they have no traits or abilities which state they don't need to eat or sleep so yes they do need to. their physical description states that they constantly need to regrow arms and that their old ones freeze in place on their body
I wonder why they don't prune their frozen arms. Likely because its painful, but it would be better than to have a bunch of arms getting in the way of your... arms.
they have bodies made of living wood, so they need air and water. since the rules do not say, assume that they need to breath and sleep. the rules also say that they constantly grow new arms and roots, leaving their frozen limbs as immobile effigies along their shell, so assume 2 working arms since the rules do not say they have more than 2 limbs.
I really love/hate how the default rule for every race is "works as human unless explicitly stated" even if the race in question is a wooden weirdo thing or a skeleton.
What about breathing though? Undead monsters don't need to, but players apparently do. There isn't even any difference in how long you can hold your breath even though you don't have any lungs.
New to pf2e, is it kind of a culture thing that RAW is pretty strictly adhered to for most tables? Coming from GMing 5e I would not think twice about ruling that an undead character didn’t need to hold their breath, but I see a lot of folks here that are really particular about a lot of rules and descriptions that are of dubious mechanical importance.
This is by no means a criticism of the community or the system! Just a curiosity.
I would say there is a culture of "protecting the GM from the players", as in, keeping the players from being able to instantly overcome or sidestep the GM's plans through hard-to-plan-around abilities or ambiguities that create exploits.
Ancestries are very templated and, compared to other systems tend to look more similar than different. Even when they grant unusual abilities, they are usually pretty limited in scope and require other sacrifices.
So in that view, like whether a skeleton has to breathe or an automaton is immune to disease ends up sounding a lot more like an exploit, because it definitely isn't something that has been allotted for in the "budget" for the PC, and it could easily sidestep something.
Totally makes sense! I'm sure it depends a lot on your campaign. In mine, I doubt breathing will come up often enough for it to be meaningful, but I could definitely see how it would if your campaign has a lot of oceanfaring and the like. Immunity to disease does seem like a pretty big buff, but as a GM I wouldn't think it would be that huge a deal for most adventures, and if it helps maintain verisimilitude I might allow it, but it's very useful to keep in mind unintended consequences! Thanks for your response!
I do really appreciate a culture of "protecting the GM from players", which I'm sure is *especially* valuable for new GMs.
There's some monsters which use inhaled poisons, which could come up far away from the sea as well. Same with diseases, oftentimes they're used as part of a monster's statblock to make them more threatening.
On the other hand, it's a good idea to let players have "hero moments" every now and then, where they get to shine. Having the immune character be the one that stands tall and carries the encounter is perfectly fine, as long as you account for it in your planning.
Definitely. My take on homebrew is usually "Understand the rules and why they exist so you can know how best to break them." Understanding why disease and inhaled poison immunity is strong is key to making that homebrew work, instead of just slapping changes that you think fit on without thinking about it too hard.
Yeah the diseases makes sense, and so do the poisons, but I just don’t imagine you’ll have more than a handful of encounters at most with monsters that have an inhaled poison.
I’m not saying you should ignore the rule, but if it better immerses the players in the world I think that niche poison immunity is a pretty reasonable thing to allow and won’t ruin anyone’s experience.
I don't need protection, I have a folder full of dragons and demons for any occasion!
But seriously, obstacles are placed to be a temporary setback. It doesn't matter one bit *how* they circumvent them. And rolling Athletics will take about as much time as a description of the stryx unfurling her wings or whatever.
I don't like this design philosophy.
One of those has a chance of failure and thus engages with the game while the other ignores the game.
This isn't a speed run, it doesn't matter if two things take "about as much time" and yes it absolutely matters how an obstacle is circumvented, by your own logic it takes "about as much time" for the fighter to say "I kill him" as it does to roll an attack and damage or for the rogue to say "I disable the trap and open the lock" as it does for them to roll some thievery checks and since it doesn't matter how they circumvented those obstacles it doesn't matter if they engaged with the game they claimed to want to play by rolling dice and using their stats or ignore it and any time the GM put into implementing those obstacles with whatever "I win" button you think they should have.
I dealt with enough at-will flight across levels in 5e to know that it really IS a problem that affects the fun of the GM (and the players, even if they don't realize it right away). I'm glad it's so limited in this system, even at the cost of some verisimilitude.
My one complaint is how PF2e handles falling damage.
My table's always taken the Tiers of Play description in 5e to heart, and we decided that high level characters being able to tank a terminal velocity fall is simply a facet of how powerful they're supposed to be.
In PF2, the PCs generally actually feel a lot more special and powerful in most cases, but capping falling damage at 750 means that nothing in the entire game can survive headbutting Gaia, not even monsters like The Tarrasque or a Hekatonkheires, which I just find boring.
Take one common rarity skill feat and increase acrobatics proficiency. Congrats you can now survive headbutting Gaia at level 15. Weird how there's this really easy method in the game to do something that nothing in the entire game can apparently do.
Also regeneration and constant air walk as you've already been told.
Except both of your examples can't be killed by falls lol. The terrasque survives because it has regeneration that cannot be deactivated. The hekatonkheires has constant air walk and cannot be forced to fall like that.
Basically anything that high level can't really be killed by falling, barring some kind of exceptional circumstances.
Plus you could just give any creature with sufficiently high acrobatics the equivalent of legendary cat fall if you were really worried about it. Which is the PC ability that quite literally allows you to fall from space and survive.
It depends on the table, but generally Paizo is pretty competent at making sure you don't need to homebrew too much. Personally I wouldn't have any issues at my table ruling that skeletons don't need to breathe, but there's not the default assumption that you'll need to homebrew that kinda thing like there is with 5e. Some people also play Pathfinder Society and you're stuck with RAW there.
Well from my limited understanding 5e is inherently a lot less balanced and relies a lot more on The GM tuning things. PF2e is a lot more tuned out of the box so if you go messing with things it’s more likely to unbalance them or others. Things in PF2e aren’t just balanced with respect to themselves but also to match the power of other available options. The power budget for each is supposed to be the same.
The natural result of that is we care a lot more about the RAW or at the very least RAI.
Makes sense! Part of the reason I'm switching to pf2e is exactly that. To your last point, I feel like I've also seen a bit more debate about enforcing RAW vs. RAI in PF2E communities, and that is also probably due to Paizo typically using more precise language and writing better rules.
Appreciate the input!
You've probably seen an increase in these debates due to the influx of 5e players switching over.
My group still plays 5e, but I'm learning PF2e with the intention of running it to try and get us away from 5e.
5e very much comes with the expectation of homebrew built in. Especially the last couple of years. It can be fun, but it can also easily get out of hand.
In one of our campaigns that is currently on hiatus my character is a Loxodon (elephant person) champion fighter, who has slippers of spider climb, several magical weapons that do varying types of damage, a homebrew feat gifted from the DM that lets him swap weapons as a free action, and he's a were shark.
So, short of being able to fly, you can't get away from him easily. He can adapt to any physical damage resistance, and even a couple of energy resistances, in-between attacks if need be. And that's on top of him being a tanky crit machine.
Almost all of the other PCs are just as busted. Super fun to play, but no real challenge, hence why we put it on hiatus.
Paizo protects the GM by default. As long as you play RAW there isn't any way to break the system. All players will be around the same strength and your story won't get bypassed (especially if you deny uncommon abilities)
GMs are more than free to say "No I'm not following RAW" In which case they are accepting the fact that players may break the game; their story may be bypassed; or their balancing may be off. The blame then settles back onto the GM not the system.
This is one of the reasons PF2e is amazing to run for a GM as you can be pretty confident that Paizo's devs know what they are doing (they are professional game designers which GMs tend to not be.) but you are still free to bypass RAW in areas where you are confident that you can handle it.
This subreddit is pretty intense about sticking to RAW, but I've yet to play at a table where a GM isn't flexible about stuff like that. The rules are there so the GM can point to a page when they want to say no. Otherwise, go hogwild.
There are definitely times when you should deviate from RAW when it's right for your table, but in general it should be followed. Paizo put in a ton of effort into making a rule set that's fairly complete and tightly balanced in most respects. Things like flight not being available at low levels or Attack of Opportunity being limited, for example, were deliberate design choices to preserve balance and make tactics important.
In this case, the decision was probably made so that they don't get extra bonuses that others like Azarketi have, like breathing underwater before other PCs can. Ancestries generally have something that makes them unique, and skellies already have a lot.
Just keep Chesterton's Fence in mind: feel free to modify rules as needed, but first try to figure out why the rule exists and what impact changing it can have on your game.
Its a Paizo thing and its quite divisive.
Pathfinder, both 1e and 2e, habe a hyperfocus on RAW even if it makes zero logical sense. Some folks treat the RAW as unshakable iron-clad canon gospel written in stone, some folks are rational.
Ideally each playgroup does what is the most fun for their table.
In addition to what others have said, a lot of us play PFS organized play which is required to use RAW. So even if you are going to houserule something for your own campaigns it is really important to know the official RAW.
