Pathfinder 1E Side quest dungeon loot, Weapons, armor, spells

[Naoki00_]

Hello all so heres the deal, I'm making a campaign setting for my group while we finish up our current game and after playing far too much dark souls and skyrim on the weekends I'm wanting to make the loot and such more of an impact, and that loot includes spells.

What I mean is that I intend to drop things like scrolls, books, and other similar things that detail heroes and such and great magicians that mastered new spells, and so forth, the party could then decide to investigate these legends and go on a short little mini dungeon or whatever to reclaim the items. I know that scrolls and wands exist in the game but my group has expressed a distaste for them as they feel it makes things far too easy for casters, as does the automatic gain of any spell you could want on level, so this is partly a way I thought they would enjoy a different take on magic aquisition.

What I'm wondering is if anyone on here has any ideas on what kind of items could be looked for in these little mini-dungeons as I have few of the actual books, and while I will be making some custom things new ideas from other people are always very welcome since many have different or better ideas than I do. For the physical items including anything from weapons, armor, shields, wonderous items, and anything between, I'm trying for a somewhat artifact like feel to them as they are likely one of a kind, but full on artifacts can be a little much at early levels and I don't want to make just "+X" items the common find as they CAN upgrade their stuff, unless it's maybe a good idea to say certain enhancements are unique and can't just be bought?

Onto spells, what spells do you think should be the "there was one master" of this sorta thing? one that jumps to mind would be a spell like Color Spray, it jumps out at me as a weird and very powerful spell that seems like a good "someone figured it out and took it to the grave, now you can go try to copy it" sorta deal, but I'm not really a knowledge bank of spells.

Any ideas that you feel like sharing? and for reference to begin with we're starting at level 1 and probably going to level 20.

 

[Naoki00_]

bump

 

[gamerprinter]

as I have few of the actual books

Go to d20pfsrd.com to find all the rules and all the magic items available - you don't necesarily need all the books, at least not for game prep.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, you won't find spells like Bigby's this or that in Pathfinder. Spell names have been simplified in PF and connections to specific casters having created a given spell have been removed. If you're talking about including some fluff regarding specific legendary spellcasters who've created new spells and new items (or new versions of existing items) in your own homebrewed backstory, that's different, but no PF material points to specific inventors of spells and items - you'd have to do that yourself.

 

[Naoki00_]

Go to d20pfsrd.com to find all the rules and all the magic items available - you don't necesarily need all the books, at least not for game prep.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, you won't find spells like Bigby's this or that in Pathfinder. Spell names have been simplified in PF and connections to specific casters having created a given spell have been removed. If you're talking about including some fluff regarding specific legendary spellcasters who've created new spells and new items (or new versions of existing items) in your own homebrewed backstory, that's different, but no PF material points to specific inventors of spells and items - you'd have to do that yourself.

I'll see if my players are alright with that since while I'm the DM I know a few of them are hardcore 'book only people' lol

and no I don't mean "bigby's" stuff or homebrew I mean existing spells on the list that could be pulled OFF the list and made into 'unique' spells that they would need to find in order to actually know., Fireball, color spray, etc (not nessisarily those but you get the idea). I don't often have a lot of time to just look through whole spell lists and figure that out :/

Now if anyone DOES have homebrew stuff that might be cool I'd love to hear that too lol

 

[gamerprinter]

You are the GM, its up to you whether allowing use of online rules instead of "books only" is OK or not. When those "books only" players run the game, they can enforce the "books only" rule, but they are currently not the GM, so should have no say, only suggest, but you have final say.

I don't just let my spellcasters automatically know a spell, they have to research it, and that might mean finding a scroll in a dungeon, visiting a wizard's academy, or other teaching resource. Since I don't allow magic shops in my worlds, there is no one-stop-shop to get everything a wizard needs. No where in the rules does it suggest that any such information is automatically attained by every spellcaster. If they don't learn it (spells), they don't have access to it. And I treat it so every spell must be learned this way.

My homebrew stuff is generally published, so I've got nothing "free" to throw at you, and really magic items are among the list of stuff that there really is a minimal amount available, of the stuff I've published. I've got many class archetypes, new races and feats available, only a few spells and magic items.

I am working on something called Ancestral Relics, which is my version of Weapons of Legacy, though my relics include a lot more than just weapons. These are items that level up with a player, so you don't have to replace your +1 sword with a +2, rather the item levels up, as long as certain parameters are met. Ancestral relics are designed for use with my Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) and is still in development, but one of the parameters uses Kaidan's honor rules - you have to have a certain level of honor to qualify before an item levels up. Also event triggers are required that differ for each item. Some might require you to defeat an opponent 2 levels higher than you (though you don't have to defeat the opponent alone - you can do it with the entire party.) Some items require you to do a positive act to someone you consider an enemy - and similar requirements. Ancestral relics can help you build your story by forcing the characters to confront certain situations that you've pre-built into your campaign. However ancestral relics aren't released yet, with rules not yet set in stone (its not available yet).

