I like to Reflavor Automaton into non-Jriska constructs. My idea being: People have been trying to replicate it ever since. They just never managed to do it at scale.
Honestly I can't pick a favorite of my flavor choices, so I'm gonna just list all of them!
Flavoring a Beast Barbarian later turned to Soulforger Fightsr as gaining armor and magical empowerment via an ancient bear spirit tied to her, all in a Northern Lights color pallete
Flavoring all of my Magus' magic as ink used to paint Japanese style tapestries, with his Arcane Cascade being swathes of multi-colored tattoos
Flavoring my Battle Oracle's curse as manifesting the Fog of War, a blood-red fog carries the wills and visages of his past army comrades
Love the Arcane Cascade tattoos! Another re-flavor of mine was that my witch's spell casting sigils were represented by elaborate arm tattoos that rotated and shifted as they did occult computations like an old difference engine.
I've always had the idea of an intelligence-KAS barbarian subclass based off Jekyll and Hyde or Bruce Banner and the Hulk. The core gimmick was it would swap your strength and intelligence modifiers on transformation but I couldn't really think of anything beyond that.
My favorite is turning Inventor into Artificer, making all inventions work on magic instead of science. I'm not a fan of stempunky characters in fantasy and all Inventor features work really natural with magic. Explosions with fire? It's unleashed magical energy, etc.
The only stretch is how Inventor interacts with anti-magical effects, I mean isn't affected by them. This could be explained by weirdness of this Artificer's magic.
I've done a similar thing with my inventor! He's an ifrit with the wizard dedication, so I decided to make the flavor of his fire-damage overdrive and unstable actions work as extensions of his elemental powers- he invented a bow that can channel elemental energy from his body to empower itself.
I had a different idea for my Construct Inventor. I wanted to lean a bit more into a puppet master vibe (thinking kind of like those in *Naruto*) Construct companion, so I took feats which leaned into that, like the Collapse Construct and Variable Core for Acid damage
Played a Thaumaturge with Root to Life in PFS. He had a badly damaged cloak that he'd patch with half-wilted flowers every day. He would stabilize people by pulling a flower from those patches and setting it on the target, where the flower would die in place of the person.
I reflavor Stumbling Stance as a kickboxing stance specializing in feints. Never really cared for a lot of the mystical kung fu styled martial arts, for lack of a better term.
I like that! We had a fighter with martial artist who flavored their Gorilla stance as "Sea Dog" stance, specializing in a fighting style built from swinging and maneuvering around the rigging of ships.
I haven't had a chance to play it, but I've been wanting to reflavor Gorilla Stance as a pankration or glima-inspired thing. Might try a Guardian-Martial Artist build when that comes out.
It's convenient because we play on Roll20 and the actual spell name is displayed, but my Kitsune Bard in Extinction Curse renames many of his spells. He plays up how he is the pinnacle of strength and perfection, so they're related to that, a circus reference, or an anime/meme reference.
* Calm Emotions was renamed to "Behold my perfection!"
* Force Barrage/Magic Missile is "Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora!"
* Invisibility Sphere is "No peeking before the performance!"
* Phantasmal Calamity is "Behold the future without the circus..."
* Humanoid Form is "Yoink! Got your form!"
* Dimension Door/Translocate is "My muscles can bend time and space"
* Telekinetic Maneuver is "Those pesky clowns are everywhere..."
* Crushing Despair/Wave of Despair is "Have you heard the tale of Hachi the Perfect? I thought not..."
He fight unarmed often, so I've renamed his unarmed attack "Fist of the Fox Star."
I do the same for my bards compositions, saying what 'song' the hes singing. I'm running out of good ones for Dirge of Doom.
All my Hymn of Healings are nursey rhymes, cause they soothe crying babies.
My character had a twin, and when our village got attacked by a horde of undead, my twin promised to protect me forever. She ended up sacrificing herself during that raid in order to save my life.
So the character herself is a spirit barbarian, and when she goes into her rage, it's her getting possessed by the spirit of her sister, who keeps her promise from beyond the grave.
When out of rage, the characrer is shy and timid, as she was never much of a fighter. Her sister, on the other hand, was always bold and brash. So when she goes into her rage, her sisters personality comes out, and she becomes much more outgoing.
I have an inventor with wizard dedication that combines arcana and technology. His armor innovation runs on a combo of steampunk and a "galvanic rune engine" (aka took the Variable Core feat for electricity). His cantrips are also a mix, so *produce flame* is a flamethrower powered by elemental energy rather than oil or gasoline.
