Adding a modern cellphone as an item in ruins of azlant adventure path

[Greg Hladun-LeBlanc]

I have a player that wants to play as a UK teenager in modern times. 2022. He was plane shifted to galarian and the rest of the party found him passed out on the beach as they are first investigating the colony.

He has no knowledge local history or nobility but I'm giving him a bonus on anything mechanical and azlanti. Azlanti being a high tech society some of the things he sees are not new. Automatons and clock work spys and what not.

We planning to use his phone. We are tracking his battery. I think maybe one day he can find an ioun stone that will actually wireless charge it.

Here has already pulled it out to use the flash light. The two magic users cast detect magic on the phone and showed no magical auras. There characters are quite intrigued.

I'm wondering if the cellphone has more uses. Obviously anything needing a networkis never going to work but I'm trying g to get ideas of some apps on his phone that may be useful.

Camera is one.
Maybe a translate app.( maybe azlanti is actually modern day English?)

I'm trying to think of other apps that a teenager would have on his phone that could be fun to play with.

Beingnun able to update the phone means I need to lock in everything now and try to balance it out.

Any ideas on this home brew idea?

[Greg Hladun-LeBlanc]

Modern day English is common as he can already talk to the party.

Maybe azlanti is ancient Greek. Being a teenager in the uk I don't think it's unheard of to have a language dictionary.

Maybe the compass app.

Maybe use the alarm as distractions.

Ways to control it is to use the battery.

I think I just need to control it until around level 9 or 10, at that point the party should have things to make it somewhat obsolete. Or maybe he fails a reflex save and crushes it. Make whole may be able to fix it.

I think it would be fun to have this item I just can't have it too over powered.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

So you say this PC is in another world with his smart phone?

Technically automata should be more surprising to a RW person than people from Golarion, because we have nothing like golems or constructs here, not that can move around freely, take orders, and can react to the environment in a pretty comprehensive manner. Someone with a good grounding in SF will probably map those assumptions on magic constructs (for better or worse), but anyone with even a cursory knowledge of robotics will be majorly impressed.

Useful apps:

Translation app
Unless other RW languages are preceisely mapped to Golarion's, this wouldn't be useful even if you declare Azlanti is modern English. If Azlanti is ME, then he won't need a translation.
On a general note, I shy away from RW languages being used in fantasy settings, unless it is explicit in the setting (hence why French, English and Scots, maybe some Gaelic, are all languages in Mystara). You run your game the way you want, but a RW translation app that is basically a ST translator wouldn't work in my game.

Calculator
math is always good. Being able to introduce modern mathematics might impress certain Golarion boffins - is the PC any good at math? Maybe he has a more advanced math app that might be useful, especially now that you can use a normal phone as graphing calculator.

Notepad apps
Possibly, but not as useful as plain old pen and paper for anything other than shopping lists, ime

camera and video
ridiculously popular. Even if you can't find a plot-relevant use for it, and you probably can, this will be an interesting thing for noobs to play with.

Masterwork Tools: Pathfinder
Having all the rules at your fingertips is likely to be useful at some point.

PDF reader
Make sure he has a copy of the AP available.

[Valandil Ancalime]

Someone has seen "In Another World With My Smartphone".

How long would his battery last?

If he already had it downloaded things like survival or scientific information would be highly useful (assuming science works the same in a magical world).

[Goth Guru]

There is a homebrew plant that is effectively a Tesla coil.
Start researching the recharge spell.
If he's familiar with 5 nights at Freddy's or Westworld he would be afraid of freewalking animatronics and androids.