Pathfinder 2e Remastered Conversion Pack

For the setting-level play philosophy this conversion is intended to preserve, see How Mar de Oro Plays.

Using the conversion

The fastest Pathfinder conversion is the one that does not rebuild Pathfinder. Use Pathfinder as written unless this conversion explicitly says otherwise.

Mar de Oro is built around credible danger, meaningful agency, predictable stakes, and consequences that follow the fiction. Pathfinder Second Edition Remastered already provides a tight action economy, degrees of success, encounter math, firearms, siege engines, vehicles, chases, troops, hazards, and downtime. This conversion uses those systems rather than reproducing them.

What this conversion adds

• Mar de Oro setting assumptions for classes, ancestries, firearms, and Fortera.
• Fortera Overdraw.
• Embedding as a downtime activity.
• Resonance Tuning as a rank-2 spell.
• A routing layer for battles, troop command, artillery, ships, and scale changes.
• PF2e-native expressions of Mar de Oro creatures and phenomena.
• Soul Shattering as a narrative layer on return-to-life effects.

Normal Strikes, skill actions, saving throws, initiative, Stealth, detection, conditions, proficiency, multiple attack penalty, spellcasting, counteracting, item bonuses, weapon runes, vehicle rules, siege weapon rules, troop rules, chases, hazards, and encounter XP remain unchanged unless a specific Mar de Oro rule says otherwise.

The play loop

1. The world acts.
2. Establish what the characters can perceive, know, or reasonably infer.
3. Players choose what they do.
4. Use the Pathfinder procedure that answers the immediate question.
5. Apply the result and its consequences.
6. Let the world react.
7. Advance time, clocks, and pressures.

System-neutral table procedures (Hard Calls at the Table and Running the Powered Arts) live in the System-Neutral Adaptation chapter because they apply across multiple rulesets.

Characters and Setting Assumptions

Character options stay Pathfinder. Their meaning belongs to Mar de Oro. Use the Calling table as a menu of familiar chassis for each Mar de Oro Calling: it identifies mechanical starting points rather than equivalences.

Powered Arts by Temperament

All Pathfinder Second Edition Remastered classes are playable when their abilities can be expressed coherently in Mar de Oro. Spellcasting classes use their normal Pathfinder mechanics. Their traditions are different practices and interpretations of Fortera rather than separate supernatural cosmologies, as shown below. Use the table as a menu of familiar chassis rather than an equivalence table. Fortera is the underlying field and disciplined practice used within the setting. References to Pathfinder classes, traditions, or resources are mechanical conversion tools rather than literal explanations of how Fortera works.

Characters and institutions may disagree about what Fortera means. The disagreement is part of the setting. The mechanics remain Pathfinder.

Capability and proficiency translation

Map the Familiar / Trained / Expert / Master ladder from the System-Neutral Adaptation chapter to Pathfinder 2e proficiency ranks of Trained, Expert, Master, and Legendary. Use the group's tier as the anchor; do not upgrade proficiency purely to fit a system-neutral label.

Bonds and Burdens

Express Bonds through allies, contacts, organisations, and ancestry or background hooks with mechanical support. Express Burdens through recurring complications, obligations, hazards, and consequences that arise under pressure.

Wish, ancestries, rarity, and items

Wish is unavailable in Mar de Oro. It cannot be learned, cast, researched into existence, reproduced, or embedded.

Use Pathfinder ancestry and heritage mechanics normally. Playable peoples are integrated throughout the societies of Aeon. Ancestry does not determine nationality, culture, religion, profession, allegiance, morality, language, or class.

Pathfinder rarity often reflects Golarion. Mar de Oro uses its own availability. Firearms are ordinary technology across much of the setting, so a character whose culture, profession, military service, or circumstances reasonably provide firearm access has that access even if the Pathfinder item is normally uncommon. Access does not grant proficiency: a character who can buy a musket still uses their normal Pathfinder proficiency.

Use normal Pathfinder item mechanics. In the fiction, runes, spell effects, magical ammunition, talismans, and similar mechanics are expressed through Fortera, embedding, material engineering, resonance, or another setting-appropriate process. Keep the Pathfinder mechanic; translate the explanation.

