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Also in an Arcadian AP's favor: good excuse for 2e playable Wyrwoods.
I'd love an Arcadia AP to at least feature a boundball tournament as a major event in one of the volumes. I'm sure all sorts of intrigue goes on in the shadows of the court.
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Light is the enemy AP: There's a trope about associating Light with good and Dark with bad, and it's one that I'm tired of for a lot of reasons. There are also several enemies on Golarion that are or could be associated strongly with light. There are two evil sun deities, a lot of fire-themed antagonists, and monsters like Shining Children and Hellcats and Lurkers in the Light. I'd love an AP where the bad guys all have a Light theme.
Dominion of the Black AP: I'd like an AP with these guys as the antagonists. Ideally in a planet-hopping adventure, the party is fighting the Dominion of the Black in some capacity and to do so they need to travel to other worlds. Its a cool spooky organization, there are already several monsters in print with ties to them, I'm hoping Doomsday Dawn isn't the last we've seen of them.
Plants AP: Plant and fungus monsters weird me out in a fun way that a lot of monsters don't. They are more alien to me than a lot of actual aliens (even ignoring the alien plants). It's hard for me to associate most plants with being intelligent and malicious, and when they are it's creepy and cool. It'd be neat to see an AP that starts in a small town in a verdant region where the party stumbles upon some great malicious plant BBEG. Ideally said BBEG would be one of those alien plants and the party's goals would also involve preserving the local ecosystem, as I've no interest in a campaign where the goal is deforestation.
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An AP where the PCs just cannot die. Maybe they escaped from a Final Blade but are not truly mortal anymore.
I like this idea. Especially if you pair it with something that is after them to fix this glitch in their mortality. A friend of mind did something similar to this, where a player came back to life randomly (without a spell or nothing), but was chased by a spirit of the ghost of his death. It would hone in on them after a few weeks of staying in one area, then the player would start seeing strange omens and hallucinations as the entity drew closer to him. It was really fun and flavorful, especially when the quest ended with the player regaining his mortality back and sending away the spirit.
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Light is the enemy AP: There's a trope about associating Light with good and Dark with bad, and it's one that I'm tired of for a lot of reasons. There are also several enemies on Golarion that are or could be associated strongly with light. There are two evil sun deities, a lot of fire-themed antagonists, and monsters like Shining Children and Hellcats and Lurkers in the Light. I'd love an AP where the bad guys all have a Light theme.
This is how my character is approaching Age of Ashes. He is a cleric who worships "the darkness" and teaches that fire is the enemy.
It'd be neat to see an AP that starts in a small town in a verdant region where the party stumbles upon some great malicious plant BBEG. Ideally said BBEG would be one of those alien plants and the party's goals would also involve preserving the local ecosystem, as I've no interest in a campaign where the goal is deforestation.
That's a unique take I hadn't seen before! I like it.
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Reminds me of a concept I had a long time ago of all Druids of the various alignments in a region having decided to drastically reduce sentient creatures' presence to save the natural ecosystem. The PCs would need to confront them all in their own way and try to find a compromise to save as many people as they can.
And whatever happens, Nature wins.
Light is the enemy AP: There's a trope about associating Light with good and Dark with bad, and it's one that I'm tired of for a lot of reasons. There are also several enemies on Golarion that are or could be associated strongly with light. There are two evil sun deities, a lot of fire-themed antagonists, and monsters like Shining Children and Hellcats and Lurkers in the Light. I'd love an AP where the bad guys all have a Light theme.
Oooh, I did this in my home campaign setting. The antagonists were aligned with the evil god whose domains were Fire, Magic and the Sun. I got to use hellcats and shining children and all sorts of fun effects. :)
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What about an inverted AP, where the PCs have to return a bunch of treasures that haven been stolen from burial tombs around Golarion back to the incredibly dangerous environments from which they were taken.
What about an inverted AP, where the PCs have to return a bunch of treasures that haven been stolen from burial tombs around Golarion back to the incredibly dangerous environments from which they were taken.
This sounds very fun. And it could be for a variety of interesting reasons too, like returning them to stop a curse, or because you feel it's right, or a whole host of other things.
An AP where the PCs just cannot die. Maybe they escaped from a Final Blade but are not truly mortal anymore.
