Things I'd like to see more of: Notes on creature parts that are useful

[Ckorik]

From the PRD on "Cave Fisher"

PRD wrote:

A cave fisher produces its filament from glands in its body; when it reels in a victim, it generally eats the filament along with its meal. It's impossible to harvest new filaments from a dead cave fisher, but filaments harvested from living ones are incredibly light and strong, functioning as silk rope once the sticky adhesive on a length decomposes (which generally takes 3d6 minutes). A cave fisher's filament glands are useful in constructing sovereign glue and similar sticky magical items. A single cave fisher's glands count as 100 gp worth of raw materials, offsetting the total cost of the item's final creation.

Link : http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary/caveFisher.html

I'd like to see way more of this please - the number of times I've been asked if there is something they can harvest from a monster... We are re-doing the bestiaries right? Can we get notes like this on critters - especially when it's fun or appropriate? Extra-especially when it's fun *and* appropriate? :)

That's it - this thread is for this request - please feel free to vote with your comment ;)

[Malk_Content]

As someone who has run homebrew of players being able to research, hunt and harvest monster parts for crafting I would welcome this.

[Jesikah Morning's Dew]

It would certainly make my Breath of the Wild-inspired games better! I'm all in favor of this idea.

[Rules Artificer]

I'm definitely on board with this!

In 1st edition, it took until Monster Hunter's Handbook and Ultimate Wilderness (nearly at the end of 1E's run) to get some decent monster part harvesting rules.

I'd love to see that be a core part of the 2E system, so that 2E monster statblocks can come with some potential unique parts "loot".

Considering that all items have levels in 2E, you could easily integrate the monster parts into this tiered system.

[vorArchivist]

I agree too. We usually do it for food or poison in our pathfinder 1e game and we now jokingly call ourselves a "chopshop" after an incident where we harvested hundreds of pounds of meat from a couple giant scorpions so it would be cool to get better and more varied payouts.

[Bard of Ages]

I would love this.

[Tarik Blackhands]

+1 for more of this sort of thing too.

There's a certain bit of extra cool when your gear is augmented with stuff you've personally hunted down. Bonus points if they actually do stuff that's different than the normal bevy of basic +x stuff.

Bullete shell armor augments, dragon tooth daggers, a roper grappling hook type thing. Let em all come I say.

[Cuttlefist]

This would be amazing, having most monsters have some kind of drop listed and either a standard value or alchemical and crafting use. Like Goblin ears and their value being included.

And can we have the Ranger specialize in this? Like maybe favored enemy could yield bonus items harvested, or special benefits from these harvested parts that other classes don’t have. Like a goblin ear being used as a whistle that causes everybody in a small range to become flat-footed for a turn.

Or the Ranger is the only class that is able to harvest most items at all, I think that would be a cool benefit to having a Ranger in your party. Or at the least requiring levels in lore or nature for non-rangers to have access to.

[Malthraz]

I would definitely like to see this. I did this in a campaign with limited magic item creation and it worked well. A character had a lance made from regenerating bone. They were wearing dire mongoose pets. Could make oil from some creature to give +1 bonus to weapons and armor.

It also balanced out the loot dropped between encounters.

[Fuzzypaws]

Cuttlefist wrote:

This would be amazing, having most monsters have some kind of drop listed and either a standard value or alchemical and crafting use. Like Goblin ears and their value being included.

And can we have the Ranger specialize in this? Like maybe favored enemy could yield bonus items harvested, or special benefits from these harvested parts that other classes don’t have. Like a goblin ear being used as a whistle that causes everybody in a small range to become flat-footed for a turn.

Or the Ranger is the only class that is able to harvest most items at all, I think that would be a cool benefit to having a Ranger in your party. Or at the least requiring levels in lore or nature for non-rangers to have access to.

I would think harvesting would be based on Lore or Nature, yeah. But the Ranger just being better at it would be a good part of their niche.

[Cuttlefist]

I would think having everybody with access to part harvesting would be best, maybe Rangers have a class feat to harvest additional parts? Or be more likely to find those parts if they are not 100% guaranteed with every kill.

or of course special ranger-only uses for parts. I like the idea of a Ranger killing a manticore, ripping its stinger off and then throwing it in the face of a nearby Bugbear, poisoning and grossing it out.

[Thanatos95]

+1 from me on the monster harvesting idea. Its a long tradition in fantasy stories of using parts from magical creatures for various things. From the wizard wanting exotic potion ingredients to the barbarian wearing trophies of his kills. It couldn't be hard to include in the monster entries a line saying something like:

dc 17 survival(or nature): harvest 1d4 units of dragon blood value 100 each.

its a way to allow even creatures with no reason to be carrying treasure to have something to make the fight worth while. It also allows for the addition of future "extra detail" systems like the optional alchemical material component rules for magic in P1.