So, I don't know if its pathfinder adventure paths under paying the adventurers or something else in the economic system, but it seems like I buy armor upgrade weapon upgrade and.. I'm broke.
For a mummy mask converted to 2e, Agents of edge-watch and 2 abomination vaults, and none of the purchased gear has been well.. purchased. I think two things outside potions/scrolls/wands have been picked up and used. Everything else has gone into a sell pile that... can't buy anything.
I don't think the best solution for the big six items was to drop it down to the big two.
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Certain ones, yes. Weapon and armor runes, movement items, save boosting items, certain skill items for athletics or stealth, carrying items, certain blasting items like wand of manifold missiles. It sort of depends.
A lot of items pretty useless. I know some swear by consumables, but past the low levels I've found consumables pretty useless. They just stack up and I never use them. Maybe healing potions are ok if you want to not waste spell power or there is a time push.
The lack of a scaling save makes items that use item saves no good. Monster saves are already set high enough to resist PCs, some non-scaling item save makes item powers using a non-scaling save absolutely worthless.
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I sadly agree that fundamental runes take way too much of a character's budget, which if campaigns don't go beyond 10 it means you pretty much aren't doing much shopping. This is why ABP is such a common variant rule.
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The general rule is that outside basic runes you should try and get items from least expensive to most expensive. Generally cheaper items provide more value per gp. A good rule of thumb for consumables is that they can be routinely used at level -4, i.e. use quickness potions most of the time starting level 13.
Just make sure to avoid items for their fixed DCs effect. They’re typically not worth the cost at the level where their DC does anything in the first place, but you’ll for sure regret it in a couple levels when it turns into ash because the DC is outscaled. There’s a couple that are outright broken enough to be worth it anyways (ashen rune, security badge), but those are few and far between.
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Here’s a (very incomplete) list of good consumables to use.
Bola shot: Magical ammo that knocks enemies prone, outright mean vs fliers. Always bring this on a ranged character.
Imp shot: Sidegrade to bola shot for non-fliers
Moderate prey mutagen: +20ft speed and a nimble dodge ability. Default mutagen for anyone who doesn’t want a different one for some build specific reason (usually there is one)
Moderate energy mutagen: Additional 1d4 energy damage and a resistance. Good for some melee characters, especially if they make a lot of attacks.
Major juggernaut mutagens: Pricey but give fortitude evasion, good for classes that don’t get that.
Iron wine: Gives unarmed characters a d4 fire damage on attacks for 3gp for 10 mins. Downside is weakness 5 to fire. Prebuff whenever possible unless you know you’re fighting fire enemies.
Quickness potions: Haste action is good. Use with potion patches for hands free application.
Soothing tonics: Brings you up after you get downed. Combine with feats and items that give you more dying/wounded stacks and it’ll keep you alive. Much better than a low level health potion, which won’t even be a strike, and dirt cheap compared to the reverse mortgage you’d have to take out on your primary residence to use on level health potions very often.
Silver salve/transmuting ingot: Get precious material weapon weakness procs without mortgaging your house
Chroma Kaleidoscope: Hour long prebuffable whetstone that makes enemies save cs your class DC vs blinded whenever crit
Chivalric Emblem: Another hour long whetstone that gives you a +1 circumstance to hit vs anyone who crits or downs an ally.
Dust of disappearance. 150gp a pop but that 4th rank invisibility goes hard. 50% miss chance for non-AOE enemy abilities. There’s a risk of your allies being unable to target you effectively, if they don’t have a non-visual precise sense to ignore your invisibility. Which they will, if they’re competent and you told them about it, or failing that you bought them for them.
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And here’s a much more incomplete list of permanent items. In addition to these many apex items have great activations (you can have multiple apex items, you just only get one ability bonus) and for skill items generally just getting the cheapest is best - usually the more expensive ones just have some dogwater fixed DC effect in addition to the skill bonus.
Echo receptors. 900gp. If you buy no other item on the list buy this one. Ignore visual effects by closing your eyes at little penalty. Become immune to enemy and allied invisibility and concealment. Get your allies to buy them, if they won’t buy them for them. Pairs well with concealment generation, the best form factor for a mist spell is the sunflower censor. It does some other stuff but we don’t care about that, the 1/hour mist centered on you is what we want.