Also this. Though whether we do it Souls style with them coming back, or just straight up Koshchei the Deathless would be an interesting choice.
And either way it would be challenging and interesting to design.
Me, personally, I'd like a crafting/survival AP. Preferably in a tropical island, cliché as it sounds. You'd probably need to make it just 3 or even 2 volumes to fit with the power curve, and rework the crafting rules a bit, but I think it'd be fun as a small diversion.
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I would love a Magaambya AP of some kind. All of the ideas in this thread are really strong. I would also like to see an Andoran AP of some kind.
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An AP for spies in Andoran, in which forces seeking to corrupt Andoran (of which we have heard canonical hints) are starting to make serious moves to establish there dystopia there, and the PCs have to become spies in their own land to unearth the conspiracy.
Galt.
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A New Serpentfolk Empire AP.
For example, the failure of the cornucopia of Absalom is likely a guarded secret that just might come into the open if someone starts a siege. Which could then shake the power structure, creating unrest that long-time enemies of Aroden might want to use so that they can tear it down and replace it with the new Serpentfolk Empire. Could make for an interesting AP, just saying.
Urban intrigue with shapeshifters. What could be better?
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Another thought, though not a theme exactly; I would like to see an AP that used a blue dragon according to the flavour text (an entrenched insidious mastermind controlling a setting through layers of intermediaries) rather than as the passing-encounter bruisers they have more often than not been in existing APs; that is a role which feels to fit being at least the end boss of a chapter, if not a whole AP.
A blue dragon can and should be the end boss of an AP. each of the previous volumes would be about peeling back the layers of his/her/their organizations.
My only concern is that quite strongly mirrors another recent AP, except that a Blue Dragon would presumably be the actual mastermind rather than a willing accomplice to most of the criminal activity you counter.
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What about an inverted AP, where the PCs have to return a bunch of treasures that haven been stolen from burial tombs around Golarion back to the incredibly dangerous environments from which they were taken.
Thinking more about this, I love the idea of a world wide curse that must be avoided by returning key treasures to "megadungeons" of golarion, that have been taken by previous adventurers and "heroes" who might have terrible secrets in their past.
This could be an exceptional AP to explore item crafting as the means of keeping the players stocked in interesting and powerful toys without having to loot them from fallen enemies or environments they should be respecting. The party can observe and record powerful formulae from the different sights and actually learn from the past rather than pillaging it.
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What about an inverted AP, where the PCs have to return a bunch of treasures that haven been stolen from burial tombs around Golarion back to the incredibly dangerous environments from which they were taken.Thinking more about this, I love the idea of a world wide curse that must be avoided by returning key treasures to "megadungeons" of golarion, that have been taken by previous adventurers and "heroes" who might have terrible secrets in their past.
This could be an exceptional AP to explore item crafting as the means of keeping the players stocked in interesting and powerful toys without having to loot them from fallen enemies or environments they should be respecting. The party can observe and record powerful formulae from the different sights and actually learn from the past rather than pillaging it.
Could be Sarusan or Rovagug/Dead Vault/Startower related ;D
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Could be Sarusan or Rovagug/Dead Vault/Startower related ;DWhat about an inverted AP, where the PCs have to return a bunch of treasures that haven been stolen from burial tombs around Golarion back to the incredibly dangerous environments from which they were taken.Thinking more about this, I love the idea of a world wide curse that must be avoided by returning key treasures to "megadungeons" of golarion, that have been taken by previous adventurers and "heroes" who might have terrible secrets in their past.
This could be an exceptional AP to explore item crafting as the means of keeping the players stocked in interesting and powerful toys without having to loot them from fallen enemies or environments they should be respecting. The party can observe and record powerful formulae from the different sights and actually learn from the past rather than pillaging it.
I know nothing about Sarusan, but the "mini-game" element of this AP could be reinforcing the security of these tombs to prevent the artifacts/items from being stolen again in the future. Either by building up their defenses directly, or maybe even recruiting local powerful allies into their defense.
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The Pathfinder Society giving exotic treasures back to the cultures they belonged to originally, as a way to show goodwill and hope for cooperation in the future, could make for a good PFS arc.
