Hey I'm Jake, I make RPG supplements, posts and videos about Pathfinder2. Being new to Pathfinder2 (PF2) but a long-time lover of DnD, I want to share the things that I find along the way and share them with you in a way that makes them easy to digest and hopefully... FUN! All the information I talk about here is on the Archives of Nethys site where all Pathfinder 2 resources are available for free.
Now - can we create a Changeling Battle Smith Artificer from 5e in PF2? Well let's see how close we can get. The main features of the Battle Smith are that you can cast damaging and protective spells (flavored as little machines or like a gun that shoots acid for example), and of course: The Steel Defender!
A robot that attacks, can shove enemies, and has a reaction to protect you. Also, if you're a small race, you can ride it. The Artificer also gets infusions, which are minor magic items that you can make and use, and at this level they are mostly utility, like armor that holds an extra set of tools, or minor combat bonuses like +1 to hit and damage or +1 to AC.
I'm going to start from first level with Ancestry selection and Backgrounds to show you an idea of how you could pull feats and skills and powers from PF2 to make nearly anything you can think of. I'll only be taking the build to 5th level to give you a start; then you can take it from there.
And that brings us to the Fox-faced Flatfoot today. This will be a Kitsune Inventor who dips into the Investigator Archetype for story reasons. But our Flatfoot has a secret! Shh not telliiiing. You'll just have to wait to find out.
First... what is a Kitsune? It's a Japanese mythology-based anthropomorphic fox person who calls on the magic of the spirit world with their magical tail... or tails. They can take feats to get more tails and more magic powers. It's pretty cool. They're also natural shapeshifters, though to start off with, it's just between 2 forms: a furry fox-headed and tailed bipedal humanoid, and either a fox or a different humanoid without any foxy features.
In myth, more tails is associated with greater wisdom and connection to the spirit world and it's magic. Sadly, our character, whose name is Aloysius has only 1 tail. Which disappoints him whenever he visits his Kitsune family. Which is extremely rare because of his obsession with 1 particular criminal: a wererat murderer who poisons his victims and seems to delight in tormenting Aloysius himself. Yes, they have a strange rivalry/antagonistic relationship thing. Like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, I guess you could say.
Our detective doesn't work for any particular legal agency, which gives him the freedom to experiment and tinker with his Innovations and gadgets. He's really into little toys and constructs that help him with a particular task. You might think of him as a mono-tasker master.
But at all times, he is focused on tracking down and capturing this Wererat who has named himself as "Snakebite" to Aloysius, and who is responsible for the death of not 1, but 3 people who were beloved by Al. And because this criminal has not only murdered people that were close to Al including his mentor, but has also gone on to kill people in other nearby communities, Aloysius the Fox-faced flatfoot has TRACKED the vile wererat from town to town for HUNDREDS of miles by now. And Snakebite seems to always be just ONE step ahead of Al and leaves little notes mocking him here and there. Now I'm going to do this build rundown a little different from the last one: I'm going to go through all the CLASS levels first, then get to the Ancestry and Heritage, which I'll explain to you later. We will choose a background that will help our later investigations, Undertaker. We can increase 2 different abilities by 2 each, 1 has to be either Intelligence or Wisdom, and we'll choose Intelligence. We're trained in the Medicine skill and a Lore skill specializing in one local type of undead. I say Ghouls, because they stink, paralyze people, eat corpses, and infect with their bite. They're pretty much what people think of when they think "Zombie" from movies and shows and stuff. And we can say that tracking down a grave robber who was actually a ghoul in the end is the first case that Al worked on. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We also get Forensic Acumen, which says:
"You can perform a forensic examination on a body, as described under Recall Knowledge in the Medicine skill, in half the normal amount of time it would take (to a minimum of 5 minutes). If you succeed at your check, you can attempt an immediate check to Recall Knowledge to follow up on something you found, with a +2 circumstance bonus. This check is usually related to the cause of injury or death, such as a Crafting check to identify a poison or weapon that was used or an additional Medicine check to identify a specific disease. If you prefer, you can instead attempt to Recall Knowledge about the type of creature whose body you were examining, using the appropriate skill and gaining the same circumstance bonus."
