I started running a Pathfinder game after many years of no D&D. I'm trying to put together a campaign for low level characters.
At the end of the adventure from the starter set, the characters made a tenuous bargain with the somewhat wimpy black dragon. I want to center the campaign around that.
Here're my ideas so far:
- the dragon's lair is in an abandoned temple deep in a swamp.
- he failed at mating combat with a particular female dragon and has it in his head that he needs to grow in power through magical means.
- an evil alchemist has persuaded him that given the proper materials and research, the alchemist can grant the dragon great power.
- secretly, the alchemist plans to sacrifice the dragon in a ritual that will instead grant the alchemist great power - something along the lines of granting him dragon form.
- through an intermediary (my npc), the dragon+alchemist will send the players on a series of quests to steal a tome from a mage's library, retrieve ritual implements from a lost temple, capture various creatures for experimentation, etc.
How does that sound? Is alchemy a good way to go? I'm just getting started with pathfinder - are there rules to cover all of the above? Any suggestions or criticisms would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Nemo
Sounds workable. I don't believe that there's any RAW way that the alchemist could actually turn himself into a dragon permanently, though there are spells to do it temporarily. But in any case you could handle it with handwaveium.
And the Beastmorph archetype would compliment your alchemist nicely.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/archetypes/paizo---a lchemist-archetypes/beastmorph
A great thing about the rules for pathfinder, and even earlier dnd editions, is that there are very few rules for "rituals". Spells are outlined as tenable options for a great many things, but are mostly instant solutions to a problem. Thus, if the alchemist had the necessary information to design a ritual then he could definitely pull off his transformation. Also, consider that an alchemist has mutagens that allow his body to transform, and maybe he just needs to figure out a way to overpower the dragon enough to get to the valuable "reagents", thus needing help from the PCs.