I have a dream, but I could use help from people who are better at balancing things than I am. The idea is to use Golarion's broad strokes for a home game, but seed it with a lot more monsters in the theme of Monster Hunter and Witcher.
My question is: Any clever ideas on how to make crafting with monster parts feel rewarding and immersive? Let's say in this example, my players kill a chameleon looking wyvern who pukey pukeys poison around. Besides the players getting a nice aesthetic of wearing the monster's unique hide, could a weapon made from such a monster perhaps have a small bonus that would be weaker than any rune?
If a wyvern was slain and they wanted to make armor and weapons out of it, how much materials could it be worth?
I think the more straightforward way to do this is to let the party use a survival check to harvest raw materials from monsters for a set value, but to have that value either increase when used to create certain kinds of magical or alchemical items, or only be useable for those items.
This is going to create a LOT more booking keeping for you as GM and for them as players and you will want to shift the gold of treasure rewards into this system so as to not over seed your world with gold.
Maybe if you can go through the magical treasures and give yourself 5 to 6 categories of magical items, you can place each harvested monster type into one of those categories? Still sounds like a lot of book keeping to me, but if your players are into it, it might not feel like a chore.
@Unicorn, think it'd be simpler to keep the rewards more aesthetical, such as a Bulette fullplate armor without it affecting the statistics of said armor, except not counting as metal perhaps?
I kinda like the survival idea, Survival or Crafting could be used to convert a % of the loot value in crafting materials there and then, a sort of way to get crafting materials outside cities?
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In older D&D versions there were lists of monster parts & components. To make a magic item, you often needed a relevant monster bit.
That might be a bit too much, but you'd only need to list them as you introduced new monsters (or the item ingredient.)
Maybe more practical, or at least universal, you could have:
Step 1: Kill monster
Step 2: Harvest monster (Survival)
Step 3: Utilize harvested bits (Craft) or sell bits at half price.
You could align steps 2 & 3 w/ the Earn Income action, except adjusted for being part of Exploration mode instead. That wouldn't reap notable money unless tied to the reward/loot system too. Each monster could have its value based on its applicability & usefulness.
So a Mimic's blood might get you a lot of polymorph ingredient value (such as for a potion or the ink to scribe such a spell into your book), the eye of a Cyclops might aid with divination, and so forth.
Let's assume you want the party to hit standard loot level X.
Note, this is based on the treasure rewards which often include items which need to be sold at half value, not on wealth by level numbers.
Step 1: Examine monsters in scenario. Some will be worth less than normal (mundane & common monsters like a Rat Swarm), others (like Trolls w/ their uber-regeneration) might be more sought after therefore valuable. Some, like Unicorns and their horn or True Dragons, will be most valuable.
Step 2: Find a baseline difficulty re: Survival, likely using the DC charts for a normal activity at the monster's level. Chopping off a Unicorn horn might be made easier, drawing blood or skinning probably normal if they have the tools and storage devices, while extracting Wyvern poison or Dragon brain juice might be extra hard. (Which reminds me, Dragons might have several "loot" areas w/ different difficulties, or maybe their success roll determines how many the PCs were able to recognize & procure.)
Step 3: Base the percentage "earned" on their success. This is where you want a typical roll to match "loot level X", meaning the potential value in the monster would have to be higher than X. So maybe have nuanced degrees of success (3% shift ever 1 on die) or just Crit=60+2d20%, Success=40+1d20%, Failure=20+1d10%, Crit Failure=0%
You may want to be tighter on the math to better control wealth, or to set harder DCs since players will emphasize any skill tied to their income!
So a 300 s.p. Troll carcass might net a typical skilled PC (X) s.p. in Troll ingredients. (Figure out your own desired %) Then add X s.p. to the expected loot list for every Troll in a position to be harvested.
Step 4: Total the expected value of those bits and add in gear & gold to make up the difference to reach expected norms for the whole of the adventure arc.
However, as mentioned earlier, much of PF2 loot needs to be sold at half price. If a larger portion of the loot is found in monsters (which aren't likely a form of currency or an item PCs will equip), then Crafting comes in and helps balance back toward normal.
The Craftspeople could take the raw ingredients and use them to make finished, thematic products. So you drink some Troll extract to heal or dye that cloak of shapeshifting in Mimic's blood to imbue it with magic, or whatever fairly gross things suit your fancy.
The party will have a strange treasure list composed of monster bits they try to link to possible items they want to craft.
The worrisome part is the effect harvesting might have on player motivation. If rewarding, harvesting could easily overshadow plot or the PC's morality. Would a Paladin be able to break even in such a system? Heck, would everyone lean evil once they learn how valuable Angel feathers are?
And if not rewarding, the system becomes a labor.
Not sure how to tackle that other than by talking to your players ahead of time so they know the priorities of your campaign (which might indeed be to pillage the world's monster population.)
Maybe only give XP for story related killing? Or not for any killing, only story, since the killing has enough rewards? The players will want that sweet XP, more so because their ability to harvest & craft is tied to leveling up!
Anyway, have fun, hope that helped,
Cheers.
Another solution is to make the monster bits parts of the story, strongly or loosely.
For example, your players may be in contact with a crazy wizard trying to make some incredible experiments but who needs equally incredible components. And every time the PCs bring him components, he makes some godawful ritual ending invariably by a disaster (if the wizard is only loosely related to the story) or by a big step forward into the adventure (if he is strongly related to the story).
The bestiary is actually full of suggestions on how to either harvest monster parts or loot their lairs. You could run a game where most or all of the treasure pretty much comes in these two forms, at which point it differs very little from figuring out normal loot distributions. It doesn't really make a difference if you put 50 gemstones worth an SP each vs 50 bunyip teeth worth an SP each.
For larger projects, like the book's suggested taxidermied Bunyip, you'd use that as an Earn Income roll for either Crafting or a Lore such as Tanning. You'd need to decide if usable monster materials, such as bulette plating, sells for half price or full price. Not sure which works better off the top of my head.
I do think the above poster is correct that this will shift the focus of the game considerably due to the extra book keeping and downtime requirements. You're gonna wind up feeling a lot more like Moster Hunter than Witcher. That's not a bad thing, but it is worth discussing with your players to make sure it suits their tastes. The Witcher held *my* interests a lot longer than Monster Hunter did for example.