And it's only a skill feat. A SKILL FEAT! This is so cool! *Grins* So we learned about the body, it's functions, and how to determine the cause of death, thereby assisting local law enforcement in catching murderers. The background is Undertaker, yes. But I prefer to think of it as studying from a Gnomish mad scientist named Reginald who learned about bodies by robbing graves. In fact, he was caught doing it, but the deputy involved saw promise in Reginald's passionate obsession. And so he was put on the payroll and quickly became indispensable to the Sheriff's office. Aloysius assisted Reginald in his work daily and even lived with him for a few years. And in exchange, the little gnome taught Al about Alchemy and Studying the dead to bring peace to the families of victims. Really cool noble beginning. 1st Level And how did Aloysius help Reginald in his lab? Why, as an Inventor of course! So let's go over the first level of the Inventor. Skills - Crafting is given to us by our class, then we take Deception, Stealth, Diplomacy, Society, Survival. And our Background gave us Medicine. And there are a couple of others for you to take whatever you like. The only really necessary skill is Crafting, the rest is for story and flexibility outside of combat and for working as a detective. You need to be able to sneak around and lie to criminals. AAAAAND an Inventor Feat. We'll choose Explosive Leap. "You aim an explosion downward to launch yourself into the air. You jump up to 30 feet in any direction without touching the ground. You must land on a space of solid ground, or else you fall after using your next action." And now we go over the Inventor abilities. Beginning with OVERDRIVE. This means that you roll a crafting check (which we're amazing at) in order to push your body into an enhanced combat state. You can flavor it however you like, we're going to say that Al combines Alchemical elixirs that he learned from Reginald and metal braces on his limbs that have little motors on them that add strength to his attacks, really driving his limbs forward forcefully. When he activates Overdrive, he gets an injection of a stimulant that his steampunky vest injects directly into his neck, and little motors start whirring all over his body. Ok game mechanics: remember you have to roll to get this to work, so you can critically fail and it says: "Whoops! Something explodes. You take fire damage equal to your level, and you can't use Overdrive again for 1 minute as your gizmos cool down and reset." A failure is you make a miscalculation and nothing happens. A success means that for the next minute, you add an amount of damage to each of your attacks equal to half your Intelligence bonus. So probably 2 at first level, which is actually pretty good. It's just a flat passive buff after you Overdrive. If however, you get a CRITICAL success, the damage bonus equals your full Intelligence bonus. Innovation is next. And you can choose armor innovation, weapon innovation, or what we'll choose today: Construct innovation. Essentially the armor and weapon innovations allow you to add qualities to your invention that does a variety of things, like adds to damage, or allows you to trip at range and so on. Sort of like you're enchanting your weapon or armor. But CONSTRUCT innovation gives you a pet. A mechanical pet. The Construct has a speed of 25 to start with and is a useful co-combatant. It has Str and Dex modifiers of +3, and does either 1d8 bludgeoning or 1d6 slashing or piercing on a hit. Also, you can spend an extra action that someone would normally spend to control a pet to give the Construct 3 actions instead of 2. So you end up with 1 action and the Construct has 3. Cool thing though: It's a construct, so it's immune to a bunch of stuff: bleed, death effects, disease, doomed, drained, fatigued, healing, necromancy, nonlethal attacks, paralyzed, poison, sickened, and unconscious. This is a pretty tanky pet to start with, and you get to choose a Modification for the Construct. We can change these later or take more of them, so we can only take 1 to start with. So for now we'll take Manual Dexterity, which gives it articulated hands to pick up and manipulate items. And in honor of our deceased mentor, we'll name our Construct Reggie. So Reggie helps us around the lab by carrying things, lifting things, or even just handing us things that are out of reach. We can just command him to stir something and he will never stop until you tell him to. He's either Small or Medium, our choice and we'll choose medium for now so we can later choose Large and give him reach. Oh, and Reggie gets the benefit of our Overdrive when we use it, just as we do. Now we can pick pretty much any appearance, so since Al has traveled across the country hunting down this rogue fugitive and in the process has heard a LOT of tales from other lands, we'll choose a mysterious creature from one of these tales... a penguin. But we've never SEEN a penguin, so it is nowhere NEAR lifelike. It's more like a sad imitation of a penguin, but Al doesn't know that. He just thought it sounded cool. AND you can have your construct use Explosive Leap instead. So penguins really CAN fly!
