Greetings.
I just started running the Ironfang Invasion on FG and the druid announced that he would like to craft magic items but with a wilderness feel. Ex: Instead of a pearl of power he would like to enchant something nature oriented like an acorn and use it in the same manner.
Now personally, I like the idea. If a nature druid is making a wondrous item, I don't see him in a stuffy laboratory hunched over a forge trying to make whatever.
The problem is, what to do with the magic item creation rules... specifically the monetary requirements. If he is enchanting an acorn, there is no cost associated with that. a pearl of power requires a pearl...
just curious how others would approach this. he has several items that he wants to create with outside-the-box thinking...
Any suggestions would be welcome.
I had converted Ironfang Invasion to Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules, back when Age of Ashes was the only PF2 adventure path published. The crafting rules in PF2 are much slower and demand more raw materials than the PF1 crafting rules. And, of course, the PCs could not simply walk into Phaendar to buy materials after the Ironfang Legion conquered the town. I was worried that they would have trouble crafting arrows. That worry was wrong, because they looted plenty of arrows off of dead Ironfang patrols. Nevertheless, I invented a system for gaining raw materials for the forest. That might have the flavor you need.
Basically, they hunted in the forest not for food, but for plants and minerals that made good raw materials. I used Survival for the skill check and the DC was fairly easy because Fangwood Forest feels very lush. That will make the crafting feel more natural.
As for using an acorn in place of a pearl, acorns are too common. You want a rare plant with mythology behind it, like a four-leaf clover or mistletoe or hawthorn berries. This is a good time to ask the players for suggestions what they would think would feel special. Finding the special plant or mineral would have a higher DC than regular raw materials for magical crafting. "Oh, you rolled a natural 19, which sums up to 25. You did not just find raw materials, you found mistletoe."
I see no reason to get caught up in the minor details of crafting. A Pearl of Power (1st) costs 500g to craft. If you want to let your Druid reskin the pearl into an acorn, that’s totally fine. The cost is for game balance, and need not be exactly what the item says it is in the CRB. As long as you and your players understand that and don’t mind just saying it costs 500gp-worth of…”Magic stuff” to imbue that acorn, well, that’s fine. I personally would have my players make skill checks to look for materials, considering you’re cut off from civilization, though. Maybe dropping in a random traveler who happens to have some “magic crafting dust” for sale? Ultimate Wilderness has some decent rules for salvaging magic powder from unwanted magic items that can be repurposed into materials for crafting. Or maybe just replace a certain percent of treasure with crafting materials. Or if that feels like too much work and you don’t think it’ll kill the immersion, just have them spend raw gp and don’t think about it too much.
Mathmuse wrote: I had converted Ironfang Invasion to Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules, back when Age of Ashes was the only PF2 adventure path published. The crafting rules in PF2 are much slower and demand more raw materials than the PF1 crafting rules. And, of course, the PCs could not simply walk into Phaendar to buy materials after the Ironfang Legion conquered the town. I was worried that they would have trouble crafting arrows. That worry was wrong, because they looted plenty of arrows off of dead Ironfang patrols. Nevertheless, I invented a system for gaining raw materials for the forest. That might have the flavor you need.
Basically, they hunted in the forest not for food, but for plants and minerals that made good raw materials. I used Survival for the skill check and the DC was fairly easy because Fangwood Forest feels very lush. That will make the crafting feel more natural.
As for using an acorn in place of a pearl, acorns are too common. You want a rare plant with mythology behind it, like a four-leaf clover or mistletoe or hawthorn berries. This is a good time to ask the players for suggestions what they would think would feel special. Finding the special plant or mineral would have a higher DC than regular raw materials for magical crafting. "Oh, you rolled a natural 19, which sums up to 25. You did not just find raw materials, you found mistletoe."
Making it an acorn instead of a pearl sounds awesome, actually. This "system for gathering raw materials from the forest" is going to be carrying a lot of the weight, though. Normally, to craft magical items, they have to buy unspecified rare and valuable materials worth half the item's base price. If you wanted to gather 500 gp worth of materials from the forest instead, you'd pretty much have to be making Profession(herbalist) or Profession(hunter/gatherer) checks or something similar, getting 1/2 the check result in GP per week, and taking much longer to gather materials than to craft acorns of power. If your average Profession check is say, 15, 7.5 gp/week = 66.67 weeks. This could be a good use for the NPCs, though. If you can just feed everyone goodberries and set them to foraging rare herbs or natural minerals, instead of gathering food, then 8 NPCs could make that total in 12 weeks. So, your system will probably be preferred! Just be aware, this means they are paying 0% of the item's base price and are getting ahead of the equipment curve. (You could always have them buy some natural magic item materials from local non-evil fey. Atomies and Pixies and such do like money.)
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