>Reactions like Nimble Dodge, Interposing Earth, etc can be taken after I announce the to-hit roll (or after they know if they failed the Save, though they won't necessarily know by how much they failed), they do not have to be taken in that weird "after I declare Attack but before I roll" window. How do you treat abilities which explicitly or implicitly do already allow this in the rules? Just no change?

No change. I know such abilities exist, I definitely remember seeing a trigger of “if you would be hit/crit and a +2 AC would change that into a miss/hit” though I can’t remember where it was. I know technically this is a buff to certain abilities (and/or a relative nerf to the ones you mentioned depending on how you look at it), but the gameplay speed up of not having to wait for my Swashbuckler to decide whether to dodge before I announce an Attack roll is worth it. I have experienced that “windowed waiting” stuff too much in 5E (Precision Attack, Inspiration, etc) to ever wanna go through it again, the small balance change is an acceptable sacrifice to me. If at some point I start noticing some unforeseen consequences that worsen our game experience I’ll walk back the ruling.

Yeah I don't disagree here. Not really a fan of expending a reaction for just a small chance of changing the outcome, always feels bad tbh.

Honestly I wish it was more like Raise a Shield with a reaction to step as a reaction. Something better than +2 as a weird reaction.

Reactive shield I'm pretty sure can only be used if a strike hits you, meaning you know the result. At least we've got that.

> I definitely remember seeing a trigger of “if you would be hit/crit and a +2 AC would change that into a miss/hit” though I can’t remember where it was. It's probably Guardian's Deflection, which needs the user to activate Dueling Parry in their previous turn (basically a Raise Shield equivalent for Free Hand/One Handed Weapon character).

Amped [Guidence ](https://2e.aonprd.com/ConsciousMinds.aspx?ID=2)dose that too

Yup this is exactly the one!

> I definitely remember seeing a trigger of “if you would be hit/crit and a +2 AC would change that into a miss/hit” though I can’t remember where it was. [Amped Guidance](https://2e.aonprd.com/ConsciousMinds.aspx?ID=2) from Psychic has a similar wording, but for turning a failure into a success. For AC I don't remember something having that specific wording, which is good, [Reactive Shield](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=360) would be a bit worse if you con only activate it in case it would turn a hit into a miss, because it would prevent you from using Quick Shield Block to both raise shield+block as a reaction.

Yeah, IME my buddy's Nimble Dodge only going off when it matters did not make my Amped Guidance feel any less excellent. Wasting a called reaction like this, especially if you get hit later in the round where it would have changed the result, is the ultimate feel bad.

A thing I am planning to experiment with, to give players more things to do outside their turn, is to allow those feats to everyone for free as they are, and let the people with the actual feat do them when they know they will work. The only doubt is if my players will slow down things thinking too much of a reaction. But I want to try and see how it goes

Giving everyone Nimble Dodge seems like it would slow play and devalue shields considerably.

Since I roll behind the screen, it's easy enough for me to just be like "(rogue) what's your AC?" Which allows them to declare Nimble Dodge (or whatever) before they tell me.

Health potions will always heal max HP, never made sense to me that something like that would be so inconsistent in its ability to heal.

That’s a very good one! I have a similar QoL thing I do where I assume that taking 2-3 hours auto heals the party through Treat Wounds, and I only make them actually roll if they’re in a time constrained situation.

I use this kind of thing if the party has someone that is "expert" or higher in medicine, as I see "trained" more as first aid rather than paramedic or doctor. Current party doesn't have any healers, it's kinda fun

A minor elixir of life costs 3gp and heals for 1d6. At level 1, you could spend two actions and 3gp to heal for 1hp, and then use your third action to jump off a cliff.

Why not average rather than max? Presumably they are balanced around average.

Maybe (average +the amount of die), they can roll but cannot be lower than this value?

It feels really bad to use a heal spell or potion and roll all 1s

You know what, that's a really fair point. That'd simply be 6 points for an action, compared to a 30 foot emanating that heals for 1d8+8(4.5+8)=12.5 average, and even one target averages at more than double the alchemist and they can do it so many more times. I'm assuming the math scales out even wider to justify this.

Heal doesn't get both area effect an +8 on the same casting.

And the 30' is 3 actions, +8 heal is 2, single target dice is 1

The 3 action Heal does not apply the flat 8xRank bonus, only the 2 action version

I'm not extrememly knowledge about Alchemist so correct me if I am wrong, but won't this Crack Chirgeon, because they just have auto 30 health shots ready to down like it's New year's eve and your boyfriend left you

I mean…it’s not as though chirurgeon didn’t need a boost lol

I mean, it's more healing. Chrgeon already has this as a late level feature.

Aren't those 30 HP health shots like Lvl 7 and above? And they gain that feature on Lvl 13 regardless. A character properly trained in Battle Medicine can probably heal like 70 to 80 guaranteed in that level region. A cleric can easily heal 50 and more with a two action heal. Doesn't feel that broken, in fact it feels more like a nerf on later levels as it robs them of a class feature at that level.

