Introduction

Magical space spheres with a plant-based exoskeleton, the Conrasu is among the weirder ancestries in Pathfinder. They’re fond of the sun and like to learn stuff, but their ancestry feats and heritages are a confusing hodge-podge with little clear direction. Despite their magical flavor and convenient ability scores, conrasu function best as melee characters, both with and without weapons.

Conrasu raise the unique question “how many hands do I have?” and offer no compelling answer. Two pieces of official art depict Conrasu with 11 hands in one picture and none in another. The physical description says “Conrasus must constantly grow new arms and roots for their living exoskeleton”, but it doesn’t say how many working limbs they have at any one time. As a magical sphere of magical space magic surrounded by a magical exoskeleton which serves as your body, what’s to stop you from having 11 hands? I’ve seen no official answer on this point, but for game balance I recommend assuming that you have just 2 hands and any others are vestigial (meaning non-functional, not meaning “a PF1 alchemist grew a spare”).

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks.

  • Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
  • Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
  • Green: Good options. Useful often.
  • Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

Conrasu Racial Traits

  • Hit Points: 10 is fairly standard, and with a Constitution boost you have plenty of hit points.
  • Size: Medium. Medium and small size have few functional differences in Pathfinder 2e.
  • Speed: 25 feet is standard.
  • Ability Boosts: Extremely versatile. Constitution and Wisdom work great for many spellcasters, but also work great defensively for nearly any character. With your Free Boost put into Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence, you can build an effective member of nearly any class that doesn’t directly depend on Charisma.
  • Languages: Mwangi and Rasu. In a campaign taking place in the Mwangi Expanse, Mwangi is better than Common. In other parts of Golarion, you’ll want to learn Common, so starting with 12 Intelligence is likely worth the effort.
  • Sunlight Healing: Nice, but not a replacement for Treat Wounds both because it’s only once per day and because it requires direct sunlight.

Conrasu Heritages

  • Rite of InvocationME: Access to a huge number of cantrips, but innate spells are Charisma-based and you get a Charisma Flaw by default, so you may need to avoid offensive options. Stick to utilities like Guidance or defenses like Shield unless you’re using the Alternate Ability Boosts rule.
  • Rite of KnowingME: Always useful, especially on characters who rely heavily on Recall Knowledge like thaumaturges and some rangers.
  • Rite of LightME: Helpful, but easily replaced by being trained in Healing.
  • Rite of PassageME: Very situational.
  • Rite of ReinforcementME: A breastplate with the Comfort trait for free. You can afford a breastplate by level 2. You might look at this and think “but I’m a wizard and I don’t get medium armor, so this is an easy way to boost my AC.” That’s likely the intent, but the execution doesn’t match. This makes your exoskeleton medium armor, which means that you suffer all the difficulties of wearing medium armor.

Conrasu Feats

Level 1

  • Ceremony of ProtectionME: Raise a Shield, the spell Shield, or a weapon with the Parry trait will all provide the same bonus. The appeal here is that you can do this without a hand committed to holding something or casting a spell.
  • Ceremony of the Evened HandME: Your go-to option if you want to fight unarmed and you’re not a monk. The claws option works great for Dexterity-based builds or as a secondary weapon if you take the feat twice, the Branch option works great for Strength-based builds. Be sure to upgrade this with Ceremony of the Strengthened Hand.
  • Conrasu LoreME: A good option for Intelligence-based characters like alchemists and wizards.
  • Conrasu Weapon FamiliarityME: A diverse and surprisingly decent collection of weapons, including the brand new Taw Launcher from Treasure Vault.

Level 5

  • Ceremony of KnowledgeME: Identical to the Human’s Clever Improviser. If your character has few Trained skills and you’ve chosen to invest your skill increases into improving the few skills that you have, you’ll be Untrained in a wide variety of skills. Untrained Improvisation will grant you a number of useful options with very little investment, and Ceremony of Knowledge grants access to Trained-Only Actions, giving you a massive library of new Action options. There’s little way to guarantee that this will be useful unless you look for opportunities to make it useful, and it’s less useful in a large party or in a party with one or more skill-focused characters, but at a bare minimum this covers every Lore skill so your party doesn’t need to throw Skill Increases at Lore skills which they’ll likely never use. Unfortunately, it doesn’t qualify you for Incredible Improvisation, so you may want to take Clever Improviser instead.
  • Ceremony of SunlightME: Roughly doubles the effectiveness of Sunlight Healing. Helpful, but it still can’t replace Treat Wounds.
  • Conrasu Weapon UnderstandingME: Critical Specialization Effects are great, and not all martial classes get them.

Level 9

  • Ceremony of Aeon’s GuidanceME: I love Augury, but Calm Emotions is going to be absolutely useless since it’s a Charisma-based Innate Spell and the Conrasu gets a Charisma Flaw.
  • Ceremony of Aeon’s ShieldME: Both spells are great buffs at any level.
  • Ceremony of FortificationME: Consistently useful. A great choice for front-line characters who draw a lot of attacks. This fills a conceptually similar function to Shield Block, but doesn’t require maintaining a shield and doesn’t eat your Reaction. That said, it’s also limited to physical damage types and you only pick one of the three when you use Ceremony of Protection. Shield Block is almost certainly more effective, but this is lower-maintenance and doesn’t require a hand dedicated to holding a shield.
  • Ceremony of the Strengthened HandME: Excellent improvements for your unarmed strikes which cater to both Dexterity-based and Strength-based builds.

Level 13

  • Ceremony of GrowthME: Permanent (until you dismiss it) large size. Excellent for a front-line Defender with a Reaction like Attack of Opportunity.
  • Conrasu Weapon ExpertiseME: Helpful, but you’re more likely to use a Conrasu weapon which was reduced to a proficiency tier that you already get from your class or you’re accustomed to using a weapon that’s a better fit for whatever class you’re playing. It’s still good if you want one of the listed martial weapons and you’re stuck with simple weapons (rogues, etc.), but rarely essential.

Level 17

  • Ceremony of Sun’s GiftME: By this level you have abundant, inexpensive healing options. Someone in the party (maybe you) is good at Treat Wounds, and magical healing from items or spells should be easily available.