Also he's a mad scientist, so of course he's got a terrible German accent. đ
For me it was having "Rage" be "Combat Focus" where you essentially tunnel vision on Getting The Job Done and you ignore defending in favor of landing the *perfect* hit.
It also works with things like your senses sharpening etc.
For context I was playing a Monster Hunter who specializes in killing "Giant Sea Monsters" (see Giant instinct Barbarian, Sea Hag Changeling)
Not sure if this constitutes reflavoring but there was amazing character I had in an Asian themed oneshot that was a giant barbarian with almost all my feats being champion archetype feats. The idea was to have all my barbarian stuff be from my oni bloodline( I was a tiefling) and all my champion stuff was tied to the Samurai Codes and a desire to seek order.Â
Might being the character back for a seasons of ghost campaign if I ever get to play.
Probably my SoT character. Animal instinct barbarian reflavored deer into protean. Sorc dedication with protean bloodline. She gelled real well. Hilariously, I was the party rogue. HD thievery and stealth maxed along with athletics for wrestler.
I'm running the Grim Hollow 5e setting using Pathfinder as a rule set. I've been filling in gaps in the Grim Hollow setting with Pathfinder lore with the numbers filed off.
For example, in Grim Hollow there's a city that got sucked into the Ethereal Plane because of some magical accident, and their citizens have been returning as these semi ethereal creatures called the Disembodied. However, in my setting,instead of the Ethereal Plane, the city got sucked into the Shadow Plane because someone was messing with a Hellraiser-esque puzzle box and became velstrac playthings. Escapees from that city are where my Fetchlings come from.
Another example, my group has run into a community of refugees that were buried when their mine collapsed about 100 years ago. In a moment of despair, they cried out to the darkness and it responded. In exchange for their souls, they would be granted long life and magic powers to help them fight against an aboleth and its minions. However, they must consume living flesh from intelligent beings as a trade off. And that's how I took some Caligni lore mixed in some ghoul lore and slapped it over a poor pathetic group of trapped refugees.
I have a Thaumaturge with the Mirror and Amulet implements. He's a Reflection versatile heritage, and I'm leaning heavily into the idea that he's a reflection who was brought to life through dark magic.
The Amulet's reaction I'm flavouring as him conjuring another reflection of whoever is being attacked, and that reflection is absorbing some of the damage.
He's also got a hat of disguise and a Transformative weapon, so he can take on many appearances, and I've given him some cantrip cards, the Scroll Thaumaturgy feat and the charlatan feat so that he can pretend to be a caster. Oh and a Deck of Illusions - it cost a lot for his level but it helps with the reflections and such idea.
Played a time traveling thaumaturge with the tome implement. I reflavored the tome to be an archived version of Wikipedia and whenever I got an Esoteric Lore check wrong, I played it off like the original article was vandalized.
I had this planned scene in my head that never got to happen, where I would confront the BBEG and go like "Oh you want to take over the world? Well, I looked you up and you're not even a footnote in history, pal." or something like that.
So, I haven't gotten to play her yet, waiting on a game that will allow BattleZoo stuff, but I have a Stheno Earth Kineticist, that instead of being tied to the earth plane, her stone impulses are a result of an unusual mutation with her petrifying gaze.
I wanted to play the daughter of another character's inventor character from a completely different system. She didn't really work right in this system mechanically as an inventor, so she instead became a focus spell monk, to reflect her inventions that let her spring around the battlefield quickly and punch people with electrified power fists.
My most recent character I've been playing on the weeks I don't dm is a poppet summoner. The eidolon holds the marionette strings that are connected to him when they fight
A player of mine made this with my help. Mechanics from me, flavor from them.
Mechanics
Sprite (draxie) bard with effervescent wings, crafting (drawing), performance (drawing), telepathy from draxie and mindlink. tiny size, not allowed to fly anywhere that requires actual flight (reach and mobility as a normal creature). She can wield a writing set rather than an instrument for the purpose of performance and spellcasting.
Flavor
Something between a Lyrakein, an angel, and a sprite, coming from the first world or Elysium. A little angel fairy person from an idealized realm of nature.
Can fly and talks via telepathy. Not used to normal folk or the material plane. Loves drawing mushrooms and casts spells via ink art magic. Fights holding parchment and quill. Spells described as leaping off of the page. Bard compositions described as giving her party members visions of things like being next to a calm ocean. Gets into trouble due to naivety.
