Sal's Pathfinder 2E vore rules (2025-01-12)

[Salanth]

Hello. This is a long-term project of mine of adding a full vore system to Pathfinder 2E by expanding on the base Pathfinder 2E rules. Note that I recommend you at least being familiar with how the core Pathfinder 2E rules work before trying to use these rules.

This forum thread will be the main place where I post new versions and consolidate information regarding the rules. Without further ado,

Introduction

Spoiler: show

This is a work-in-progress Pathfinder 2nd Edition vore rules. Made by me, with the help of a bunch of others.

The goal of these rules is to create vore rules that work relatively harmoniously with the core Pathfinder 2nd Edition system, and makes vore a viable option without completely outshining the existing feats. The core system in this is also made to be as simple as possible (whilst still achieving the goals I had in mind), although great care has been taken to plug edge cases and fix the ways the system can break down, and just explain everything well enough that it could (in theory) stand on its own. It tries to build upon and use constructions used in Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules, and so some sort of familiarity in the core rules is needed to interpret how certain rules work.

It is also intended to be customizable (to a certain extent) and for things like dedications, feats, and magic to be able to be added on to it relatively easily. It also provides all of the above out-of-the-box as well as rules of how to make existing enemies vore capable with relatively little effort.

Short version of features:
* Content that ranges from level 1-20
* A dedication system with 8 different vore dedications with a good amount of different feats which you can take
* New vore spells from cantrips to rank 10
* A lot of customizability in character creation
* Ways to make any existing pathfinder NPC vore-capable with relative ease
* A solid foundation in Pathfinder Second Edition mechanics and conventions
* A rules system that has been polished to (hopefully) contain everything that is needed to determine how any given thing works
* A lot of different alternatives and options with which to customize your campaign

Things that do not exist in the system at the moment:
* New items (this is more to keep the scope in check; this is prime ground for new additions or homebrewing)
* Perfect balance. I mean, there is no such thing, but with a large scope and limited distribution there is almost certainly a lot of things that still needs adjusting

The rules

The main rules
On Eka's (downloading and viewing in Libre Office Writer or Microsoft Office is recommended): https://aryion.com/g4/view/1090788

On Google Docs (better for online viewing - I recommend that you use print view)
Full rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19kV ... =1&tab=t.0

Each section one by one
The Basic Rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mgl ... g=h.gjdgxs
Player Character Options: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fJJ ... g=h.gjdgxs
Gamemaster section: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bXO ... g=h.gjdgxs


Further options and alternatives:
On Eka's: https://aryion.com/g4/view/1083590
On Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16nY ... it?tab=t.0

FAQ:

Spoiler: show

Empty for now.

Short version of how the system works

Spoiler: show

Character creation

2 new main stats are introduced in the system, Vore Attack (VA) and Swallow. These use a proficiency system, just like most things in Pathfinder second edition, like:

Vore attack = Vore attack proficiency bonus + level + main vore stat
Swallow = Swallow proficiency bonus + level + main vore stat
Swallow DC = Swallow proficiency bonus + level + main vore stat + 10

You also get Capacity, which determines how many enemies you can eat.

At level 1 you choose your main vore stat (which determines bonuses to your vore attacks and which saves your Vore Attacks and Swallow Checks targets, among other thing), as well as a vore specialization, which gives you a powerful bonus, like higher Vore Attack or Swallow proficiency, or the ability to cast more spells.

At level 2 and every even level afterwards players gain Vore Dedication feats, which will give you vore-themed abilities. Just like normal Dedications, you can switch between Vore Dedications if you have acquired enough feats within a Vore Dedication, offering you plenty of flexibility and options to jump between the Vore Dedications, or alternatively to stay within the same Vore Dedication.

All players follow a progression table which says what exactly you receive and at which level.

How vore in combat works

Vore Attacks is rolled against the target's Save DC (which depends on your main vore stat). On a success, you damage them and give them the Salivated condition, each stack of which gives them a -2 to any future Vore attacks. On a critical success, the target rolls a Swallow Check against the attacker's Swallow DC (using a save depending once again on the attacker's roll), and if they fail on it, they are Gulped. If someone reaches Gulped 4, they are Swallowed, and effectively out of action for that encounter.

The Healthy condition gives anyone which has 50% or more health a +4 Resilience bonus, which applies to save DC and saving rolls when defending from Vore Attacks and abilities.