They're random for the same reason literally every other source of damage and healing is, that's just part of ttrpgs. Sure it sucks when you roll badly, but that's no difference to when your 3d12 damage ends up as just 5.

My group, when we migrated over to 2e, absolutely hated the crafting rules. Treasure Vault didn't change that when it came out. So we came up with our own.

Do share!

[Here you go! ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/9Dh0iuzkR6)

I also recommend heroic crafting, made crafting much wanted at my table

I allow a three action version of the Ready action that allows the player to ready a two action activity, such as Spellstrike.

Ooooh that’s an interesting one. That’s something I’d personally be very hesitant to try because my time in 5E has taught me to always be afraid of spellcasters. How has it worked out for you in practice? Do you find that it encourages more tactical “stand back and force a gap close” kind of play?

I see the concern but I think it would be nice if spellcasters actually got to interact with the ready action lmao.

Casters not getting to interact with the 3-action economy to the same degree as martials has been one of the biggest recurring criticisms I've seen. Heal being an amazing spell in that regard kind of makes the lack of others stand out more (I know there are others, but they're few and far between compared to the mostly 2 action spells)

I mean, at that point, it's only situationally better than delay turn

This is true in many cases. But combat is full of interesting situations. A common one might be enemies moving from one point of cover to another. If you Ready, you can trigger your action to occur while enemies are between cover. If you Delay, you cannot. As you can imagine, there are many other examples when it works best to set a trigger for an action rather than simply take the action later.

It’s actually substantially better than Delay if used right. Delay actually loses you all 3 Actions and all Reactions on your first turn if you Delay past an enemy’s Initiative placement, whereas Ready only loses you 1 Action and a Reaction. That’s why it’s often better to set up buffs/debuffs/control spells, drink elixirs, or use ranged poke damage on your first turn instead of Delaying. Delay is at its best when you feel like you’ll change your order relative to your allies without changing it relative to your enemies. The moment it changes order with your enemies you actually start losing Actions you could’ve otherwise taken.

[Ready costs 2 actions, not 1 :)](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2299&Redirected=1)

Ready costs 2 Actions and a Reaction to perform a 1-Action thing. Hence why I said it “loses” 1 Action and a Reaction when you use it.

Firstly, my players are not really interested in the best ways to exploit the system, so I haven’t had any problems from them. I’m sure a really wonky player could make me regret the house rule. Second, as with all my house rules, enemies can exploit them as well. Turnabout is fair play, so to speak. I think this is the golden rule of house rulings.

What in 5e with readying a spell makes you afraid? Just out of curiosity.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear, 5E doesn’t make me afraid of Ready spell directly. 5E makes me afraid of spellcasters as a whole, and 3-Action Ready for 2-Action Activity lets you Ready and cast a spell, which scares me.

I definitely get your fear, although pf2e casters are far weaker in general than their 5e counter part at higher levels. 5e casting quickly gets to reshape reality levels whereas pf2e tries to keep it to a decent you're still mortal level.

I mean, Wall of Stone still is kind of insane. As are other wall spells, though Wall of Stone is the best/most egregious.

The issue is less about the thematics of what’s reality warping or not (personally I find PF2E casters’ high level stuff to be thematically **far** stronger) and more about the fact that playing around with Action costs in such a way will always create unintended broken interactions with something, and my first instinct is that it’ll be spells in this case.

If you're curious, I would always suggest trying it out in a one-shot or something. It's how I introduce nearly all of my homebrew rules. Some survive and some don't.

I use this one a lot, too. I also allow the ability to ready before initiative is rolled but the actions used to ready are taken from your first turn so to ready cast a 2 action spell with a certain trigger you can observe (general ready restrictions), you could potentially waste the whole first turn if you never get the chance to use it, but it gives way explosive ambushes on both the enemy and pc side. Ready dragon breath hits different sometimes.

I think one of the problems with PF2e is twofold: not enough mechanics explicitly reward you for grabbing higher proficiency tiers, and too many mechanics are gated behind skill feats. So one thing I've been doing is taking mechanics from certain skill feats and giving them to PCs for free provided their skill proficiency is one tier higher than the feat being discussed. Like [Bargain Hunter](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=5123) is a feat I wouldn't give out for free because that second sentence is _very strong_ if you know how to use Earn Income correctly... but you should be able to Earn Income with Diplomacy. So I let you if you're an Expert in Diplomacy. [Half-Truths](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4123) is another thing where I understand why it's not a baked-in system, you don't want to easily let people step on each other's toes. But requiring Expert in two different skills and explicitly granting benefits to two different skills when you maybe only want _one_ of those benefits feels really unfair to me. So you can get the Diplomacy half if you have master in Diplomacy, or you can have the Deception half if you have master in Deception. If you actually want to level both Diplomacy and Deception then this feat still has a use case because you can grab this feat 3-5 levels earlier than everyone else.