Firearms

Pathfinder already has a firearm engine, and Mar de Oro only maps its weapons into it. Use the firearm rules from Pathfinder Guns & Gears Remastered as written. Weapon proficiency, Strike actions, reload actions, range increments, critical behavior, traits, ammunition, runes, and class abilities work normally.

Do not import the fifth-edition firearm Advantage, +2 versus armor, bonus-action reload, or special critical rules. Pathfinder's AC, proficiency, traits, reload economy, critical system, and multiple attack penalty already balance firearm lethality.

Use Pathfinder's existing circumstance penalties, concealment, environmental effects, or equipment consequences when the fiction establishes wet powder, poor ammunition, heavy smoke, or similar problems. Ordinary shots do not require a separate Mar de Oro misfire roll. Do not use the fifth-edition Volley procedure: at Personal Scale, multiple shooters use ordinary Pathfinder encounter rules, and when a whole body of troops is firing together, use troop or skirmish rules. Aimed fire attacks an individual. Massed fire attacks occupied space.

Kalthoff Repeater

The Kalthoff Repeater is the one custom personal firearm because its rate of fire is important to the setting. Use the nearest appropriate two-handed Remastered firearm profile for damage, range, traits, proficiency, runes, and critical behavior. The Kalthoff changes only the reload economy.

• Magazine: 30 shots.
• A Strike consumes one shot but does not require the normal Reload action between shots.
• Multiple Strikes still use normal Pathfinder actions and multiple attack penalty.
• Replenishing the magazine is a maintenance task measured in minutes, not a normal combat Reload.
• Neglect, contamination, or water exposure can disable the repeating mechanism when the fiction supports it; servicing restores it.

Ambushes and Credible Danger

Core HP is not used in the Pathfinder conversion. Use normal Pathfinder exploration, Avoid Notice, Seek, Perception, Stealth, detection, initiative, off-guard, and encounter procedures.

A mechanically dangerous ambush can still remove meaningful choice if the GM deploys it without any discoverable warning. The safeguard is encounter preparation rather than a new defensive rule.

• Simulate or estimate unusually lethal opening situations before running them.
• Give discoverable signs when the characters could reasonably notice the danger.
• Let preparation, reconnaissance, terrain, and retreat matter.
• Know what defeat means before the encounter starts.
• A failed ambush check can lead to capture, injury, separation, loss, pursuit, or another playable consequence when the fiction allows it.

A clue can be missed and a warning can be ignored. Once the characters had a fair chance to perceive or reason about the danger, the world follows through. Pathfinder's normal critical hits, dying rules, recovery, and encounter math carry the result.

Hazards and Éterlumin

Contained, non-active Éterlumin may be transported as controlled cargo, but it continues to degrade over time. Model unstable situations as environmental hazards: pressure, calibration loss, resonance, heat, active fire, structural damage, containment failure, or rupture. Active Éterlumin is flammable, so existing fire and explosion procedures may be used when ignition or active combustion is genuinely present. Éterlumin is not inherently toxic. Simple proximity should not automatically require a Fortitude save.

Battlefields, Troops, and Scale

The battlefield is wider than the part the characters can directly act upon. Scale follows the question that matters now: resolve what the players can act upon, and let clocks carry the battle beyond them.

When many soldiers act as one creature inside an ordinary encounter, use Pathfinder's troop rules. If Battlecry! is not being used, run Personal Encounters normally and let clocks carry the wider battle; no Mar de Oro replacement mass-combat engine is required.

Wider-battle clocks

• Left Flank Collapsing
• Reinforcements Arrive
• Enemy Reserve Commits
• Battery Located
• Bridge Falls
• Retreat Route Cut
• Enemy Cavalry Manoeuvring
• Airship Support Arrives

Do not run a skirmish encounter and a Personal Encounter simultaneously for the same immediate exchange. The wider battle continues through clocks, reports, visible movement, sound, and consequences while the Personal Encounter is in focus. Change focus, not reality.

Research, influence, chases, and infiltration

Pathfinder 2e's Victory Point subsystems map cleanly to the extended challenges described in the System-Neutral Adaptation chapter. Assign Victory Points to segments on the neutral clock rather than reworking the pressure structure.