Repatriating artifacts to those they belong to as a heroic act of decolonization and almost certainly having to fight off colonial looters who would sooner see them in a museum or a private collection sounds SO clever.
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Theme I dearly want to see tackled: something set before the modern era of the setting. Not necessarily time travel (though that could be a LOT of fun), but more just exploring the fringes of big moments.
I've talked before about how fun a post-Azlant AP would be, where your group is a bunch of "barbarians" who have lost so much, in a world where orcs and dwarves are new and Nidal is one of the few groups to prosper.
The "return artifacts to their rightful place" AP sounds so fun to me. What if Way of the Wicked book 2... was good?
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I'm now kinda disappointed if they never end up doing "return artifacts to their rightful position" ap/pfs scenario because that really is really clever twist on the rpg tropes (which also addresses the "steal artifacts from the locals" rpg narrative that I remember Pathfinder Society also having been guilty of)
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There's a fantastic 'Continuing the Campaign' at the end of Giantslayer [no spoilers] where the PCs have attracted the attention of a mighty gygas on the Plane of Dreams.
I want to see that campaign, where dream assassins, weird phantasms, and just utterly bizarre monsters are the battles de jure; a whole book could take place in a shared dream of the characters; where a town is driven mad with sleep / dream / illusion magics; and finally the PCs have to venture to Nirvana to fight the mighty giant.
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Theme I dearly want to see tackled: something set before the modern era of the setting. Not necessarily time travel (though that could be a LOT of fun), but more just exploring the fringes of big moments.
I've talked before about how fun a post-Azlant AP would be, where your group is a bunch of "barbarians" who have lost so much, in a world where orcs and dwarves are new and Nidal is one of the few groups to prosper.
We've had folks ask for this before, and it's a tough one to do for the same reasons that setting Adventure Paths outside of the Inner Sea region are tough—this is essentially asking us to build a new campaign setting.
Since we don't have the foundation to support something like this in print, so we'd have to either shift one of our support books to build what's essentially a new setting or we'd have to have the backmatter articles in each volume do some heavy lifting to support the new setting, which means that we have to be even further out ahead of the release schedule than we already do, or ask the adventure writers to also write the backmatter articles so that they know the setting. And since not every adventure writer is a good world lore designer, that further limits who we can get to write each volume.
And in the end, if we're going to do something like this, I'd much rather all that work go into "present day" Golarion. AKA: If we're going to do an entire Adventure Path set outside of the Inner Sea region, I'd much much much rather do so with one set in a different continent rather than a different time.
And yes, I do hope to be able to do an entire Adventure Path set outside of the Inner Sea region that's also set on a continent outside of Tian-Xia, Avistan, and Garund. But for the reasons mentioned above, that requires a lot of extra hands on deck and at work, which in the first few years of "Most of us are focusing on launching a new edition of the game or getting a thousand pages of reprinted updated Kingmaker back in print" wasn't an option.
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I'm now kinda disappointed if they never end up doing "return artifacts to their rightful position" ap/pfs scenario because that really is really clever twist on the rpg tropes (which also addresses the "steal artifacts from the locals" rpg narrative that I remember Pathfinder Society also having been guilty of)
This is a really pretty interesting reversal on the classic RPG artifact hunt quest. It'd be complicated, since so much of the game's reward structure is built into the acquisition of new magic items, of course, since you'd have to either balance the "put stuff back but get other things" themes or come up with an entirely new way of gaining rewards that feels logical and doesn't rely upon a "bottomless bank of magic items that your benefactors dole out to you starting with the weak ones and holding back on the good stuff until you're higher level without making the players frustrated that their so-called allies are being 'stingy' with their rewards."
I'm now kinda disappointed if they never end up doing "return artifacts to their rightful position" ap/pfs scenario because that really is really clever twist on the rpg tropes (which also addresses the "steal artifacts from the locals" rpg narrative that I remember Pathfinder Society also having been guilty of)This is a really pretty interesting reversal on the classic RPG artifact hunt quest. It'd be complicated, since so much of the game's reward structure is built into the acquisition of new magic items, of course, since you'd have to either balance the "put stuff back but get other things" themes or come up with an entirely new way of gaining rewards that feels logical and doesn't rely upon a "bottomless bank of magic items that your benefactors dole out to you starting with the weak ones and holding back on the good stuff until you're higher level without making the players frustrated that their so-called allies are being 'stingy' with their rewards."
