Variant Rules: S

Set Relics in The Campaign

Set relics are more powerful than typical relic seeds, but they also make acquiring treasure more exciting. To balance things, ensure each character has access to a set relic suited to their abilities. Also, consider what it takes for characters to acquire this considerable power. Seeking the items or materials to craft them should lead to specific quests and challenges, or even whole adventures. Strongly consider adjusting treasure (Gamemastery Guide 95) to account for these valuable items.

Starting a Set Relic

A character starts a set relic when they acquire one item from the set, usually the lowest-level item. (You can allow characters to start the set with a different item.) This starting item has a minor gift and two aspects, as with other relics. The set then works as a single relic regarding its aspects and relic level.

Utilizing a Set Relic

A user must carry or wear items comprising a set relic to gain their benefits as part of the set. Any item the set relic's wielder fails to wear or carry, as well as any item stowed in an extradimensional space, doesn't count toward the gifts and item-number features the set relic can grant. The character must also invest any item that has the invested trait, or that item doesn't count for the power of the set relic. Consequently, if a user loses an item that's part of the set relic, any benefits that item brought to the set relic disappear until the item is recovered, invested if necessary, and carried or worn again.

Advancing a Set Relic

Each part of a set relic that a character collects further empowers the relic's gifts and provides additional features.

Collective Features: A set relic also grants its user features, boosting to the relic's gifts, based on the number of items properly utilized in the relic. Such features are cumulative. Once a character has four items from a set, for instance, that wielder gains the features for having two, three, and four items. Each known set relic lists the number of items and the feature linked with properly utilizing that number of items as part of the set relic.

Gifts: A set relic grants you gifts based on the number of items properly utilized as part of the set relic, as well as a minimum level, which the wielder's level must equal or exceed. This progression matches that detailed on the Gamemastery Guide's Table 2–22: Relic Gifts in terms of number of gifts, minimum level, gift type, and gp equivalent. Each known set relic (see the sets presented below) shows a number before listing a gift. This number corresponds with the number of gifts on Table 2–22, as well as the number of items in the set relic that must be properly utilized to access the indicated gift.

Improving Set Items: The items in a set relic need not remain static. They can be improved, according to rules for items of their type, with runes and to higher-level versions. If a set relic lists a specific advanced form of an item, you must possess that form of the item and properly utilize it to gain its benefits as part of the set relic.

Smaller Sets: For set relics that have fewer than five items, the relic can still permit the wielder to access gifts that are more powerful. One of the items in the set must be of or higher than the minimum level given for the gift on Table 2–22 for the relic to grant the gift. Meeting this requirement might involve the wielder improving an existing item to the appropriate level or finding a new item of a suitable level.

Known Set Relics

Several set relics are known to exist. You can adjust them with items tailored to your players' characters or create custom sets, using the benefits described here as a guideline. Set relics in this section use aspects found in this book or the Gamemastery Guide.

Read from page 224 of Secrets of Magic.

Grezukhi

Read from page 224 of Secrets of Magic.

Crown of the World

Read from page 224 of Secrets of Magic.

Falaiziavrul

Read from page 224 of Secrets of Magic.

Falalugreid Expanse

Read from page 224 of Secrets of Magic.

Moroufalaik

Read from page 225 of Secrets of Magic.

Konourn

Read from page 225 of Secrets of Magic.

The Shadow Plane

Read from page 225 of Secrets of Magic.

Giakhaed

Read from page 225 of Secrets of Magic.

Spellcasters aren't the sole purveyors of shadow magic. Some adventurers are guided on their path by companions with an inherent connection to shadow, whether or not the adventurer is a shadowcaster. Adventurers who would wield shadow should follow the guidance of such beings. Shadowcasters, as well as others who might stumble across this knowledge, have access to the shadow hound animal companion and the shade specialization option.

The Shadow Hound statblock can be found on the Companions & Familiars page.