Oh and the actuated hands that can manipulate items? We'll say that Reggie has a hollow cavity in his chest that holds a pair of robotic arms that extend to manipulate or use items. AAAAND we get the inventor special ability: Explode. Ahem... Your innovation is a creation barely held together by your own engineering, always on the edge of completely falling apart. Though this adds risk, it also means you can coax it to perform far beyond its design specifications using special unstable actions. While inventors can learn various unstable actions over their career, all at least know how to make their innovation Explode. "You intentionally take your innovation beyond normal safety limits, making it explode and damage nearby creatures without damaging the innovation... hopefully. The explosion deals 2d6 fire damage with a basic Reflex save to all creatures in a 5-foot emanation around you (if you're wearing or holding the innovation) or around your innovation (if your innovation is a minion)." so it's around Reggie "At 3rd level, and every level thereafter, increase your explosion's damage by 1d6." So this is a mini Fireball that we can use at least once per day and it hits a 5-foot radius around our Construct. Later we can change it to ice damage 'cuz penguin. And also at 1st level, we gain "Peerless Inventor", which gives us the Inventor feat, which lets you craft stuff and learn and create Formulas for items. You also gain Shield Block, which is really cool. This character is actually really good in a fight. 2nd Level Then at 2nd level we take the Inventor feat Reverse Engineer: "You are incredibly skilled at reverse engineering items to learn their formulas, or disassembling them just to disable them. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Crafting checks to reverse engineer a formula from an item. If you get a critical success on your Crafting check, you can opt to both create the formula and reassemble the original item at the same time, leaving you with the formula and the item instead of the formula and raw materials equal to half the item's value. Furthermore, you can use Crafting instead of Thievery to Disable a Device or Pick a Lock." Which means that we don't have to take Thievery, even though we might be breaking into houses or out of dungeons.
And Next... INVESTIGATOR ARCHETYPE! Yeah, you know I gotta take an Archetype! Well I freakin' love flexibility and doing as many fun things as possible at the same time! So talk to your GM and find out if you're using the Free Archetype feat Variant Rule. If not, you can still use your class feat to take an Archetype, as we don't really NEEEEED Reverse Engineer, it was just a nice option to have. Either way - we're taking the Multiclass Archetype feat: Investigator Dedication.
First off, it means we get training in Society and another skill of our choice and if we already have Society, we can pick any other skill to be trained in. You gain the on the case class feature, which grants you both the Pursue a Lead activity and Clue In reaction. They both basically make you a better detective; I'll go over them. Pursue a Lead "Frequency once per 10 minutes You spend 1 minute examining the details of one potential clue, designating the subject related to that clue as the target of your active investigation. This subject is typically a single creature, item, or small location (such as a room or corridor), but the GM might allow a different scope for your investigation. You don't need to know the identity, purpose, or nature of the subject, but you do need to be aware of its existence. For instance, finding a footprint is enough to investigate the creature that left it, and seeing a hasty sketch of an item or location can be enough to start your investigation of that subject." You basically get +1 to Perception and any other skill check that involves following your lead. You can maintain two active investigations at a time.
