
    • In practice this means that Oracles start with 5 cantrips + a cantrip from their mystery, and 3 1st-rank spells + whatever spell their mystery grants (if any)
  • Specific or named magic weapons cannot be purchased or crafted, they can have their fundamental runes upgraded. Property runes can be added or removed, but this turns the weapon into a normal version of it’s base, losing any special abilities it might have.

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