Issues and future changes

Spoiler: show

Here are some issues that I know of:
* Because of how the system works, classes that got better saves are better defensively than those who don't. This is unfortunately pretty fundamental to the system itself, and I don't see a good way to fix this without remaking it, or making the system a lot more complicated for very little gain.
* Vore tends to be outclassed by just applying damage when facing lots of weak enemies, and is more powerful on fewer, stronger enemies. If it's a problem, could maybe be fixed by lowering saves of weaker enemies and increasing saves of stronger enemies? Maybe also some more AoE vore options?

here are some things that I got my eye on, and might see future changes.
* The struggler vore dedication is probably on the weaker side due to not being useful often (only when things are already going wrong) and not very impactful
* Vore weapons got rules, but not much use at the moment, and can probably benefit from being expanded upon
* Vore dedications overall are not overly tested, so changes are likely to happen there

Guidelines for creating new stuff

I'll add some guidelines for how to create new content if there is enough interest for it.

Version history

Spoiler: show

2025-01-12:
* Did a major restructuring of the rules as a whole. The rules are functionally the same as before, just presented differently.
- Split the rules up between Introduction, The Basic Rules, Player Character Options, and the Game Master Section.
- Moved around a lot of the rules text to hopefully make it easier for new players and game masters to take in.
- Rewrote a lot of the basic chapter to be simpler and explain things in more detail.
- Made some changes to formatting to hopefully make it clearer and easier to read.
- Added reminder text for action, reaction, and free action symbols.
* Changed Escapist dedication effect to reduce the DC of the Gulp Check instead
* Clarified how to calculate Swallow DC
* Changed wording used to inflict Salivated to “adds x to Salivated” (from “is Salivated x”)
* Changed Vore modifier to Resilience modifier
- This should make it easier to differentiate from bonuses to vore attack and to intuit how it actually works
- Also rewrote the Resilience Modifier rules text to go into more detail and to not contradict my intentions
* Fixed some various small spelling mistakes and errors

2024-12-23:
* Removed the Vore trait from a whole lot of places where it shouldn’t apply.
* Removed unsorted dedication vore feats.
* Fixed a bunch of spelling and grammar mistakes.
* Added text explaining that the Prey Fated condition is added to the Gulped condition whenever you get Gulped.
* Reduced the grace period before a prey is Digested and adjusted the recommendation attached to it.
* Changed wording and functionality of some abilities to not use the wording “once per encounter”, and changed “rest” to “after 8 hours of rest” in some places.
* Added a mention of maybe needing to adjust Vore Bonus manually in case you want some creatures to be more or less likely to be eaten.
* Changed “Vore Dedication Feat” to “Vore Archetype Feat” to match with how those two concepts work in base Pathfinder 2E.
* Clarified how the Swallowed condition works.
* Removed Condition from the header of different conditions (as they were already under the Conditions section).
* Changed the description of the Vore Trait to more closely correspond with its actual use.

2024-12-21: First public release.

Acknowledgements

Here is where I'd put any acknowledgements for all the people who have helped me create the system. If you feel that applies to you, just tell me that you want on the list and I'll add you!

Other than that, I'd love to hear whatever feedback you might have. There is only so much I can do on my own.

[tuc1357]

You know, I had been working on making some Pathfinder 2e vore rules myself, largely from converting a vore houserule system from DnD5e. It's pretty clunky and in need of serious revision. I'm interested in seeing how you did things here.

[Siorche]

Think you could submit these in a pastebin? Eka's formatting kind of ruins the readability.

[Phorcyz19]

I love a lot of what you've done here, it really uses a lot of the system's strengths to mitigate a lot of the frustrating parts of trying to put vore in a TTRPG, but I have some feedback and questions to clarify the rules.

The lack of a Multiple Attack Penalty for vore attacks concerns me. I'll need to read more carefully to decide if it really causes issues, but it raises some alarm bells given that vore attacks seem to otherwise be similar to Strikes. Perhaps it'd work better as an alternate rule for if GMs feel that the penalty is discouraging players from doing some of the stuff they'd like to do with their characters?

I think that "Whenever a character gains the Gulped condition, add the number from the Prey Fated condition to the number provided by the Gulped condition" should appear in the description of the Prey Fated condition, corresponding to the formatting of the Wounded condition.

A lot of lines say something along the lines of "+1 vore bonus". It's unclear to me if this means that "vore bonus" is the type of bonus or if this is meant to be a +1 [type] bonus to Vore checks and DCs. If it's the former, this bonus type needs to be definined, and it could cause some effects to become redundant due to same-typed bonuses not stacking, and if it's the latter, it should be formatted more like I did for clarity and consistency with how bonuses are presented in the system.

24 hours is quite a long time between being swallowed and being digested, especially since in this context Digested simply means when the prey is killed. I'm not seeing any way to speed it up either. It feels like this would be a pretty frustrating thing for players who're eating a bunch of enemies to deal with.

I'm seeing some "end of encounter" or "after resting", which doesn't line up with how the system uses its terminology. For the former, I'd suggest either "after ten minutes" or "when the character Refocuses", while for the latter I'd propose "after eight hours of rest" or "when a character makes their daily preparations".