Clue In "Frequency once per 10 minutes Reaction Another creature gains your Pursue a Lead circumstance bonus to checks investigating your subject." And that's all you get from Investigator for now, but that's enough to explain our backstory, how we continue following the trail of our nemesis, and how we ended up ANYWHERE the GM needs us to wind up. Also at level 2 you get a Skill Feat and we're going to take Alchemical Crafting. Oh hell yeah. The skill feat allows us to add 4 1st level Alchemical formulas to our formula book and we'll choose Forensic Dye, Numbing Tonic, and any 2 others you like. This will help us in our investigations and give us more variety of tools to use. Numbing Tonic gives you 2 temporary hit points every round for 1 minute. Forensic Dye makes blood or chemicals you're looking for glow if you brush it on the area they're in. I just love that this is in this system. This character is a forensic investigator. The Alchemy is actually giving us an ability that's very much like a spell that the Artificer from 5e gets: Heroism. Heroism gives you more temporary hp per round, so the Numbing Tonic isn't nearly as good, but you can eventually increase it to be more temp hp than Heroism. 3rd Level At level 3 we get the Expert Overdrive class feature which makes us Expert in Crafting, so we add 2 to our Crafting rolls, and when we go into Overdrive, we add 1 more point of damage to each attack. And so does our Penguin-bot, Reggie. Also, we can spend a day of downtime and roll Crafting to change one of our Constructs modifications. Cool, don't really need it most of the time but if you know ahead of time that you're JUST going to be doing combat for the next few days and the manual dexterity won't matter as much, then you can give it a movement rate of 40 or Stealth, or tremorsense or a swim speed, or a ranged attack. And at 3rd we also get our first GENERAL feat and I'd like to double down on our Investigator/Spy capabilities with Read Lips. We can tell what people are saying from a distance. Cool. Useful. 4th Level Now 4th level we get another Class feat and we'll take GAAAADGET SPECIALIST! Woo baby doo doo doo doo doo Inspector Gadget doo doo doo doo doo woo woo!
So Gadgets are a part of Inventors that I didn't mention before. As an Inventor, you can craft Gadgets with your Crafting skill. With the feat, you can also make 2 extra per day that are consumable, then they fall apart at the end of the day. So no matter if you have downtime or not, you always will have at least 2 gadgets. And gadgets are weird and fun.
I've added a bunch of Gadgets to our character sheet that you can download for this character, as well as some other Alchemical goodies. Gadgets are things like:
Impact Foam - prevents up to 20 fall damage by making you look like a big marshmallow.
Explosive mines - cuz sometimes you don't want to be followed. Does fire damage in an area
Instant Spy - this is why I wanted to take Gadget Specialist. So we can place a little device somewhere inconspicuous and record up to 1 hour of sound, then play it back later. So cool.
You also have Clockwork Goggles - because steampunk. Gives you low-light and darkvision for 10 minutes.
Gadget Skates - 1 action to double your speed up to 1 min. But it's really hard to steer.
Or Gecko pads - It suctions you to walls to give you a climb speed for 10 minutes.
I love this stuff. Now THAT is something that 5e doesn't have. I'll gladly take these over the shield spell. I'd also like to say that we have a couple of gadgets that just hold stuff for us or can be activated to constantly turn something, just to help us around the lab. Cuz we totally have a crime lab! With random little doo dads and gizmos all over the place.
Ok so we also get a skill feat and we'll take Improvise Tool. It just totally makes sense for an Inventor to be able to do.
"You can repair damaged items without a repair kit and if you have raw materials laying around, you can make these items: a basic caltrop set, candle, compass, crowbar, fishing tackle, flint and steel, hammer, ladder, piton, rope, 10-foot pole, replacement thieves' picks, long or short tool, or torch without consulting a basic crafter's book."
And now we can take an Investigator feat (in which case I'd take That's Odd)
Or we can take Investigator's Stratagem. It takes an action and means that you study 1 particular opponent. You get to roll your first attack against that creature ahead of time and then decide if you want to attack or not. So this is really useful for combat, but I'll read "That's Odd" to you too so you can decide.
