For a while now I've been wanting to make up some adventures and campaigns based on ancient mythology. Recently I decided to give it a try with Pathfinder. At first I was thinking about what I would need to modify and add to get Pathfinder to works with an ancient mythology setting. But really, apart from removing non-human races and limiting the equipment that's available, what else needs to be changed? Are there any classes, feats, spells, etc that really need to be changed or added? Or can everything be used as is? I've been looking at books like Testament and thinking "some this new stuff is good, but is any of it really necessary?" None of the new classes and prestige classes were really that different from the core ones, and none of the new feats and spells really screamed "ancient mythology". Has anyone here tried using Pathfinder for an ancient mythology setting? What changes did you make, if any?
I did some work on a 3.5 setting that was classical Greek/Egyptian in flavour. There were not that many changes I really needed to make, although I emphasised the 'cottage industry' feel (no general stores or magic shops), and there was a high number of Aasimar and Tiefling characters around (almost all the royal families were Aasimar, for example). In terms of equipment, breastplate was really the heaviest common armour, although the Greek-style people had panoply armour for the very wealthy, and those in the far north used chain mail. I didn’t restrict races at all, except in terms of geography.
Really, the biggest differences were flavour wise, not crunch wise.
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Has anyone here tried using Pathfinder for an ancient mythology setting?
At a first glance, Osirion, Qadira and Katapesh seem like they would have the best feel for an ancient-mythology 'Sinbad / Clash of the Titans' feeling setting. There really isn't a place that's spot on perfect for a more Greco-Roman or Mesopotamian setting, but the Persian / Egyptian stuff should be easy enough to use right out of the box.
I suspect that Testament might not fit as well, as would, say, Hamunaptra (much of which you could slot straight into Osirion without breaking the feel of the area), but you could probably take advantage of the fact that Thuvia and Rahadoum get so much less 'play' than Osirion and tweak one into a quasi-Babylonian style setting, or have a monotheistic faith crop up in Rahadoum, taking advantage of the expulsion of the other gods to sneak in under the guise of a 'philosophy' with some charismatic speakers, while obscuring the deistic underpinnings of that philosophy to avoid persecution (much as earlier faiths IRL often had to operate underground).
Indeed, making Thuvia into a more Greco-Roman / Babylonian / Mesopotamian influenced area might help to distinguish it from the Persian Qadira and Egyptian Osirion, and make it a bit more interesting. Right now, at least to me, it seems like Osirion-lite, and the vast amount of information I've seen on the nation revolves around some elixir they sell, which, IMO, leaves a lot of room to flesh out the 99.9% of the nation that has nothing to do with that (no matter how important the rulers think it is, and how much their economy revolves around it).
I've started working on the alignments and domains of the deities from each pantheon. I have both Deities and Demigods and Testament that I can use as reference. Are either of these worth using? Is there something better? Is there a 3.5 book with mythological pantheons in them??
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When I started, I wanted to use Trojan War (same as the Testament) but got drawn into the Pathfinder CS.
I think that between Trojan War and New Argonauts, a Pathfinder-ized Ancient Mythology campaign could work!
I don't think it would really fit in the Golarion as is, but it would be interesting looking back at old Azlant or Thassilon for this kind of campaign.
You'll need to decide how accurate you want to be.
Historically, in say 300AD, you'll want the following...
No longbows
No crossbows
No heavy cavalry
chain mail is rare
plate mail is not really invented
Emphasize chariots, javelins, tower shields, longspears, short swords, falchions, maces.
Some types of magic are more common than others. Greek magic involves a lot of enchantment and transmutation, relatively little 'blasting'.
Limit to appropriate monsters. Minotaurs fit Greece, Sphinxes Egypt, I can't tell you much about Babylonia personally. Running into a fiendish black pudding with assassin levels just destroys the feel.
READ. There's a lot of mythogical fiction out there. At the very least, watch both the History Channel stuff and the Mythological action movies (Prince of Egypt, Troy, 300, etc.) You local library will have boatloads of this stuff.
I once ran an Ancient-Greece-type paladin in a plane-hopping, World Serpent Inn campaign. He had a bronze breast plate, a shield, and a "star-metal" adamantine shortsword. All I can tell you is you want to avoid wearing sandals on a sewer crawl, you really want to avoid being paralyzed or held in the sewer, and you REALY REALLY WANT TO AVOID having the trickster bronze dragon wyrmling druid push you over in the sewer while you are paralyzed with your mouth open!!!!!
But to re-emphasize what was said above, the Ancient Mythology campaign setting is all about the fluff and setting and flavor. Talk it over with your players and make sure they are on board.
The only crunch thing I can think of is that you might want to have Foolish Hubris system, where the more self-important the PCs are, the more foolish their decisions are.
Wasn't there a 3.X book that had alternative campaign ideas set in different mythologies?