Artillery and Siege Weapons

Use native siege weapons. Mar de Oro adds battlefield context, not a second artillery damage system. Use Pathfinder Guns & Gears Remastered siege weapons for individual guns, field pieces, swivel guns, and other artillery, with their native Aim, Load, Launch, range, damage, crew, and reload procedures. Mounted siege weapons resolve Launch through the listed basic saving throw rather than a normal attack roll. When artillery is part of a troop-level skirmish, use the appropriate Battlecry! and siege-weapon procedures.

For distant artillery that can reach the scene but does not need its own tactical position, use clocks and fictional states such as Ranging, Effective Fire, Observer Lost, Battery Relocating, or Counter-Battery. Range determines reach; observation determines engagement. Terrain, elevation, firing arc, traverse, smoke, weather, observers, scouts, signals, airships, and Fortera sensing determine whether artillery can actually engage a target. Dead ground and blind angles remain real even when the rules are abstracted.

When characters reach a gun position, resolve the scene as a normal encounter. They can attack crews, sabotage ammunition, break firing mechanisms, seize guns, kill observers, or force a retreat.

Ships and Airships

Vehicles, siege weapons, chases, and one light subsystem layer. Track vessels by role and by systems (Hull, Rigging or Lift, Weapons, Crew, Bridge or Command, and Éterlumin Reserve when relevant). Do not use “Engines / lift” as a universal category and do not use “Éterlumin drive” language for lift, containment, reserve, or calibration. Do not describe vessels as recharging Éterlumin systems or as rechargeable batteries.

Three naval modes

The switch follows the fiction. When the question is what the vessels are doing, use Sailing or Chase. When it becomes what the people aboard are doing, use a normal encounter.

Fleet vehicle statistics

Each Mar de Oro vessel uses the Pathfinder vehicle stat block, but GM Core does not provide a universal vehicle-by-level construction table. The fleet values below are custom Mar de Oro vehicle statistics calibrated against published GM Core examples, then adjusted for canonical hull size, military construction, national doctrine, speed, and role. The Cutter, Longship, Sailing Ship, Galley, Airship, and Steam Giant provide the numerical anchors for this conversion.

The official Airship is a level-12 vehicle only 90 feet long with 1 pilot and 5 other crew, so it is a useful mechanical reference rather than a physical size ceiling for Mar de Oro warships. Mar de Oro military hulls can exceed the official example in Space, Crew, Hardness, and HP while remaining inside Pathfinder's vehicle language.

Use the native Broken vehicle rule. At or below Broken Threshold, the vessel takes a -2 penalty to AC, saves, and collision DC, all related Piloting DCs increase by 5, and its Speeds are halved. At 0 HP the vehicle is destroyed. A flying vessel then falls unless another rule or emergency action prevents it.

Broadside batteries

A Mar de Oro broadside uses the mounted siege-weapon structure, but represents several guns firing together as one coordinated damage instance. The battery Launches once, the target resolves one basic Reflex save, and the target's Hardness applies once to the final damage. These are original Mar de Oro battery profiles calibrated from Pathfinder siege-weapon cadence and damage bands.

The listed Launch DC is the default. If the crew member directing the Launch has a higher class DC that the siege-weapon rules allow them to use, use that DC instead. A controlled vehicle's pilot may attempt the vehicle's appropriate Piloting check in place of the basic Reflex save against a broadside. Critical Success: no damage. Success: half damage. Failure: full damage. Critical Failure: double damage. Apply Hardness after the degree-of-success adjustment.

An uncontrolled or stationary vessel that cannot evade is treated as having failed the save unless another rule provides a defense.

Battery cadence and firing arcs

A Stable battery with a functioning Crew can Launch at most once per round. In Sailing mode, the many individual Aim and Load actions are abstracted into the gunnery crew, provided the target remains within the battery’s physical firing arc and the crew can observe it. If either Weapons or Crew is Impaired, the battery requires one full round after Launching before it can Launch again. If Weapons is Disabled, the main battery cannot Launch.

Firing arcs remain physical. Treat a ship’s broadside as a 180-degree lateral hemisphere, centered on port or starboard, with a 45-degree vertical elevation and depression limit unless the individual ship’s weapons state otherwise. Unless a ship states otherwise, a forward battery covers a 90-degree horizontal arc centered on the bow and uses the same 45-degree limit. A dash in the fleet table means the ship has no forward battery large enough to resolve as a separate battery profile; small chase guns remain part of the fiction.