"When you enter a new location, such as a room or corridor, you immediately notice one thing out of the ordinary. The GM determines what it is, or whether there's nothing reasonable to pick up, skipping obvious clues that can be easily noticed without a check or specifically looking for them. You learn only that an area or object is suspicious, but not why it's suspicious. For example, if you entered a study with a large bloodstain on the ground, the bloodstain is so obviously suspicious it's evident to you already, so the GM might note that there's something suspicious about the desk drawer instead. You would then need to investigate the drawer further to find out what specifically is out of the ordinary. That's Odd doesn't reveal whether creatures are suspicious."
So you see, one is good for in combat, the other one is good for outside of combat, and might annoy your GM or your party. Definitely talk with your GM and your party before picking "That's Odd" if you decide you want that one.
5th Level
Now at 5th level we get Inventor Weapon Expertise. Your proficiency ranks for simple and martial weapons and unarmed attacks increase to expert. Ok, so you're better at hitting stuff.
Ahem... now we have our 5th level Battle Smith Artificer Inventor Investigator Inspector Gadget Fox-faced Flatfoot.
Ancestry and Heritage
Now we talk about our Ancestry. *grin*
As you know, we chose Kitsune. Which is an Ancestry. I didn't say what Heritage we chose.
You see: when Reginald was killed by Snakebite, Aloysius was there. In fact, he was helping Reginald with an experiment in Mutagens. And there was an accident. Al's Heritage changed - the Mutagen combination that spilled all over him made him a furious, starving, Wererat Beastkin.
It wasn't his fault, it wasn't even Reginald's fault, really. Only an accident. That claimed the lives of two people that day. One to be buried as an honored loved one, and one doomed to spend the rest of his life hunting himself across the globe, always out of reach of the truth that he just can't handle. Aloysius IS Snakebite. And everything the Wererat does is to bury himself further in a lie. The lie that he is a different person and that Aloysius isn't responsible for killing his mentor and friend.
Our character has 4 forms to change between: Kitsune, a bipedal humanoid rat form, a tiny rat pest form, and any humanoid form he likes (thus satisfying the "changeling" part of this build conversion).
At 1st level we took the Critter Shape for rat from the Beastkin Heritage, then at 5th we took Shifting Faces from the Kitsune Ancestry.
Snakebite uses his mastery of Alchemy to poison people and destroys Al's projects to hurt himself in his anger, and uses his Rat critter form to get into places that Al doesn't believe he could get to so he can have a clean conscience if Snakebite crawls under a door and poisons someone, for example. And Al's attempts to track and hunt his other half are sometimes sabotaged by Snakebite. Now you could play this a few different ways. You can play it the way I've portrayed and maybe at some point Al and Snakebite realize they're the same person and resolve a few things. Then they become the same person again and deal with their guilt; or they stay as separate people but work together, Al taking the more cerebral parts of the adventure and Snakebite arising whenever combat or subterfuge is to be had. I've included 5 different kinds of poison on the character sheet that Snakebite has mastered, and he also loves using Acid to destroy evidence, so he has that too. And Bloodeye Coffee to drink as he's changing back to make Al feel alert so he doesn't notice how much his body has been used while he was suppressed. Snakebite also makes great use of Reverse Engineer to get in to places or to disable traps that Aloysius has set up for... himself. And Al has a few things that are just his as well: he keeps a small gun in his coat pocket for self-defense, he keeps a polytool on him at all times so he can always use his crafting for traps or whatever, he loves the science of alchemy and invention. Also, for some reason his Construct Reggie will only respond to him. It may be that he feels so much guilt that Snakebite doesn't believe he can use the Construct, so he can't.
Here you will find the download for the Character Sheet. I have already filled in all you need to get started playing your own Battle Smith Artificer Inventor Investigator Inspector Gadget Fox-faced Flatfoot. The download it's on a fillable form so you can just add to it as you like.
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Until Next Time.... Remember you're not a person; you're a brain piloting a bone mech covered in meat armor.
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