Gift Guide For Gamers 2024: The ‘Pathfinder Treasure Vault’
by Anton Kromoff
Welcome to the table,
‘Tis the season to roll some dice, play some cards, and share some time with those at your table. In the spirit of the season, I’m here with another installment of Comicon’s 2024 Gift Guide For Gamers!
Paizo’s Pathfinder second edition has had some cool offerings since P2 has launched, including Guns & Gears, Dark Archive, and the Book of the Dead. One that I feel is a true treasure to both players and storytellers is the Pathfinder Treasure Vault.
Treasure Vault is a TTRPG book stuffed with all manner of stats, mechanics, and lore focused on the thing most players value above all else, loot. While there are many books that have presented catalogs of items ranging from potions to poisons, artifacts to ancient cursed items, this goes a little further with the world building and meta of it all. It carries a narrative from the perspective of an ancient underworld dragon known as Valashinaz and the steward of her hoard, a kobold named Purepurin.
The addition of this POV narrative from these two personalities really gives a charming dynamic to a book that could have become just another collection of stuff your players find on the bodies of their vanquished foes.
The Pathfinder team is known, by those paying attention, to go that extra mile. It’s never out of the ordinary to pick up a P2 book and find little extra bits of quality of life and world building to really make each offering in their library feel special.
Treasure Vault has around 600 new items that range in categories from alchemical creations to magical weapons, sentient artifacts, and cursed objects, and a ton more. For a book that comes in at around 200 pages there is so much within these pages that can inspire you to craft adventures that spin into entire campaigns with minimal effort.
One of my favorites is the Deadweight Mutagen Elixir that makes your joints loose and bones thick so your body becomes really difficult to move around. I’m also a fan of the Whispering Staff that has some cool flavor including the ability to expand your characters knowledge of languages and protecting your self and your party from the damaging effects of magics that harm the mind.
As a disabled person I’m also a huge fan of the section of Assistive Items. It’s rare to see any attention being given to such things that does not come off as pandering or checking a box but the Pathfinder team never seems to go that route. I was following the publishing process of this book from announcement to release and never once did it even come up these were in here, so I was delighted to find them upon my first read through.
The Pathfinder Treasure Vault is far from the only item-based TTRPG offering on the market. Where Treasure Vault sets itself apart is the tone and worldbuilding that you find on almost every page.
I never knew I needed an irritated Kobold’s grumblings about how boring spell books are but in a single small paragraph this book inspired 12 hours of game play at my table. That and so much more is why the Pathfinder Treasure Vault has a well deserved space in my 2024 Gift Guide For Gamers.
Until next time, I mean what I say. Paizo seems to prioritize the normalization of everyone at the table and for that I’m very grateful.