Familiars bind themselves to mortals in a symbiotic relationship. Shadowcaster witches are among the most likely to obtain a familiar with the power of shadow, particularly those with the night patron. Others likely to take on shadow familiars include shadow bloodline sorcerers and darkness domain clerics.

The Shadow Familiar statblock can be found on the Companions & Familiars page.

Familiar Abilities

Shadow familiars use these additional familiar abilities. A shadowcaster, however, can select these abilities for any kind of familiar.

Darkeater: Your familiar naturally recovers in the shadows. After spending 10 consecutive minutes in an area of dim light or darkness, your familiar recovers a number of Hit Points equal to half your level.

Shadow Step: Your familiar gains the Shadow Step action. You must be at least 7th level to select this familiar ability for your familiar.

Building a Simplified Ancestry Character

When choosing an ancestry for a simplified ancestry character, you gain the ancestry's normal abilities at 1st level, choose a heritage, and gain the appropriate lore feat (Dwarven Lore for dwarves, for example) as your ancestry feat. Simplified ancestry characters never gain ancestry feats beyond that first lore feat. If you want to keep the power level of your game consistent, you can replace the ancestry feats gained at higher levels with general feats.

Building a Simplified Skill Feat Character

Simplified skill feat characters don't receive any skill feats, even from their backgrounds. They still gain general feats and can use those to select skill feats if they want a crucial ability. You may want to allow rogues to gain skill feats, but at the normal advancement most characters have, instead of their usual double advancement.

Playing with Simplified Skill Feat Characters

While you probably won't need to adjust combat challenges at all for simplified skill feat characters, skillbased challenges—especially social challenges—will be tougher, especially at higher levels where it's expected characters will have more efficient skill-based abilities due to skill feats. If you prefer more baseline difficulty, you could adjust the expectations down slightly.

At 1st level, a character using the Skill Points variant gains their initial skill proficiencies as described in the Core Rulebook. However, at every level beyond 1st, instead of gaining skill increases, the character gains a number of Skill Points, as indicated on Table 4–19: Skill Points by Level. The character can spend these Skill Points to increase their proficiency rank in various skills, as shown on Table 4–20: Cost to Increase Rank. A character must meet the minimum level indicated on the table to increase their rank, primarily to avoid having a player becoming unrealistically good at one skill early in their adventuring career while neglecting everything else. Characters can save up Skill Points between levels for a more expensive increase later on.

Players using Skill Points have more flexibility to build characters with a broader range of skills in which they're trained or better than normal, and this variant encourages that flexibility by increasing the cost of specializing. For instance, a 19th-level fighter could use Skill Points to be a master in seven different skills, or to be legendary in three skills. While this makes the variance in skills slightly less predictable, it shouldn't have a big enough effect on a group's capabilities that you need to make any significant adjustments when you run the game.

The GM should follow the same guidelines and rules for granting soul seeds as for relics. They can have any aspect or gift that a normal relic has, and their DCs, spell attack rolls, and counteract modifiers are determined identically. The following gifts are particularly appropriate for soul seeds, though they might apply to relics in the right circumstances. Dragon gifts are often connected to the souls of ancient dragons, and soul gifts are prevalent across all sorts of soul seeds.

Please visit the relic gifts page to view all soul seed gifts.

You bind an armament—a weapon, shield, or suit of armor—to your soul when you select the Soulforger Dedication feat. This represents performing a special ritual to do so. You can choose an item you own to make soulforged or spontaneously manifest an item with a form drawn from your spiritual essence. In the latter case, you choose the form, selecting a mundane weapon, shield, or armor of level 1 or lower, either common or one to which you have access. An existing armament is deconstructed and then recreated with the substance of your soul binding it together, which changes the appearance to match the state of your soul. It might have a perfect surface and gleam in the faintest light if you have a noble soul or have a twisting, chaotic shape if your soul is wracked with turmoil. This appearance can change based on your actions. Most soulforgers also choose a unique name for their armament.

Traits: A soulforged armament is always magical. If it doesn't otherwise have any traits that make it magical, it gains the magical and evocation traits if it's a weapon or the magical and abjuration traits if it's a shield or armor.