A ship must complete its listed Turn distance before changing facing by 90 degrees. A 45-degree change costs half that distance. A ship may change altitude by up to half its Speed per Drive action without a Piloting check; a greater climb or descent requires an appropriate Piloting check or risks losing control, and altitude change counts as movement for the Drive action. Ships inside 150 feet of one another must maintain a declared altitude separation of at least 50 feet, otherwise resolve collision or near-miss risk using the normal vehicle and Piloting procedures.

Chain shot can target exposed masts, sails, rigging, or external flight surfaces instead of the hull. It deals no vehicle HP damage. The pilot attempts the same Piloting defense against the battery Launch DC. On a Failure, step Rigging / Lift from Stable to Impaired. On a Critical Failure, step it directly to Disabled. Chain shot cannot bypass an intact hull to strike internal lift banks or protected machinery.

The Justicar-class ship of the line uses a Capital Broadside while its Weapons subsystem is Stable and retains a Heavy forward battery. If Weapons becomes Impaired, its coordinated gun decks fall to a Heavy Broadside and its forward battery falls to Medium. If Weapons is Disabled, both main batteries are unavailable. Its 300-foot Turn distance expresses the inertia of a ship of the line.

Ship subsystem states

Pathfinder already supplies the whole-vessel HP pool and Broken Threshold. Mar de Oro adds subsystem condition tracks only to show where damage is changing the ship. Do not create separate subsystem HP pools.

A subsystem steps down when a vessel critically fails against a broadside, suffers a targeted siege effect, takes boarding or sabotage damage, or another consequence clearly damages that part of the vessel. Impaired means the subsystem creates a real operational problem, normally a circumstance penalty, lost action, reduced option, or clock appropriate to the situation. Disabled means it cannot perform its primary function until repaired or replaced. Track Éterlumin Reserve separately from HP; repairing hull HP does not automatically restore Reserve.

Ship engineering

Damage, depletion, and miscalibration are different problems.

Fortera Overdraw

The player chooses to push. The roll determines what pushing costs. A Fortera user can deliberately force a spell beyond current safe capacity. The caster must already be able to cast the spell through their normal class rules. Overdraw does not teach a new spell, add a spell to a repertoire, replace preparation, or bypass access. Fortera strain is not Éterlumin poisoning.

Safe capacity is the highest spell rank the character can currently cast from an available spell slot. Each rank above that capacity is one Overdraw tier. A caster whose highest available slot is rank 4 can force a spell to rank 5 at one tier, rank 6 at two tiers, or rank 7 at three tiers. The spell uses its normal heightened effect at the declared rank. If the spell gains no effect from that rank, Overdraw does not invent one.

Containment save: Overdraw DC equals the standard DC for the character’s level plus 2 per Overdraw tier. After declaring the Overdraw, attempt a Fortitude save.

Strain

Use the normal Pathfinder drained condition. If a character is already drained, use the higher value rather than adding the values together. Further Overdraw while already drained 4 worsens the field consequence and fiction instead of increasing drained beyond 4.

Containment responses

The roll does not decide what the caster attempted. It decides what the attempt costs.

Embedding

A simple downtime technique, not a second magic-item crafting economy. Embedding binds an eligible spell or Fortera working into a physical object. Choose an Embedding Depth from 1 up to your character level. Creation time = Depth in days. Useful life after completion = Depth in days. No additional Crafting check is required merely to perform the standard technique; the cost is time, access to the working, and the spell slot expended when the embedding completes.

When the Embedding completes, expend one appropriate spell slot for the effect. The slot then recovers normally and is not committed for the object’s useful life. The caster must satisfy the normal Pathfinder requirements for knowing, preparing, or otherwise being able to cast the working.

Depth controls longevity, not spell rank or potency. A rank-2 working embedded at Depth 10 takes 10 days to make and naturally lasts 10 days; it remains a rank-2 effect. If the effect itself exceeds safe capacity, resolve Overdraw separately when the Embedding is completed.

Embedding creates the effect. Enchantment slows the decay. No Fortera item is intrinsically permanent: long-lived artifacts are embeddings whose decay has been slowed, stabilized, maintained, or repeatedly tuned over long periods. Embedded ammunition resolves the physical projectile through Pathfinder weapon rules and the embedded Fortera effect separately.