I think the Formulae system of PF2 is ready built for this though. The players don't have to find and take the items, they can learn how to build them/have them built. The benefactor could supply lots of cheap consumables while part of the players rewards is finding out how to build even better items that are not horrifically cursed/stealing power away from the descendants of those who buried them in the first place.
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I think the Formulae system of PF2 is ready built for this though. The players don't have to find and take the items, they can learn how to build them/have them built. The benefactor could supply lots of cheap consumables while part of the players rewards is finding out how to build even better items that are not horrifically cursed/stealing power away from the descendants of those who buried them in the first place.I'm now kinda disappointed if they never end up doing "return artifacts to their rightful position" ap/pfs scenario because that really is really clever twist on the rpg tropes (which also addresses the "steal artifacts from the locals" rpg narrative that I remember Pathfinder Society also having been guilty of)This is a really pretty interesting reversal on the classic RPG artifact hunt quest. It'd be complicated, since so much of the game's reward structure is built into the acquisition of new magic items, of course, since you'd have to either balance the "put stuff back but get other things" themes or come up with an entirely new way of gaining rewards that feels logical and doesn't rely upon a "bottomless bank of magic items that your benefactors dole out to you starting with the weak ones and holding back on the good stuff until you're higher level without making the players frustrated that their so-called allies are being 'stingy' with their rewards."
That'd require building in some extensive downtime elements tho the campaign, and would force some, if not all, of the players to invest in crafting. Not everyone's into that. A "return the items" Adventure Path will already not be something that a lot of folks are into, I suspect, as interesting and compelling as it is to me and others, and putting further restrictions on PC choices would make this an even riskier thing for us to tie up a six month adventure (or even a three month one) with.
This is EXACTLY the sort of story that I think would work better as a stand-alone adventure. There's a lot of adventures that would work better as stand-alones, even if said stand-alone were hundreds of pages long.
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The items in question don't necessarily have to be magical, or if they are you could save them for the final since giving them away would be a moot point then.
As for loot, we could take it from the corpses of the people trying to steal the items. Most players would prefer a useable magic item over a statuette that just has cultural value.
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I'm now kinda disappointed if they never end up doing "return artifacts to their rightful position" ap/pfs scenario because that really is really clever twist on the rpg tropes (which also addresses the "steal artifacts from the locals" rpg narrative that I remember Pathfinder Society also having been guilty of)This is a really pretty interesting reversal on the classic RPG artifact hunt quest. It'd be complicated, since so much of the game's reward structure is built into the acquisition of new magic items, of course, since you'd have to either balance the "put stuff back but get other things" themes or come up with an entirely new way of gaining rewards that feels logical and doesn't rely upon a "bottomless bank of magic items that your benefactors dole out to you starting with the weak ones and holding back on the good stuff until you're higher level without making the players frustrated that their so-called allies are being 'stingy' with their rewards."
Couldn't this be theoretically solved (or at least partially mitigated) by making this particular AP make use of the Automatic Bonus Progression variant rules? You could even tie it into the story by making the ABP a side effect of the items being returned, if you want.
That leaves your benefactors, whoever they are, able to just pay you in hard coin for the characters to acquire whatever nice ancilliary items they like.
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The Pathfinder Society giving exotic treasures back to the cultures they belonged to originally, as a way to show goodwill and hope for cooperation in the future, could make for a good PFS arc.
Oh, go whole hog with it and make the Pathfinder Society the villains of the story. Not because they've been taken over or subverted, but simply because their mission is not necessarily in everyone's interests.
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I'm now kinda disappointed if they never end up doing "return artifacts to their rightful position" ap/pfs scenario because that really is really clever twist on the rpg tropes (which also addresses the "steal artifacts from the locals" rpg narrative that I remember Pathfinder Society also having been guilty of)This is a really pretty interesting reversal on the classic RPG artifact hunt quest. It'd be complicated, since so much of the game's reward structure is built into the acquisition of new magic items, of course, since you'd have to either balance the "put stuff back but get other things" themes or come up with an entirely new way of gaining rewards that feels logical and doesn't rely upon a "bottomless bank of magic items that your benefactors dole out to you starting with the weak ones and holding back on the good stuff until you're higher level without making the players frustrated that their so-called allies are being 'stingy' with their rewards."Couldn't this be theoretically solved (or at least partially mitigated) by making this particular AP make use of the Automatic Bonus Progression variant rules? You could even tie it into the story by making the ABP a side effect of the items being returned, if you want.