Extradimensional Storage: The armament is stored in an extradimensional space when not in use, and you can Manifest it to summon it into your hands or onto your body. A soulforged armament can be Dropped, Disarmed, or otherwise removed from you, but its soulforged abilities don't function for anyone else, and you can Dismiss the manifestation to return the items to the extradimensional space no matter where the items are. If you die or choose to pass ownership of a soulforged armament to a successor, it loses any soulforged abilities; violating the spirit of the soulforged bond by selling the item tends to have disastrous results. There might be special techniques or rituals by which a determined foe can break your bond with a soulforged item, but otherwise, your ability to Dismiss and Manifest it essentially means it can't be stolen.

Essence Power: Choose one essence power for your soulforged armament. You can bring the essence power forth once per day by tapping into the armament's essence form deep in your soul; essence powers can be found on page 236. You also choose a soulbond—a cause true to your soul that links you and your armament. Going against this cause can give your armament a soulbond corruption that hinders you even while the armament isn't manifested.

When you take Soulforger Dedication, you must choose a soul path—a motivation, cause, or goal that compels you to act, prompts you to undertake substantial risk, and drives you to face significant danger. Such a motivation can be limited or grand in scope but must be actionable enough to be easily linked to gameplay. For example, if your village was destroyed by the greed of wealthy nobles, you might select a soul path to protect the poor by undermining the rich, which might drive you to protect an innocent from the blade of a wealthy noble or break into a bank vault containing coins stolen from destitute villagers. Other sample soulbonds might include liberating the oppressed from the tyranny of slavery, punishing those who threaten nature or hunting and killing malevolent undead. Work with the GM to choose a soul path that fits in well with the themes of your campaign and group dynamic so that you can pursue your soul path in an interesting fashion.

You might want to alter your soulbound armament by adding new runes, replacing its form with a new one, or creating a new armament after yours was destroyed. You decide whether you consider this new armament as the same armament of the same lineage or a brand-new creation with a totally different appearance and name.

Upgrading your armament works like etching or transferring runes (Core Rulebook 580) or upgrading a permanent item from a lower-level version of the same item (Core Rulebook 534), whichever is appropriate to what you're doing. You or someone else can do the work, but you must leave the item manifested for the entire process. You can transfer runes off your armament as well, typically in anticipation of establishing your bond with a different item.

Reshaping your armament allows you to change the base weapon, armor, or shield into another of the same type, turning half plate armor into full plate, changing a warhammer into a longbow, and so on. If all you do is change the form while keeping the same runes and other magical properties, you can do so by spending a day in meditation. This doesn't cost any gp or extra time unless the new form is higher than level 1, or unless the difference is so vast that the GM determines it might take additional time and cost. For example, turning explorer's clothing into full plate requires the same time, expense, and Crafting check you'd need to Craft full plate since full plate is a level 2 item. Specific items can't be reshaped in this way unless the GM expressly allows it. You can't turn a flame tongue into a spiked chain, a breastplate of command into hide armor, or a sturdy shield into a darkwood shield. You can also use this day in meditation to rebind your soul to a different item in your possession. Typically, you keep the old item, its power removed, as a special keepsake or gift to a worthy successor, though attempting to disrespect the spirit of the bond by selling the item can have dire consequences. Since the essence power you chose represents the effects of the connection to your soul, the essence power typically doesn't change when you bind a new armament, though if your character's personality and connections change dramatically through the story, you and the GM might decide together to shift to a different essence power the next time you bind a new armament. If you rebind your soul to an armament that can't accommodate your current essence power, you will also need to change to a different essence power.

You can recreate a destroyed soulforged armament, or bond to a new armament if your previous one was destroyed. (If it was destroyed by soulforged corruption, you must first successfully use purify soul path.) Recreating costs the same amount of time and money as creating the item from scratch. If you already have an item with which to form a new bond, it takes 1 day in meditation, as with reshaping an armament.

