abyssalbrews

Kintsugi

Added 2024-11-21 16:00:07 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

Though I’ve never practiced it myself, I’ve heard of an ancient art of taking broken pottery and turning the repair into something beautiful by restoring it with lacquer mixed with gold. It’s a fascinating process to behold and truly does give a broken piece a new sense of life while not rejecting its history. This armor seems to have at one point undergone a similar destruction and repair process, but whatever magics were used during the restoration truly are something phenomenal.

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Design notes from Matthew:
This is one of those items that came into my head after a random life event. I was in a restaurant for breakfast and one of the servers dropped a mug. Unfortunate, but it happens. I always pride myself on being open to ideas no matter where they come. After seeing the pieces of the mug on the floor, I had remembered watching a short documentary about the process of kintsugi in Japanese tradition. I did a bit more reading and consulting with friends/contacts to make sure we were respectful of any cultural significance around the process. What came out was an item I’m quite proud of.
It’s always important to balance around the system you’re writing in. A common mistake that new players to PF2E make is thinking that PF2E is just an alternative 5E and that the balance exists in the same way. When writing items like this, I like to look to spells, feats, ancestries, and other existing resources. For this piece, the Protection and Resist Energy spells were the base that everything else was built on. I just put my own flare to them.
In the 5E version, well this is just really powerful in a unique way. I haven’t seen the ability to trade bonuses to negate hits before, but it seemed like an interesting trade off that someone could make when they know a big hit is about to land. It doesn’t do anything for spells mind you, but the ability to straight up tank a few hits is powerful in its own way. Couple in the party AC buff and you’ve got a formidable piece.

Something to remember when you’re writing for any system while using real world cultural inspirations is to work with sensitivity consultation. Thankfully, we’ve amassed some friends along the way that are great with this work. Paying folks for their time to make sure you get it right is never something you’ll regret in my experience!

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