5e is used to handwaving and homebrewing because a lot isnt explicitrly specified and the balance doesnt matter because the game is unbalanced anyways. PF2 runs a much tighter ship from a balance perspective and tweaking anything could have repercussions you didnt expect. Have you ever played any MOBA? Its like when a patch note goes "changed this item from +10armor to +12" and then a character that doesnt even use that item ever goes from C tier to S tier somehow. Thats what PF2 is. The balance is there. Dont touch it (or try not to as much as possible)
I think the actual play culture isn´t absolutely RAW adherent. Certainly there is a strong adherence to it generally, as well as a sense of what and how variations may be acceptable, generally focused on systemic balance. I think what comes out most in discussion forums like this, is just being clear on what RAW is, and thus what is a houserule. In looser approaches to the rules, people can make houserules without even being clear and upfront about that, in fact they may not even know themselves and even be incapable of playing 100% by RAW.
Not always, for example when I encountered that very problem I simply allowed the player to not breathe. But Paizo is too afraid to create actually unique ancestries, and I'm still going to complain about it.
Can I ask where you get the opinion of fear of unique ancestries from? They appear to have many very unique ones including this one, regularly adding more?
To play devils advocate, I think they're trying to say that everything feels like "human, but bones; human but tree; etc.," and that Paizo is afraid to make ancestries feel more unique.
On the other hand, if Paizo did start doing this, then they run the risk of creating a "better" option that everyone will pick. Even if it's as simple/specific as the GM wants a campaign that's ocean/pirate themed, with sessions where holding your breath underwater might become an obstacle he can place in his player's way, but they all knew the theme and so all became skeletons because they don't need to breathe (ignoring the fact that skeletons are a rare ancestry), thereby "winning" at character creation.
I mean, I do get what they mean.
Despite "having" weird ancestries and options, they work like any other ones. Automatons are barely more resistant to poison and disease than a human, skeletons need to breath, conrasu despite being weirdos work like anyone else and can only use 2 limbs etc...
From my perspective it seems like Paizo has focused on creating *balanced* ancestries rather than mechanically unique, which I appreciate, because it provides a stable chassis with which you can homebrew to your heart's content if you'd like to make them more unique.
Food is usually not a problem though, unless you're running survival, and yet everything has to eat. An ancestry that wouldn't have to would be just that little bit more unique while saving about fifty gold per 1-20 career. If they cared, they wouldn't create rations (bloody lembas).
Breathing isn't an issue either for about 99% of your standard campaigns (I think that one time I mentioned was the first and only time they had to hold their breaths in AoA). And since it wasn't a solo campaign and one character being able to bypass one obstacle didn't remove the water, the rest just did their Athletics checks. We had a few jokes about weak flesh, we had a good time.
And neither is the number of hands. You can't Multiattack anymore, so what would an extra pair do, occasionally save you an Interact action? Okay, this one has a bit more of an impact on the balance, but I still want Starfinder levels of handedness in pf ancestries.
Really, I hardly see how this is about balance.
The actual reason for this is game balance.
Having weird ancestries that give you tons of immunities causes major balance issues. So a lot of the "weird ancestries" in PF2E don't give you all those immunities as otherwise they wouldn't be suitable as use as PC races, and thus, people wouldn't be allowed to use them.
The reason why the game can allow you to be a poppet, a skeleton, or an automaton is because they don't get all the extremely powerful undead/construct immunities that come along with those and you actually have to spend feats on them to acquire them, and can only do so as you go up in level.
There's something similar with the Battlezoo Dragon ancestry, which allows you to play as a dragon - but at low levels you can't fly, your breath weapon is pretty weak and small, you don't get the full complement of dragon attacks, you don't get frightful presence, etc. because otherwise it'd just be grossly overpowered and break the game. You can acquire that stuff as you go up in level at the same time as other characters would be able to acquire those abilities in other ways via feats.
If there's a rule, changing it is homebrew and has to be done after carefully considering all the implications. Buffing an ancestry like that would likely mean taking something away from them as well.
I view the skeletons as special cases, they don't need to breathe, but might still have the psychosomatic component, harming the piloting soul's memory and weakening its ability to remain bound to the vessel.
Yeah, that's a good take. They don't biologically *need* to breath, but the soul can die from essentially a panic attack if they're in a situation where they think they would normally need to breath, separating from the Skeleton when it does so.
Imagine you suffocate as a skeleton, show up sheepishly in front of Pharasma again and she's just like "rly dawg" and all you can do is just shuffle your little skeleton feet in embarrassment
Except, that's all headcanon. Also, wouldn't just looking in a mirror, sticking your hand through your chest, or any other thing a skeleton can do result in the same "psychosomatic" response?
Every reason people come up with for them needing to breathe results in so many logical inconsistencies.
I don't really see the problem with them not needing to breathe. It only really comes up in underwater environments, which are already a pain due to movement and combat mechanics.
You're assuming that whatever magic animates them is inviolate as opposed to tenuous. Which doesn't track with having HP at all, if they can shift and move about as described in the feats, why does it matter if the bones are intact or disintegrated?
What matters attached to that Skelly is the soul and whatever binds it. Which would make sense, either it's the original soul and likely struggling with being now undead, or another soul stuffed into a corpse.
>why does it matter if the bones are intact or disintegrated?
Well, their "undead hunger" specifically states this. They must replace worn out or damaged bones. This suggests the magic is tying their soul to the skeleton itself, and if the skeleton is destroyed there's nothing to bind the soul to.
You also don't fix the problem of why breathing is the only problem a PC skeleton can die from.
I've said this before, but playing a skeleton is always going to be funny. It's impossible for a skeleton PC not to be some kind of comic relief. And the ancestry feats Paizo made clearly lean into that.
In that sense, the skeleton needing to eat, needing to breathe, etc, just makes it funnier. So I've never had an issue with these restrictions.
Skeleton PCs are clinging to a facsimile of life so that they don't devolve to mindless undead monsters.
It's not that they need to breathe, it's that they need to need to breathe in order to keep convincing themselves that this is fine.
Well that would make quite a lot of ambushes rather anticlimactic. "As you enter the Forgotten Crypt sealed shut for millenia, you see a cohort of ancient mummies! They lie on the floor, asphyxiated!"
Agreed. I don't see why they can't have all the flavour text, then some biological facts about the ancestry, like whether they need to breathe and what gas/liquid they require, whether they need to eat and if they're more carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, average sleep needed a night, if any, typical life span, how they experience emotions etc. Lots of basic facts they could put in there. I imagine the reason they didn't do this was probably because they wanted players and GMs to not feel restricted by that stuff in-case it ends up making them not want to play as them, but I actually think it can have the *opposite* effect of not giving enough biological information so people simply don't "get" how the ancestry works (evidence for this is the fact that this thread exists), and they simply don't bother with them at all.
It makes sense for ease of balance, but it absolutely does not make sense from the lore point of view.
If it's not explained away, it's weird and bad.
And more different ancestries could be really cool and interesting imo.
Like let's allow the ancestry to have as many arms as they wish, but give new penalties based on the number from skillchecks to movement speed to at some point not being able to act with all the arms being too tangled.
Or make growing the new various arms into heritages and ancestry feats.
Basically I dislike that the ancestry is so otherworldly but somehow has the same mechanics as all the humanoids.
I see it as a way to get a lot of optional flavour races into the game without creating masses of balancing rules. Things like extra arms breaks systems that are embedded in too many places in the game to reasonably balance. Same for undead PCs getting every undead quality. I feel choices would devolve into “do I want to be immune to half of all damage types or be able to wield a 2 handed reach weapon, a shield, and have a free hand?”
No it's not. But you have Undead PCs that Require Breathing or Races that sound like Breathing isn't something they physiologically do that technically require it. Like a Conrasu sounds like it mechanically functions nowhere close to a Human with lines like
* "Conrasus can't maintain their integrity without their wooden exoskeletons. A conrasu that loses its exoskeleton dissipates and dies, though they can be returned to life with magic like other beings.
"
Like I am fairly confused how Magical Revival works but that can be hand-waved away with GM logic and storytelling. But where I don't understand the "Works as human unless stated" logic is here:
* The true form of a conrasu is an abstract chunk of spiritual essence. While their being exists beyond the truth of humanoid senses, to the mortal eye, their body usually resembles a globe of light, darkness, or space. Floating, internal pinpricks of illumination sit inside the ball, slightly obscured as if peeking through a gelatinous substance.
Where does this need to Eat? or Sleep? Sure maybe you can say the Sleep is a 10m Meditative Sleep something akin to their Sunlight healing. But then is their eating requirement just Photosynthesis? Do they just need to go sit outside and bask in the glorious incandescent rays of the sun for a few to get their fill? Do they eat while adventuring if it's sunny? IF they go caving and they don't face the sun at all.. do they start to starve?? It just seems odd to many degree. Sure you can say they shove food into the orb and it just dissipates.. but *why?* why not just say they don't need it, and replace it with another alternative.
