Zeitgeist: the perfect book for an Archaeologist

[lishikai]

Hi everyone,

I'm playing, as you can guess, an Archaeologist in the Zeitgeist campaign.
We just hit the 8th level and my character just found a mysterious book about the Ancients, the mysterious prehistorical population that inhabited the world centuries, strangely able to weild gold...

My master told me that the book, once decoded, will bestow me some awesome ability / will become magical.

I searched for some appropriate wondorous item, with no success.

Can you help me to find/create a nice but useful item/effect?

[Claxon]

Knowing the zeitgeist books it probably has an effect intended already, so you don't need to come up with one.

Ask your GM before you put much effort into this.

Also, there's probably like a 50% chance that decoding books will actually kill you/drive you insane (in my experience).

[lishikai]

Usually he likes to screw up his players, bit nothing so extreme to kill you because he made you find something. Probably it will be a grey item, with a "power up" tought by me and a backlash tought by him

...it also could be possibile he is simply lazy XD asked me to come il with an idea XD

[lishikai]

What do you think about this:
A magic item that emulates the occultist's divination implement?
Something like the monk's belt/robe

[Claxon]

Honestly, I'd expect the powers to be related to the culture that created the item.

Perhaps it gives you permanent arcane sight, and the ability to speak and understand Ancient, Lore: Ancients (as a skill from Unchained skills), and maybe ranks in Spellcraft or Knowledge (Arcane ). Something along those lines.

[lishikai]

I'm still investigating on the Ancients. Is permanent arcane sight related to their culture?

I can already speaker ancient lenguage, thanks to my backround, and a skill bonus is a little..i don't know..sad? Will i need those boni?

If It can help, the item/effect should cost around 8000/10000gold

Edit: if my PC wasn't reincarnated (onehotted by the steelshaper) maybe orc eldritch heritage wuold have been nice

Editedit: or maybe not, since before he was an half-elf and he found the book inside his evil(?)elf father house

[Claxon]

My suggestion isn't necessarily meant to pertain to "what would be good for my character". It should pertain to things about the culture of the ancients that they would put into a book.

Edit: IIRC correctly this book isn't written by the ancients, simply about the ancients....the most notable thing about the ancients that you encounter in the game that I can recall is there ability to cause ethereal creatures to solidify. So my new suggestion is a SLA of ghostbane dirge/3 per day.

[lishikai]

Very nice suggestions, thank you so much!

If you have any other idea feel free to write me, i'd love to have more advices, also about what should i do to enjoy more the adventure

[Claxon]

You mentioning you're having a problem enjoying the adventure...is it the slow plodding pace?

I had that same problem...which ultimately led to my quitting the campaign. In the time it took us to complete a normal Paizo adventure, we had only progressed through 2.5 of the Zeitgeist books for the campaign.

It started out fun, but the pacing was far too slow for me. I don't really have a solution for that.

[Moonheart]

Claxon wrote:

Knowing the zeitgeist books it probably has an effect intended already, so you don't need to come up with one.

This.

You probably won't chose the effect of the book once decoded, the GM will.

[Moonheart]

Claxon wrote:

You mentioning you're having a problem enjoying the adventure...is it the slow plodding pace?

I had that same problem...which ultimately led to my quitting the campaign. In the time it took us to complete a normal Paizo adventure, we had only progressed through 2.5 of the Zeitgeist books for the campaign

The main problem with Zeitgeist is that is an half-investigation campaign, and many players do not know how to handle this part well.

Our DM warned us at start we should dispatch the investigation skills properly and define invesigation roles for each and not only combat roles.

We did it, and it works like a charm: during investigation, we take turns, and every of us goes for the action which suits the most to his role... perception/heal specialist goes for crime scenes, diplomacy specialist interrogate witnesses, intimidation specialist bullies the potential suspects and people wanting to get in the way, and knowledge specialist analyse any strange object found during the process.

If you can be organized, investigation goes a lot faster, and there is no pace problems.
The worst way to deal with those parts is discussing what must be done at each space because no one as a true investigation speciality... so just let each specialist handle his speciality the way he wants.

Here is a little exemple of how a good team for Zeitgeist can be designed:
- Frontline & Bullying: Paladin with Intimidating Prowess feat. Hilarous to see him go for "If we found out you are an accomplice and you hidden it, I'll smite you do hard you will never find back your own jaw, so better spill it now". Good diplomacy too.
- Arcane & Analysis: Psychic with Rebirth discipline. Can use all knowledge skill with high bonuses, and even add Psychometry on top of it.
- Divine & Searching: Cleric with Feather domain. Insane spot checks, very good Heal checks for studying dead corpses
- Rogue & Spying: Cypher Investigator. That guy is both good at "sneak attacks" that to infiltrate everywhere due to being able to use inspiration on all rogue skills and to remain unseen even when failing sneak checks

There are a lot of other possibilities for dispatch both combat and investigation roles... that's just an exemple.

[lishikai]

Claxon wrote:

You mentioning you're having a problem enjoying the adventure...is it the slow plodding pace?

I had that same problem...which ultimately led to my quitting the campaign. In the time it took us to complete a normal Paizo adventure, we had only progressed through 2.5 of the Zeitgeist books for the campaign.

It started out fun, but the pacing was far too slow for me. I don't really have a solution for that.

Absolutely no, i love this campaign.

If there's a problem is more linked to how other players behave. I mean, it is a mysterious and investigative campaign and everybody behave in a mysterious way...even the players! So it's always a problem if you can trust anybody.
..and that i feel my bard is a bit inferior to the other, expecially in this part where many have truesight or trueseeing (and we are at level 9..)

Other than that i really like zeitgeist and any advice i ask is in order to fully experience it more :)

My master finally decided that the book shows where the ancient's ziggurats are and how to extract part of their power