2x spring heels. 150gp each. Stride twice as an action 1/hour. Great speed.
Longstrider wand second rank. More speed can’t hurt.
Ant haul wand. If needed for bulk.
8 heroism wands and backup scrolls. Use these whenever it’s even plausible you’ll be in combat or an important skill challenge in the next 10 minutes. Literally never be walking around a dungeon without heroism. Won’t help you in true ambushes but those are fairly rare. You might want to start with just a few wands as the price tag for the full 8 + backup flex scrolls is a bit steep for 6k.
Bag of holding. Carry all your wands
Ancestral geometry. The solution to unfilled investment slots. 30gp a pop and you can have as many as you have the slots for. Give you some savings throw resilience, you roll a saving throw with advantage at the start of the day and can swap that in for a bad roll as a reaction. They’re tattoos, so you’ll have to remove them to get the invested slots back if you need them later, but you can do that with a sharp knife and a regeneration spell if necessary. Or craft them into staring skulls which turn non-magical if you have duplicates (and are also a good item to have one of). But the regenerate spell is cheaper.
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A common suggestion I hear for permanent magic items is any that doesn't require being held and lets you cast the Heal. Faith Tattoo and Healer's Gloves come to mind. the item bonuses are just a neat addition.
The amount healed doesn't matter, just that it lets you revive an unconscious teammates.
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Reminder to wait to buy weapon/armor upgrades until you're one level past the item level. Buying them on-level means being permanently broke.
I generally like to load up on flavorful first and second level permanent magic items as soon as it's feasible, and then you can swap them out for more useful upgrades.
The level 2 Battlecry! items are a good choice, a Cloak of Feline Rest, and a Purifying Spoon. Those mostly aren't ones that make an impact on combat, but they do help a character feel like a proper adventurer.
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I know some swear by consumables, but past the low levels I've found consumables pretty useless. They just stack up and I never use them. Maybe healing potions are ok if you want to not waste spell power or there is a time push.
I guess I might be one of the Swear by consumables people. And really consumables are like spell slots. A few low level ones might be always useful (I like Antidote, Antiplague and Cat's eye elixir myself) and others you want to always have the highest version you can buy.
This is especially true for scrolls which are basically additional spell slots you can buy.
I know some swear by consumables, but past the low levels I've found consumables pretty useless. They just stack up and I never use them. Maybe healing potions are ok if you want to not waste spell power or there is a time push.I guess I might be one of the Swear by consumables people. And really consumables are like spell slots. A few low level ones might be always useful (I like Antidote, Antiplague and Cat's eye elixir myself) and others you want to always have the highest version you can buy.
This is especially true for scrolls which are basically additional spell slots you can buy.
Also worth mentioning as well that consumables provide item bonuses at lower levels than permanent equipment. It's something that really shines with classes and feats that give temporary consumables.
Consumables, as mentioned, are useful because they are much less expensive and give better bonuses than permanent items of equivalent level. They do eat into your action economy especially in battles where the party is surprised.
Automatic Bonus Progression takes the price of the necessary items out of the picture. But it does also put your equipment bonuses onto the same treadmill as all of the rest of your stats. You generally can't squeeze out extra money enough for better items anyway, so that isn't really a bad thing. Especially when playing an AP while having a larger size party and the GM forgets to adjust the loot drop rate...
ABP also has some known bugs that have to be resolved at the table, such as being cost inequitable to certain types of classes (mostly spellcasters that still have to pay for their extra learned spells and for wands/staves) and not interacting well with consumables by strict RAW (it strips out those improved item bonuses mentioned and leaves many of them doing practically no effect at all). Houserule the official houserule as needed.
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ABP also has some known bugs that have to be resolved at the table, such as being cost inequitable to certain types of classes (mostly spellcasters that still have to pay for their extra learned spells and for wands/staves) and not interacting well with consumables by strict RAW (it strips out those improved item bonuses mentioned and leaves many of them doing practically no effect at all). Houserule the official houserule as needed.