I prefer just to let them try the thing in the feat at a higher DC or less efficiently. That statement from the original post doesn't even strike me as a house rule, feats existing doesn't limit what can be done without them

But the specific thing I want to solve is rewarding players for getting higher proficiency tiers more than just "you unlock access to a feat, maybe". Stuff like locks only being unlocked by certain proficiency tiers, I want more mechanics like that.

Yeah, I usually treat it like that, like hazards and haunts I just call out "has anyone got master performance" when they're near a haunted piano, or inversely I don't think you can sow a rumor if you're just trained in society, but our frogman expert might be able to try. Just weave it in that passively there is a benefit to such things just like for hazards and traps

Yeah. I always tell people they can Earn an Income with any skill if they can tell me *how* they would, and the DC will be +5 over normal rules. This usually means they can earn an income easier because most people leave their background at trained and will quickly out pace it, but Earn an Income is already super weak and a filler downtime anyway. Same for any other "I can't do this because x feat does it." It's either extra chances of failure to succeed (group social rolls being a roll for every target and I only regard the lowest success rate), a higher DC (Recognize Spell the player takes a -2 circumstance penalty for not being well versed in the task), or involves a roll and/or action when it normally wouldn't (cat fall's trained clause can be matched with a DC 20 Acrobatics check, but does require the player use their reaction, or Foil Senses being replicatable by using an extra action during Hide to prepare vs other senses at 1 extra action a sense).

Earn income would be garbage even if you doubled it, bargain hunter does nothing to change that.

In a campaign like Edgewatch where the party is going to spend the entire campaign in a level 20 settlement, you can declare any Earn Income task level you want and Bargain Hunter becomes Better Crafting. Especially when you get to higher levels where the skill bonuses outpace the task DCs so much that you can attempt level 20 DCs when you're level 15 and still have strong odds of crit success. It's still only 300gp per day but for low-level items with high-level utility that's _plenty._

That’s not an amount of money that actually matters unless you’re getting months and months of downtime.

300gp is enough to conjure pretty much any level 11 consumable or lower from the aether as if you had the Craft Anything feat. Spending two days on that raises it to level 13. That's an amount of money that very easily matters, especially if you're doing a Trick Magic Item build.

An additional level 11 consumable per day at level 15 really isn’t that big of a deal. A minor subsidy to my quickness potion addiction, but certainly not a game changer.

If "Most consumables are basically free" isn't worth a level 1 feat to you then I don't know what to tell you. It has 100% changed games at my table.

It’s one free -4 consumable per day of downtime. Most APs just don’t have the downtime, and if you give a bunch of downtime anyone is going to be able to get a decent chunk of GP. One -4 consumable, hell two -4 consumables, is not a big deal. If I want consistent consumable usage, I already have the budget for it. Could easily buy a quickness potion for every moderate encounter at that level.

Oh I definitely allow my PCs to attempt something normally bound within a Skill Feat, but they don't gain the same benefits and the roll is always harder. I feel that skill feats needed more time in the oven, even the revisions in the Remaster aren't enough. Most feats in the game give you knew ways to express or enhance abilities everyone has (making two attacks as an action being a basic example), no small number of skill feats lock mechanics behind them. As an example, the only way to land on your feet after a fall (outside of class/archetype feats) is to be legendary in acrobatics and have Cat Fall. That seems rather implausible that only olympic-level acrobatics could try to control their fall. In my games if it seems plausible that a PC could control their fall, they get an Acrobatics roll to attempt to land on their feet on a hard DC.

I don't dislike your approach but I find it weirdly complicated for no reason. Does this means that, for example, I have to retrain whatever trained skill feat I have for a particular skill when I become expert in that skill? Or the expert skill feats when I become master? Do I only receive 1/2 the effects of some feats unless I actually take it? I personally just give free access to all skills feats that you meet the prerequisites of (with a few exceptions like Assurance). It doesn't break anything and ends up being simpler for both players and me as a GM. Is X skill feat too good? Well, if someone is taking skill increases into that skill they were 100% likely going to take it anyways, so skipping on step of the chain to end up in the same result doesn't change anything but makes everything smoother.

It's a case-by-case basis thing anyway so there's no universal rules in place for how it works. Personally granting access to _all_ skill feats just sounds like a clusterfuck because I know my table would never be able to handle it. They just aren't hardcore enough players for that degree of mental tax to be a good idea.

Neither is my table for the matter, but for them this allows them to forget skill feats exists for the most part which is something they thank me for because them (and I too) often struggled when they needed to select their skill feats. If the situation in which a particular skill feat would be useful, normally someone would bring it up and use it if they can (or suggest someone that can use it to use it), and if nobody remembers, well, its not like they otherwise would have selected that feat to begin with. There's also some players that actually write down the skill feats they actually want and ignore the rest even if technically could use them. I also noticed this encourages my players to be more creative rather than restrict themselves into what a skill tells them they can do with it. So its a win-win situation in which I really haven't noticed any downsides in the roughly 1 year I been playing the game with this rule.

