#pathfinder remaster

Hey there fine folks

Made some more beasties for my future in-Golarion scenario for Pathfinder 2e, this time heavily inspired in medieval manuscripts and some fantastic animals represented in heraldic art. Oh and the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus because I love that thing. And the idea of mixing an octocpus and a slug seems like a good outcome for it.

Hope you like them and stay tuned for the next post in Easter where I will reveal who lives in these scenario alongs those creatures. But I can give you a little hint as well in the image bellow... Not all of them will be there but most of the will.

Special thanks to @a-book-of-creatures for the inspo this time and presenting us with their fantastic beasts.

Time to yell at clouds again

I really don't like it when D&Dtubers use recognizably Pathfinder art for unrelated D&D concepts

Feiya has nothing to do with Fey

Why is she here!?

Of course, the reason is that Pathfinder Iconics Art is usually more detailed and easier to acquire in my experience, that's why Pathfinder Goblins often show up in Vids about D&D Goblins

As a wizard, when you cast spells, your incantations likely specify exactly what forces you call on and how to shape them, and your gestures precisely shape and direct your magic while circles of arcane runes flare to life.

Look at that! Pre remaster that was just “you use material components from a pouch”. Now there’s specific role play guidance like “Throw some mustard on that spell. Go all ‘BY THE EIGHT WINDS AND THE TWELVE STARS’ on some guys.”

And there’s one for every class!

As a bard, when you cast spells, your incantations might be musical riffs or clever limericks, your gestures might incorporate dance and dramatic pantomiming, and you might accompany your spellcasting by playing a musical instrument.

As a cleric, your chants generally invoke your deity and their powerful servants by name or title, while your gestures are followed by sacred symbols or other representations of your deity

As a druid, your spellcasting incantations might be pleas to the environment around you or the invocation of ancient vows; your hands might sway like willows or curl into clawlike shapes as your gestures direct your magic.

As a witch, when you cast spells, your incantations might rhyme, your gestures might be as simple as an ominous pointing finger or a complex folk sign, and your familiar might even echo your words or movements slightly as your patron's magic surges.

Just a little nudge toward roleplay potential in a central aspect of the game and how it differs from class to class, character to character.

They even brought it back for Player Core 2! “A Sorcerer with a demonic bloodline might chant guttural fiendish phrases or make brief curt gestures to cast a spell.” “As an Oracle, when you cast spells, your incantations may spill from your lips rapidly as you speak in tongues or intone in a voice not quite your own…”

This is it. The final gauntlet of fights against spiders and drow with the strongest of the lot as the big boss! Will we come out victorious? Or will my absolutely abysmal luck be my demise before I can reach the end??

#dawnsburydays #pf2e #crpg

Paizo really just went "Fuck it" and made non-binary plant people a core player ancestry in the 2e remaster.

Crafting! Every Intelligence spellcaster's (and Alchemist, Munitions Crafter Gunslinger, Inventor, and Alchemical Sciences Investigator) favorite skill. In Pathfinder 2e pre-remaster, the Crafting skill and its Craft activity were generally... underused. The Craft activity asked of you 4 days to produce one permanent item or 4 consumables at full price after you also bought the formula for it, and most adventure paths just didn't have the downtime to allow for it to be useful with the real benefit of spending extra time to reduce the price of the items down by your Earn Income amount for your Crafting skill. However, with Player Core 1, that's changed! So, first, let's go over what changed from the CRB.

I Can Make a Spoon in 1 Day Now: The Changes to Crafting

The following are some of the most notable changes to Crafting and the Craft activity:

CRB: Crafting items takes 4 days of downtime, and you must have the formula. You must provide half the materials upfront and pay the rest of the value after the 4 days are finished, but you can spend can spend extra days to reduce the price further, up to half the total value of the item.

PC1: Crafting items takes 1 - 2 days of downtime. 1 day if you have the formula, 2 days if you don't have the formula. Any common item can be crafted without a formula. You must provide half the materials upfront and pay the rest of the value after the 4 days are finished, but you can spend can spend extra days to reduce the price further, up to half the total value of the item.

The following feat was altered with these changes to the rules:

Inventor was moved down from a 7th level skill feat that required Master in Crafting to a 2nd level skill feat that requires Expert in Crafting. Additionally, it now says the GM can allow you to use the Craft activity to make uncommon and rare formulas, which you do need if you want to craft those items.

Spoons are Nice, But How About This Healing Potion: How Crafting Helps Every Party Now

So, with those changes, there is a notable difference with Crafting now: you only need 1 day to make stuff (if you have the formula). 1 day of downtime is stupid easy to come by in a majority of APs and homebrew games, heck 2 isn't a big ask either. The biggest benefit this provides is the savings, however. By reducing the downtime required from 4 days to 1, that gives you 3 days you typically would've spent making a wicked new magic longsword for Seelah as extra days you can spend to get savings you wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. This makes feats like Impeccable Crafter have much more value, since you can take advantage of getting a critical success on your Crafting check a lot more now.