Resonance Tuning

The standard working for preserving embeddings and maintaining calibrated systems. Resonance Tuning is a rank-2 Fortera spell.

You establish a stable resonant reference in an existing Fortera embedding or a calibrated Fortera or Éterlumin system. Choose Preserve Embedding or Calibrate System.

Preserve Embedding

Touch one object containing an active Embedding. For the duration, its remaining useful life does not decrease. When Resonance Tuning ends, decay resumes from exactly where it stopped. An embedding with 3 days remaining that is tuned by a 10th-level caster still has 3 days remaining when the 10-day tuning ends.

Tuning cannot restore an expired embedding, restore a consumed embedded effect, replenish charges, or extend the normal duration of another spell, class feature, summon, condition, or other Pathfinder effect. Multiple tunings on the same target do not stack; a new casting replaces the previous duration. Repeated tuning can preserve an embedding for as long as practitioners continue spending the required time and spell slots.

Calibrate System

Touch one physically serviceable Fortera or Éterlumin component or coherent system. Tuning corrects ordinary resonant drift and holds the system to a stable reference for the duration:

• resonators
• regulators
• Fortera instruments
• lift references
• Éterlumin controls
• embedded ship equipment
• synchronized engineering systems
• laboratory apparatus

If miscalibration is the only problem, the system returns to normal calibration. If it is physically damaged, incomplete, depleted, or operating outside safe limits, the spell establishes a stable reference but does not solve the other problem. Tuning restores agreement. Repair restores structure. Supply restores capacity. Resonance Tuning does not restore vehicle HP, Broken Threshold, Hardness, missing parts, consumed Éterlumin, Dead Zones, Collapse Zones, or physical damage that has already happened.

Overdrawing Resonance Tuning

Resonance Tuning is the only standard Fortera spell where forcing a failed Overdraw automatically produces Catastrophic Tuning Failure. On a failed or critically failed containment save, the caster can Ground the Working: the slot is expended, the tuning fails, and catastrophe is avoided. If the caster instead forces the failed tuning to completion, apply the normal Overdraw result and Catastrophic Tuning Failure to the target:

• an embedding loses all remaining useful life
• a resonator ruptures
• a regulator falls violently out of agreement
• an instrument becomes unusable until repaired and tuned again
• a lift reference collapses
• usable Éterlumin Reserve is lost
• a pressure or containment event occurs
• failure propagates into connected systems when the physical relationship supports it

On a critical failure, increase the severity of the physical consequence rather than adding a second generic numerical penalty. Pushing Resonance Tuning means forcing a system to hold an agreement it cannot safely sustain.

Resurrection and Soul Shattering

Use Pathfinder’s normal spells, rituals, counteract rules, costs, conditions, and restrictions for returning a dead character to life. Mar de Oro changes what return can mean.

When Soul Shattering occurs, resolve it narratively rather than through a random table. The returned person may be altered in body, apparent age, memory, personality, temperament, identity, or only one narrow aspect of the self. Determine the change from the death, the return, the Fortera conditions involved, the character, and the campaign. The truth of what happened can remain unknowable, and the player retains authorship over how their character understands and responds to the change. Resurrection can restore life. It cannot guarantee continuity.

Creatures and Phenomena

All creatures are ordinary Pathfinder creatures regardless of physical size. Use native size, reach, movement, senses, saves, conditions, resistances, weaknesses, and encounter XP. Creature Level is retained because Pathfinder encounter building depends on it. Each entry is built around one readable behavior and one thing the players can learn.

The stat block tells you what happens when force is used. Understanding changes what other actions become possible.

GM Quick Reference

• Use Pathfinder as written unless this conversion says otherwise.
• No Core HP. Native detection, initiative, and off-guard rules apply.
• Firearms use Guns & Gears Remastered profiles; only the Kalthoff changes reload economy.
• Artillery uses native siege weapons; no separate Battery HP pool.
• Broadside: one Launch, one basic Reflex save or Piloting check, Hardness applied once.
• Overdraw DC = standard DC for your level + 2 per tier; Fortitude save; Strain is the drained condition.
• Embedding: creation time and useful life both equal Depth in days.
• Resonance Tuning preserves an embedding or calibrates a serviceable system.
• Damage, depletion, and miscalibration are different problems.