abyssalbrews

Brewer's Barrier

Added 2025-09-25 15:00:14 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

I try not to get involved with the seedier sides of town, but I must admit there’s something inherently interesting about the social aspects of a pub. Loud, boisterous places with so many interesting social situations happening. Happy cavorting one minute and a brawl breaking out the next. You never know what’s going to happen. When I came across an antique beer barrel rotting in storage with its tap still in place, I thought ya know, there’s something I could do with this. So I got to work. I have to say, the thing I’m most happy with is the flavor. You wouldn’t believe what kind of alchemy I had to do to artificially recreate a lager taste using only non-poisonous materials. Well, they’re mostly non-poisonous anyway.

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Design notes from Matthew:

There comes a time in every brewers life where you brew something about brewing. It seems that time has finally come for us. I don’t think it’s our first beer based item, but it is certainly one of the sillier ideas we’ve had to use a beer cask as a shield. The overall writing of this one actually fell in place pretty easily as I had a clear idea for it from the start. It’s always nice when the mechanics are already somewhat in your head when you actually get started on a piece.

On the 5E side, I knew I wanted to allow for people to go a little overboard and maybe use this too often which brought in the poisoned mechanic that I included later in it. Funnily enough though, the actual language for it proved a bit tricky. I wanted to allow the ability to overindulge but I didn’t know how to make it somewhat punishing without making it overly problematic. I think I hit that balance ultimately in the end.

On the PF2E side, it has some more limited uses, but I liked tying the item bonus to having temporary hit points. It makes it a little more interesting for the player to have to consider when they actually want to use it and due to the available uses, it also means this one couldn’t have the overindulgence mechanic. That’s fine for me as it ends up offering a bit more of a straightforward item. Sometimes with the complexity of PF2E mechanics, you need to just keep the items a little more focused.

We’ll be releasing the Barbot creature later today to accompany this piece as it’s our last release for the month of September. Somehow this whole month got away from me a bit and seemed to fly right by. It’s not the worst thing, I just hope that I don’t miss fall along the way as it’s absolutely one of my favorite seasons. With spooky month around the corner, we’ve got some great pieces coming your way!

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