That leaves your benefactors, whoever they are, able to just pay you in hard coin for the characters to acquire whatever nice ancilliary items they like.
It can be solved a lot of ways, but each of those solutions takes away from the core assumed experience of the game, which remains my point. It's less of a risk for us to use these sorts of things in stand-alone adventures.
It can be solved a lot of ways, but each of those solutions takes away from the core assumed experience of the game, which remains my point. It's less of a risk for us to use these sorts of things in stand-alone adventures.I'm now kinda disappointed if they never end up doing "return artifacts to their rightful position" ap/pfs scenario because that really is really clever twist on the rpg tropes (which also addresses the "steal artifacts from the locals" rpg narrative that I remember Pathfinder Society also having been guilty of)This is a really pretty interesting reversal on the classic RPG artifact hunt quest. It'd be complicated, since so much of the game's reward structure is built into the acquisition of new magic items, of course, since you'd have to either balance the "put stuff back but get other things" themes or come up with an entirely new way of gaining rewards that feels logical and doesn't rely upon a "bottomless bank of magic items that your benefactors dole out to you starting with the weak ones and holding back on the good stuff until you're higher level without making the players frustrated that their so-called allies are being 'stingy' with their rewards."Couldn't this be theoretically solved (or at least partially mitigated) by making this particular AP make use of the Automatic Bonus Progression variant rules? You could even tie it into the story by making the ABP a side effect of the items being returned, if you want.
That leaves your benefactors, whoever they are, able to just pay you in hard coin for the characters to acquire whatever nice ancilliary items they like.
I guess I find it confusing because I never found Pathfinder's core assumed experience to be "do things, get stuff", it was more "do things, gain power", but that power doesn't have to come from items (it can, but it doesn't have to).
In my mind at least, it'd be no different than how many previous APs have changed or added to the experience with their own subsystems (kingdom management in Kingmaker, Mythic rules in Wrath of the Reighteous, managing the Silver Ravens in Hell's Rebels, etc).
But either as an AP or a Module it'd certainly be interesting to explore.
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That'd require building in some extensive downtime elements tho the campaign, and would force some, if not all, of the players to invest in crafting. Not everyone's into that. A "return the items" Adventure Path will already not be something that a lot of folks are into, I suspect, as interesting and compelling as it is to me and others, and putting further restrictions on PC choices would make this an even riskier thing for us to tie up a six month adventure (or even a three month one) with.
This is EXACTLY the sort of story that I think would work better as a stand-alone adventure. There's a lot of adventures that would work better as stand-alones, even if said stand-alone were hundreds of pages long.
James, first of all, it is really awesome that you weigh in and give us insight like this. I really appreciate it, and communication like this and your live streams are part of why I love Golarion so much.
I agree that you don't want to limit players to only getting items from building them, but a couple of really cool items that can be built, combined with an NPC that could do the building, if convinced, could go a long way to mitigate the "you must have a master crafter to play this AP."
I also think it could be really cool to work against a subset of the pathfinder society, but it might be easier to have some terrible outsider monsters that also bring loot-worthy treasure in the tombs, (something like devils or other extra-dimensional contract bounty hunters) looking to either prevent the items' return or fulfill the curse/original threat.
I could see this working as a super dungeon instead of a AP as well, although I thought having long thematic downtime elements was something APs were looking to include in PF2? There could also be a fair bit of interesting social encounters of trying to get permission to be the ones to return the items to places where the locals might be a little hostile to the people who originally took them.
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I guess I find it confusing because I never found Pathfinder's core assumed experience to be "do things, get stuff", it was more "do things, gain power", but that power doesn't have to come from items (it can, but it doesn't have to).
Fair enough, but from what I've seen in my 35 years of playing D&D and then Pathfinder, the assumed core experience is "do things, get stuff." The "stuff" in this equation can be items, or treasure, or experience points—it's the stuff you get that allows you to gain power.
