Variant Campaign Rules

Being a living campaign, Valyar benefits from a number of the variant systems presented by Paizo to enhance the experience of our players. There are also some rules that make the game a bit more difficult to run sessions for a wide variety of players single sessions at a time. To handle both of these, below are presented the special rules that we use. You will find a number of variant systems from Paizo, as well as a few homebrew systems that we've devised presented below. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the CORE PATHFINDER RULE CHANGES page as well, to know what changes are made to default (non-'optional') systems. Check out the Character Options category if you're looking for our homebrew character options (such as feats, classes, and items).

Additional Variant Options
If you are curious about an option listed as ‘optional’ or ‘variant’ that aren't on this page, feel free to ask about it. If it is a system change that only affects options that are added (such as Vehicles) you will likely be able to take it. This is also true of options that allow you to make different choices with options already present (such as Variant Multiclassing that we've already added). Variants that overhaul entire systems (such as Revised Action Economy) are likely to be denied, or at the very least, allowed for the individual character if the system can be incorporated into a single character without affecting the rest of the game. Variants that just add options to a character (such as Mythic) will not likely be approved, unless the GM team wishes to add this to the entire game. So don’t get your hopes up if you’re interested in a variant or optional system that falls into the last two categories.

Background Skills
Artistry may be used to earn gold like perform or profession.

Corruption
Corruptions are meant to be used as an affliction rather than a boon. The tales that these story elements create are ones of descent from grace (as the name would imply). As such, players may apply these corruptions to their good characters that they wish to see struggle with a taint upon their flesh and soul slowly taking over. The exception to this is the Promethean, which characters of any alignment can take. You must apply for your character to gain a corruption.

Characters with corruptions gain a Manifestation at every odd main character level. You are likely to only receive one corruption, but in the event that you are approved for additional corruptions, you may select manifestations from either corruption when you gain a new manifestation. You are still subject to advancing the corruption of both though.

When a character reaches the final stage of a corruption, they are subject to all of the penalties of said corruption except for becoming an NPC (if you choose to fall to evil and continue the character's story). Although the Possessed corruption doesn't specify, treat the possessing spirit as evil. If your character isn't killed by the corruption (such as with Lich) then you may convert your corruption manifestations and stains into the simple template for that corruption, or you may apply for the full template.

Evil and neutral characters wishing to gain these corruptions may apply as normal for the full templates, or the simple corruption templates.

Hero Points
The hero point system is in use with the caveat that characters gain a hero point when they hit a new ECL or Mythic Tier. Characters may pick the Antihero option (opt out of hero points in exchange for a bonus feat). You may retrain this feat later to opt back into the hero points system, but you only get 1 hero point (as if you were a higher level character entering play).

Reputation and Fame
You begin the game with a Fame score of your ECL + Charisma modifier and this many Prestige Points. Every time you gain an ECL, or successfully complete a session, your Fame increases by 1 and you gain a Prestige Point.

Fame Awards
Some of the fame awards work differently than presented. See the following list for how these awards are handled in Valyar.


 * Master of Trade: You are limited to once per in game week rather than once per session. This ability resets on Fireday, at the same time that the markets refresh.

Skill Unlocks
Skill unlocks are available to Unchained Rogue and Unchained Ninja.

Stamina and Combat Tricks
The “Feat Access” option is in place.

Starting Occupations
Every character has an occupation that defined their pre-adventuring career. This can be a wide variety of things, and doesn't necessarily need to be their first occupation in their life.

Select a bonus feat you qualify for that comes from this occupation (such as Power Attack for a Soldier, or Skill Focus (Stealth) for a Scout). Select two skills from this occupation as well (such as Ride and Profession (Soldier) for a Soldier or Survival and Perception for a Scout). You may either treat these skills as class skills or gain a +1 competence bonus on them.

Variant Multiclassing
Characters may opt into the Variant Multiclassing system anytime prior to reaching standard character level 3. If they are past 3rd level, they may retrain their 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th feats to Variant Multiclassing (all at one time). If the character wishes to opt out of variant multiclassing, or change their secondary class, they may treat the Secondary Class Features as feats for the purposes of retraining (again, this must be done all at once).

VMC'd Barbarians may use the UBarbarian's rage and greater rage abilities. VMC'd monks should use the chained monk's abilities. VMC'd summoners use the Unchained Eidolon.