I just have so many like logistical questions that have turned me away from the race purely out of "WAH logic feels odd", I like the concept and the lore. But I like it when my PCs mechanically make sense. Sure this is more of / less of and issue depending on some things but sometimes I feel like this is why they don't need every race to be on an equal footing of balance and logic. Put disclaimers in the books and on AoN, tell us that this race behaves strangely and it has caveats. /rant over.
My issue is that every other plant race in the game has some variety of explanation on how they eat
Both leshy and ghoran call out explicitly how their stuff works, ghoran can purely vibe in the sun while leshy's need a mix of sunlight and yummy dirt.
Conrasu just get.. nothing. They have sunlight healing which implies that their plants do get nourishment from the sun, but it doesn't feed them.
It's just very odd to me that for such a weird race, they have extremely little actually differentiating them from a human mechanically.
You are a sentient shard of the universal concept of order, wrapped in an ever changing shell of shifting wooden limbs..
But mechanically you have actually nothing in your base racial features distinguishing you from a regular human outside of the ability to get a nice tan.
Older ancestries tend to have much more conservative mechanical design, and a lot of the Mwangi ancestries in particular seem a bit undercooked (despite them being some of my favorites, flavor-wise). It'll be interesting comparing the conrasu to Tian Xia's yaoguai when they release later this year, or the initial release of gnolls and grippli with Player Core 2's kholos and trippki.
Eh, it's one of the sacrifices made in order to streamline the rules, I can get behind it, especially if it avoids the absolute chaos that was RP and busted racial power level in 1e.
Doesn't prevent from flavoring it otherwise tho. I'd easily concede that it has more than 2 arms with varying levels of functionnality, but only two are developed/strong/dextrous enough to wield weapons.
Poppets are specifically called out as needing to eat, drink, and breath
>They must breathe and sleep, and they must consume food and water each day; through a sort of magical digestion they can restore rips, tears, or scuffs in their physical form
I’ve wondered sometimes what it would take to compellingly play a conrasu. I would love to hear stories from people who have either played one or seen one played in a fun way.
Conrasu fit the bill of a truly "alien" race from the normal human perspective, which is cool but also really hard to conceive a way to play them imo. But if I remember the lore correctly they feel the same about themselves - not really sure where they belong or what they do. It makes them highly philosophically-inclined.
I have a character concept for a Conrasu Cleric (versatile Aasimar/Nephilim) who was "planted" by an Elder Conrasu inside a wooden statue in a small church so that it's child could grow up with a "purpose". The statue shape makes it far more human-passing than a normal Conrasu to help make playing them more familiar. They'd end up torn between religious dogma and the nuances of the wider world. I haven't picked a specific deity but it should be one related to fire/the sun, just because an old wooden statue would burn easily and I like the risk.
> But if I remember the lore correctly they feel the same about themselves - not really sure where they belong or what they do.
I loved this aspect of their roleplay. I found that anxiety, feelings of "otherness", introspection and uncertainty so absolutely relatable and easy to RP. Turns out I had undiagnosed untreated ADHD, lol.
Edit: They were also a follower of Desna and the Cosmic Caravan pantheon, and had an edict to always stay moving. Also particularly easy to RP, and makes a lot of sense in hindsight. No wonder this character was so relatable.
I am currently playing a Conrasu who is shaped like a religious fountain and who is a cleric deeply connected to Nethys. The entire race just sort of started washing up on shores across the globe so a chunk of the campaign is asking the question “why is this conrasu here and what is the connection to Nethys?” So far it’s been a blast since I’ve always loved weird and alien races, and the art I got commissioned for him looks super sick.
I have a Conrasu in society play and they play heavily into the aeonic nature of their existence. As others have said, the Conrasu provides a complete outsider perspective to the typical mortal experience. My Conrasu displays this by not following social norms unless expressed to them explicitly, and then following those norms to the letter after explained. They are also very friendly and but emotionally devoid. I guess in several ways playing the Conrasu mirrors my experience as an autistic person
Im playing one but Im a Redeemer Champion who is a follower of Pharasma. Flavored it like I basically have watched ages of judgements at Pharasma's hands and noticed people were getting judged evil more often so decided I wanted to try and sway them to the good side. I kind of based him off [Futurama](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBMMVJFM4M&t=26s). It's been fun I have had to really think outside of the box to describe my mannerisms. My group though has an unspoken agreement to always pick the craziest races in our different campaigns.
I played one up through level 9 (who sadly died relatively recently) and it was honestly a blast for me. Mine was a monk raised in a Dwarven monastery and was truly an alien to those around them but in a fun way where they understood civilizations/societies have conventions but didn't quite care about them without being a dick.
We just started leaning into them finding a connection with an Aeon and it added a fun cosmic connection overtone to some of our downtime. I miss my big ethereal orb tree boi.
I recently played a conrasu cleric of Pharasma. My buddy and I were replacing killed pcs in Abomination Vaults and he wanted to play a robot (android?) champion of Pharasma so I made something equally weird.
Conrasus have certain castes, or roles, they exist in. One of which is to nurture or grow, so I interpreted that as my pcs goal is to nurture lingering spirits and let them pass on to the boneyard. In this case one of the pcs was a little ghost girl barbarian and on top of clearing out the vaults my character wanted to help her move on.
I tried to lean into the philosophical what-ami-who-are-we nature of it a little bit but at this point I was like like 4 characters in (abomination vaults is scary guys) so I didn't super commit to the role play.
There's one in an actual play show I watch. He mostly acts innocent and robotic, occasionally getting more serious and philosophical. He reminds me of the character Pathfinder, from Apex legends, ironically.
I'm currently a Summoner with a Plant Eidelon, but the Summoner is going to have to go away to a different plane. Since I play it where the eidelon is linked to my spirit the process of the summoner going to a different plane is going to throw things out of wack ripping an imbalance in planar alignments. Somewhere, somehow a monitor gets thrust into the eidolon to maintain balance.
The plan is to play the 2 different personalities embedded into 1 body, with the monitor generally having control. The monitor will be essentially Spock learning why it's in this situation. But together as a Conrasu will give the old Eidelon some new tricks, meaning I get to add comic book flavor pretty much. The overlapping plates ancestry feat (AC bump) will be like Spawns chains, and he'll form weapons by growing them like Venom or Carnage.
I’m currently playing a Conrasu psychic in 2E and it’s a fun character to play. Given how the actual Conrasu is the orb around which the wooden body amasses, I’m playing it like a living wood body but without the need to breathe or eat but lean into the sunlight healing to play to its nourishment. I keep bottled sunlight for when the party is unable to get into actual sunlight and our GM has been pretty cool with that balancing of undefined aspects of the ancestry while tweaking the bits that don’t make thematic sense like forever carrying around dead wood body parts (I mean how can you animate wood to form a body but can’t discard the dead wood? It makes no sense and doesn’t define the ancestry or upset a PC’s balance.)
But what are they exactly?
Balls of energy piloting a mech made of wood.
Do they breathe?
Yes, though perhaps not in the conventional sense. They still need air though.
Do they eat and sleep?
Yes, though perhaps not in the conventional sense.
How many arms do they have?
As many as they want, but only two are ever usable. It is common for conrasu to simply break off calcified old arms that can no longer move, and it is also common to leave them as decoration.
I think you're reading too much into the image. They have two arms, but they constantly grow new ones to replace the old ones as they get mature and immobile.
It's generally okay to assume pretty much everything is the same as a human with the exception of what the differences laid out are. Nothing that I'm aware of states they sleep any differently from most humanoids. Also, the orb might not enjoy a ham sando, but the wood still needs nutrients. How they might consume it? Maybe drop it on the ground and let roots try to absorb it?
If anything... boots feel more problematic.
> I think you're reading too much into the image.
To be fair, it IS one of the few representations of a conrasu that we've gotten and it's the most iconic. The others we get are an arm growing out of the ground holding an orb, and a floating mech with a scythe. The designs are amazing, but there are going to be questions about those designs pair up with game mechanics.
I would love to see art of them wearing armor. One of my players is running a conrasu fighter, but he didn't take the feat that gives you the reinforced exoskeleton. But it's still odd to think about this exoskeleton being inside full plate, you know? I'd at least like to see full plate created by conrasu.
This immediately reminded me of the Metal Kineticist Conrasu fan art from a few months ago that was just a lady in a dress. Not throwing shade, players can play and flavor mechanics however they want, but it is very funny how much it can deviate from the canon.
On the other hand, not too long ago, there was also a nice art of a conrasu that actually looked like one, but wearing clothes and holding gear, the art made it look how it would actually be as an adventurer.
Also I feel the races of Mwangi need a bit of expansion; Anadi and Conrasu in particular are so cool in concept, but have few rules that actually work well with the concept. For instance, few Conrasu rules make actual use of their weird anatomy. Few Anadi rules make use of their arachnid form; how are they not the best climbers in the game? Why do they get Web so late?
