Rules and Important Knowledge

in Character Creation

Rules

Adults Only

Your character must be mature for their given race, the wilds of Etharis are deadly and I'm not having anyone taking children out into them.

Starting Level

For Saga of the Season we will be starting at level 3, and the adventure uses milestones to grant level ups. This means I will track your progress and let you know when you will all level up. As Level 3 PCs you are already an accomplished hero in your fledgling tribe and are recognised as someone whwo completed a great task. This can be something you did on the journey south to found Clan Ragvall, or during the tough winter the clan enduring shortly after its birth. Either way it should be something you can see a real-world medieval adventurer accomplishing. Some broad ideas to act as a launch pad:

• Champion. You slew a mighty foe, such as bear, a dire wolf, or another clan's warrior.
• Healer. You used magic or herbalism to save the life of a dying clanmate.
• Protector. You saved someone in your village from being killed by a ferocious monster in winter, like a hungerer beast or a sky drake.
• Relic-Finder. While exploring Valika and the dungeons hidden in its wilderness, you stumbled upon a great relic of the past, like an ancient warrior's spear, a rune-etched stone tablet, or the patterned sail of a longship.

Your Clan: Ragvall

Clan Ragvall is the youngest of the Valikan clans—and it is the clan the player characters belong to in this campaign. The founding of the clan starts with a schism. A charismatic raider named Hrafen av Skeir boldly split from Clan Völgr, taking with him his most trusted warriors, and about one hundred other clanfolk who saw him as a steady leader that outshone the power-hungry Nolgr Magnusson, chief of the Völgr.
Hrafen and his schismatic followers traveled south along the coast of the Grarjord mainland, visiting fishing villages and denouncing Chief Magnusson as a tyrant who made new laws at his whim, and raided not for the glory of his clan or the glory of the gods but to feed his insatiable ego. Few listened, but those who did joined Hrafen in their search for a new homeland.
In time, Hrafen had gathered five hundred Valikans from all walks of life—thralls, farmers, warriors, and even a deposed chieftain—and from all six of the clans. They traveled ever southward until the snows of winter hemmed them in and they were forced to settle upon the shores of Akkeri Bay within a rugged land near the border of the Bürach Empire called the Teeth. As hunger set in and faith in Hrafen’s leadership faltered, a warrior discovered a statue buried in the snow. This monument was to the legendary shield maiden Ragvall the Blade-Breaker, who fought alongside the Seven Heroes who tamed Grarjord. The dispossessed saw this as a sign, and Hrafen declared his people to be the clan of Ragvall. All despair was struck from their minds and they worked as if divinely inspired to build their new home on the shores of Akkeri Bay.
Though many died that winter of cold, hunger, and exhaustion, Clan Ragvall survived. The winter snows slowly recede as spring dawns upon the new clan’s first year. Now, the Saga of the Seasons begins, and the champions of Ragvall Village will carry the fate of their fledgling clan upon their shoulders. Will they carry it to greatness? Or will they lead it to ruin?

Health

At level 1 you take the maximum health as normal. When you level up you make take the average value, or you may roll it. You make this decision before you roll any dice. Re-rolling is allowed on 1/4 of your hit dice value and every class has their allowed re-rolls listed on the Character Classes page. But as an example, a sorcerer with a D6 hit dice can only re-roll a 1, but a barbarian with a D12 hit dice can re-roll a 1,2 or 3.

Ability Score Method

We will be using point buy, I know some people enjoy rolling for stats but I've found its much more balanced and fair on everyone to go with point buy. It still gives the flexibility that people find lacking with standard array, but ensures everyone is on roughly the same playing field. Additionally, you will be able to use the optional rule to customise your origin, meaning you can swap the ASIs that you would normally get from the race for ones that fit your character more, this allows for more race flexibility and cool and unique combos and ideas to not suffer as much mechanically. Additionally, you will be getting one ASI at level 1 which you can use either as an ASI or for a feat.

Tasha's Optional Features

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduced a lot of optional class features and all of these will be allowed in my campaigns. You can use the options above for customising races as mentioned above, but not the full custom race.

Homebrew Rules

These rules aren't standard 5e but I will be using them in my campaign because I like them.

• You can drink a potion as a bonus action and you receive the normal rolled healing (e.g. a potion of healing is 2d4+2) but you may also drink a potion as an action to receive the maximum healing (e.g. a potion of healing would be 10). Feeding a potion to someone else is always an action and the healing will need to be rolled.
• Flanking provides a +2 bonus to attack rolls rather than advantage. However, there will be no bonus if a flanked creature has a passive Perception higher than 18, blindsight, tremorsense, or can realistically see in more places than one (e.g. a two-headed creature or a beholder).
• Switching weapons is a free action.
• Familiars can use their reaction to take concentration from you on a spell. This means that you won't need to roll concentration checks when you're hit, and could effectively concentrate on two spells at one time. However, your familiar must make concentration checks if they are hit, and if they die, then the spell you had them concentrate on will drop.
• You will gain a number of points equal to your Intelligence modifier to demonstrate how you pick things up quicker than other people. These points can be used to gain proficiency in a skill, tool, musical instrument, language, armour or weapon. You can also use three points to gain expertise in something you aleady had proficiency in. You can gain or lose proficiencies as your Intelligence score changes over the course of the campaign.
• If you go down, or sustain a critical hit, you will have a chance of sustaining Grievous Wound.
• Allied Creatures with the same initiative take their turns at the same time and are able to co-ordinate their turns together. As an example, a Warlock could use their bonus action to Hex the target, giving it disadvantage on Strength checks, and then the fighter could attempt to shove them prone before both parties wail on them. There is no requirement to take one person's full turn before taking another person's full turn. Enemies still always go first.
• Like any other saving throw, you can use a bardic inspiration on death saving throws. Paladin auras also affect them, and you can even use inspiration to re-roll them.

Homebrew Elements

There are a lot of elements from the Grim Hollow Campaign guide that I want to incorporate into my campaigns, you can find each of them listed here:

• Advanced Weapons - Various Melee and Ranged weapons with additional stats or traits along with their prices.
• Additional Feats - Feats that centre around grim dark style campaigns, or the additional weapon types.
• Additional Spells - Expanded spell lists for all spellcasters which includes various grim dark themed spells.
• Curses - An entire curses system that is usable by any full spellcaster class along with lists of curses you can cast and their effects.
• Transformations - The darkness of Etharis can change people, but some more physically than others. There will be the option to contract transformative curses, or boons depending how you see it, throughout the campaign and here you can find all the information about the various transformations.
• Extra Subclasses - There is an expanded list of subclasses centred around the grim dark theme, all of which I'm happy for people to use if they so desire. They may need tweaking as I'm unsure how much playtesting they got.
• Languages - In Etharis there is no common tongue, each reigon has its own dialect all of which are considered standard languages under DnD rulebook definitions. They are: Charneault, Castinellan (It is also the predominant language of Morencia and so is used a lot in trade), Valiki (Each clan speaks a different strand of Valiki but is similar enough to converse with each other), Ostoy, Lower Bürach (spoken by commoners), Upper Bürach (highborn dialect which most formal writings are written in. Learnt by foreigners).

Advanced Backgrounds System

In my campaigns we will be making use of the advanced backgrounds system from Grim Hollow. These replace your standard background choices. The reasoning for this is that I feel they give your characters easy to follow goals and ambitions and just provide a lot more direction and character than regular backgrounds. They are more complex but you can find a hopefully easy to read and understand compendium here.
Please read through and pick a background and profession, then discuss it with me. If none seem to fit your character feel free to propose one and I'll see what I can do.