Stamina Points represent a character's energy and readiness. They're reduced by damage just like Hit Points, but a character always loses their Stamina Points first, and loses Hit Points only if they're out of Stamina Points. If a character takes damage exceeding their remaining Stamina Points, the excess damage reduces their Hit Points. However, they lose any temporary Hit Points before losing Stamina Points.

Though Stamina Points and Hit Points function similarly when a character takes damage, a character recovers them differently. A heal spell restores Hit Points, not Stamina Points, and the actions described below (like Take a Breather) restore only Stamina Points, not Hit Points. A character regains all their Stamina Points after a full night's rest. Hit Points still determine whether a character remains conscious—a character at 0 HP is unconscious, no matter how many Stamina Points they have.

In addition to their ancestry Hit Points, a PC gains the number of Stamina Points and Hit Points indicated in the second and third columns of Table 4–21 at 1st level. Both values increase by the same amount at each level thereafter. This replaces the Hit Points a character gains from their class in a standard game.

In this variant, each PC also has a pool of Resolve Points, representing their intrinsic grit and luck. A character's maximum Resolve Points is equal to their key ability modifier, and a character regains all their Resolve Points with a full night's rest. In addition to spending Resolve Points to regain Stamina Points (as described under Stamina Actions), characters can spend Resolve Points in the following way.

Stamina Feats

There's no need to give Stamina Points to monsters that are expected to be encountered once and likely defeated. However, you might use Stamina Points for a recurring character, especially an NPC who fights alongside the PCs. Usually, it's easiest to turn half the creature's Hit Points into Stamina Points. While enemy healers still work as they're intended to, players might be upset about the enemies' ability to heal their allies to full Hit Points, while the PCs are left not being able to heal their allies' Stamina Points. In this case, give more enemies Stamina Points to compensate.

Treasure by Encounter

The crafting by questing rules work best when used in conjunction with the treasure by encounter guidelines. The rules presented in this section assume that you, as the GM, have the treasure by encounter guidelines in play.

The standard rules count treasure over the course of a level, rather than dividing it up by encounter. If you need to select treasure for a single encounter, such as in a sandbox game, you can use the table above. It takes the treasure budget for each level from Table 10–9 on page 509 of the Core Rulebook and breaks that down per encounter based on the encounter threat, similar to how XP varies by threat. The final column shows extra treasure you should award if you build an entire level this way. Unlike the standard table, this doesn't include items by item level, as the value doesn't cleanly break down for most single encounters. It's recommended you still give out those permanent items, but you'll need to borrow from other encounters' treasure to account for their value. Include encounters against creatures without treasure to account for this.

Crafting Quests

As in normal crafting, the first step in initiating a crafting quest is for the player to decide what they want to craft, or for you as the GM to present them with a handful of possible things they can quest to create. You might also plan out a few crafting quests during your session zero (Gamemastery Guide 7) so that they can be built directly into the narrative of the campaign and worked into the PCs' backstories. One of the simplest ways to do this is to have each of the players give you a wish list of items during your session zero, listing key items their characters would like to acquire during the course of the campaign. These could be as general as "a magic sword" or "a magic staff," or as specific as "a suit of devil's bargain armor for my Khaezaithan cleric."

Crafting Quests

As in normal crafting, the first step in initiating a crafting quest is for the player to decide what they want to craft, or for you as the GM to present them with a handful of possible things they can quest to create. You might also plan out a few crafting quests during your session zero (Gamemastery Guide 7) so that they can be built directly into the narrative of the campaign and worked into the PCs' backstories. One of the simplest ways to do this is to have each of the players give you a wish list of items during your session zero, listing key items their characters would like to acquire during the course of the campaign. These could be as general as "a magic sword" or "a magic staff," or as specific as "a suit of devil's bargain armor for my Khaezaithan cleric."