And since you only gain benefits from your XPs 20 times during your character's career, and only once every several sessions when you level up, those bursts of rewards aren't NEARLY as common as the rewards of gaining stuff. You can get the rush of "gaining power" much more often by finding a fancy new magic item than you do by leveling up.
Call of Cthulhu's reward structure is more akin to my preference for leveling up. You get to check if your skills increase at the end of every session, rather than gating that process to specific points during your career when you've arbitrarily earned enough points to gain a level. That said, it works well in Call of Cthulhu because the accumulation of character power isn't the primary draw to play.
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That'd require building in some extensive downtime elements tho the campaign, and would force some, if not all, of the players to invest in crafting. Not everyone's into that. A "return the items" Adventure Path will already not be something that a lot of folks are into, I suspect, as interesting and compelling as it is to me and others, and putting further restrictions on PC choices would make this an even riskier thing for us to tie up a six month adventure (or even a three month one) with.
This is EXACTLY the sort of story that I think would work better as a stand-alone adventure. There's a lot of adventures that would work better as stand-alones, even if said stand-alone were hundreds of pages long.
James, first of all, it is really awesome that you weigh in and give us insight like this. I really appreciate it, and communication like this and your live streams are part of why I love Golarion so much.
I agree that you don't want to limit players to only getting items from building them, but a couple of really cool items that can be built, combined with an NPC that could do the building, if convinced, could go a long way to mitigate the "you must have a master crafter to play this AP."
I also think it could be really cool to work against a subset of the pathfinder society, but it might be easier to have some terrible outsider monsters that also bring loot-worthy treasure in the tombs, (something like devils or other extra-dimensional contract bounty hunters) looking to either prevent the items' return or fulfill the curse/original threat.
I could see this working as a super dungeon instead of a AP as well, although I thought having long thematic downtime elements was something APs were looking to include in PF2? There could also be a fair bit of interesting social encounters of trying to get permission to be the ones to return the items to places where the locals might be a little hostile to the people who originally took them.
There are also some tropes that could be built into the adventure at strategic points that allows players to build toward unique iconic characters. Who hasn't read the Riftwar Saga and wanted to be Tomas wearing his Dragon Armor?
If the return of sacred artifacts in turn allowed the organization receiving the returned artifacts to reward the PCs with stuff. Or in the process of seeking out the secret, hidden Tomb of Branthenal to return his Gauntlets of Blasting to his corpse to stop a curse from sweeping over the countryside, the PCs save a mysterious nature spirit disguised as a merchant in distress, who rewards them with things. Or they manage to stumble across another ancient tomb and repository of power and after showing due deference to that tomb the ancience spirit of Bahamut's spokesperson grants each character an item from the hord.
These are ways where you can grant players "kits" of gear that turn them into the Dragon Paladin/Cavalier that Tomas became or the White Gold Ring that turned Thomas Covenant into the White Gold Wielder. A truly epic adventure that allows players to mold their characters into and around and become the story, rather than just being a conglomeration of the best stats and items that disjointedly shoehorns into the adventure.
I'd gobble this up like Mint Chocolate Chip!
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I also think it could be really cool to work against a subset of the pathfinder society
In this vein, one might be able to work a conflict between factions in PFS who want to recover items and factions who want to "take only pictures, leave only footprints," as it were. Not that I know which factions are even in current PFS.
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I guess I find it confusing because I never found Pathfinder's core assumed experience to be "do things, get stuff", it was more "do things, gain power", but that power doesn't have to come from items (it can, but it doesn't have to).
Fair enough, but from what I've seen in my 35 years of playing D&D and then Pathfinder, the assumed core experience is "do things, get stuff." The "stuff" in this equation can be items, or treasure, or experience points—it's the stuff you get that allows you to gain power.
And since you only gain benefits from your XPs 20 times during your character's career, and only once every several sessions when you level up, those bursts of rewards aren't NEARLY as common as the rewards of gaining stuff. You can get the rush of "gaining power" much more often by finding a fancy new magic item than you do by leveling up.