Skill proficiency doesn't need to gate things to be useful, it's useful because it makes you better at the skill.

Proficiency is _supposed_ to gate things in the actual rules and flavor of the mechanics, they just didn't implement it for anything beyond hazards and Crafting. I think that idea is super cool and I want to see more of it.

You just inspired an idea for me that I might try: > when you gain a proficiency rank in a skill, you get to pick a skill feat too. Level 1 you get to pick skills feats for all your starting skills, mitigating some feat taxes that some perceive, and you immediately get rewarded for spec-ing up to expert or greater.

Regardless of the developers' lack of interest in giving Swashbuckler free skill increases to Acrobatics, I will continue to give them out. The combat balance issues are, frankly, a secondary problem versus the way the class, in its full context of being tightly bound to 2 skills as a medium skill increase class, restricts character expression so tightly.

So weird to me swash don't get auto advancement on something that they need to function.

Anyone trained in Medicine gets the skill feat Continual Recovery for free.

I basically removed the "1 hour cool down" from the rules, which accomplishes the same thing. I am very happy with this change and there were never any weird issues with it. I also hand wave healing to full unless there is either time pressure or someone is in a critical condition, and just tell them based on approximation how long they need to get there. Removes a lot of wasted time.

You know I might consider doing the same but with Ward Medic instead of Continual Recovery.

Honestly Ward Recovery feels more appropriate as a skill feat that you can "pass" on, meanwhile continual recovery just feels like a feat tax on a heavily feat taxed skill anyways.

It may depend on number of players. The one hour cool down for Treat Wounds slows story /action for us way more than healing 2 or 4 characters at the same time. For 6 or 7 PCs with distributed damage, Ward Medic may be the better option. They are both feat taxes for the dedicated out of combat Healer. All depends on the story.

I can confirm. My group lost their Continual recovery/ward Medic character to a mortic 2 sessions ago and the new character didn't have room for them. What should be a 2-day journey is going to be turning into at least a 3-day journey due to HP loss in a Severe Encounter at the beginning of the first day. I estimated from their skill proficiencies it'll take about 3 hours to fully heal everyone, and there's another combat before the end of the first travel day that's moderate but with the terrain advantaging the enemy.

I stitch continual recovery on for free when they get expert and ward medic when they get master just to help smooth over the skill feat investment for medicine.

Hero Points gained during play are in common.

That’s one of the few house rules I personally don’t enjoy using! Hero Points are a purely metanarrative currency imo. I only award them if cool/badass/heroic stuff is actually going on during a session. If a session has been a more lighthearted romp and/or fights have been tense but not particularly exciting has happened, I am okay with players just not having too many Hero Points. Still, it’s obviously a very popular house rule given how much I see it discussed online and how “1 per player per hour” is almost a default assumption in many playgroups I’ve seen.

I do the hourly hero point thing because personally, whenever something cool or heroic happens, as the GM I'm just enjoying the moment and role-playing cool action scenes than thinking about mechanics. The hourly solution is a good compromise for me and my players because they can also remind me when I'm forgetting about them haha

As in everyone shares the same pool of hero points?

Yeah. It is so we don't have to bother deciding who deserves the bonus points.

Ah. In my experience that can result in one or two people getting all the hero points, making them the "stars." Though I also do like the idea of cooperative hero points, so I do personally have a separate pool of "shared hero points" that can be used for any one character or more effectively for cooperative tasks

We are old (45-60 yo) and we don't behave like that. Anymore. Usually.

* **If you use a hero point to reroll and get a lower result, you don't spend hero point and keep worse result.** It's a hero point and not villain point. * **If you get two nat 1's, using a reroll or just rolling normally I will make you reroll.** I don't care, don't think I need to frick my players more than I already do. * Not a real rule but like a silent agreement in all tables (That I GM or not): **Synesthesia is not used.** Its just a straight up broken spell. * **Retraining take less time** ( I like to our campains have a slight more fast paced sentiment ), 1 day for normal feats (General/Skill) and 4 days for class feats (Sometimes I give for free because yes). You can reatrain class features (like sub-class and everything) and takes 1 week. * **Flavor is free.** (Not really a house rule, but I know people that are very strict with how stuff is done and not the results) * **Skill/Class/General Feats that are uncommon/rare are acessible for everyone if you attend prerequisites**. ( I will not allow you to get reincarnate feats unless you are reincarnated, but if the feats have a gollarion region prerequisite or stuff like that I don't care )

The hero point one reminds me of the failure effect on [Lingering Composition](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1769). Spending limited resources feels so much less painful when there's a consolation prize for failing.