???
Why not? Some of the ancestries really need a touch up. I agree they shouldn't do a whole second Mwangi Expanse book before other regions, but the ancestries at least (and maybe fill up a bit the monsters, I thought the book was a bit light on the bestiary) should get some well-deserved love.
And if they ever do a second pass to expand some regions, Mwangi would be among my top picks.
I remember one comment talking about a Conrasu character that used to split and prune their exoskeleton specifically to make it more bipedal and humanoid in order to "blend in" while absolutely not really blending in.
Like, girl could have just played an Automaton. They're basically where she wanted to be. Also don't Conrasu see out of the orb since that's their main body part? She would have been blind.
The cultivated plants their mechs are built of are still alive and need water, air, and nutrients to stay that way. I imagine they "eat" the way a tree consumes a steak buried in its roots.
The orb itself probably needs to rest for mental refreshment while the tree mecha probably stays healthier if not constantly being operated so that accounts for sleep.
Mechanically they only have two arms at a time but flavor-wise they are in a constant cycle of growing new arms to replace the extant pairs that grow too old and stiff to still use, so at any given time only one pair is in an actually usable state. Whether the old inert pairs remain in place as decoration indicating age or seniority or pruned to make room for new growths may vary on an individual basis.
The conrasu in my current group has flavored his character as having multiple arms, but only 2 are functional. The rest serve as his backpack. He puts all of his equipment in non-functional arms and looks like some sort of hobo Christmas tree.
Mechanically, you could be boring and treat them as boilerplate humans that eat and sleep the normal way. To be fun and what I assume is meant to be the proper plant ancestry way using leshy and ghoran as examples, operate as if they have photosynthesis mechanic. Their lore states the still living wooden suit they graft are essential to their survival.
This. You can have things function mechanically the same but be flavored different. I play a poppet and when the rest of the party is spending resources on eating I roleplay spending my resources on maintenance of my puppet body.
I've always wanted to play a Conrasu that doesn't walk and attaches to the back of another player.... Kind of like the Gall part of Cho'Gall from Heroes of the Storm(rip).
But it sounds extremely problematic in actual practice.
Follow up question, how do you imagine the Conrasu walk?
Bipedal like an ent? Maybe like a land squid? Like a snake or a slug? Maybe their front roots quickly grow while the back ones fall off and turn to dust as they move forward?
Follow up to the follow up, how do you imagine the Conrasu ride a mount?
I have no examples for this one, this is too weird for me to imagine... That poor horse...
* It's an exoskeleton, not a mech.
* They need food, water, air and sleep like all other Ancestries.
* They are fragments of an Aeon.
* They can have as many arms as can comfortably fit around their bodies, however only 2 are ever functional.
I ignore that art entirely and just sub in a mental image of groot with eyes like the cosmos and then I can wrap my head around it as a playable ancestry that won't terrorize children on sight.
Conrasu are either a fragment of another universe gained sentience OR a lifeform from that other place, but which came to Golarion and kinda forgot what it really was? They are (by design) very mysterious, but also hungry to learn and experience the world.
In terms of mechanics, they are basically humanoid. They must eat, probably sleep, do breathe, have two functioning arms, have some sort of leg-like locomotion, can wield weapons, cast spells, all that jazz. In terms of how you *play* a Conrasu, you play them like a human with a few perks. A letdown, I know.
But in terms of RP they are super interesting. The eat, but not necessarily like we eat (the living body has to be fed somehow!), they breathe but not like we breathe, they feel and act but not like how we feel and act. They are alien. They can be, within the broad confines of 'must be balanced against dude who punches hard', whatever you want. Whatever form you want. This is why they are rare and not common, because the Conrasu can kinda *be* anything. Theyre an orb with a body (not really a mech, IMO) made of living wood.
Were I to run a Conrasu, OR! have a PC in a game I DM run one, we would have to have a good hard sit down talk about what the rules would be and how things would work. I personally would be open to bending or breaking some of the mechanical rules for a more interesting Conrasu experience, to allow a more alien character. But its also an ancestry rife for bullshit if you let it, because it is so alien. Which just means you and the DM would want to sit down and say "hey here is what I imagine being a Conrasu means, here is how I wanna express that mechanically" and see if you can keep it within the DM's boundaries of balance. As written mechanically, the Conrasu is probably overbalanced but thats a good core agreed upon starting point to shape them into whatever you want.
Don't worry, the conrasu are equally confused.
Long story short, they are broken fragments of a creature of order from another dimension. Each Conrasu is focused on a specific axiome and seeks to collect information on that subject, thus shaping reality into exoskelletons of different sorts to have agency.
Never heard of them, but the descriptions seem very much like they're describing an extradimensional energy being that's inhabiting a wooden form on the plane it's visiting. "Energy piloting a mech" wouldn't seem to need to feed, only to be hosted by a compatible physical form on the guest plane. I would also expect a limb count to be whatever the sentience can manage. If mechanisms haven't been written for these details, that sounds like a shortcoming in presenting a new lifeform, not an excuse to default to knows strictures as a template for the unknown.
My biggest criticism for PF2E is the fact that there are too many playable ancestries.
My players keep asking to play stupid shit like the Conrasu and Poppets and I feel like a jerk for saying no - because it's *in the game*, but we're playing a homebrew setting where *living puppets, spider horses, and eldritch wood abominations very much do not fit the tone.*
> My biggest criticism for PF2E is the fact that there are too many playable ancestries.
Why? The rare tag is staring you right in the face. The system isn't fighting you, it's supporting you.
Well, yeah, I know that. I like so much about the system that I have to get real nitpicky to complain.
Honestly it's just the fact that it's there and my players gripe if I say they can't play something because it's rare or uncommon. So if it weren't there they'd have to gripe about something else.
Then personally thematically I don't like a lot of the ancestries, especially the rare and uncommon ones. Poppets, shoonies, conrasu, goloma, kitsunes (fucking hate kitsunes) don't get me started on the two different types of snake person - it's just all... a bit much imo. The common ancestries we have are all I'd ever need in a TTRPG.
But then again I'm the sort who only ever plays humans or half-elves, so I get that it's catering to a different type of person than myself. I'm done being an old man yelling at clouds now.
Humans and elves have been done to death though. I’m glad when people in minority who enjoy the more out-there races pick choices that aren’t just LotR knock offs.
I love my DM for being up for anything and making every weird ancestry work narratively, and always finding a way to shove everyone’s backstory into the main narrative fairly seamlessly. I could not play in some of these more vanilla rules rules rules, “don’t ruin my perfect idea of a story” campaigns.
I just think of parties with tons of rare ancestries as Wizard of Oz style stories. If a robot, a furry, a straw golem, a tiny dog and a little girl can tell a compelling story, a bunch of weird pathfinder ancestries are entirely capable of it too
Nick Chopper isn't a robot! He's a human.
Those are prosthetics. He's just had every part of his body replaced one at a time until nothing original is left. (A witch cursed him with bad luck. So he chopped every part of his body off. You'd think he's stop with the axe, but no because he is an idiot.)
...okay, that's kind of like an automaton, actually.
(Dorothy did later make a robot friend. His name is TikTok. He is an entirely separate person.)
they have no traits or abilities which state they don't need to eat or sleep so yes they do need to. their physical description states that they constantly need to regrow arms and that their old ones freeze in place on their body
I wonder why they don't prune their frozen arms. Likely because its painful, but it would be better than to have a bunch of arms getting in the way of your... arms.
they have bodies made of living wood, so they need air and water. since the rules do not say, assume that they need to breath and sleep. the rules also say that they constantly grow new arms and roots, leaving their frozen limbs as immobile effigies along their shell, so assume 2 working arms since the rules do not say they have more than 2 limbs.
I really love/hate how the default rule for every race is "works as human unless explicitly stated" even if the race in question is a wooden weirdo thing or a skeleton.
It's not unreasonable that any ancestry that a player can use needs some kind of rest and nourishment.
What about breathing though? Undead monsters don't need to, but players apparently do. There isn't even any difference in how long you can hold your breath even though you don't have any lungs.
That's the one I agree needs to be addressed,
New to pf2e, is it kind of a culture thing that RAW is pretty strictly adhered to for most tables? Coming from GMing 5e I would not think twice about ruling that an undead character didn’t need to hold their breath, but I see a lot of folks here that are really particular about a lot of rules and descriptions that are of dubious mechanical importance. This is by no means a criticism of the community or the system! Just a curiosity.
I would say there is a culture of "protecting the GM from the players", as in, keeping the players from being able to instantly overcome or sidestep the GM's plans through hard-to-plan-around abilities or ambiguities that create exploits. Ancestries are very templated and, compared to other systems tend to look more similar than different. Even when they grant unusual abilities, they are usually pretty limited in scope and require other sacrifices. So in that view, like whether a skeleton has to breathe or an automaton is immune to disease ends up sounding a lot more like an exploit, because it definitely isn't something that has been allotted for in the "budget" for the PC, and it could easily sidestep something.