Automatic Rune Progression fixes this (as a variant of the variant). Instead of changing how things work like ABP does, it just grants you fundamental runes automatically. No changes to how item bonuses work, no other stuff being altered. So Alchemy works normally since item bonuses themselves work normally.
This also means the GM can still give out skill booster items early as a bonus or such, as that part of the system isn't altered at all.
Personally I just prefer to add some fundamental runes in as loot and use the normal system, but if I was going to use a variant I'd definitely pick ARP over ABP.
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A lot of items pretty useless. I know some swear by consumables, but past the low levels I've found consumables pretty useless. They just stack up and I never use them. Maybe healing potions are ok if you want to not waste spell power or there is a time push.
Most consumables (and permanent items) are worthless vendor trash, yeah. There are some good consumables though. Silversheen, bola shot, air walk scrolls until everyone has permanent flight, that one bard talisman whose name I can never remember. And the usual assortment of utility spell scrolls you'll cast once a campaign I guess.
The more free hands you have, the more interesting options there are. Nets aren't even magic, but they can do a lot as an opening move. Eternal eruption, even under-leveled, is great for when you're a martial fighting a swarm or ooze. Windlass Bolas is a great tool for abusing Athletics builds at a distance.
Utility items can be great with the right planning. Versatile Tinder box is handy for a patient pyro and for various bluffs. Flask of Fellowship, Bottomless Stein, etc. are simple but nice, flavorful tools, Decanter of Endless Water can be a menace, and so on.
A common suggestion I hear for permanent magic items is any that doesn't require being held and lets you cast the Heal. Faith Tattoo and Healer's Gloves come to mind. the item bonuses are just a neat addition.
The amount healed doesn't matter, just that it lets you revive an unconscious teammates.
That’s what I use soothing tonics for, because it also gets them up the next time they go down. Faith tattoo having range is good though.
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It's legacy now, but I'll add the holly bush feather token to the list of evergreen consumables, and this one is 6gp.
The consumable is a 1A activate, fills a square with the bush, which has the healing berry thing, but I cite it because the bush provides standard cover.
The GM likely will want to rule that AoE damage instantly destroys the bush, but this does not time out in combat.
Standard cover is a +2 to AC, Reflex, & Stealth, and in the worst case, the GM will rule the cover as being fully mutual with foes. Meaning, players that use things like Will or Fort spells can still operate without penalty.
Most of the time, I'd kinda hope the GM considers the bush to be akin to the non-mutual arrow-slit example of cover.
Unlike a shield, standard cover also needs zero actions to maintain, nor is dropped if you use offensive actions.
That "ends if" mechanic only happens if you perform the Take Cover action to up the +2 to a +4. So casters can pop a bush and cast turn 1, then Take Cover and cast again turn 2.
The image of a caster hiding inside a bush like a little gremlin while chucking spells is rather fun one, and is a perfect fit for all those druid types.
That sounds like a pretty solid mid level held item for otherwise free hand builds.
What do you all think of the price for the highest level items? A +3 Major Striking weapon or +3 major resilient armor or bracers of armor +3? These items cost so much that you're barely able to afford them at max level.\
Do you make sure the PCs get them as treasure? Or do the PCs save up enough to buy them in your campaigns?
The armor you can at least buy in levels. The bracers of armor +3 are crazy priced. You almost have to hand them out for a PC to have them given the cost.
What do you all think of the price for the highest level items? A +3 Major Striking weapon or +3 major resilient armor or bracers of armor +3? These items cost so much that you're barely able to afford them at max level.\
Do you make sure the PCs get them as treasure? Or do the PCs save up enough to buy them in your campaigns?
The armor you can at least buy in levels. The bracers of armor +3 are crazy priced. You almost have to hand them out for a PC to have them given the cost.
Apparently, fundamental runes and their bonuses only exist and factored into the math because of playtesters thought they were fun (a sentiment I agree with). I just wish the prices weren't budget hogs without ARP...
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In my AP experience cash hasn't really been as sparse as all that. It might be a combination of relatively generous GM and really thorough completionist playstyle, or just that these APs were more generous than some others.