Really its quite difficult to shoot you off a list of magic items for the purposes you ask for. Which magic items are best is entirely up to what kind of PCs your players are running, what are their PC's personal goals. Which item is best is nuanced with each player, and its different for each. So without knowing your players nor their PCs, I can't even guess what would be best for them.

One thing I do sometimes, is out of game, ask each player to give you a "wish list" of the spells and magic items they'd like their characters to be able to have. Study the list, look the items up (use d20pfsrd.com), and see which few of the many they ask would be fair and would fit the parameters of your campaign. Then provide them as found treasure in dungeons, or discover a local artificer willing to make such items for some defined cost (I often charge more than the listed prices for magic items.) Although I will insure that every PC gets a similar found item in every dungeon. I don't just have one item available from one players wish list, and not include items from other lists.

 

[aglondier]

Much as a sword swinger might track down a respected swordmaster to learn the secrets behind an advanced feat, or a weaponsmith might study with ancient dwarven mastersmiths to perfect his techniques, so too should the party spellcasters seek out learned sages for instruction in new spells.

I'm thinking back to one campaign I played in where the party mage had to get initiated into a jungle tribe to gain access to the Limited Wish spell...and wound up with key parts of the spell tattooed across his chest, and having to submit to a geas in order to learn it.

It was a lot more interesting than reading it off a scroll or looted spellbook...

 

[SpiralBound]

As someone else said, you're the GM, what is within your dungeons is up to you. If you're looking for ideas, guidelines, or some such thing to customize your loot and make it stand out, then I would recommend you consider what your mini-dungeon is first.

If your mini-dungeon (as an off the cuff example) is the 7 chamber burial tomb of an ancient Dwarven Clan Elder who was buried with his wife and several high ranking members of his household, then you might expect to see a lot of Dwarven items! Seriously though, who was the guy? What makes him different from every other dead Dwarf? Perhaps he was a famous defender of his clan against giant attacks and he was renown for his pious nature and his close affiliations to the church of a specific Dwarven god in your campaign. Maybe his wife was a great healer? This is a rather simplistic and stereotyped scenario I know, but it is only to illustrate my point so bear with me.

So we have Olaff Sniggurson, Clan Elder of Clan Brommingard, a once large and famous warrior clan who is now nearly disappeared, their ancient clan halls abandoned and the handful of remnant members scattered among the households of other clans. They did not fall in disgrace, they simply were victims of the low Dwarven birth rate - too many costly battles against giants and not enough children in each generation to maintain the clan in the face of continual population loss. Oh, if only Olaff had known how his clan would end... (sniff...)

Okay, one paragraph is plenty of back story for this. Now, what kind of ideas jump out? Reach weapons, heavy armor, and heavy repeating crossbows for starters. Giants need to be damaged from afar. How about halberds? Some long-distance ankle chopping on a 15 foot tall giant whose already been softened by a regiment of heavy crossbowmen sounds about right. Toss in a really nice masterwork halberd with the Keen property. How about a ring on Olaff that gives a Dodge bonus? Some fancy plate mail befitting his station couldn't go astray. Now, Olaff was a godly man and likely donated heavily to the church, so choose some deity-specific religious and magical items. Don't forget some items representing the other tomb occupants. His wife may have some masterwork healer's tools, a healing oriented magic item, and perhaps some unique or at least uncommon healing spells. Then you can consider who else in his household was interred with Olaff, what would make sense to have been placed with them?

My point is, since as the GM you call fiat on what you can or can't do, there isn't really any absolute ruling on the "correct" way to stock a dungeon. Thus, the best way to do it and especially to make it memorable for the players, is to build it around a narrative theme. once you have a context for your mini-dungeon, you'll find that all kinds of ideas will pop forth.

If your mini-dungeon is instead the long-lost torture pits of a horribly cruel necromancer Baron who used to experiment on his subjects until he was dragged down by his creations, then not only do you have some ideas for what kind of monsters to put there, but you also have a couple of thematically appropriate directions for selecting weapons, scrolls, magical and even mundane items to put within.

So, while all the advice on what web sites or books or GP values to reference are useful, the first thing you need to decide is where are your PCs going? What is the relevance or reason for the existence of the dungeon? Good luck!

 

[Interjection Games]

Depending on the sort of group you have and how invested they are in this sort of thing, I think you'd have an easier time locking out non-core spells in this fashion. Alternatively, you can take a fun buff spell without a mass version, say heroism, and make a mass version 3 or 4 levels higher. It might trip a bard up if he has to choose between greater heroism and heroism, mass.

As for items, one of the themes I don't see played upon very often is the idea of flexible a flexible weapon special ability. For example, you have a bow. It is a +2 bow; however, if you add an arrow whose weapon special abilities have a total modifier of +2 or higher, you can reskin those weapon special abilities to be shocking burst instead.

Example: Your +1 holy arrows can become +1 shocking burst arrows when fired by this bow if you choose to do so.

This ability can be kept fairly inexpensive - I wouldn't value the +2 bow in question much over 11-12k, primarily because its cool power is a total "coin toss" effect. It's the sort of item theme that a witch hunter or paladin might have for spontaneously-generating good damage.