Core Downtime Changes
The downtime system is used with the following modifications:


 * Do not divide your check by 10 when earning gp. You have an ESR, Effective Skill Ranks, this is equal to your skills ranks plus and minus all bonuses and penalties you would add to a take 10 for the check you are making in Downtime.
 * There is no spending limit on capital in metropolises (smaller settlements follow the normal spending limits though).
 * Buildings (Rooms) and Organizations (Teams) are all pooled together to determine your bonuses to Earning Capital rolls. This means that your businesses can make a maximum of 5 Earn Capital rolls per week (1 for gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, and Magic each). Gain capital - GP: is done in GP not SP and is factored into your monthly settlement earning. Buildings/Organizations earn capital daily but each room and/or team only contributes to 1 type of capital per day.
 * You may use Magic capital for expensive material components for spells or for spellcasting services but not for magic item construction costs.
 * When earning capital and gp from a settlement, the gp spent on the earned cost of capital does not count towards your normal 30k gp/month limit (e.g. if you generate 3 Magic and 200 gp with a business, only 50 gp goes towards your 30k gp/month limit, while the other 150 gp goes towards paying for the Magic).
 * In lieu of earning capital directly and as a use of excess settlement earnings, you may put the gp earned from businesses directly towards the purchased cost of a capital type without it contributing towards your 30k gp/month limit as above. This does not save any money, but is merely an option for reducing the workload of allocating bonuses around (e.g. if you generate 250 gp with a business, you can put 200 gp towards purchasing 2 Magic and only 50 of that gp counts towards your 30k gp/month limit).

Downtime Actions

Declare what downtime actions your character is taking in the downtime channel on the discord (include the in game date, any of the randomly rolled market items you are buying, and the amount of gp you are making if you are earning gold). The following are new actions you can take, or modifications to downtime actions you could already take:


 * Earn XP: You are limited to earning XP up to Level 5. Each day earning XP earns an ammount of XP equal to an encounter CR matching your lvl from the table here.
 * Hunt Monster: You may hunt a Specific Monster, its CR can be no greater than your ECL up to lvl 5 plus half your ECL beyond level 5 rounded down. This action can be included as a part of Earn XP. This action counts as defeating 1 creature from which you may use class features and feats on. (This is primarily for Xenoalchemist, Necromancers, and harvesting feats.) Truly unique creatures are subject to approval. You need to spend one day of downtime for every CR of the monster you are hunting to locate and kill it. Additional information for xenografts: You can only acquire first or second level grafts from DT hunted monsters. Third level grafts and above need their own proper session.
 * Earn Capital. for Labor, Goods, Influence, and Magic. Divide your ESR by 10, round down, add 1, that is the amount of Capital of the type you choose that you earn.
 * Earn Gold: Earn 50 times your ESR in the skill you are using for Downtime if it has a use for earning gold.
 * Craft Mundane Items: You craft 100 times you ESR in the respective crafting skill. You pay 30% of its base cost for materials, and these items can be sold to Settlements at 70% base cost of the item.
 * Craft Magic Items: You may not spend Magic capital on crafting magic items. Craft Magic Items can be used to Earn GP. You earn Gold up to your Magic Item Crafting speed minus 30% and the cost of Materials.
 * Recruit for an Organization: This happens in the background and does not take downtime actions on your part.
 * Construct a Building: This happens in the background and does not take downtime actions on your part. Using the Lyre of Building takes 1 hour of Downtime per use for the days it is used. For Fabricate it takes 30 minutes of downtime, 15 with Quicken Spell and otherwise functions as below.
 * Research an Occult Ritual: You must submit your occult ritual research  it is not a 1st party ritual or otherwise on this wiki. Rituals developed on their own or learned through an NPC require 1 week per ritual level. Rituals learned directly from other PCs take 1 day per level. This does not need to be done all at once.
 * Lead a Settlement: If you have a leadership role in a settlement, you must spend 1 day per week performing duties for that role (traditionally this is on Fireday).
 * Explore a Hex: You can explore a hex with your downtime. All characters are treated as having a speed of 30 ft to determine how long it takes to explore the hex (Plain or Hill: 1 day; Desert, Forest, or Marsh: 2 days; Mountain: 3 days). Otherwise this is treated as the Scheme for an Upcoming Adventure action. Be sure to request a session before you dedicate the downtime, as it may take some time for a GM to be able to run your exploration session.
 * Research a spell: You must get the spell research approved first.
 * Transport: Your team is assumed to move at a speed of 30ft for determining how long it takes them.
 * Travel: Unless you are using some means of magical travel, traveling around the world map takes time. Regardless of actual speed, characters are treated as having a speed of 30ft. when traveling. This means that they can travel across 3 plains hexes, or 2 hexes of any other kind with a single downtime day. Movement by water allows a character to travel longer in a day (5 plains or open water hexes, 3 hexes of any other kind). If you are capable of flight, you may treat any terrain type other than mountains as plains.
 * You may take certain downtime actions while traveling in a group. Since these actions are done while resting, or in vehicles under non-ideal circumstances, they take twice the normal amount of time though. The actions are: Add Spells to Your Spellbook; Craft Magic Items; Craft Mundane Items; Heal Others; Spell Research; Research Facts and Lore; Retrain (assuming the individual retraining you is traveling with you); Train an Animal (assuming the animal you are training is traveling with you; increase the DC of handle animal checks by 4).
 * The following spells and effects can increase your travel speed when traveling. Some may prohibit other downtime actions:
 * Wind Walk: If all members of a traveling group are under the effects of a wind walk spell, then they travel 6 hexes in a day (treat mountains as 2 hexes for this purpose). Travelers using this method cannot take downtime actions.