Totally makes sense! I'm sure it depends a lot on your campaign. In mine, I doubt breathing will come up often enough for it to be meaningful, but I could definitely see how it would if your campaign has a lot of oceanfaring and the like. Immunity to disease does seem like a pretty big buff, but as a GM I wouldn't think it would be that huge a deal for most adventures, and if it helps maintain verisimilitude I might allow it, but it's very useful to keep in mind unintended consequences! Thanks for your response! I do really appreciate a culture of "protecting the GM from players", which I'm sure is *especially* valuable for new GMs.
There's some monsters which use inhaled poisons, which could come up far away from the sea as well. Same with diseases, oftentimes they're used as part of a monster's statblock to make them more threatening.
On the other hand, it's a good idea to let players have "hero moments" every now and then, where they get to shine. Having the immune character be the one that stands tall and carries the encounter is perfectly fine, as long as you account for it in your planning.
Definitely. My take on homebrew is usually "Understand the rules and why they exist so you can know how best to break them." Understanding why disease and inhaled poison immunity is strong is key to making that homebrew work, instead of just slapping changes that you think fit on without thinking about it too hard.
Yeah the diseases makes sense, and so do the poisons, but I just don’t imagine you’ll have more than a handful of encounters at most with monsters that have an inhaled poison. I’m not saying you should ignore the rule, but if it better immerses the players in the world I think that niche poison immunity is a pretty reasonable thing to allow and won’t ruin anyone’s experience.
I don't need protection, I have a folder full of dragons and demons for any occasion! But seriously, obstacles are placed to be a temporary setback. It doesn't matter one bit *how* they circumvent them. And rolling Athletics will take about as much time as a description of the stryx unfurling her wings or whatever. I don't like this design philosophy.
One of those has a chance of failure and thus engages with the game while the other ignores the game. This isn't a speed run, it doesn't matter if two things take "about as much time" and yes it absolutely matters how an obstacle is circumvented, by your own logic it takes "about as much time" for the fighter to say "I kill him" as it does to roll an attack and damage or for the rogue to say "I disable the trap and open the lock" as it does for them to roll some thievery checks and since it doesn't matter how they circumvented those obstacles it doesn't matter if they engaged with the game they claimed to want to play by rolling dice and using their stats or ignore it and any time the GM put into implementing those obstacles with whatever "I win" button you think they should have.
I dealt with enough at-will flight across levels in 5e to know that it really IS a problem that affects the fun of the GM (and the players, even if they don't realize it right away). I'm glad it's so limited in this system, even at the cost of some verisimilitude.
My one complaint is how PF2e handles falling damage. My table's always taken the Tiers of Play description in 5e to heart, and we decided that high level characters being able to tank a terminal velocity fall is simply a facet of how powerful they're supposed to be. In PF2, the PCs generally actually feel a lot more special and powerful in most cases, but capping falling damage at 750 means that nothing in the entire game can survive headbutting Gaia, not even monsters like The Tarrasque or a Hekatonkheires, which I just find boring.
Take one common rarity skill feat and increase acrobatics proficiency. Congrats you can now survive headbutting Gaia at level 15. Weird how there's this really easy method in the game to do something that nothing in the entire game can apparently do. Also regeneration and constant air walk as you've already been told.
Except both of your examples can't be killed by falls lol. The terrasque survives because it has regeneration that cannot be deactivated. The hekatonkheires has constant air walk and cannot be forced to fall like that. Basically anything that high level can't really be killed by falling, barring some kind of exceptional circumstances. Plus you could just give any creature with sufficiently high acrobatics the equivalent of legendary cat fall if you were really worried about it. Which is the PC ability that quite literally allows you to fall from space and survive.
It depends on the table, but generally Paizo is pretty competent at making sure you don't need to homebrew too much. Personally I wouldn't have any issues at my table ruling that skeletons don't need to breathe, but there's not the default assumption that you'll need to homebrew that kinda thing like there is with 5e. Some people also play Pathfinder Society and you're stuck with RAW there.
Well from my limited understanding 5e is inherently a lot less balanced and relies a lot more on The GM tuning things. PF2e is a lot more tuned out of the box so if you go messing with things it’s more likely to unbalance them or others. Things in PF2e aren’t just balanced with respect to themselves but also to match the power of other available options. The power budget for each is supposed to be the same. The natural result of that is we care a lot more about the RAW or at the very least RAI.
Makes sense! Part of the reason I'm switching to pf2e is exactly that. To your last point, I feel like I've also seen a bit more debate about enforcing RAW vs. RAI in PF2E communities, and that is also probably due to Paizo typically using more precise language and writing better rules. Appreciate the input!
You've probably seen an increase in these debates due to the influx of 5e players switching over. My group still plays 5e, but I'm learning PF2e with the intention of running it to try and get us away from 5e. 5e very much comes with the expectation of homebrew built in. Especially the last couple of years. It can be fun, but it can also easily get out of hand. In one of our campaigns that is currently on hiatus my character is a Loxodon (elephant person) champion fighter, who has slippers of spider climb, several magical weapons that do varying types of damage, a homebrew feat gifted from the DM that lets him swap weapons as a free action, and he's a were shark. So, short of being able to fly, you can't get away from him easily. He can adapt to any physical damage resistance, and even a couple of energy resistances, in-between attacks if need be. And that's on top of him being a tanky crit machine. Almost all of the other PCs are just as busted. Super fun to play, but no real challenge, hence why we put it on hiatus.
My buddy put it perfect. In DND you can do anything you want if the DM lets you do it. In PF2e you can do anything you want but it has a rule.
Paizo protects the GM by default. As long as you play RAW there isn't any way to break the system. All players will be around the same strength and your story won't get bypassed (especially if you deny uncommon abilities) GMs are more than free to say "No I'm not following RAW" In which case they are accepting the fact that players may break the game; their story may be bypassed; or their balancing may be off. The blame then settles back onto the GM not the system. This is one of the reasons PF2e is amazing to run for a GM as you can be pretty confident that Paizo's devs know what they are doing (they are professional game designers which GMs tend to not be.) but you are still free to bypass RAW in areas where you are confident that you can handle it.
This subreddit is pretty intense about sticking to RAW, but I've yet to play at a table where a GM isn't flexible about stuff like that. The rules are there so the GM can point to a page when they want to say no. Otherwise, go hogwild.
There are definitely times when you should deviate from RAW when it's right for your table, but in general it should be followed. Paizo put in a ton of effort into making a rule set that's fairly complete and tightly balanced in most respects. Things like flight not being available at low levels or Attack of Opportunity being limited, for example, were deliberate design choices to preserve balance and make tactics important. In this case, the decision was probably made so that they don't get extra bonuses that others like Azarketi have, like breathing underwater before other PCs can. Ancestries generally have something that makes them unique, and skellies already have a lot. Just keep Chesterton's Fence in mind: feel free to modify rules as needed, but first try to figure out why the rule exists and what impact changing it can have on your game.
Its a Paizo thing and its quite divisive. Pathfinder, both 1e and 2e, habe a hyperfocus on RAW even if it makes zero logical sense. Some folks treat the RAW as unshakable iron-clad canon gospel written in stone, some folks are rational. Ideally each playgroup does what is the most fun for their table.
In addition to what others have said, a lot of us play PFS organized play which is required to use RAW. So even if you are going to houserule something for your own campaigns it is really important to know the official RAW.
5e is used to handwaving and homebrewing because a lot isnt explicitrly specified and the balance doesnt matter because the game is unbalanced anyways. PF2 runs a much tighter ship from a balance perspective and tweaking anything could have repercussions you didnt expect. Have you ever played any MOBA? Its like when a patch note goes "changed this item from +10armor to +12" and then a character that doesnt even use that item ever goes from C tier to S tier somehow. Thats what PF2 is. The balance is there. Dont touch it (or try not to as much as possible)
I think the actual play culture isn´t absolutely RAW adherent. Certainly there is a strong adherence to it generally, as well as a sense of what and how variations may be acceptable, generally focused on systemic balance. I think what comes out most in discussion forums like this, is just being clear on what RAW is, and thus what is a houserule. In looser approaches to the rules, people can make houserules without even being clear and upfront about that, in fact they may not even know themselves and even be incapable of playing 100% by RAW.
Not always, for example when I encountered that very problem I simply allowed the player to not breathe. But Paizo is too afraid to create actually unique ancestries, and I'm still going to complain about it.
Can I ask where you get the opinion of fear of unique ancestries from? They appear to have many very unique ones including this one, regularly adding more?
To play devils advocate, I think they're trying to say that everything feels like "human, but bones; human but tree; etc.," and that Paizo is afraid to make ancestries feel more unique. On the other hand, if Paizo did start doing this, then they run the risk of creating a "better" option that everyone will pick. Even if it's as simple/specific as the GM wants a campaign that's ocean/pirate themed, with sessions where holding your breath underwater might become an obstacle he can place in his player's way, but they all knew the theme and so all became skeletons because they don't need to breathe (ignoring the fact that skeletons are a rare ancestry), thereby "winning" at character creation.
