For the science ideas - I absolutey love them.
However, there are two problems that must be overcome:
1) Since you're being transported into a new character (aka new body), you're not taking any of your equipment with you. Only your mind and knowledge. So for any given science experiment, you would have to be able to do those right now without any internet support and without any logistical support. You won't have infrastructure (electricity, plumbing, supply lines, manufacturing facilities to make materials or purified materials) or appropriate glassware or tools or anything when you show up in Golarion, and some of the materials you need may be called something else. All these issues means that it takes time and money to conduct the experiments to recreate the technology you want.
2) You're required to actually play the AP, which means you may not have the time or resources to conduct the experiments needed. Hope you get Kingmaker or Skulls and Shackles - those are the only two APs I can think of that would grant the time needed to conduct the experiments and put you in a position to reliably get the required materials. Some APs don't give you any down time at all.
As long as you can overcome the limitations of knowledge, materials, time, and expense - you should be able to do some nifty stuff with modern tech, provided you can actually recreate some of the stuff.
One big advantage the scientifically minded have, however, is the knowledge for how to properly conduct experiments and critically think in order to maximize the efforts put forth. That alone can provide a huge advantage.
As for this, well...real life crafting isn't like magical crafting in Pathfinder. For example, you don't actually need a calm place to do it. This doesn't mean that you can do it while running from a dragon, obviously, but you could do it while, for example, sitting in a carriage driving to a different city, and you can buy a carriage after lv1. Neither do you need 8 hours-for example, a simple battery can be made in maybe 5 minutes, if you have the materials, so I rather doubt you won't be able to find time to do it. And those aren't particularily special materials either, mostly things like glassware, metals, acid(from Acid flasks) and so on, which should be availible in most settlements based on item availibility charts.
After you have done it a couple times in front of your cohort, you can just tell them "do this over and over" and leave crafting to them, so that's hardly a problem. Since you'll get Leadership either way, you could just as well teach your followers the basics of how blueprints work, then draw what you want them to craft and leave the actual crafting to them.
My casino-running players rode around in a fancy armored carriage for a while.
Game rules:
You're playing an AP, but you don't know which one.
If you beat the AP, you are transported back to the time and place you got sucked into the game.
If your character dies and is not brought back to life within one week, you die. No going home.Hang on, hang on.
If I beat the AP, then by the time I've beaten it I could be a god in all but name who is not so much a reality warper as one who has reality bent over a table.
Why would I want to go back to being a mere mortal again? This isn't about beating the AP, it's about dealing with the bad end when you intentionally don't beat it after reaching somewhere in the last part of the AP. It's not like a one week buffer is an issue.
Many people who play this game actually have people here on earth that they care about. Some have children of their own and they don't want to abandon them. Some have pets that they don't want to have starve to death. You'd have to be either extremely lonely and/or extremely selfish to not want to come back.
The one week requirement is mostly for low levels and to prevent people from just committing suicide to try to come back home. It makes them actually want to try to survive. Also, no matter how powerful you get, there's still someone more powerful than you - the GM who sent you here. That same GM who sent you here because he felt that you weren't caring about the game enough. So if you don't try to play or if you try to avoid finishing the AP, you may have other issues. That GM may flat out kill you, or may try to make your life in Golarion as miserable as he can until you get back on track to finish the AP. One way to do that t to just keep assaulting you with combat encounter after combat encounter until you get back on track - preventing you from even sleeping (and hope you don't run out of resources!). It might work if you can out-think the GM, but if he ever catches on it could be very risky for you.
It would be useful to know if you have meta-game knowledge of the game (e.g., retained knowledge of the AP and rules exploits in game). The challenge as stated implies you'd lose all skills you didn't buy so no making explosives if you didn't take craft (alchemy) etc. Recognising monsters becomes a big deal without meta-game knowledge.
Yes you do! Part of the original conditions for the scenario was that you keep all your real world knowledge - you also gain in-character knowledge based on your character and the ranks you pick. What you don't get is access to any game books - so once you're done with character creation, all your meta-game knowledge is only based on your own memory and system mastery.
Anyone who choses Paladin better chose Gray Paladin, in case they get thrown into Skull & Shackles or Hell's Vengeance.
Yeah I'm still going all bards.
If only for sheer camp hilarity value!
You'd have to be either extremely lonely and/or extremely selfish to not want to come back.Once you hit the final stages of an AP, you'll have access to all sorts of things that mean you can go back and forth as much as you please, and bring people with you if you so desire. Put simply, my point is that the experiment by its own nature will turn into a different experiment as you reach the late game and high level play. That's because of how the game functions, and is in its own way fascinating to observe.
While it's unlikely you'd be able to use magic to get friends and family to come without whatever the GM is using (the only AP that goes to earth does so 100 years before our time), I also think it's a fair point to allow people to stay if they want when they finish the AP. So I take back my previous statement on such.
Incidentally, the GM is inarguably a variant of Evil and deserves to take a Holy Avenger to the face.
That is most certainly true!
IF you really want to kill a party, adapt the AD&D Second module "The Apocalypse Stone" for your game. IT WILL KILL THE PARTY/END THE WORLD. This module is insanley hard, and if they can get past multiple pit fiends, a Tarrassque, etc., The world literally ends. Thats it. They cant escape, all the planes are cut off. No coming back form this point.