Crafting quests should always be significant events for the players and their characters. Don't send the PCs questing to create a simple dagger. Instead consider what items could become iconic parts of the character's story, like a magic bow for an archer, a powerful staff for a wizard, or lucky boots for a rogue. The nature of crafting quests as events that will permanently inform the characters' stories and shape their builds means that there should always be a high level of collaboration between the players and GM. When using crafting quests, you typically won't need to use the Extra Treasure values from Table 5–3: Treasure by Encounter, as those values are to compensate for the PCs finding loot that they won't use or for missing some of the loot entirely. Since the PCs are always set up to get the loot they want when using story-based crafting, and because the value of these items is subtracted from their total treasure, these additional values are superfluous and could give the party too much treasure for their level. If you prefer a campaign where the PCs have a bit more treasure on hand as a way to encourage the use of consumables or "non-essential" equipment, you can use the treasure values as presented.

The items you select for the PCs should all be items that are of a level appropriate to the characters (typically the same as their current level) or appropriate to the level they will be when they complete the crafting quests. For complete examples of crafting quests, see Example Quests below.

Story-based Crafting as The Baseline

There are many reasons you might consider making story-based crafting the base assumption for your game. This system results in items that feel more special and integral to the narrative, which the players have more agency in helping to create. Story-based crafting can make an item feel unique and less like something they just bought down at the local shop.

It's important to note that this style of crafting works best in sandbox campaigns and other adventures where the players are expected to inform a lot of the story's direction and progress, and is less compatible with campaigns seeking to tell a very specific and involved story. The encounters dedicated to crafting just the right weapon still give experience, and since each player should have the opportunity for a roughly equal number of crafting quests, you'll find that a campaign that uses story-based crafting as the baseline won't leave a lot of time open for other encounters and side quests.

An important element of using story-based crafting as PCs' primary method of acquiring new key permanent items in a campaign is ensuring that one player's crafting quests don't overwhelm the narrative and put the other players in the "back seat" for too long. Here are a few general tips for managing this game experience.

Don't feel pressured to do an entire PC's crafting quest through to completion before starting another PC's quests. You should intermix their adventures as much as possible, so that pursuing one character's crafting quest can naturally position the party to tackle another character's quest along the way. For example, if the fighter is crafting a flaming sword that requires traveling into a volcano, and the wizard is crafting a magic staff, you should try and place one of the encounters for acquiring staff components (or perhaps forging them together) inside that same volcano. This both reinforces the party's mutual goals, giving them strong story reasons to adventure together, and keeps the campaign feeling organic and connected.

When weaving multiple characters' crafting quests together, look for key opportunities to align their goals. A single dragon's hoard could easily hold components for an entire adventuring party, along with other treasures. Using powerful monsters with large treasure hoards or notable access to rare materials is a great way to both keep the party's goals united and layer in deeper story threads and some altruistic motivations for the party.

Quest 1: Forging The Holy Sword (Level 13–14)

James is running a game that includes Logan's character, a champion of Laisouvis. The party is getting close to reaching 14th level, and Logan has expressed a desire for his character to gain a holy avenger. James has decided that in order for Logan to forge his holy avenger, he'll need to recover the sword's hilt, blade, and pommel stone, for a total of 3 encounters. James takes the cost of the holy avenger, 4,500 gp, and reduces it by 10% for each of the three encounters (for a total reduction of 30%), arriving at a final total of 3,150 gp. James decides that each piece of the sword is worth the same amount, or 1,050 gp per component.

James plans the following three encounters out for Logan.

Liberating the Pommel Stone: The second encounter James has planned for the crafting quest is a mission to retrieve the holy avenger's pommel stone from an abandoned dwarven vault. While no monsters guard the vault, it's located behind a maze of twisting tunnels. When the party eventually finds the room and Logan's champion retrieves the pommel stone, they find out that the other treasures along all four walls are actually telekinetic swarm traps! Four 12th-level complex hazards constitute a severe encounter for a 13th-level party, so James deducts another 1,050 gp from the encounter's treasure for the pommel stone. Since there's over 2,000 gp remaining in the encounter's treasure value, this would also be an excellent location for James to leave items for other party members' crafting quests, along with some consumables and other treasure like art and coins.