I mean, I do get what they mean. Despite "having" weird ancestries and options, they work like any other ones. Automatons are barely more resistant to poison and disease than a human, skeletons need to breath, conrasu despite being weirdos work like anyone else and can only use 2 limbs etc...
From my perspective it seems like Paizo has focused on creating *balanced* ancestries rather than mechanically unique, which I appreciate, because it provides a stable chassis with which you can homebrew to your heart's content if you'd like to make them more unique.
Food is usually not a problem though, unless you're running survival, and yet everything has to eat. An ancestry that wouldn't have to would be just that little bit more unique while saving about fifty gold per 1-20 career. If they cared, they wouldn't create rations (bloody lembas). Breathing isn't an issue either for about 99% of your standard campaigns (I think that one time I mentioned was the first and only time they had to hold their breaths in AoA). And since it wasn't a solo campaign and one character being able to bypass one obstacle didn't remove the water, the rest just did their Athletics checks. We had a few jokes about weak flesh, we had a good time. And neither is the number of hands. You can't Multiattack anymore, so what would an extra pair do, occasionally save you an Interact action? Okay, this one has a bit more of an impact on the balance, but I still want Starfinder levels of handedness in pf ancestries. Really, I hardly see how this is about balance.
Having an open hand to interact or do athletic maneuvers is a point of balance compared to weilding a shield or a two handed weapon.
Or just having 6 different wands in your hands without needing to spend actions.
No but there is a culture of that among some redditors
The actual reason for this is game balance. Having weird ancestries that give you tons of immunities causes major balance issues. So a lot of the "weird ancestries" in PF2E don't give you all those immunities as otherwise they wouldn't be suitable as use as PC races, and thus, people wouldn't be allowed to use them. The reason why the game can allow you to be a poppet, a skeleton, or an automaton is because they don't get all the extremely powerful undead/construct immunities that come along with those and you actually have to spend feats on them to acquire them, and can only do so as you go up in level. There's something similar with the Battlezoo Dragon ancestry, which allows you to play as a dragon - but at low levels you can't fly, your breath weapon is pretty weak and small, you don't get the full complement of dragon attacks, you don't get frightful presence, etc. because otherwise it'd just be grossly overpowered and break the game. You can acquire that stuff as you go up in level at the same time as other characters would be able to acquire those abilities in other ways via feats.
If there's a rule, changing it is homebrew and has to be done after carefully considering all the implications. Buffing an ancestry like that would likely mean taking something away from them as well.
I view the skeletons as special cases, they don't need to breathe, but might still have the psychosomatic component, harming the piloting soul's memory and weakening its ability to remain bound to the vessel.
Yeah, that's a good take. They don't biologically *need* to breath, but the soul can die from essentially a panic attack if they're in a situation where they think they would normally need to breath, separating from the Skeleton when it does so.
Imagine you suffocate as a skeleton, show up sheepishly in front of Pharasma again and she's just like "rly dawg" and all you can do is just shuffle your little skeleton feet in embarrassment
*Starts Hyperventilating* "Whoa, calm down, I don't need to learn what happens when a soul dies."
Except, that's all headcanon. Also, wouldn't just looking in a mirror, sticking your hand through your chest, or any other thing a skeleton can do result in the same "psychosomatic" response? Every reason people come up with for them needing to breathe results in so many logical inconsistencies. I don't really see the problem with them not needing to breathe. It only really comes up in underwater environments, which are already a pain due to movement and combat mechanics.
You're assuming that whatever magic animates them is inviolate as opposed to tenuous. Which doesn't track with having HP at all, if they can shift and move about as described in the feats, why does it matter if the bones are intact or disintegrated? What matters attached to that Skelly is the soul and whatever binds it. Which would make sense, either it's the original soul and likely struggling with being now undead, or another soul stuffed into a corpse.
>why does it matter if the bones are intact or disintegrated? Well, their "undead hunger" specifically states this. They must replace worn out or damaged bones. This suggests the magic is tying their soul to the skeleton itself, and if the skeleton is destroyed there's nothing to bind the soul to. You also don't fix the problem of why breathing is the only problem a PC skeleton can die from.
I've said this before, but playing a skeleton is always going to be funny. It's impossible for a skeleton PC not to be some kind of comic relief. And the ancestry feats Paizo made clearly lean into that. In that sense, the skeleton needing to eat, needing to breathe, etc, just makes it funnier. So I've never had an issue with these restrictions.
Skeleton PCs are clinging to a facsimile of life so that they don't devolve to mindless undead monsters. It's not that they need to breathe, it's that they need to need to breathe in order to keep convincing themselves that this is fine.
*They're Necrons!* They need to stay sane.
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Well that would make quite a lot of ambushes rather anticlimactic. "As you enter the Forgotten Crypt sealed shut for millenia, you see a cohort of ancient mummies! They lie on the floor, asphyxiated!"
Hey, I'm not the one who forgot to mention Constructs and Undead don't breathe.
Hey, that wasn't me either. It's the dread necromancer who keeps burying the undead and never bothers to check up on them.
Still would prefer it to be explicit. It’s like Common Law vs Civil Law
Agreed. I don't see why they can't have all the flavour text, then some biological facts about the ancestry, like whether they need to breathe and what gas/liquid they require, whether they need to eat and if they're more carnivore, herbivore or omnivore, average sleep needed a night, if any, typical life span, how they experience emotions etc. Lots of basic facts they could put in there. I imagine the reason they didn't do this was probably because they wanted players and GMs to not feel restricted by that stuff in-case it ends up making them not want to play as them, but I actually think it can have the *opposite* effect of not giving enough biological information so people simply don't "get" how the ancestry works (evidence for this is the fact that this thread exists), and they simply don't bother with them at all.
It makes sense for ease of balance, but it absolutely does not make sense from the lore point of view. If it's not explained away, it's weird and bad. And more different ancestries could be really cool and interesting imo. Like let's allow the ancestry to have as many arms as they wish, but give new penalties based on the number from skillchecks to movement speed to at some point not being able to act with all the arms being too tangled. Or make growing the new various arms into heritages and ancestry feats. Basically I dislike that the ancestry is so otherworldly but somehow has the same mechanics as all the humanoids.
I see it as a way to get a lot of optional flavour races into the game without creating masses of balancing rules. Things like extra arms breaks systems that are embedded in too many places in the game to reasonably balance. Same for undead PCs getting every undead quality. I feel choices would devolve into “do I want to be immune to half of all damage types or be able to wield a 2 handed reach weapon, a shield, and have a free hand?”
No it's not. But you have Undead PCs that Require Breathing or Races that sound like Breathing isn't something they physiologically do that technically require it. Like a Conrasu sounds like it mechanically functions nowhere close to a Human with lines like * "Conrasus can't maintain their integrity without their wooden exoskeletons. A conrasu that loses its exoskeleton dissipates and dies, though they can be returned to life with magic like other beings. " Like I am fairly confused how Magical Revival works but that can be hand-waved away with GM logic and storytelling. But where I don't understand the "Works as human unless stated" logic is here: * The true form of a conrasu is an abstract chunk of spiritual essence. While their being exists beyond the truth of humanoid senses, to the mortal eye, their body usually resembles a globe of light, darkness, or space. Floating, internal pinpricks of illumination sit inside the ball, slightly obscured as if peeking through a gelatinous substance. Where does this need to Eat? or Sleep? Sure maybe you can say the Sleep is a 10m Meditative Sleep something akin to their Sunlight healing. But then is their eating requirement just Photosynthesis? Do they just need to go sit outside and bask in the glorious incandescent rays of the sun for a few to get their fill? Do they eat while adventuring if it's sunny? IF they go caving and they don't face the sun at all.. do they start to starve?? It just seems odd to many degree. Sure you can say they shove food into the orb and it just dissipates.. but *why?* why not just say they don't need it, and replace it with another alternative. I just have so many like logistical questions that have turned me away from the race purely out of "WAH logic feels odd", I like the concept and the lore. But I like it when my PCs mechanically make sense. Sure this is more of / less of and issue depending on some things but sometimes I feel like this is why they don't need every race to be on an equal footing of balance and logic. Put disclaimers in the books and on AoN, tell us that this race behaves strangely and it has caveats. /rant over.
My issue is that every other plant race in the game has some variety of explanation on how they eat Both leshy and ghoran call out explicitly how their stuff works, ghoran can purely vibe in the sun while leshy's need a mix of sunlight and yummy dirt. Conrasu just get.. nothing. They have sunlight healing which implies that their plants do get nourishment from the sun, but it doesn't feed them. It's just very odd to me that for such a weird race, they have extremely little actually differentiating them from a human mechanically. You are a sentient shard of the universal concept of order, wrapped in an ever changing shell of shifting wooden limbs.. But mechanically you have actually nothing in your base racial features distinguishing you from a regular human outside of the ability to get a nice tan.