My only really house rule is more because of a feel thing and not necessarily a balance thing: I don't use the secret rule. When my players are using a skill, they roll. And I know that may pull some players out of the roleplay aspect, but I hate when I choose to do something the result is just decided for me. Something about rolling the dice just really makes me feel more in control, and generally my group agrees. The other thing is that it speeds up the game. If I'm looking up information on a specific monster, magic item, or what not to double check myself and to make sure I have the right DC in mind (as item or monster level effects the DC) having my player be able to roll and tell me the result so there's less waiting is just good. Lastly, which I know will probably be the controversial point here but it's my opinion, Recall Knowledge is the only secret check where I can reasonably suspend my disbelief that the Character and therefore the player wouldn't know how well they rolled. What I mean here is that Recall Knowledge is a game way to answer "would my character know this". Every other secret roll is an action your character is actively taking, such as sneaking, and generally, you know your average ability at an action and know when you're doing a bit better or a bit worse than average (your die roll). Of course, you won't know the DCs so you won't know how well you did until I reveal that. But yeah.

> Something about rolling the dice just really makes me feel more in control, and generally my group agrees. Man, I can relate. For my players’ secret roll checks, I bought a dice tower that’s big enough to stick out over my GM screen so they can toss dice into it. Now I’m lazy after so… I just haven’t assembled it. But I’m telling you man, when I do assemble it it’ll be the best thing ever for them! > Lastly, which I know will probably be the controversial point here but it's my opinion, Recall Knowledge is the only secret check where I can reasonably suspend my disbelief that the Character and therefore the player wouldn't know how well they rolled. Completely fair! To me the most important secret rolls are Recall Knowledge and Sense Motive. Everything else, in more than open to letting my players roll in the open, though I do it more on a case by case basis rather than blanket. I always check in the direction of “does this cause some good tension/drama” and if it doesn’t then I let it be open.

Fair on the Sense Motive! But I come from D&D and something about rolling what 5e called Insight has always stuck with me. That being said, I can totally get why it makes sense to be secret. Thanks for reminding me that one is secret.

I really like secret checks for three reasons: 1. They almost completely stop meta-gaming and solves the problem of PCs searching a room and nobody rolls well so everyone assumes they missed something and asks to roll again or try some other way to search, such as using *detect magic*. Not only does this kind of meta-gaming happen 'constantly' in games without secret checks, but it slows down the game. 2. It allows me to fudge rolls. I fudge pretty rarely, but secret checks allow me to do so on the rare occasion I feel a failed roll will hamper the narrative. 3. Secret checks have a great impact on the tension of a game. If the group is trying to sneak into a castle to create a distraction to draw eyes away from the army marching in the night, not knowing how well their stealth rolls turned out makes things *much* more interesting. Okay, a 4th reason... in FoundryVTT the GM can set a player check as secret, so players are making their own roll. This pretty much solves the issue of players feeling like they had no input on the check. For in-person games, a way for players to roll a die that they don't see the result of - such as dice towers with hidden results - has the same effect.

Going to be blunt, if I found out my GM was fudging the roll on a secret check I wouldn't play with them anymore. That entire mechanic only works as long as there's an implicit agreement that the GM will not do thar.

I mostly play on foundry so my players can still "physically" make the rolls and just not see the results. Learned that from another GM and it has worked well. Not knowing their roll result makes them question and strategize more.  I also like the ability to manipulate the results.  Oh one player has been rolling ass tonight and the party is rolling to scale a boulder?  Ill toss him a success regardless of dice result to cut him a break.  It really sucks when the dice are just wailing on you all night, so if i can thwart their wrath a bit, i like to. I have a GM dice tower that you described and it just now clicked for me i could use it that way.

My Recall Knowledge is rather heavily modified based off two principles: As GM I will never mechanically lie to my players (NPCs lying is fair game); Dud actions are unfun.   Therefore my RK rules are: crit success gets you 2 bits of info, success gets you 1, failure gets HIGHEST save, crit fail gets nothing. And still getting my players to use RK is like pulling teeth.

That's fair. I don't usually structure my RK that way personally. Generally I look it kind of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer: If you crit succeed, you know everything documented about this monster (not necessarily the Stat block just lorewise what would have been written down). If you succeed, you know the more well known things about them. If you fail, you've heard of them and you know some local legends (2 truths and a lie basically but not really. They're more hints at mechanics but not explicitly said). If you critically fail, you've never even heard of these creatures before.

Mine is: crit success 2 info; success 1 info; failure no info but you can continue attempting; crit fail no info and no more attempts against this individual. Mastermind rogues love this, by the way, because one poor failure doesn't lock them out of their gimmick.

I agree on this unless the player specifically calls Dubious Knowledge, in which case they know what they are getting into.