Since this was a severe encounter and the champion's crafting quest is nearing completion, this would also be a good time for the party to level up to 14th level, which is what we assume happens going into the final encounter of the holy avenger crafting quest.

Restoring the Blade: The final piece of the holy avenger is its blade, which it turns out is still lodged between the scales of the ancient black dragon Davraivris. As an ancient black dragon, Davraivris is a 16th-level creature—a Moderate encounter for the 14th-level party. James deducts 1,050 gp from the 3,650 gp Davraivris is worth. This also leaves room for James to include a couple other crafting quest components for other party members in the dragon's loot. With the dragon slain, Logan's champion claims the holy avenger's blade as his piece of the treasure for the encounter and rejoins it with the hilt and pommel stone. The magic of the blade's components, awakened by the champion's holy quest, causes the pieces of the sundered blade to fuse with each other, and the champion's holy avenger is complete.

Retrieving the Hilt: The first encounter James has planned for this crafting quest is a mission to retrieve the holy avenger's hilt from the clutches of a pair of liches. As 12th-level creatures, the liches are worth 30 XP each for a 13th-level party and collectively comprise a low-difficulty encounter worth 1,875 gp. James subtracts the value of the pommel from the encounter's loot and adds in some consumables and other minor treasures for the rest of the group.

Quest 2: Weaving the Wizard's Robes (Level 7)

Jessica's character is an evoker wizard who has just reached 7th level and wants to celebrate her ascension by creating a set of fire energy robes (Grand Bazaar 50). Jessica's wizard has trained with a prestigious archmage as one of the archmage's many apprentices; the robes will serve not just as protection for her wizard on future adventures but as a symbol of the completion of her apprenticeship. Her GM, James, has decided that to create these robes, Jessica's wizard will need to collect spider silk, a gemstone imbued with the power of elemental fire, and a scale from a white dragon to protect the robe's wearer from the gemstone's flames. All three of these materials can be harvested from within the magical demiplane where the evoker's archmage master trains his apprentices, and the final step for Jessica's wizard will be to weave all the components together at the archmage's magical loom. James takes the 320 gp base cost of the fire energy robes and reduces it by 10% for each of the three encounters, arriving at a final total of 224 gp. James has decided that the encounters will consist of one low-difficulty encounter and two moderate-difficulty encounters, with the value of the spider silk set at 50 gp and the value of the other two crafting quest components each set at 87 gp.

James plans the following three encounters out for Jessica's wizard.

Bargaining for Silk: The first encounter Jessica's wizard will need to navigate is retrieving the silk for her robe from a trio of ether spiders. As 5th-level creatures, the three spiders collectively are worth 60 XP for a 7th-level party and constitute a low-difficulty encounter worth 220 gp. James deducts 50 gp from the value of the encounter for the silk and distributes the rest in the form of various consumables the archmage left behind for his successful apprentices to find. While the ether spiders are deadly threats, Jessica's wizard recognizes that killing the spiders would destroy her master's silk supply, so she instead bargains with the ether spiders and trades them food and treasures from her earlier adventures in exchange for the silk she needs, completing the encounter nonlethally.

Claiming a Scale: Singed but undeterred, Jessica's wizard and her party face their final challenge: a pair of elite young white dragons guard the magical loom on which the wizard must weave her magical robes. As 7th-level creatures, the dragons collectively represent a moderate encounter worth 290 gp for a 7th-level party. James deducts 87 gp from the value of the encounter for the dragon scale and provides the rest as treasures for the wizard's party members. Once the wizard has fought, bargained, or tricked her way into retrieving a scale and accessing the archmage's loom, she attempts a DC 23 Crafting check at the loom (the standard DC for a 7th-level item) to weave the crafting quest components together into her completed fire energy robes.