For fundamental runes my approach is based on the base treasure per level tables, which suggest:
- that at level X, the party expects to find two permanent level X and two permanent level X+1 items
- 50%-75% of these items should be useful enough to keep
That means that you have a pretty decent chance of finding some items with fundamental runes at, or one level before you can buy them. It's kinda common to find a +1 striking weapon around level 3 and it's always a big damage boost at that time. If you're not the lucky one though, there's more chances to find one at level 4, but if you don't, then by level 5 you should consider just buying one. (If you actually use strikes, of course.)
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In PFS wealth is pretty abundant as long as the tables you play at remember that skill challenges are where a lot of the treasure comes from, and don't neglect that part of character building.
The lower runes are fine. Max level runes once you hit that 17 to 20 range while also obtaining an Apex item is quite pricey. So are the upper tier property runes.
The top end stuff is expensive but that's kind of okay. It's not the end of the world if people can't afford that many level 19 items given how powerful they are, and I don't think the expectation should be "everyone has maxed out weapons and armor with 3 high level property runes AND a ton of other top end items too." People need to be choosey about items in that price range.
Major Resilient Runes are the only problem ones to me because they're so expensive that by time you can afford them, you're usually right around the end of the story and don't have time to actually transfer them if you find them, or craft them if you can afford it (if you have a crafter that can do it). It's not like this is something you can buy just anywhere.
It's pretty common in my experience for only part of the party to have those by time a high level AP ends.
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I've yet to play an adventure path that did not give us our wealth by level several times over.
I understand that not all APs are the same, but I'm astounded to see so many people claiming they have difficulty affording their capstone items. Paizo is pretty good about ensuring heroes get what they need in my experience, so tg8s indicates to me that there is likely something else going on at your table (like a GM being stingy with the treasure, the party not selling off loot, or the party rogue hoarding a bunch of unreported findings).
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What do you all think of the price for the highest level items? A +3 Major Striking weapon or +3 major resilient armor or bracers of armor +3? These items cost so much that you're barely able to afford them at max level.\
Do you make sure the PCs get them as treasure? Or do the PCs save up enough to buy them in your campaigns?
The armor you can at least buy in levels. The bracers of armor +3 are crazy priced. You almost have to hand them out for a PC to have them given the cost.
Usually I skip major resilient, better ways to spend 40k gp. Shit’s almost a 9th of your total treasure by level for the entire game.
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What do you all think of the price for the highest level items? A +3 Major Striking weapon or +3 major resilient armor or bracers of armor +3? These items cost so much that you're barely able to afford them at max level.\
Do you make sure the PCs get them as treasure? Or do the PCs save up enough to buy them in your campaigns?
The armor you can at least buy in levels. The bracers of armor +3 are crazy priced. You almost have to hand them out for a PC to have them given the cost.
I hand magic items out to the PCs.
I have run three campaigns under PF2 rules. The first was Ironfang Invasion converted to PF2. The first two modules have the PCs in the Fangwood Forest with no stores available to purchase itemns. Thus, I had to stock treasure caches with the items they needed. I needed to change the items in those caches anyways, because the PF2 items had few matches to the PF1 items listed in the module. When they reached the city of Longshadow in Assault on Longshadow, they had gold to spend on upgrading their items. Instead, they spent their gold on hiring workmen to improve the city defenses, since defending Longshadow was one of their campaign goals. So I had a fey Millindemalion give them magic hats (some had the powers of PF2 magic robes) as their prize for defeating him.
The second campaign was based on the Free RPG Day modules A Fistful of Flowers, A Few Flowers More, and two more chapters I wrote myself. They started each chapter with level-appropriate gear.
My third and current PF2 campaign is Strength of Thousands. The first module, Kindled Magic, deliberately left +1 Handwraps of Mighty Blows in their dormitory laundry room for the party to claim. Instead, the party tracked down the former resident to return the handwraps. She said that she had made them in her Magical Crafting class and would not use them herself, so the party could keep them. The players wanted to roleplay as students at the Magaambya Academy rather than as adventurers, so they did not loot. Instead, we worked out work-study jobs for them that paid half Earn Income wages. And before any dangerous mission, the Magaambya lent them appropriate gear. They do have a few personally owned items, because they used their wages to give Winter Solstice gifts to each other.
