this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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Working on a dungeon for my Pathfinder 1e game. Hidden in the sewers underneath the city is an underground complex of insane Derro (little halfling sized purple-skinned insane humanoids) who have been capturing people for their experiments. I have some fun encounters planned, and I intend to make them really weird and alien. Derro alchemists with sentient tumors, psychic malformed derro babies held aloft in golden cages and used as living war banners, mutated and mind controlled humans from the city above used as muscle and servants, fungus monsters, suicide-bomber homonculi, etc etc. I plan for the big reveal to be that a character they met previously (an elven alchemist who runs a free clinic in the city) to be the mastermind behind the derro lair. He's been buying slaves and experimenting on them for centuries (a la Nazi experiments during ww2) to further his medical knowledge which he uses to help people (and eventually cure death but thats mostly for him). He brought the Derro from the deep underground closer to the surface so he could guide their research towards something more productive (the Derros racial insanity makes it difficult for them to make any lasting progress). Oh also the Derro use their alchemical knowledge to wipe the memories of the people they experiment on before sending them back to the surface. Who knows how many hidden mutants are running around aboveground, and if the nightmares of the seemingly insane are actually resurfacing memories...
That sounds really cool! Are you designing it all from scratch?
Ive had a lot of help lol. Kobold Press' Midgard setting had a few new Derro monsters (Fetal Savant and Dogmoles) and Pathfinder's Golarion setting has a lot of good Derro lore to work with. The most time consuming part is gonna be building all the Derro npc stats and balancing all the encounters. Pathfinder's Derros are also the closest to what their actually based on, which was a fascinating rabbit hole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver
That was a very interesting read, thanks for sharing! I play d&d 5e myself, but I had no idea what the origin on the Duergar and all the psionic creatures dwelling in the Underdark was.. Really cool to find out, thanks!
Its one of those stories you read about and wonder why it hasnt been made into a movie. A down on his luck writer finds this schizophrenic guy who wrote this absolutely bizarre piece on his journey to an underground civilization. So the writer takes it, spruces it up, and publishes a really popular science fiction story. You could make it about the ethics of this writer using the paranoid delusions of this poor man to create award winning books. Like Rainman but for science fiction.
Amazing stuff! How do you find Pathfinder mechanically from a DM perspective? I played a bit of 1e as a player yeaaaaars ago but have only DM’d in D&D 5e (and this has reminded me I need to figure out the next session).
I started out playing DnD 5e years ago (almost a decade now I think) and I was quickly given the title of Forever DM. As I got deeper and deeper into the game and my understanding grew I heard some people online talk about 3.5e and how much better it was. I had started to get a bit dissatisfied with 5e and after reading the 3.5e Core Rulebook it was all over. Character creation was more in depth, way more content for players and DMs, every aspect of the game was better. I played 3.5e for several years until I heard about Pathfinder and things got even better. Pathfinder 1e is my absolute favorite ttrpg system. Its everything I want out of an rpg, especially as a DM. In 5e, whenever you try to make new monsters or adjust stats the DMG just tells you to guesstimate. In Pathfinder, everything is supported by math and easy to understand forumulas to help ensure balance. I can increase a monsters hit dice to make them more powerful, give them class levels, add a template (of which there are many), or change their stats around. I love Pathfinder, and if you're still playing 5e I suggest you get out now. Wizards of the Coast is a terrible company that abuses their customers (see OneDnD fiasco and the MtG Pinkerton Incident) and Paizo, the creators of Pathfinder, create more content for the game in one year than WoTC makes for 5e's entire lifetime. IDK if you can PM me, but if you can please do and ill provide you with all the basic Pathfinder books as pdfs. If you like it, then go buy the actual books. Oh also Paizos books dont cost 60 dollars each.