Retrieving the Fiery Gemstone: The second encounter awaiting Jessica's wizard requires her to travel to the magical furnace powering the archmage's tower and retrieve a gemstone imbued with the power of elemental flame. When Jessica's wizard arrives at the furnace, she discovers that the archmage has prepared a surprise for her and has left the furnace gate open, allowing a pair of salamanders (Bestiary 148) to slip in from the Plane of Fire! As 7th-level creatures, the two salamanders collectively represent a moderate encounter worth 290 gp for a 7th-level party. James deducts 87 gp from the value of the encounter to account for the value of the gemstone and gives the rest of the treasure to the party as consumables that will help them resist the icy breath of the elite young white dragons the PCs will have to face in the final encounter.

Quest 2: Shaping the Armor of Yggdrasil (Level 5)

Braitrax's character is a druid seeking to craft a +1 wooden breastplate for herself. Having just reached 5th level, Braitrax's druid will soon be leaving the relative safety of her grove and the surrounding woodlands to venture out into the wider world as a champion of nature, an endeavor which will call for greater protection than she has had need of so far. Her GM, James, has decided that for Braitrax's druid to create this armor, she'll need to gather four essential materials from the woodlands around her grove: fur collected from grizzly bears to line the armor, darkwood bark collected from trees protected by arboreal wardens, a section of wood freely gifted by an awakened tree for the main plate, and sticky sap from a grove guarded by a dryad and her pet basilisk to bind it all together. James has decided that this crafting quest will require Braitrax's druid to complete four Low difficulty encounters, so he has reduced the 160 gp cost of the +1 wooden breastplate by 40% for a final crafting cost of 96 gp, with each component having a value of 24 gp each. He deducts the 24 gp from the 100 gp value of each of the encounters and assigns the remaining 76 gp from each encounter to consumables and crafting quest components for the other characters.

James plans the following four encounters out for Braitrax.

Shaving the Grizzly: Braitrax's first task is to collect the grizzly bear fur, and fortunately, three large grizzlies with fur to spare can be found fishing salmon from a nearby stream. While the bears do constitute a potentially engaging, or even deadly, combat encounter, Braitrax's character is a druid and unwilling to harm the creatures just to line her armor. By leveraging a combination of primal magic and Nature-oriented skill feats, she's able to calm the bears and convince them to donate some of their fur to her.

Sticky Situation: Having collected most of the components to create her armor, the druid just needs the sticky sap to bind everything together. The dryad and basilisk protecting the sap are cantankerous, cruel, and unwilling to share, and their grove is littered with evidence that the basilisk isn't too picky about who or what it petrifies and eats, either. While the party has thus far attempted nonviolent solutions wherever possible, the clearly evil nature of the dryad and basilisk likely mean that Braitrax's party might just choose to fight this one out for the good of the forest, though it's also possible that they will choose to try and redeem the dryad and her pet. Regardless of the resolution they choose, once the dryad and basilisk are dealt with, Braitrax's druid has all the crafting quest components she needs to Craft her armor, and she can begin the process of assembling them.

Working Around the Wardens: Next, Braitrax's druid must convince a pair of arboreal wardens to allow her to collect fallen scraps of darkwood bark from the grove of darkwood trees they're dedicated to protecting. Whether through combat, stealth, bargaining, or fleetness of foot, the druid manages to retrieve the necessary bark and completes the encounter before seeking out the next component for her armor.

You're Not Using That, Are You?: Next, Braitrax's druid needs to convince a mighty awakened tree to gift her a section of its living body to form the main plate of her +1 wooden breastplate. Combat isn't an option here; not only would attacking an otherwise-peaceful awakened tree potentially be anathema for the druid, but the wood has to be freely gifted or the armor will be ruined. Guile, diplomacy, and magic are Braitrax's only options, but fortunately, if anyone can convince a tree to give up a part of itself, it's probably a druid.

Since the encounters were all contained within the same woodland, James requires Braitrax's druid to attempt a Crafting check inside the druid grove to complete the armor. Braitrax's druid successfully completes a DC 20 Crafting check (the standard DC for a 5th-level item) and can now don her +1 wooden breastplate.