"Vore Dedication Feat" is confusing terminology. Based on the frequency I'm assuming this means the equivalent of a class feat for the different archetypes presented. However only the feats which would be equivalent to archetype Dedication feats in the vanilla rules have the Vore Dedication trait. Perhaps "vore archetype feat" would make things clearer?

I think the Swallowed condition could use another look over, what it actually does is very vague and feels contradictory to some of the abilities presented later on. Perhaps some of the language from the vanilla Swallow Whole monster ability could be useful here.

Overall though, I'm really impressed with a lot of these ideas and will at the very least play around with some character builds using them (I don't really have the time to add a new game to my schedule lol)

[Salanth]

Think you could submit these in a pastebin? Eka's formatting kind of ruins the readability.

I use images for the action/reaction symbols, so I would need figure out a good way to replace those first. Right now I would recommend downloading the file and viewing it in Microsoft or Libre Office.

I love a lot of what you've done here, it really uses a lot of the system's strengths to mitigate a lot of the frustrating parts of trying to put vore in a TTRPG, but I have some feedback and questions to clarify the rules.

Thanks. You have provided some excellent feedback.

The lack of a Multiple Attack Penalty for vore attacks concerns me. I'll need to read more carefully to decide if it really causes issues, but it raises some alarm bells given that vore attacks seem to otherwise be similar to Strikes. Perhaps it'd work better as an alternate rule for if GMs feel that the penalty is discouraging players from doing some of the stuff they'd like to do with their characters?

This actually came from testing. Due to the low damage of vore attacks, you deal more damage with normal attacks even when normal attacks have MAP and vore attacks don't. The healthy condition, which increases saves when opposing vore abilities by +4 when health is above 50%, also effectively puts a buffer on how powerful vore abilities is as well. I wouldn't be completely opposed to changing it if it does turn out to be too much, but thus far, in my experience, it works just fine.

A lot of lines say something along the lines of "+1 vore bonus". It's unclear to me if this means that "vore bonus" is the type of bonus or if this is meant to be a +1 [type] bonus to Vore checks and DCs.

Right, that is a very important thing that might be easy to miss. It is under "Basics and terminology" in "Vore modifier":

"Vore has been added as a descriptor to Status, Item, and Circumstance modifiers. Modifiers with the Vore descriptor applies to saves and save DCs when the inciting action has the Vore trait, but otherwise work as the normal types of modifiers, so that a Status and Circumstance bonus might stack, but two Circumstance penalties do not stack. Note that the Salivated and Healthy conditions have an untyped Vore modifier, meaning that they always apply, like similar penalties and bonuses in the core Pathfinder 2nd edition rules."

I think the Swallowed condition could use another look over, what it actually does is very vague and feels contradictory to some of the abilities presented later on. Perhaps some of the language from the vanilla Swallow Whole monster ability could be useful here.

Thinking about it, I can see that. I'd be interested in hearing what exactly you think is contradictory, but I have a decent idea of how I can make it more explicit. It will likely be a lot clearer after I've worked on it.

As for the rest of what you bring up, it makes sense - I'd rather use Pathfinder 2E terminology and conventions when I can, 24h digestion is likely too long for the average party. I'll add it to the new version.

[Salanth]

Here is a simple update, mostly just making the rules clearer and fixing an oversight caused by me applying the Vore trait to everything.
* Removed the Vore trait from a whole lot of places where it shouldn’t apply.
* Removed unsorted dedication vore feats.
* Fixed a bunch of spelling and grammar mistakes.
* Added text explaining that the Prey Fated condition is added to the Gulped condition whenever you get Gulped.
* Reduced the grace period before a prey is Digested and adjusted the recommendation attached to it.
* Changed wording and functionality of some abilities to not use the wording “once per encounter”, and changed “rest” to “after 8 hours of rest” in some places.
* Added a mention of maybe needing to adjust Vore Bonus manually in case you want some creatures to be more or less likely to be eaten.
* Changed “Vore Dedication Feat” to “Vore Archetype Feat” to match with how those two concepts work in base Pathfinder 2E.
* Clarified how the Swallowed condition works.
* Removed Condition from the header of different conditions (as they were already under the Conditions section).
* Changed the description of the Vore Trait to more closely correspond with its actual use.