Retraining
Characters can spend downtime retraining. Classes not explicitly spelled out can have their class features retrained as well. If there is a question about whether or not a particular class feature can be retrained, feel free to ask about whether or not it can be retrained on discord. You do not need to have a higher level character to retrain (meaning level 20 characters can retrain even their level 20 class features)

Construction and Recruit Times
The time it takes to build a building or recruit an organization is equal to the build/recruit time of the longest room/team, plus the time for every room/team with a build/recruit time of 2 or less days, +2 days per room/team that takes longer than 2 days to build/recruit. The following time reductions are totals, not cumulative. You may only reduce the construction/recruitment time by 25% increments.


 * The build time for buildings can be decreased by spending additional capital. After adding up the costs of the building, you may reduce the time it takes to 75% by paying an extra amount of Labor equal to the base Labor cost of the building.
 * You may reduce the time it takes to 50% by paying an extra amount of Labor equal to twice the base Labor cost of the building.
 * You may reduce the time it takes to 25% by paying an extra amount of Labor equal to twice the base Labor cost of the building as well as an amount of Magic equal to the base Labor cost.
 * You may reduce the time it takes to one day by paying an extra amount of Labor equal to twice the base Labor cost of the building as well as an amount of Magic equal to 4 times the base Labor cost.
 * This represents hiring spellcasting services like fabricate castings.
 * If you are able to cast fabricate yourself, then you may instead use it yourself to speed up the construction speed. Every casting of fabricate grants you additional Magic capital that can only be spent on reducing the construction time equal to your caster level. If the Magic cost of reducing the construction time is more than what you can generate with fabricate within the reduced construction time you are shooting for, the building is completed once you cast the final fabricate that would generate the requisite amount of Magic. Alternatively, if you cannot generate enough 'free' Magic within the reduced construction time, you can spend the additional Magic as normal.
 * For example: You are constructing a building with a base Labor cost of 50 labor, and a construction time of 8 days. But your caster level is only 10, and you can only cast fabricate twice in a day. To reduce the time to 2 days (25% of 8 days), you would need to spend 50 Magic. Since you can only generate 20 'free' Magic a day (2 castings times 10th caster level), the building would finish construction after your first casting of fabricate on the 3rd day of construction.
 * For example: You are constructing a building with base Labor cost of 15 Labor, and a construction time of 16 days. Your caster level isstill only 10, and you can still only cast fabricate twice a day. To reduce the time to a single day, you would need to spend 60 Magic. Again, you only generate 20 'free' Magic a day, so it would take 3 days to complete the building, instead of just a single day.
 * Organizations can be recruited faster by spending more Influence. Reduce the time by 25% by doubling the base Influence cost, or by 50% by tripling the base Influence cost.

Separate buildings and separate organizations can be built/recruited at the same time. An organization that works in one of your buildings can likewise be recruited at the same time as the building is being built.

You may use a crafting skill appropriate for building buildings (such as carpentry or stone-masonry) to craft the Goods and Labor components of a room.

Buildings and organizations are assumed to be handled by NPCs. As such, unless you are using an appropriate craft skill or the Earn Capital action, build/recruit times do not take any downtime days on your part.

A Lyre of Building can be used to increase construction speeds. For every hour that the lyre is played treat your character as having spent an additional 300 Labor.

Downtime Events
Downtime events can happen once per IC week (Fireday) for one of your buildings or organizations. You may roll randomly to determine what happens for any or all of your businesses.

If the building doesn’t have a random events table use the closest approximation, or roll on the generic table if there is none. If the organization doesn’t have a random table, use the closest approximation.