Unfortunately she ended up retiring and rerolling because we made the character before picking the campaign. She had to leave AV due to all of the negative energy (necromancy and such) infusing the place and draining her of life force. She had to go back to her realm.
Player even wrote little poems and made a super tiny goodbye letter prop.
She rerolled as a male orc commander from Belkzen whoâs there to help the party fight monsters lol. Talk about tone shift. Still a party support role though.
I once gave a good and protective character a Boon that was the Tyrant's Cause Champion Reaction. Instead of kneeling because of dominance, it was stopping what they were doing for harming an innocent with their violence.
Only a minor refluff, but I had a Sterling Dynamo fistfighter with a shield on my normal arm, and I had the shield be extra armour on the mechanical arm while I just didn't use the other hand for combat.
Ever since reading dubious knowledge, I like to play my knowledge roles as if it is dubious knowledge anytime the GM lets me get away with a stretch of a lore roll.
Personally I did a minor change in Kineticist, their powers come from elemental spirits who are locked in their body, instead of a vague âconnected to the elemental planesâ. Slapped some living vessel dedication on that to support the flavour!
I had an android summoner with a construct Eidolon , whose whole thing was her body was breaking down faster and faster each life so she started looking for ways to fix it/head back to numeria.
Her Eidolon was actually her nanites creating an amalgamation of snippets from all her past lives and her spells were all malfunctions of her body.
Manifesting her eidolon involved expelling the nanites.
Sorc bloodline claws into an âethereal bladeâ (like wolverineâs claws, but a single thick blade that hovers over the wrist).
PC was a fallen Viking warrior that Odin resurrected due to âunfinishedâ business. Resurrection caused permanent physical weakness from his former warrior self (sorc vs fighter), Viking shield bearer perk meant basically a perma injured warrior doing Odin bidding with a âswordâ and shield but a ton of dark Viking magic to toss about. Champion arch type gave heavy armour and the preachings of Iomedae continually cause conflict with Odins bidding. Being pulled in opposite directions by two opposing deities was an awesome experience!
I am a wizard addict. the flavor of someone who studies the basic mechanics of how magic works is perfect for me.
I also love the occult spell list, dark, mysterious, less damage, but also an off-healer, in terms of playstyle, occult is perfect for me.
My first pf2e character was an occult witch flavored as something between a witch and wizard. Originally it was going to be pure-wizard flavor but as his background was fleshed out it ended up having a patron anyway, but he has an extremely academic approach to magic.
You could argue there was a very small mechanical change in that i gave him a spellbook to store his spells in but mechanical implications of this never came up. His familiar still knew all of his spells because this was premaster and we were tinkering with a buff to the witch's familiar where the familiar had one or two slots that could be used to cast any spell it knew.
So animal companions are kind of a big one. There's a lot of interesting options, but some common fantasy companion animals don't have rules. Like you can't get a spider if you wanted to be an cave-themed ranger. You need to take a Scorpion and then re-flavor it as a spider. Want a deer for your forest ranger? Re-flavor a horse.
If I ever get a chance to be a player (and not the GM), I think I'm gonna be a Kobold Druid with a Slurk companion. Slurks are giant cave toads that Kobolds tribes raise in Pathfinder. My idea is to use the Ape stat-block since it has all the monster traits I need;
* Climb speed that matches the Slurk
* Strength and Con focus similar to the Slurk. Decent HP.
* Low Light Vision is sorta like Dark Vision.
* Menacing Growls from the Ape? Menacing croak.
* Frightening display? Slurk puffs up it's throat pouch like a frog/toad.
The only odd piece is that slurks do piercing damage while apes do bludgeoning, but maybe my Slurk just body slams and head butts people.
Wanting to play an alchemist but instead making a rogue wizard and flavoring was probably the best thing to do
I had a PFS character that was a Goblin Alchemist feigning to be a "mighty Wizard" with bombs.
I like to Reflavor Automaton into non-Jriska constructs. My idea being: People have been trying to replicate it ever since. They just never managed to do it at scale.
We have done this for my game! He is basically robocop with a split personality. Super fun character
Honestly I can't pick a favorite of my flavor choices, so I'm gonna just list all of them! Flavoring a Beast Barbarian later turned to Soulforger Fightsr as gaining armor and magical empowerment via an ancient bear spirit tied to her, all in a Northern Lights color pallete Flavoring all of my Magus' magic as ink used to paint Japanese style tapestries, with his Arcane Cascade being swathes of multi-colored tattoos Flavoring my Battle Oracle's curse as manifesting the Fog of War, a blood-red fog carries the wills and visages of his past army comrades
Love the Arcane Cascade tattoos! Another re-flavor of mine was that my witch's spell casting sigils were represented by elaborate arm tattoos that rotated and shifted as they did occult computations like an old difference engine.
