Jim and I were talking about a 5e conversion of A Broken Sky, its something he wanted to do but didn’t get a critical mass of Patreon supporters behind it so he could focus on it full time. We believe in the book and think a 5e conversion would make a strong 5e product for us. There are some things the 5e conversion will need and some it might be able to do without.

In D&D 3.5 there was one thing in all the books that use the alchemical bonus the antitoxin, in D&D 4e WotC got rid of the alchemical bonus. When Pathfinder took over the 3.x chassis, they made more alchemical items and an alchemist class to make and use them. Pathfinder 2e and by extension A Broken Sky both make use of a lot of alchemical items and the alchemist class. So we look at 5e and there is no native alchemist class.

There are at least 5 Alchemists; EN5ider, Kobold Press, Tribality, Fifth Fantas and Mage Hand Press all have a full class or in Kobold’s case a school of magic devoted to alchemy. For everyone’s sanity I am going to use alchemy, alchemical and alchemist throughout despite the various K and Y spellings used by different publishers to differentiate their products.

Project Component	Must Have	Should Have	Could Have	Won’t Have
Alchemical items	X
Alchemist class			X
Ancestry/Races	X
Ancestry feats		X
Skills and uses			X
Sample Airships			X
Equipment			X
Magic Items		X
Monsters				Probably
Sample NPCs			X

Jim believes the alchemical items in A Broken Sky are essential to the setting because without divine casters full of healing the setting could be very deadly without some alternative form of healing. There are also some fun things like feeding certain liquids to your buzzwing backpack and flying around that just aren’t the same without them.

• Bright Fluid
• Fuel Block
• Fuel Tablet

• Acid flask
• Alchemist’s fire
• Bottled lightning
• Frost vial
• Tanglefoot bag
• Thunderstone
• Antidote
• Antiplague
• Elixir of Life
• Smokestick
• Sunrod
• Tindertwig

There’s a lot of Elixirs, Poisons and alchemical gear in core, too many to list here just trying to decided which ones are essential to ABS and to someone trying to play an Alchemist.

Alchemist class, with no 5e base class we either recommend one of the 5 third party alchemists or make our own for ABS that suits the needs of the setting. This would be all new material for the book which previously relied upon the PF2e core rules.

Ancestries and Races, the people of ABS aren’t just stock fantasy characters with funny names sky-elves or gully dwarves, but PF2e made ancestries more than just stat adjustments eyes and a funny haircut. Many of the PF2e races get a number of feats available to them, you don’t have to take them all, but in 5e you’d never be able to. How do we handle that in a way that’s satisfying to all parties concerned?

Ancestry feats, 5e characters don’t get a lot of feats and most times people take other character boosts over the feats so do we spend a lot of time replicating feats from another system that will likely never get used?

Skills and uses, owing to the abundance of non magical healing in PF2e we were able to rely on alchemy and medicine checks to keep characters alive in PF2e. In 5e there the Healer feat allows for more non magical healing but now you’ve made it a must have instead of a nice to have.

Sample Airships, in the PF2e vehicles section there is a sample airship with cost, speeds, passengers and the like. In 5 there was an airship in the Unearthed Arcana: Ships of the Sea but that did not make it into Ghosts of Saltmarsh. We have a setting with flying cities and airships, we need there to be an airship in the book.

Equipment, is you want to strap on your buzzwings and go chasing after airship pirates then we need those things in the book to be converted. We’ll need to look over the difference between the base PF2e and 5e equipment lists and ensure that the costs look correct for 5e when we’re done.

• Battery Tube
• Buzzwings
• Lobber

Magic items, same real notes as equipment, we need our magical temple keys and other magic doodads, they need to have the costs adjusted for 5e so that the GM knows how and when to hand them out.

• Reliquary of the Maker Gods
• Temple Talismans

Monsters, Jim gave a list of monsters you might encounter in ABS, those monsters exist in the PF2e bestiary, if the same monsters don’t exist in the 5e monster manuals or other books then we need to rewrite the monster list to monsters that exist in 5e or we need to create a small section of monsters that exist in ABS with 5e stat blocks.

Sample NPCs, airship pirates, town guards, temple guardians, the dreaded nightfall lords, some or all of these guys are going to need stat blocks.

If you have any feedback about this post or our books please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com