Sometimes, when I don’t have a real focus fore gaming / fantasy head, I go off on a tangent – and I just had an idea. Post-apocalypse has always interested me as a genre, although I have rarely seen settings that are to my taste, and even the world I tried to build (many years ago) just didn’t feel right. But, what if the apocalypse happened to a D&D/Pathfinder world, rather than a current or future world?
Perhaps a God’s War, as the apocalypse? We play around with the concept often enough, we use them to define eras, or a minor fight between gods as a backdrop for adventures – but what about Ragnarok, Doomsday, and all the other world ending scenarios all rolled into one? I used it as an era defining even at one point, but jumped a long way forward to build the world. But I could use the early world? This encapsulates the event, and take elements from many different mythologies …
“After the eternal winter the great snake drank the sea, the wolf ate the sun, cows turned to lions and ate everything. The armies of the righteous, the chosen who had died in battle, those whose hearts were lighter than a feather, and those who had gone into the east with the sun were mustered, and they fought together against the undead legions of the underworlds. Gods, demons, dragons and giants fought to the death, then the fire came, and the seas rose up. Everything was destroyed.”
Except that it wasn’t. Something, or someone, always survives. Little pockets of people, living in remote corners, surrounded by smouldering cities, burning temples, flooded buildings, volcanic badlands and all the other tropes of the post apocalypse world. And Gods can do all sorts of weird things when they are panicking in the last seconds of their ‘life’. Who is to say that some of those badlands aren’t radioactive, null-magic, wild-magic or some other ‘unusual’ effect? How about portals to elemental planes? Great holes in the ground, continually spurting flames (and various minor elemental monsters), huge whirlpools at sea (or in large lakes) that suck vessels down and are home to all sorts of scary things. A high, conical mountain with clouds issuing from its summit – it doesn’t spew magma, but the wind whistles upwards from its summit, as winds gush in from the plane of air. Who knows what lives in that?
That leads to mutated versions of typical D&D monsters and the elevation of some others. Perhaps radioactive mudmen, whose touch burns for an extra d6 damage? Or a pack of three-headed wild dogs? Mongrel men and wererats might come to the fore. Undead, of various sorts, around every corner – after all, think how many people would have died in the apocalypse? Evil, intelligent, trees and plants could be everywhere!
But what about education and learning? Most big temples, universities and libraries were in the cities – and the cities are just smouldering ruins. The gods, of course, are dead – and while new gods will rise up and grow, they aren’t powerful yet. Some philosophies might survive, but the Green Faith has been blown out of the ground – quite literally. The magic colleges and libraries, all attracted the wrath of the one god or another, although there is probably a legend of one that survived, but that has to be half a continent away – and an epic journey.
Magic, Faith, Philosophy & Religion
Most of the gods and philosophies are new, and not fully developed yet. On top of that, nearly all the divine casters who survived were low level adepts – and could only pass on their limited knowledge to their acolytes. So divine casters will be limited to spells from the Adept spell list, that fits well as survival and flexibility would have been the main concerns of the survivors. If they ever get the opportunity to take L6 (and above) spells, they can fill those slots with lower level spells – unless they can research them, or find someone who has researched the spells to teach them. All other aspects of their class remain the same – although there are probably fewer domains to choose from. This includes Rangers, Clerics & Druids – assume paladins and Inquisitors are not suitable (as PC classes) for this setting.
Maybe the main philosophy/religion is based on Survival and the proto-deities have Oracles and Witches as their main priests.
Interesting! There are four Oracle Mysteries and Witch patrons that overlap. Ancestors, Moon/Lunar, Time and Winter. And they make sense for a post-apocalypse setting – I wonder if I can create deities that fit them. One base ‘religion’ and four sets of proto-deities for the world … If the ‘survival’ religion is TN (so Divine casters are restricted to TN, LN, NG, CN and NE, although Evil alignments are banned in my games) and the Oracles and Witches can take any alignment …
Academic Casters, Wizards and Magi, will be limited as well – perhaps to spells from the PHB wizards list, although, perhaps, Magi should be limited to those spells that appear on both the CRB Wizard List AND the Magus list. Wizards are universalists and no one gets free spells when they go up a level – instead they have to find new spells.
Charismatic casters, Sorcerers and Bards, are a different kettle of fish, and need some thought. Only CRB spells (to keep them in line with arcane casters) but beyond that, it needs more thought. Bards are probably OK, as they are generally considered the weakest class. It might be interesting to restrict sorcerers to the Elemental bloodline and restrict them to universal spells and the four elemental domains, although they will have to choose their primary element. That would give them a very different feel, but still leave them in very much the same role as normal. Charismatic casters will only be able to learn new spells (that are on their spell lists) that they have seen cast.
Skills, Feats and Materials
Magic Item Creation Feats need to be restricted, as the mainly small settlements will have lost those abilities, when they lost the higher level casters. Keep Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion as options – everything else has to be learned from a specialist – and that should entail a fairly significant quest. Perhaps there is one local source of low level magical weapons and armour – and the craftsman who knows that secret keeps it very close to their chest – after all, that is the secret that keeps their family important. This is probably an Expert with the Master Craftsman feat – capable of creating +1 items or minor wondrous items. Anything else would have to be ‘recovered’ or as a reward for a major service to someone powerful? Who would be powerful?
Clay, wood and leather might be common, while any Metals would be rarer. Perhaps double the cost for items with metal components and quadruple of all metal items? Is steel more expensive than bronze?