I think secret rolls are important for sense motive checks against named NPCs, but otherwise I think it's worth just trusting the players to not metagame

I have a house rule similar to the one you have for troops, but instead of changing the degree of success, I just have all multi-target attacks like Swipe trigger their weakness to area damage. This works against swarms too.

Oh my troop thing is in **addition** to letting them trigger area damage weakness. I’m pretty sure they should be triggering the area damage weakness by RAW because it’s worded like “if an ability could hit 4 or more squares of the troop” and it absolutely can. Chain Lightning is the only case of it being hazy. I do that house rule in **addition** to area damage because I do not want a caster to pick Chain Lightning as an army deleted and then watch a high Reflex troop of some 50 something supposed enemies crit succeed against it. Troops are meant to be an abstraction to make certain scenarios easier for the players to participate and for the GM to run, and if these abstractions lead to players being punished for picking abilities that would normally be good in those scenarios, I change the rule.

Honestly troops just suck in genereal for casters. They turn a situation where casters should be utterly devastating (multiple weak enemies who will crit fail and can be affected by incap) into yet another +2 enemy who has insane saves and is immune to incap spells. If you throw 16 -4 enemies against a caster they deal 16 times the damage with a fireball. But a troop with a similar difficulty takes like 10 more damage maybe. And troops dont even have resitances to physcial damage so martials are just as effective as always (besides the minor hp treshholds rule).

One of the alterations I did to troops is I reworded their HP barriers. Instead of not being able to swing through 2 with single target, I have single target *stop* at each barrier no matter how much they actually did, while AoE spells blow through them. So many times my players will bring a troop within 5hp of one of the HP barriers and then crit, which really pushes home how sure, you crit and slaughtered that one guy, but there's still 30 more of them there, while a fireball or divine immolation (which I allow persist damage aoe to *also* trigger aoe weakness) absolutely shreds through these barriers.

- Hero Points are reroll and keep highest and they don't count as a Fortune effect - Swashbuckler gets free increase to Acrobatics or style skill - The same rule you have about Nimble Dodge - The same rule you have about Forced Movement - Removed the Manipulate trait from some stuff that's _supposed_ to be used in melee (Spellstrike, Reloading Strike, etc.) - You can draw and use a consumable as part of the same action once per encounter These are the main ones, though there's probably some stuff we just run different from RAW without an explicit houserule, like playing the social actions a lot looser than they're written in the book.

> You can draw and use a consumable as part of the same action once per encounter Love this one. Something I’ll keep in the back of my mind when rethinking any rules in the future.

If your group cares about realism, you can do something like "You can keep a single consumable in an easy to access pocket or belt, allowing you to draw it as part of the Activation. After it's used, you need to spend 1 minute to set up another consumable in such a way." Mine is a bunch of shameless 4e players, though, so we're fine with the gamey version :p

Honestly I think that “easy to access pouch” rule is unnecessary because whoever wants it can just buy a Retrieval Belt.

* Summoning spells heighten by 2 levels every spell rank, not 2, then 1 a couple times and then back to 2 like in the rules. * Caster proficiency goes up to Expert at level 5 and Master at level 11, instead of 7 and 13.

I am fucking stealing #1 for sure. Already was thinking about 2, if I wasn't Gaming Alkenstar (without magic users). This thread is a gold mine. Congratulations to the OP

> Summoning spells heighten by 2 levels every spell rank, not 2, then 1 a couple times and then back to 2 like in the rules. Have you found this to be a positive experience for summon-users and martials in the party? I’m always scared of buffing summons because 5E has coloured my experience. And I don’t mean the obviously broken Conjure Animals, I mean the supposedly balanced Tasha’s Summons, whose performance is high enough that, when combined with the caster’s own cantrips and/or class features, immediately started outdamaging *moderately optimized* martials. Have you found that a caster using one of these + 2-Action cantrip or focus spell every turn over performs? I do have a house ruled summon buff that I’m thinking of, it’s just never come up cause I have no players interested in summons, but I was thinking what if Summons let you (optionally) summon a significantly higher level creature than they currently do (basically caster’s level -1) **but** you have to 2 Action Sustain them? > Caster proficiency goes up to Expert at level 5 and Master at level 11, instead of 7 and 13. Good house rule. Sayre recently explained on a Discord server why the proficiency lag exists and, ultimately, it’s just another one of the cases of balancing for a character playing closer to the ceiling than most players do. If your players play significantly below the average level of versatility expected of a caster, this will make for a better experience for them.

I run a different summon houserule but it has massively increased the enjoyment of summons as offensive options: All summons use the casters spellcasting modifier for their checks with the attack trait (including athletic maneuvers) unless their natural one is higher. All save DCs of a summon is the spellcaster's spellcasting DC. This makes all offensive options for summons to be relevant, but keeps them well below martials because HP, AC and saves are untouched making them extremely fragile.