[Dracon_Kitsune]

Nice to see someone else working on this. If you want to steal anything from my system, feel free. Yours seems to add just a bit more overhead to the system then mine does, and it is interesting to see how things differ. Mine is based around the Swallow Whole monster action, and acts otherwise as just an archetype.

viewtopic.php?f=79&t=64783

[Salanth]

Nice to see someone else working on this. If you want to steal anything from my system, feel free. Yours seems to add just a bit more overhead to the system then mine does, and it is interesting to see how things differ. Mine is based around the Swallow Whole monster action, and acts otherwise as just an archetype.

viewtopic.php?f=79&t=64783

I did see your system back when you first posted it, I see that it has gotten a lot more developed since the early version. I do respect your system for how much it achieves in comparatively little text, which is honestly a sign of good design. In the end I wanted vore to work differently. Feel free to likewise steal ideas from my system, if there is anything useful. I think I might get an idea or two from your system whenever I want to work on feats or dedications again.

One thing I will steal right away is using Google Docs to share the rules text. I added it in the first post.

[amorapotter]

Nice to see someone else working on this. If you want to steal anything from my system, feel free. Yours seems to add just a bit more overhead to the system then mine does, and it is interesting to see how things differ. Mine is based around the Swallow Whole monster action, and acts otherwise as just an archetype.

viewtopic.php?f=79&t=64783sprunki retake

Id be down for watching a few more example builds of different levels / creature roles.

[ultimated]

I've been reading through these rules and they seem very promising! I'm hoping to run a very lightly modified version for my group in an upcoming game.

I did have a couple of questions, though.

1. How is a character's Swallow DC calculated? There's a table in the document that specifies what kind of save the prey makes based on what the predator's vore attribute is, and there's a section on vore attacks where the way a vore attack is calculated is clearly laid out, and "Swallow" has proficiency, but other than this there seems to be no formula for Swallow DC that I can find.

2. Is it intended that both predators and prey get the Healthy bonus to all vore actions? It seems like it's intended as a mechanic that makes it harder to eat somebody before whittling them down with attacks, probably vore attacks for extra stacks of Salivated, but since the predator is also Healthy at 50%+, all their save DCs are equally higher too, so the prey's buff cancels out and effectively becomes pure debuff once they're below half health.

3. Do vore modifiers such as Salivated and Healthy apply to Swallow Save and Swallow DC?

Excited to see how this develops further!

[Salanth]

I've been reading through these rules and they seem very promising! I'm hoping to run a very lightly modified version for my group in an upcoming game.

I'm happy to hear that! If you want any more help in detail, feel free to send a PM to me.

1. How is a character's Swallow DC calculated? There's a table in the document that specifies what kind of save the prey makes based on what the predator's vore attribute is, and there's a section on vore attacks where the way a vore attack is calculated is clearly laid out, and "Swallow" has proficiency, but other than this there seems to be no formula for Swallow DC that I can find.

The DC for something is always the base value +10, so a Will DC is your Will save +10, and your Swallow DC would be Swallow + 10.

2. Is it intended that both predators and prey get the Healthy bonus to all vore actions? It seems like it's intended as a mechanic that makes it harder to eat somebody before whittling them down with attacks, probably vore attacks for extra stacks of Salivated, but since the predator is also Healthy at 50%+, all their save DCs are equally higher too, so the prey's buff cancels out and effectively becomes pure debuff once they're below half health.

Right, this is a bit unclear at the moment I see. Vore bonuses only applies to saves, so it only makes it harder to eat people, and does nothing on the pred side of things. I have gone through the rules now and I realize that the rules as written contradict this, in particular the section on Vore Modifiers. I am correcting that in the new version. Regardless, this means that as the battle goes on, two heavily salivated opponents are both more likely to finally eat each other.

It also made me realize that vore attack bonuses and penalties can very easily be confused with vore bonuses and penalties. So I'm going to rename that in the new version to make it clearer.

3. Do vore modifiers such as Salivated and Healthy apply to Swallow Save and Swallow DC?

Vore modifiers does apply to Swallow Saves, but again, does not affect the pred side of things.


Looking over your questions I realized there were things that needed fixing. I already had a relatively large update done most of the way, so I figured it is better to just have the new update ready before I answer.

2025-01-11 update changelog:
* Did a major restructuring of the rules as a whole. The rules are functionally the same as before, just presented differently.
- Split the rules up between Introduction, The Basic Rules, Player Character Options, and the Game Master Section.
- Moved around a lot of the rules text to hopefully make it easier for new players and game masters to take in.
- Rewrote a lot of the basic chapter to be simpler and explain things in more detail.
- Made some changes to formatting to hopefully make it clearer and easier to read.
- Added reminder text for action, reaction, and free action symbols.
* Changed Escapist dedication effect to reduce the DC of the Gulp Check instead
* Clarified how to calculate Swallow DC
* Changed wording used to inflict Salivated to “adds x to Salivated” (from “is Salivated x”)
* Changed Vore modifier to Resilience modifier
- This should make it easier to differentiate from bonuses to vore attack and to intuit how it actually works
- Also rewrote the Resilience Modifier rules text to go into more detail and to not contradict my intentions
* Fixed some various small spelling mistakes and errors