Thus, my players and I have not experienced the cost of buying full-level items. However, I noticed that besides the basic magic weapons and armor, the magic items feel lackluster. Most are slightly useful, way below class features in power.
The party in Hurricane's Howl was given 8th-level gear by the Magaambya for their archaeology expedition at the 8th-level start of the module. Then the main adventure started while they were out in the field. The Magaambya is sending them new gear to pick up in the town of Jula in the Sodden Lands so that they don't have to play the 10th- and 11th-levels of this module with below-level equipment. I have been stocking this care package with the gear recommended by this thread. Thank you for the suggestions.
Magical items (outside fundamental runes) definitely feel like they matter less in PF2, but there are several that are impactful. Unfortunately there are so many, that finding the ones that are good is difficult, and becomes more challenging as more material is released.
Easy items to identify are obviously fundamental runes. Then property runes. I have trouble finding armor property runes I like. When it comes to weapon property runes, there are a lot, but it's also hard to go wrong with just 3 elemental damage runes as a default.
Beyond that, look at items that increase the skills you've invested in. Beyond doing just a number bonus, some have some cool benefits to how you use the skill.
Honestly, beyond that you're probably most broke for most of your career. But there are some items that are probably worth seeking out for specific circumstances/characters.
Some items I like (not necessarily for combat power):
Decanter of Endless Water
Deteriorating Dust
Fear Gem
Fury Cocktail
Hat of Disguise
Healer's Gloves
Horn of Fog
Jar of Shifting Sands
Predictable Silver Piece
Private Workshop
Sleeves of Storage
Snapleaf
and I'm sure there's much more
As far as permanent items I like,
Math items:
Weapon (runes, doorknob)
Armor (runes, some cheap armor talisman)
Perception (darkvision goggles or eye slash)
Skill 1
Skill 2
Skill 3
Speed (tailwind wand and/or boots of bounding)
At very high level:
Apex
Permanent Flight
Playstyle based:
Doubling ring/blazons (dual wield)
Weapon siphons (dual wield, maybe melee magus)
Shield (take a guess)
Collar of the shifting spider (empty hand)
Generic:
Potion pouch (cheap haste)
Bulk boosters (lifting belt, ant haul wand)
Storage (bag of holding and common variants)
Misc wands (heroism, others)
I'm sure there are some I've forgotten that I'll feel silly about later but oh well.
I vaguely recall a glove item that let you see through walls and door for a limited distance, but I can't recall the name of it. Pretty nifty item though.
As far as permanent items I like,
Math items:
Weapon (runes, doorknob)
Armor (runes, some cheap armor talisman)
Perception (darkvision goggles or eye slash)
Skill 1
Skill 2
Skill 3
Speed (tailwind wand and/or boots of bounding)At very high level:
Apex
Permanent FlightPlaystyle based:
Doubling ring/blazons (dual wield)
Weapon siphons (dual wield, maybe melee magus)
Shield (take a guess)
Collar of the shifting spider (empty hand)Generic:
Potion pouch (cheap haste)
Bulk boosters (lifting belt, ant haul wand)
Storage (bag of holding and common variants)
Misc wands (heroism, others)I'm sure there are some I've forgotten that I'll feel silly about later but oh well.
Shifting spider collar doesn’t actually need a free hand. It’s an activate, not an interaction. It’s just a really weird activate that’s also manipulate despite not taking a hand.
I vaguely recall a glove item that let you see through walls and door for a limited distance, but I can't recall the name of it. Pretty nifty item though.
I thought it was an eyepiece? Either way goes hard with ghost ammo.
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I vaguely recall a glove item that let you see through walls and door for a limited distance, but I can't recall the name of it. Pretty nifty item though.I thought it was an eyepiece? Either way goes hard with ghost ammo.
Maybe it is. At this point its only a vague recollection for me.
I believe I was thinking of the gloves of reconnaissance, but they're from PF1.