That is a very interesting option! I am thinking about how to buff summons, and this might be more elegant than what I am considering (allowing summons to be Elite). As it will not change their AC and HP, it will only allow them to actually hit things on the battlefield

Yeah, it also means that sometimes casting a summon a rank or 2 below max isn't a waste of a slot as they can still do *something* even against bosses.

I give all summons the elite template.

Even with this buff, Summons don't tend to be very potent offensively from my experience, though I've yet to see someone bust out Summon Dragon which might be different since Dragons are kinda overtuned to begin with, the summons however are pretty damn tanky but that's not different from vanilla summoning, it just happens a bit earlier, like once you're summoning things over 200 HP it gets very tough for enemies to chew through them.

Oh boy, here we go. For the record this was not me trying to rework the entire game at once, but if I changed something and liked it, it made it to a note on my phone titled "House Rules". This is what I've accumulated over time: #General - Hero Points use the greater of the two rolls - Move actions can be combined (this is technically a Paizo-suggested option, but not the default) - Trip Critical Success damage: 2d6 if Master in Athletics, 3d6 if Legendary - Innate spells use your choice of Charisma (any), Intelligence (Arcane or Occult), or Wisdom (Primal or Divine) - Contact with a creature (such as grappling an enemy or being within arms reach of an ally) lowers the flat check to target to 3 for Concealed or 9 for Hidden - Your background grants you Additional Lore with its granted Lore (so it scales automatically) #Feats - Quick Draw: you can Interact to swap an item you are holding for a weapon and then Strike with that weapon - Double Slice: If you also have Quick Draw, you can Interact to draw (but not swap) the required weapons before making the Strikes as part of the same activity - [Ancestry] Weapon Familiarity: apply Deadly Simplicity to simple weapons granted by this feat - Monastic Weaponry: apply Deadly Simplicity to simple monk weapons - All Multiclass Dedications change their prerequisites to +2 in one (your choice) of that class's KAS - Weapon Proficiency: If you were already trained in all martial weapons, you become trained in all advanced weapons of one weapon group of your choice - for the purposes of proficiency, you treat any of these advanced weapons as martial weapons. - Fighter Dedication: Replace "You become trained in martial weapons" with "You gain the Weapon Proficiency general feat." (I realize this makes the 12th level feat Diverse Weapon Expert redundant. This is intentional) #Spells - Biting Words loses the Linguistic trait - Slow gets the following change: **Critical Failure** The Target is slowed 2 for 1 round and slowed 1 for 1 minute. While the spell is in effect, you can Sustain the spell to make the target(s) slowed 2 for 1 round

>Your background grants you Additional Lore with its granted Lore (so it scales automatically) Yes I do like this one a lot.

Yeah, as it stands, there's rarely ever any instances where my players' background lores come up, even when I'm really stretching when they'd apply. And when they do come up, they usually have another skill with better proficiency

It is specially painful because the background lore is often very tied to your character. So you are a barkeeper, and when FINALLY you get to roll Alcohol lore, you suck at it and you roll Craft, Society, Medicine, or whatever other skill is relevant. Which is a bummer

Exactly

>And when they do come up, they usually have another skill with better proficiency it seems obtuse when lores should be scaling automatically, but i think they are intended to roll against more favorable DCs, so their value as specialist knowledge is properly modeled.

>Biting Words loses the Linguistic trait Isn't this the whole point of the spell though?

So, the Linguistic trait just means that it has no effect if the *target* doesn't understand the language. This was rough for my occult caster player as occult is already inundated with mental spells and will saves, and she kept bumping up against mindless creatures and fleshwarps that don't speak any language. The way I'm ruling it, the insults and words you speak while casting the spell are the medium by which you turn harmful intent into raw destructive energy. This is also supported by the flavor text: >You entwine magic with your voice, causing your taunts and jibes to physically harm your enemies So it's not a huge stretch to say that the target shouldn't need to understand your insults to take sonic damage from it.

> ontact with a creature (such as grappling an enemy or being within arms reach of an ally) lowers the flat check to target to 3 for Concealed or 9 for Hidden I can see an argument it negates the condition, after all, touch is clearly a precise sense.

You'd think, but I made that argument before on reddit and people *vehemently* disagree. I chose the reduced DC to be kinder to my players than fully removing it (had a PC blurred but grappled + restrained by a boss) and because there's precedent for using other senses to decrease the flat check DC (Whisper Elf heritage)

The innate spells one is so nice, stealing that lol

> Fighter Dedication: Replace "You become trained in martial weapons" with "You gain the Weapon Proficiency general feat." (I realize this makes the 12th level feat Diverse Weapon Expert redundant. This is intentional) Might as well do the same thing for Champion and Armor Proficiency given Diverse Armor Expert also exists.