Ah, I see your point there. Our experiences have indeed been different then, since 95% of the time when I've played published adventures (which, due to time constraints, is most of the time) finding an item just leads to "Ok, how much can we sell it by?", unless it's a general use consumeable, or a campaign-related quest item; at which point you could replace all those nice items nobody wants with equivalent piles of gold and it's the same thing. Better, in most cases, because you don't run into issues of where to sell the stuff and whatnot.
I know 2nd Edition has taken steps to avoid the vendor trash problem, so maybe that's where the divide stands.
Though in either case, like Unicore says, thank you for engaging in the discussion and providing your viewpoint.
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There are also some tropes that could be built into the adventure at strategic points that allows players to build toward unique iconic characters. Who hasn't read the Riftwar Saga and wanted to be Tomas wearing his Dragon Armor?
If the return of sacred artifacts in turn allowed the organization receiving the returned artifacts to reward the PCs with stuff. Or in the process of seeking out the secret, hidden Tomb of Branthenal to return his Gauntlets of Blasting to his corpse to stop a curse from sweeping over the countryside, the PCs save a mysterious nature spirit disguised as a merchant in distress, who rewards them with things. Or they manage to stumble across another ancient tomb and repository of power and after showing due deference to that tomb the ancience spirit of Bahamut's spokesperson grants each character an item from the hord.
These are ways where you can grant players "kits" of gear that turn them into the Dragon Paladin/Cavalier that Tomas became or the White Gold Ring that turned Thomas Covenant into the White Gold Wielder. A truly epic adventure that allows players to mold their characters into and around and become the story, rather than just being a conglomeration of the best stats and items that disjointedly shoehorns into the adventure.
I'd gobble this up like Mint Chocolate Chip!
To follow up on this:
I don't recall the books, but I believe it was either Mythic Origins, Mythic Realms, or Mythic Adventures where there are locations of power that grant mythic ranks.
But having locations of magical power that allow you to charge up or enchant your items in region/location specific ways would be both thematic to returning sacred artifacts to special dungeons or organizations and an interesting way to kit up.
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I like the suggestion of doing Around the World in 80 days.
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Per gaining loot while returning items, maybe relics could be used here? Items that increase in power as they level up, but being powered by a deity or other powerful figure or some such. Still getting the 'new' magical item paradigm, without actually necessarily getting more items.
Could tie into the returning artefacts to return the celestial lock to full power, which also powers up these items that have been bequeathed to the players to help out.
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Per gaining loot while returning items, maybe relics could be used here? Items that increase in power as they level up, but being powered by a deity or other powerful figure or some such. Still getting the 'new' magical item paradigm, without actually necessarily getting more items.
Could tie into the returning artefacts to return the celestial lock to full power, which also powers up these items that have been bequeathed to the players to help out.
You could also default to the Pathfinder Unchained rules for gaining all the various enhancement (armor/weapon/ability), resistance and deflection bonuses in the automatic bonus progression chart. And couple that with the idea of relics or "growing" items, then those family heirlooms you start the game with gain their special powers as you grow into them.
That's a lot of specialized information for an AP, but the automatic bonus progression, relic and growing rules could be put into the free player's guide to the AP.
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Automatic Bonus Progression can certainly help but it only accentuates the problem of limiting character "power ups" to being gatelocked at happening only 20 times during your character's career and only happening once every several sessions. The slowdown of incremental boosts would only become more frustrating to some players in this case, I fear.
Automatic Bonus Progression can certainly help but it only accentuates the problem of limiting character "power ups" to being gatelocked at happening only 20 times during your character's career and only happening once every several sessions. The slowdown of incremental boosts would only become more frustrating to some players in this case, I fear.
I agree. And I don't think it would be necessary for a "return items to crypts that you don't pillage" AP or stand alone. I think that it could be discussed in a blog post about that adventure, but not necessary for it to run if the crypts/tombs were being actively raided by some other party that had the kinds of items on them that made getting into and out of the settings easier. Combine that with some interesting crafting options and a benefactor that could provide certain resources in advance of entering the adventure site, and I don't really think there would be a lack of treasure options.
That isn't to say ABP wouldn't be a great way to run that AP, but it wouldn't be a necessary requirement. Having ABP as a requirement for an AP or even major module is pretty much a deal breaker in a system that is so heavily built around cool stuff.