When a downtime event happens, roll in the bot channel to determine which event happens, adding the settlement's Danger to the result.

Settlements (Not Currently Available)
Every in game week on Fireday, the magic item markets refresh. This is when the randomly rolled magic items are rolled again (clearing out the previous magic items) and when you may roll a d% to see if a magic item is available.

The following rules are in place for Valyar:


 * There is no buying or selling limit.
 * The highest level NPC spellcaster is assumed to be 16, and the highest level spells that can be cast are 8th (this goes for spell services as well as magic items).
 * Even if established that there is a higher level NPC spellcaster during a session, it is assumed that said NPC does not offer their services unless otherwise stated by the GM team.
 * Even then, it will be for a limited time.
 * All magic items that meet the above restriction are available.
 * The randomly rolled magic items are sold for 75% market value. These will be posted in the news-and-weather discord channel. When purchasing these magic items, be sure to include the item you purchased on the day you purchased it in the downtime channel.

For all other settlements there is no purchase limit (adventurers can sell items for 70% of the items market value no matter the settlement). Randomly rolled magic items are available to anyone in the settlement and may be purchased any number of times.

Scaling Magic Items
Scaling Magic Items are available. These come in two varieties. Fixed and Scaling:

Fixed
The base item can be used without any of the higher-level upgrades, or you can pick a higher level and purchase an individual item that has the base abilities plus one or more unlocked levels. You should use the standard price for that level of scaling item, as described on Table: Value of Scaling Items.

For example, you could purchase out a spear of the huntmaster as a CL 6th item worth 3,202 gp with just the base abilities, a CL 8th item worth 4,950 gp with the base abilities plus the 8th-level unlockable ability, a CL 10th item worth 9,300 gp with the base abilities plus the 8th- and 10th-level unlockable abilities, and so on.

Scaling
Scaling items require a special ritual to unlock their greater powers. A character that owns a scaling item must burn exotic incense, soak the item in baths of yliaster infused mercury, or other strange ritual that consumes expensive materials with a gp value equal to the difference between the current cost of the item, and the value of the item described on Table: Value of Scaling Items to unlock the higher level bonuses and abilities. This process adjusts the current cost of the item to the new value.

Staff Recharging
Instead of requiring a spell be cast into a staff once per day to recharge it, all staves recharge at a rate of one charge per day. This counts as casting a spell into the staff, and so you may not recharge the staff by casting additional spells unless you have a feature that would normally allow you to do so.

Technology
Technology from sources such as Ultimate Technology and Technology Guide are not available for purchase. Keep in mind that to craft a technological item, you must have a lab. There are no labs in the city of Valyar, and no known labs in the world. Since they're considered artifacts, labs cannot be created either. As the game progresses, labs may be uncovered. Treat technological items as magic items for purposes of availability in settlements that have a lab (75% chance per week that a technological item worth less than the settlement's base value is available for purchase). Settlements that have a lab are limited to the types of items that the lab can produce in addition to any other restrictions that the settlement imposes.

Active Spellcasting
You may not Overclock Spells. You may opt in to the Spell Attack Roll option for spells you cast (do not use the Faster Variant). You do not suffer spell fumbles. Regardless of whether or not you use Active Spellcasting, we do use the Spell Critical system.

Esoteric Material Components
These may be purchased from any NPC vendor that sells magical items or components. These are optional components. The Eschew Materials feat does not apply to Esoteric Material Components, but has been altered to interact with Esoteric Material Components.

Players cannot scrounge for components.

Idols
These are a thing, expect them to crop up from time to time.

Occult Rules
Since these are listed under the Variant Rules section of the PFSRD it is worth listing this here. Additionally, Occult Classes are completely legal as well.

Occult Rituals require research to discover. A player may apply for an Occult Ritual in the same way that they would apply for spell research. The one approving the Occult Ritual will determine the time it takes to research the ritual.

Primal Magic
Areas of primal magic do pop up from time to time.

Simplified Spellcasting
If you are a prepared spellcaster you may opt into this system to save yourself some bookkeeping. This choice must be made prior to reaching level 10 as a warpriest or magus, or level 7 as a Cleric, Druid, Shaman, Witch, or Wizard.

Spellblights
Spellblights are a thing. They can be caused Arcane Spell Failure, Crafting Magic Items, Spell Turning, Teleportation Mishaps, and Use Magic Device as described on the spellblights page.

Wild Magic
Like Primal Magic, areas of wild magic pop up from time to time as well.