Are there pre-built adventures where any of the iconic characters are pre-set as cameos/NPCs at all?
Either way, is it generally accepted that they live and are active during the same historical time period of Golarion, even though most do not have dates specific to their personal stories?
I've been trying to get some kind of a catalog for a generally typical campaign setup where the largest number of iconic characters can actually pop in and out, and so far all I can figure is to look into their backstories for where they originate from, and which of them essentially abandoned their homes and have good reason to avoid cause to return, and discover what others may frequent a given region, however very little info of that sort seems to be public. Any assistance with this endeavor?
Are there pre-built adventures where any of the iconic characters are pre-set as cameos/NPCs at all?
Either way, is it generally accepted that they live and are active during the same historical time period of Golarion, even though most do not have dates specific to their personal stories?
I've been trying to get some kind of a catalog for a generally typical campaign setup where the largest number of iconic characters can actually pop in and out, and so far all I can figure is to look into their backstories for where they originate from, and which of them essentially abandoned their homes and have good reason to avoid cause to return, and discover what others may frequent a given region, however very little info of that sort seems to be public. Any assistance with this endeavor?
Paizo doesn't really have the Iconics appear as NPCs in any of the Adventure Paths or modules (I wouldn't know about Pathfinder Society, but I doubt it). They were preset/sample/default PCs for the earlier APs, though, and they often appear in the art for even the recent ones as the PCs.
The Iconics occupy this interesting space where Paizo never really uses them as actual characters in the world canonically, but they've all been given backstories that can justify them appearing almost anywhere at any time, presumably so that you can slot them into whatever adventure and role works best for whatever campaign you're running.Unfortunately, most of them aren't exactly optimized, so they tend not to work that well as rivals for most PC groups...
It seems like more often than not, they'd be closer to allies than rivals, but I do see the chance for butting heads. That's too bad. So besides certain iconics being found in their homeland (given that the iconic character in question has left their home for shame or safety) there's nothing to say for where on Golarion they couldn't wind up?
It seems like more often than not, they'd be closer to allies than rivals, but I do see the chance for butting heads. That's too bad. So besides certain iconics being found in their homeland (given that the iconic character in question has left their home for shame or safety) there's nothing to say for where on Golarion they couldn't wind up?
Pretty much. That's kind of the point of most of their backstories, as far as I can see; to make them a part of the world, but a nebulous one that could have decent reasons to appear just about anywhere in the Inner Sea on this or that adventure.
There are some good resources for you out there:
- The Pathfinder Iconics for PFS. These each have a column or so on their backstory.
- The Comics. This is the main way we learn about the iconic. they are the characters that the story follows. The 'origins' story each issue tells about 2 characters backstories. the other 40+ issues the Iconics are the main protagonists (and antaginists in one storyline)
- The Pathfinderwiki iconics category. These links will bring you to pages based on each of the iconics, which clickable links so that you can learn more about the places and objects mentioned.
Creative Director
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One of the TRICKIEST parts of creating adventures and other story lines for a tabletop RPG is that, unlike pretty much every other form of story telling, the one aspect we don't have the luxury of directly controlling is the protagonist(s). That role is reserved for the player characters, and who those protagonists actually are depends entirely on YOUR group, not our decisions.
As a result, when it comes to illustrating scenes where a player character is doing something (such as for most adventure illustrations), we need a proxy for your character to appear in the scene. That's the role the iconics play.
It doesn't make sense to have them show up in an adventure to help your player characters or fight against your player characters, because they're not NPCs in a world where your player characters exist.
When we do fiction in the form of novels or comic books or whatever, they WILL show up there, because that's not a tabletop RPG product anymore. It's a novel or comic book or whatever, and in such the reader has no control or agency over the protagonist—that element is 100% controlled by the author in this case. So that's why you see the iconics showing up in that format.
There are some good resources for you out there:
The Pathfinderwiki iconics category. These links will bring you to pages based on each of the iconics, which clickable links so that you can learn more about the places and objects mentioned.[/list]
I was looking for something exactly like this, so thank you very much. The page says it wasn't updated since 2009, though. Have there been more iconics since then?
Despite what the page says, I'm pretty sure it's up to date. Kess, for example, is from 2014 when the Brawler class was introduced.
Despite what the page says, I'm pretty sure it's up to date. Kess, for example, is from 2014 when the Brawler class was introduced.
That makes total sense, thank you.
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The Category pages of the wiki are popualted from the back end (when we add the categroy to a page and file, the wiki software recognizes that and populates that page onto the proper category page), and not manually updated. The edit date you are seeing is when someone added the Category: Iconics page to the Category:Inhabitants page.
You can see what categories a page belongs too all the way on the bottom of the page. They are also clickable. So if you were on the page for Pesh you would see that it is in the categories: Articles requiring cleanup, Drugs, Flora, and Alchemical reagents... if you wanted to see more drugs clicking o nthat category sends you to Category:drugs