Oh that's really cool
Oh, Soulforger, if I ever get around to it I'll probably reflavor it to make a Power Ranger.
Yes!
Barbarian that is a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde type of character through alchemy. Gives me a reason to use alchemical gauntlets.
As a librarian, literary references are always A+ with me!
I've had this idea before,! I went with animal Instinct and depending on when he was raging or not it would shift to a different personality
I've always had the idea of an intelligence-KAS barbarian subclass based off Jekyll and Hyde or Bruce Banner and the Hulk. The core gimmick was it would swap your strength and intelligence modifiers on transformation but I couldn't really think of anything beyond that.
My favorite is turning Inventor into Artificer, making all inventions work on magic instead of science. I'm not a fan of stempunky characters in fantasy and all Inventor features work really natural with magic. Explosions with fire? It's unleashed magical energy, etc. The only stretch is how Inventor interacts with anti-magical effects, I mean isn't affected by them. This could be explained by weirdness of this Artificer's magic.
Meanwhile my player just wanted to be an inventor with a lightning gun, so reflavored the kineticist to be essentially iron man armor.
Love the magical science take! Hope they give us more options for it in the future!
I've done a similar thing with my inventor! He's an ifrit with the wizard dedication, so I decided to make the flavor of his fire-damage overdrive and unstable actions work as extensions of his elemental powers- he invented a bow that can channel elemental energy from his body to empower itself.
I had a different idea for my Construct Inventor. I wanted to lean a bit more into a puppet master vibe (thinking kind of like those in *Naruto*) Construct companion, so I took feats which leaned into that, like the Collapse Construct and Variable Core for Acid damage
he created anti-anti-magic effect for the thingies
Played a Thaumaturge with Root to Life in PFS. He had a badly damaged cloak that he'd patch with half-wilted flowers every day. He would stabilize people by pulling a flower from those patches and setting it on the target, where the flower would die in place of the person.
I reflavor Stumbling Stance as a kickboxing stance specializing in feints. Never really cared for a lot of the mystical kung fu styled martial arts, for lack of a better term.
I like that! We had a fighter with martial artist who flavored their Gorilla stance as "Sea Dog" stance, specializing in a fighting style built from swinging and maneuvering around the rigging of ships.
Oooo I really like that reflavor! All of the traits as well as the climb bonus make perfect sense. I'm stealing this lmao
I haven't had a chance to play it, but I've been wanting to reflavor Gorilla Stance as a pankration or glima-inspired thing. Might try a Guardian-Martial Artist build when that comes out.
Int Psychic as "wizard but good". I can play the same pointy hat arrogant caster I wanted to play but also have class features!
Doing this right now, feels so good to be smart and big brain without having to be so wizardy
It's convenient because we play on Roll20 and the actual spell name is displayed, but my Kitsune Bard in Extinction Curse renames many of his spells. He plays up how he is the pinnacle of strength and perfection, so they're related to that, a circus reference, or an anime/meme reference. * Calm Emotions was renamed to "Behold my perfection!" * Force Barrage/Magic Missile is "Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora!" * Invisibility Sphere is "No peeking before the performance!" * Phantasmal Calamity is "Behold the future without the circus..." * Humanoid Form is "Yoink! Got your form!" * Dimension Door/Translocate is "My muscles can bend time and space" * Telekinetic Maneuver is "Those pesky clowns are everywhere..." * Crushing Despair/Wave of Despair is "Have you heard the tale of Hachi the Perfect? I thought not..." He fight unarmed often, so I've renamed his unarmed attack "Fist of the Fox Star."
I do the same for my bards compositions, saying what 'song' the hes singing. I'm running out of good ones for Dirge of Doom. All my Hymn of Healings are nursey rhymes, cause they soothe crying babies.
My character had a twin, and when our village got attacked by a horde of undead, my twin promised to protect me forever. She ended up sacrificing herself during that raid in order to save my life. So the character herself is a spirit barbarian, and when she goes into her rage, it's her getting possessed by the spirit of her sister, who keeps her promise from beyond the grave. When out of rage, the characrer is shy and timid, as she was never much of a fighter. Her sister, on the other hand, was always bold and brash. So when she goes into her rage, her sisters personality comes out, and she becomes much more outgoing.