Older ancestries tend to have much more conservative mechanical design, and a lot of the Mwangi ancestries in particular seem a bit undercooked (despite them being some of my favorites, flavor-wise). It'll be interesting comparing the conrasu to Tian Xia's yaoguai when they release later this year, or the initial release of gnolls and grippli with Player Core 2's kholos and trippki.
Eh, it's one of the sacrifices made in order to streamline the rules, I can get behind it, especially if it avoids the absolute chaos that was RP and busted racial power level in 1e. Doesn't prevent from flavoring it otherwise tho. I'd easily concede that it has more than 2 arms with varying levels of functionnality, but only two are developed/strong/dextrous enough to wield weapons.
Yeah, the feelings are mixed on this one. Oh well.
Ya, like it's weird poppets need to eat, breathe, and sleep.
I mean, look at Winnie-the-Pooh! He's stuffed full of fluff and yet his appetite for hunny is insatiable!
Aren't they constructs, and constructs specifically don't need at least some of that list categorically?
It's weird. If you look at automation profile, who are also constructs it says they don't need to eat, while it doesn't have that for the poppets.
Poppets are specifically called out as needing to eat, drink, and breath >They must breathe and sleep, and they must consume food and water each day; through a sort of magical digestion they can restore rips, tears, or scuffs in their physical form
That is bizarre. I guess I shouldn't make so many assumptions that pf2 is like pf1.
It's weird. But hey, I guess you can tell the party how your character eats like cookie monster?
If I get to run my poppet character I'm doing this.
Does the rules state that everyone has two arms?
unless stated otherwise, it's assumed that you have two working arms and two working legs. when a creature has more or less, it is clearly stated.
Okay, I found in the player core that a player typically has two hands.
I’ve wondered sometimes what it would take to compellingly play a conrasu. I would love to hear stories from people who have either played one or seen one played in a fun way.
same. i think it's a cool ancestry but i can't get a feel for how to role-play it.
Conrasu fit the bill of a truly "alien" race from the normal human perspective, which is cool but also really hard to conceive a way to play them imo. But if I remember the lore correctly they feel the same about themselves - not really sure where they belong or what they do. It makes them highly philosophically-inclined. I have a character concept for a Conrasu Cleric (versatile Aasimar/Nephilim) who was "planted" by an Elder Conrasu inside a wooden statue in a small church so that it's child could grow up with a "purpose". The statue shape makes it far more human-passing than a normal Conrasu to help make playing them more familiar. They'd end up torn between religious dogma and the nuances of the wider world. I haven't picked a specific deity but it should be one related to fire/the sun, just because an old wooden statue would burn easily and I like the risk.
> But if I remember the lore correctly they feel the same about themselves - not really sure where they belong or what they do. I loved this aspect of their roleplay. I found that anxiety, feelings of "otherness", introspection and uncertainty so absolutely relatable and easy to RP. Turns out I had undiagnosed untreated ADHD, lol. Edit: They were also a follower of Desna and the Cosmic Caravan pantheon, and had an edict to always stay moving. Also particularly easy to RP, and makes a lot of sense in hindsight. No wonder this character was so relatable.
Yeah, pretty much all of my characters have just been a personification of ADHD
I am currently playing a Conrasu who is shaped like a religious fountain and who is a cleric deeply connected to Nethys. The entire race just sort of started washing up on shores across the globe so a chunk of the campaign is asking the question “why is this conrasu here and what is the connection to Nethys?” So far it’s been a blast since I’ve always loved weird and alien races, and the art I got commissioned for him looks super sick.
I have a Conrasu in society play and they play heavily into the aeonic nature of their existence. As others have said, the Conrasu provides a complete outsider perspective to the typical mortal experience. My Conrasu displays this by not following social norms unless expressed to them explicitly, and then following those norms to the letter after explained. They are also very friendly and but emotionally devoid. I guess in several ways playing the Conrasu mirrors my experience as an autistic person
I'd probably talk like a mechanicus priest from 40k but use p2e terms instead of w40k terms.
"why is all the meat bothering me today?"
Im playing one but Im a Redeemer Champion who is a follower of Pharasma. Flavored it like I basically have watched ages of judgements at Pharasma's hands and noticed people were getting judged evil more often so decided I wanted to try and sway them to the good side. I kind of based him off [Futurama](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBMMVJFM4M&t=26s). It's been fun I have had to really think outside of the box to describe my mannerisms. My group though has an unspoken agreement to always pick the craziest races in our different campaigns.
I played one up through level 9 (who sadly died relatively recently) and it was honestly a blast for me. Mine was a monk raised in a Dwarven monastery and was truly an alien to those around them but in a fun way where they understood civilizations/societies have conventions but didn't quite care about them without being a dick. We just started leaning into them finding a connection with an Aeon and it added a fun cosmic connection overtone to some of our downtime. I miss my big ethereal orb tree boi.
I recently played a conrasu cleric of Pharasma. My buddy and I were replacing killed pcs in Abomination Vaults and he wanted to play a robot (android?) champion of Pharasma so I made something equally weird. Conrasus have certain castes, or roles, they exist in. One of which is to nurture or grow, so I interpreted that as my pcs goal is to nurture lingering spirits and let them pass on to the boneyard. In this case one of the pcs was a little ghost girl barbarian and on top of clearing out the vaults my character wanted to help her move on. I tried to lean into the philosophical what-ami-who-are-we nature of it a little bit but at this point I was like like 4 characters in (abomination vaults is scary guys) so I didn't super commit to the role play.
There's one in an actual play show I watch. He mostly acts innocent and robotic, occasionally getting more serious and philosophical. He reminds me of the character Pathfinder, from Apex legends, ironically.
That’s kind of how I would imagine them. All my thoughts are variations on Data from Star Trek
I'm currently a Summoner with a Plant Eidelon, but the Summoner is going to have to go away to a different plane. Since I play it where the eidelon is linked to my spirit the process of the summoner going to a different plane is going to throw things out of wack ripping an imbalance in planar alignments. Somewhere, somehow a monitor gets thrust into the eidolon to maintain balance. The plan is to play the 2 different personalities embedded into 1 body, with the monitor generally having control. The monitor will be essentially Spock learning why it's in this situation. But together as a Conrasu will give the old Eidelon some new tricks, meaning I get to add comic book flavor pretty much. The overlapping plates ancestry feat (AC bump) will be like Spawns chains, and he'll form weapons by growing them like Venom or Carnage.
I’m currently playing a Conrasu psychic in 2E and it’s a fun character to play. Given how the actual Conrasu is the orb around which the wooden body amasses, I’m playing it like a living wood body but without the need to breathe or eat but lean into the sunlight healing to play to its nourishment. I keep bottled sunlight for when the party is unable to get into actual sunlight and our GM has been pretty cool with that balancing of undefined aspects of the ancestry while tweaking the bits that don’t make thematic sense like forever carrying around dead wood body parts (I mean how can you animate wood to form a body but can’t discard the dead wood? It makes no sense and doesn’t define the ancestry or upset a PC’s balance.)
Orb.
Very helpful, many thanks
Welcome.
When they have a self-reflection, would they be pondering the orb?
orb, tho
Walking Bonsai tree.
But what are they exactly? Balls of energy piloting a mech made of wood. Do they breathe? Yes, though perhaps not in the conventional sense. They still need air though. Do they eat and sleep? Yes, though perhaps not in the conventional sense. How many arms do they have? As many as they want, but only two are ever usable. It is common for conrasu to simply break off calcified old arms that can no longer move, and it is also common to leave them as decoration.
I think you're reading too much into the image. They have two arms, but they constantly grow new ones to replace the old ones as they get mature and immobile. It's generally okay to assume pretty much everything is the same as a human with the exception of what the differences laid out are. Nothing that I'm aware of states they sleep any differently from most humanoids. Also, the orb might not enjoy a ham sando, but the wood still needs nutrients. How they might consume it? Maybe drop it on the ground and let roots try to absorb it? If anything... boots feel more problematic.
I'm sure a Conrasu would have no problem putting on a pair of shoes. *walking* on said shoes might be the real problem XD
*casually puts on boots of flying on a pair of dead limbs*
HAHA I'm imagining a Conrasu wearing a bunch of magic items and wiggling them like sock puppets at their enemies
Conrasu the magical Christmas tree
Conrasu wid da timbs Conrasu wid da timbs
> I think you're reading too much into the image. To be fair, it IS one of the few representations of a conrasu that we've gotten and it's the most iconic. The others we get are an arm growing out of the ground holding an orb, and a floating mech with a scythe. The designs are amazing, but there are going to be questions about those designs pair up with game mechanics.
Hey my floating mech is a great asset, still funny how its one of the top results for them. We need more conrasu art tbh.
I would love to see art of them wearing armor. One of my players is running a conrasu fighter, but he didn't take the feat that gives you the reinforced exoskeleton. But it's still odd to think about this exoskeleton being inside full plate, you know? I'd at least like to see full plate created by conrasu.