But, let me provide a recent experience. In my current campaign, my GM gave the party a month of downtime before PC1 came out while I ran Malevolence for everyone to give him a break. I wanted to craft the following:

4x Cheetah's Elixirs (Moderate)

4x Elixirs of Life (Lesser)

1x Eye Slash (Greater)

4x Oils of Mending

4x Predator's Claws (Formerly called Owlbear Claws)

My Gunslinger/Inventor has the following skill feats and items to help with Crafting, with her Master Crafting proficiency:

Crafter's Eyepiece

Speciality Crafting (Alchemy)

Tattoo Artist

Overall, I got 4 critical successes, 1 success, and 1 critical failure on my die rolls. In total, I spent 25 days performing the Craft activity to make of all of this, spending lots of extra days to reduce the total cost of the items be crafted by half. In total, I spent 6 days making the items, and 19 days finishing them for the discount.

With the CRB rules, I would've spent a total of 24 days making the items, and then 19 days finishing them for the discount, for a total of 43 days spent Crafting, 13 days over my limit of 1 month.

Simply put, if I used the CRB Crafting rules, I would've had to spend much more gold, but I also likely wouldn't had taken the time to make the Oil of Mending for our Inventor, or the Eye Slash for our Barbarian. The new Crafting rules provide incentive for players to not only make cheaper items, thus spend less gold, but also make more items too since you're spending way less time.

We Only Have 1 Apex Item Between Us All: How the Formula Changes Helps High-Level PF2e

A minor issue high-level PF2e APs have is item droughts. Acquiring the equipment you need can be difficult because it doesn't drop, and unless you have access to a city like Absalom with a high settlement level, it won't be sold either. The issue can mainly be seen in acquiring Apex Items, some of the best magical gear available to high-level PCs that boosts 1 ability score to +4, or increases it by +1 if it's above that already. This is essential for getting a +7 in your primary ability score. The main problem, however, is that most APs (barring a few like Stolen Fate) don't drop apex items for every stat and buying them could be out of the question either due to not having enough gold or just no place to purchase. The solution to this was supposed to be Crafting, but small issue, you needed a formula to craft it, and that was just as hard to get.

However, the recent change makes it so that common items require no formula at all, you just need to spend 2 days on the Craft activity instead! And what are apex items and their rarity at typically? Common. With this, plus the lowered downtime required to finish the initial item, if a party has a crafter, getting cheaper apex items can be simple provided you find time for a little bit of downtime from levels 17 - 20 (which can still be a big ask, but not as big as before). This means, that perhaps everyone can get access to the prestigious magic items and enjoy the benefits of the power they entail.

In Conclusion

Moving away from D&D’s schools of magic, abjuration, necromancy, etc, spells don’t have a school anymore, though studying an arcane school will let you learn certain spells. But these schools are more … I don’t want to say ‘practical’, but they do kind of feel like … magic you study towards a purpose? It’s not about what the spells are, the arbitrary categories they’re deemed to fit into, it’s about the kind of things you want your magic to do. Your school is a collection of magic you’ve studied towards a goal. I’m not sure how to phrase this, but I like the ethos. And. There’s just a couple of particular schools that excite me just for existing.

Particularly, I’m just going to be honest here, the School of Civic Wizardry. Is it a good subclass? I have no clue. But I love that it’s a thing that exists. If you want to study magic to build things, to transport things, if you want to be an architect arcane, honey baby, have we the school for you! If you became a wizard to help build and maintain cities, there’s now a school for that. That just makes me happy.

I also enjoy the School of Ars Grammatica. It’s the school of runes and wards, the magic of words, the underpinning geometries of magic. Wards are an idea in fantasy that have always fascinated me, and you also can’t go wrong with the magic of communication.

Then there’s the School of the Boundary, for when you want to get spooky. This is the school of summoning, seeing, traversing. Trespass and transgress. I really really really like the boundary, the liminal, as a theme. People may have noticed. So, yes. Excellent school. Do enjoy it.

And then, of course, there’s the School of Mentalism. The magics of the mind. I just really like illusions?

This is not to knock the schools of Battle Magic, Protean Form or Unified Magical Theory, of course. I’m just. Likely gonna pick a few of the others first.

I do also love that the entries for each give examples of actual schools, as in places in the setting, where you might have learned particular Arcane Schools. Embedding your mechanics in your setting, and vice versa, is always a thing I enjoy.

But yes. I really just want a wizard construction worker now? An architect arcane. None of this arty farty ‘what is the meaning of magic’ stuff, magic is so you can build a building without having to move rocks with your body like an idiot. Okay? Magic exists so we can make things easier. There’s no need to get complicated and silly about it.

It’d be funny to have a party that’s a small wizard construction/building inspection firm? You have your Civic Wizard who does the building, your Ars Grammatica Wizard who does the warding and puts the magical phones in, and then you have the black sheep, the Boundary Wizard, who does building inspections and tells people whether their shit’s haunted or if they just built too close to the sewer and the ventilation in this end of the city isn’t the best.