I might steal this
Feel free!
I have an inventor with wizard dedication that combines arcana and technology. His armor innovation runs on a combo of steampunk and a "galvanic rune engine" (aka took the Variable Core feat for electricity). His cantrips are also a mix, so *produce flame* is a flamethrower powered by elemental energy rather than oil or gasoline. Also he's a mad scientist, so of course he's got a terrible German accent. đ
In 1e I re-flavored a vigliante into a luchador... then I found out that there was a 3rd party class that did all the work for me...
For me it was having "Rage" be "Combat Focus" where you essentially tunnel vision on Getting The Job Done and you ignore defending in favor of landing the *perfect* hit. It also works with things like your senses sharpening etc. For context I was playing a Monster Hunter who specializes in killing "Giant Sea Monsters" (see Giant instinct Barbarian, Sea Hag Changeling)
One of my players reflavored Conrasuâs exoskeleton to be various body parts to make a shambling body horror freak (Weâre playing Blood Lords)
Not sure if this constitutes reflavoring but there was amazing character I had in an Asian themed oneshot that was a giant barbarian with almost all my feats being champion archetype feats. The idea was to have all my barbarian stuff be from my oni bloodline( I was a tiefling) and all my champion stuff was tied to the Samurai Codes and a desire to seek order. Might being the character back for a seasons of ghost campaign if I ever get to play.
Probably my SoT character. Animal instinct barbarian reflavored deer into protean. Sorc dedication with protean bloodline. She gelled real well. Hilariously, I was the party rogue. HD thievery and stealth maxed along with athletics for wrestler.
I'm running the Grim Hollow 5e setting using Pathfinder as a rule set. I've been filling in gaps in the Grim Hollow setting with Pathfinder lore with the numbers filed off. For example, in Grim Hollow there's a city that got sucked into the Ethereal Plane because of some magical accident, and their citizens have been returning as these semi ethereal creatures called the Disembodied. However, in my setting,instead of the Ethereal Plane, the city got sucked into the Shadow Plane because someone was messing with a Hellraiser-esque puzzle box and became velstrac playthings. Escapees from that city are where my Fetchlings come from. Another example, my group has run into a community of refugees that were buried when their mine collapsed about 100 years ago. In a moment of despair, they cried out to the darkness and it responded. In exchange for their souls, they would be granted long life and magic powers to help them fight against an aboleth and its minions. However, they must consume living flesh from intelligent beings as a trade off. And that's how I took some Caligni lore mixed in some ghoul lore and slapped it over a poor pathetic group of trapped refugees.
I have a Thaumaturge with the Mirror and Amulet implements. He's a Reflection versatile heritage, and I'm leaning heavily into the idea that he's a reflection who was brought to life through dark magic. The Amulet's reaction I'm flavouring as him conjuring another reflection of whoever is being attacked, and that reflection is absorbing some of the damage. He's also got a hat of disguise and a Transformative weapon, so he can take on many appearances, and I've given him some cantrip cards, the Scroll Thaumaturgy feat and the charlatan feat so that he can pretend to be a caster. Oh and a Deck of Illusions - it cost a lot for his level but it helps with the reflections and such idea.
Ancestors oracle, but instead of being haunted by their ancestors, the character was a serial killer haunted by their past victims.
Played a time traveling thaumaturge with the tome implement. I reflavored the tome to be an archived version of Wikipedia and whenever I got an Esoteric Lore check wrong, I played it off like the original article was vandalized. I had this planned scene in my head that never got to happen, where I would confront the BBEG and go like "Oh you want to take over the world? Well, I looked you up and you're not even a footnote in history, pal." or something like that.
So, I haven't gotten to play her yet, waiting on a game that will allow BattleZoo stuff, but I have a Stheno Earth Kineticist, that instead of being tied to the earth plane, her stone impulses are a result of an unusual mutation with her petrifying gaze.
Hello fellow Stheno enjoyer
I wanted to play the daughter of another character's inventor character from a completely different system. She didn't really work right in this system mechanically as an inventor, so she instead became a focus spell monk, to reflect her inventions that let her spring around the battlefield quickly and punch people with electrified power fists.
I reflavored Medicine as being mystical, so instead of bandages and such, its crystals and such.
My most recent character I've been playing on the weeks I don't dm is a poppet summoner. The eidolon holds the marionette strings that are connected to him when they fight
The spider sting spell became a serpent's fang spell for my Sacred Nagaji.