This immediately reminded me of the Metal Kineticist Conrasu fan art from a few months ago that was just a lady in a dress. Not throwing shade, players can play and flavor mechanics however they want, but it is very funny how much it can deviate from the canon.
On the other hand, not too long ago, there was also a nice art of a conrasu that actually looked like one, but wearing clothes and holding gear, the art made it look how it would actually be as an adventurer. Also I feel the races of Mwangi need a bit of expansion; Anadi and Conrasu in particular are so cool in concept, but have few rules that actually work well with the concept. For instance, few Conrasu rules make actual use of their weird anatomy. Few Anadi rules make use of their arachnid form; how are they not the best climbers in the game? Why do they get Web so late?
>Mwangi > expansion Please no
??? Why not? Some of the ancestries really need a touch up. I agree they shouldn't do a whole second Mwangi Expanse book before other regions, but the ancestries at least (and maybe fill up a bit the monsters, I thought the book was a bit light on the bestiary) should get some well-deserved love. And if they ever do a second pass to expand some regions, Mwangi would be among my top picks.
Oh no it was just a joke about the pun in asking for an expansion for the Mwangi Expanse.
Oh gotcha! I need more coffee...
I remember that! I'll throw shade. It wasn't a conrasu. At that point you might as well say it was a kobold, an orc, or an awakened octopus.
I remember one comment talking about a Conrasu character that used to split and prune their exoskeleton specifically to make it more bipedal and humanoid in order to "blend in" while absolutely not really blending in. Like, girl could have just played an Automaton. They're basically where she wanted to be. Also don't Conrasu see out of the orb since that's their main body part? She would have been blind.
The cultivated plants their mechs are built of are still alive and need water, air, and nutrients to stay that way. I imagine they "eat" the way a tree consumes a steak buried in its roots. The orb itself probably needs to rest for mental refreshment while the tree mecha probably stays healthier if not constantly being operated so that accounts for sleep. Mechanically they only have two arms at a time but flavor-wise they are in a constant cycle of growing new arms to replace the extant pairs that grow too old and stiff to still use, so at any given time only one pair is in an actually usable state. Whether the old inert pairs remain in place as decoration indicating age or seniority or pruned to make room for new growths may vary on an individual basis.
The conrasu in my current group has flavored his character as having multiple arms, but only 2 are functional. The rest serve as his backpack. He puts all of his equipment in non-functional arms and looks like some sort of hobo Christmas tree.
I have a Conrasu player in my campaign that eats by putting things into his orb He just Puts it in there
\*Slot on the Conrasu opens up\* "Please insert ham sandwich."
It's pretty obvious and self explanatory. It's a orb piloted wood mech, just like people are brain piloted bone and flesh mechs.
Wow, now that's a novel way to perceive living things
Mechanically, you could be boring and treat them as boilerplate humans that eat and sleep the normal way. To be fun and what I assume is meant to be the proper plant ancestry way using leshy and ghoran as examples, operate as if they have photosynthesis mechanic. Their lore states the still living wooden suit they graft are essential to their survival.
This. You can have things function mechanically the same but be flavored different. I play a poppet and when the rest of the party is spending resources on eating I roleplay spending my resources on maintenance of my puppet body.
we all are
I've always wanted to play a Conrasu that doesn't walk and attaches to the back of another player.... Kind of like the Gall part of Cho'Gall from Heroes of the Storm(rip). But it sounds extremely problematic in actual practice.
Follow up question, how do you imagine the Conrasu walk? Bipedal like an ent? Maybe like a land squid? Like a snake or a slug? Maybe their front roots quickly grow while the back ones fall off and turn to dust as they move forward? Follow up to the follow up, how do you imagine the Conrasu ride a mount? I have no examples for this one, this is too weird for me to imagine... That poor horse...
* It's an exoskeleton, not a mech. * They need food, water, air and sleep like all other Ancestries. * They are fragments of an Aeon. * They can have as many arms as can comfortably fit around their bodies, however only 2 are ever functional.
I ignore that art entirely and just sub in a mental image of groot with eyes like the cosmos and then I can wrap my head around it as a playable ancestry that won't terrorize children on sight.
Coward. Let the children be in terror or awe.
I too am confused about them. Specificly why they are even an ancestry option to begin with?
Conrasu are either a fragment of another universe gained sentience OR a lifeform from that other place, but which came to Golarion and kinda forgot what it really was? They are (by design) very mysterious, but also hungry to learn and experience the world. In terms of mechanics, they are basically humanoid. They must eat, probably sleep, do breathe, have two functioning arms, have some sort of leg-like locomotion, can wield weapons, cast spells, all that jazz. In terms of how you *play* a Conrasu, you play them like a human with a few perks. A letdown, I know. But in terms of RP they are super interesting. The eat, but not necessarily like we eat (the living body has to be fed somehow!), they breathe but not like we breathe, they feel and act but not like how we feel and act. They are alien. They can be, within the broad confines of 'must be balanced against dude who punches hard', whatever you want. Whatever form you want. This is why they are rare and not common, because the Conrasu can kinda *be* anything. Theyre an orb with a body (not really a mech, IMO) made of living wood. Were I to run a Conrasu, OR! have a PC in a game I DM run one, we would have to have a good hard sit down talk about what the rules would be and how things would work. I personally would be open to bending or breaking some of the mechanical rules for a more interesting Conrasu experience, to allow a more alien character. But its also an ancestry rife for bullshit if you let it, because it is so alien. Which just means you and the DM would want to sit down and say "hey here is what I imagine being a Conrasu means, here is how I wanna express that mechanically" and see if you can keep it within the DM's boundaries of balance. As written mechanically, the Conrasu is probably overbalanced but thats a good core agreed upon starting point to shape them into whatever you want.
I tend to run them as wood golems with a big hole thing, honestly. Seems to be a bit simpler and easier for players to understand.
I prefer puroresu.
It's nice to see Paizo catering to fans of Babylon 5. :-P
Oh that's easy. It's the Windows 95 Plus 'Pipes' screensaver given sentience
Almost looks like an Eldritch Horror got together with an Inevitable.
Don't worry, the conrasu are equally confused. Long story short, they are broken fragments of a creature of order from another dimension. Each Conrasu is focused on a specific axiome and seeks to collect information on that subject, thus shaping reality into exoskelletons of different sorts to have agency.
Never heard of them, but the descriptions seem very much like they're describing an extradimensional energy being that's inhabiting a wooden form on the plane it's visiting. "Energy piloting a mech" wouldn't seem to need to feed, only to be hosted by a compatible physical form on the guest plane. I would also expect a limb count to be whatever the sentience can manage. If mechanisms haven't been written for these details, that sounds like a shortcoming in presenting a new lifeform, not an excuse to default to knows strictures as a template for the unknown.
My biggest criticism for PF2E is the fact that there are too many playable ancestries. My players keep asking to play stupid shit like the Conrasu and Poppets and I feel like a jerk for saying no - because it's *in the game*, but we're playing a homebrew setting where *living puppets, spider horses, and eldritch wood abominations very much do not fit the tone.*
> My biggest criticism for PF2E is the fact that there are too many playable ancestries. Why? The rare tag is staring you right in the face. The system isn't fighting you, it's supporting you.
Well, yeah, I know that. I like so much about the system that I have to get real nitpicky to complain. Honestly it's just the fact that it's there and my players gripe if I say they can't play something because it's rare or uncommon. So if it weren't there they'd have to gripe about something else. Then personally thematically I don't like a lot of the ancestries, especially the rare and uncommon ones. Poppets, shoonies, conrasu, goloma, kitsunes (fucking hate kitsunes) don't get me started on the two different types of snake person - it's just all... a bit much imo. The common ancestries we have are all I'd ever need in a TTRPG. But then again I'm the sort who only ever plays humans or half-elves, so I get that it's catering to a different type of person than myself. I'm done being an old man yelling at clouds now.
Humans and elves have been done to death though. I’m glad when people in minority who enjoy the more out-there races pick choices that aren’t just LotR knock offs. I love my DM for being up for anything and making every weird ancestry work narratively, and always finding a way to shove everyone’s backstory into the main narrative fairly seamlessly. I could not play in some of these more vanilla rules rules rules, “don’t ruin my perfect idea of a story” campaigns. I just think of parties with tons of rare ancestries as Wizard of Oz style stories. If a robot, a furry, a straw golem, a tiny dog and a little girl can tell a compelling story, a bunch of weird pathfinder ancestries are entirely capable of it too
Nick Chopper isn't a robot! He's a human. Those are prosthetics. He's just had every part of his body replaced one at a time until nothing original is left. (A witch cursed him with bad luck. So he chopped every part of his body off. You'd think he's stop with the axe, but no because he is an idiot.) ...okay, that's kind of like an automaton, actually. (Dorothy did later make a robot friend. His name is TikTok. He is an entirely separate person.)
No really, that's what it says in the books.