A player of mine made this with my help. Mechanics from me, flavor from them. Mechanics Sprite (draxie) bard with effervescent wings, crafting (drawing), performance (drawing), telepathy from draxie and mindlink. tiny size, not allowed to fly anywhere that requires actual flight (reach and mobility as a normal creature). She can wield a writing set rather than an instrument for the purpose of performance and spellcasting. Flavor Something between a Lyrakein, an angel, and a sprite, coming from the first world or Elysium. A little angel fairy person from an idealized realm of nature. Can fly and talks via telepathy. Not used to normal folk or the material plane. Loves drawing mushrooms and casts spells via ink art magic. Fights holding parchment and quill. Spells described as leaping off of the page. Bard compositions described as giving her party members visions of things like being next to a calm ocean. Gets into trouble due to naivety. Unfortunately she ended up retiring and rerolling because we made the character before picking the campaign. She had to leave AV due to all of the negative energy (necromancy and such) infusing the place and draining her of life force. She had to go back to her realm. Player even wrote little poems and made a super tiny goodbye letter prop. She rerolled as a male orc commander from Belkzen whoâs there to help the party fight monsters lol. Talk about tone shift. Still a party support role though.
I once gave a good and protective character a Boon that was the Tyrant's Cause Champion Reaction. Instead of kneeling because of dominance, it was stopping what they were doing for harming an innocent with their violence.
Only a minor refluff, but I had a Sterling Dynamo fistfighter with a shield on my normal arm, and I had the shield be extra armour on the mechanical arm while I just didn't use the other hand for combat.
Ever since reading dubious knowledge, I like to play my knowledge roles as if it is dubious knowledge anytime the GM lets me get away with a stretch of a lore roll.
Personally I did a minor change in Kineticist, their powers come from elemental spirits who are locked in their body, instead of a vague âconnected to the elemental planesâ. Slapped some living vessel dedication on that to support the flavour!
I had an android summoner with a construct Eidolon , whose whole thing was her body was breaking down faster and faster each life so she started looking for ways to fix it/head back to numeria. Her Eidolon was actually her nanites creating an amalgamation of snippets from all her past lives and her spells were all malfunctions of her body. Manifesting her eidolon involved expelling the nanites.
Sorc bloodline claws into an âethereal bladeâ (like wolverineâs claws, but a single thick blade that hovers over the wrist). PC was a fallen Viking warrior that Odin resurrected due to âunfinishedâ business. Resurrection caused permanent physical weakness from his former warrior self (sorc vs fighter), Viking shield bearer perk meant basically a perma injured warrior doing Odin bidding with a âswordâ and shield but a ton of dark Viking magic to toss about. Champion arch type gave heavy armour and the preachings of Iomedae continually cause conflict with Odins bidding. Being pulled in opposite directions by two opposing deities was an awesome experience!
I am a wizard addict. the flavor of someone who studies the basic mechanics of how magic works is perfect for me. I also love the occult spell list, dark, mysterious, less damage, but also an off-healer, in terms of playstyle, occult is perfect for me. My first pf2e character was an occult witch flavored as something between a witch and wizard. Originally it was going to be pure-wizard flavor but as his background was fleshed out it ended up having a patron anyway, but he has an extremely academic approach to magic. You could argue there was a very small mechanical change in that i gave him a spellbook to store his spells in but mechanical implications of this never came up. His familiar still knew all of his spells because this was premaster and we were tinkering with a buff to the witch's familiar where the familiar had one or two slots that could be used to cast any spell it knew.
So animal companions are kind of a big one. There's a lot of interesting options, but some common fantasy companion animals don't have rules. Like you can't get a spider if you wanted to be an cave-themed ranger. You need to take a Scorpion and then re-flavor it as a spider. Want a deer for your forest ranger? Re-flavor a horse. If I ever get a chance to be a player (and not the GM), I think I'm gonna be a Kobold Druid with a Slurk companion. Slurks are giant cave toads that Kobolds tribes raise in Pathfinder. My idea is to use the Ape stat-block since it has all the monster traits I need; * Climb speed that matches the Slurk * Strength and Con focus similar to the Slurk. Decent HP. * Low Light Vision is sorta like Dark Vision. * Menacing Growls from the Ape? Menacing croak. * Frightening display? Slurk puffs up it's throat pouch like a frog/toad. The only odd piece is that slurks do piercing damage while apes do bludgeoning, but maybe my Slurk just body slams and head butts people.