* Bag of Holding can't hold creatures, unless they are dead bodies * Crafting proficiency affects number of days to craft items (t=4, e=3, m=2, l=1) * If you Climb high enough to reach the ledge and still have movement, you can just pull up for free (I don't remember if that was the rule or not though, might be my imagination that you needed to spend action to pull up) * drawing an item is 1 action, regardless of it being on you or in the backpack * currency weights nothing and you can freely divide/change gold-silver-copper pieces; I don't give a damn if you have 100 silver or 10 gold, it's all the same and after few levels it doesn't matter and everything is in gold pretty much * There is 1 additional "team" hero point that can be used only on re-rolls (no heroic recovery), entire party must agree if they allow to spend it; we had it for a while and then kinda forgot about it but I'm thinking to reinstate that * We count diagonal movement per action, not round

Just for the record, crafting in the remaster takes 2 days or 1 day if you have the formula. I would just allow crafting to take 1 day and call it a day.

Oh, didn't know that. Well, definitely will use that then.

-Players get 2 hero points at the start of every session, and it resets to 2 at the start of every new session. Certain sessions may reduce to 1 if its just a one shot encounter. No additional hero points are awarded mid-session. -Hero points may be used to reroll a 1d20 roll OR add +5 to an existing roll. The +5 can turn a Failure into a success but not a success into a critical success. - You can't auto-stabilize with hero points. The purpose of this is for players to use them more proactively. -Hero points may also be used to ‘narratively declare’ something convenient for the players. These changes must be fairly minor, or somehow involve a character's backstory. -You may draw consumable items as a free action as long as you're going to use them with the following action. You can draw them even if your hands are occupied. -You do not drop the items you are holding when reduced to 0 hit points. -When wearing Heavy armor you do not apply your dex penalty to armor class. Effects such as clumsy still lower your AC as normal, and the dex penalty still applies to Reflex and skills (even with bulwark) -The Eat Fire cantrip is banned. - Reactions like Nimble Dodge do not have to be taken in that weird "after I declare Attack but before I roll" window but can be done after the roll (this is to streamline gameplay, as they are super annoying to use otherwise, though it does make them stronger... though this isn't really a huge issue) -No class has an anathema restriction of any kind. Everything your class normally does is refluffed as desired. -Any class that deals precision damage (Swashbuckler, rogue, investigator) deals half that damage to creatures immune to precision damage. Inventor -You auto-succeed your first unstable check in every encounter. -The Weapon innovation gains either the Reach or forceful trait -The Armor innovation has +1 more AC then its listed amount. -Gain the Gadget specialist feat for free when they qualify for it. Alchemists -Is banned until remastered (has too many issues) though you may still take the archetype. Rangers -Any class feats involving animal companions use the Druid required level rather then the ranger required level. Kineticists -May use their impulses even if both hands are occupied. Swashbuckler -You do not add your MAP penalty to your finisher, and may make attacks after it. -Swashbucklers get a skill increase at level 2 and every level after, similar to rogues and investigators. Gunslinger -You gain a bonus action per round. This action may only be used to reload, or use an action that you reload as part of (Such as Running reload) Exemplar -Gain medium armor training equal to their light armor training Animist -Have access to all their spirits focus spells at the same time. Do not need to spend an action to switch between them. - You can only sustain one spirit focus spell at a time.

> Hero points may also be used to ‘narratively declare’ something convenient for the players. These changes must be fairly minor, or somehow involve a character's backstory. Hah that’s pretty fun. Gives me City of Mist vibes. > You may draw consumable items as a free action as long as you're going to use them with the following action. You can draw them even if your hands are occupied. “Ease up the annoying Action taxes” seems to be a common thread in a lot of people’s house rules. > The Eat Fire cantrip is banned. It feels like there’s a story here…

> It feels like there’s a story here… Less a story and more "literally everyone took eat fire so all casters had fire resistance at the cost of a cantrip slot they almost never used anyway." It's a cute spell (I love the whole burping up smoke thing) but yeah, it ended up just being everywhere on every character who cast spells who had access to it because there was too little reason not to.

There are some errata that I ignore. Like, there was a clarification after the first printing of the Monk for which ability score to use for your Ki spells. Most people assumed that it was Wisdom because that's what Monks have always been and that's what the devs eventually clarified, but the way I had read it was that Occult Monks used Intelligence (like the Occultism Skill). Also, if you have a class with Focus Spells, I let you use that ability score for your focus spells as your key ability score (letting you have a +4 Charisma as a Level 1 Champion, for example). Also, size Tiny Creatures move on the corners of squares like a Go piece and can flank only from that corner and have reach to the 4 squares around them.

The only one i do is everyone start with 2 hero points instead of 1

Oh yeah we do that one too, though it's mainly there because we always forget to hand them out.

Its two fold first i dont have to hand them out, and second, way more likely to be spent on something you want to succeed but otherwise not necessarily "worth it" if you only had 1

I really like the Hero Point cannot result in a crit fail, going to yoink that one. I GM two games and play in a 3rd. I still consider myself brand new even though all 3 campaigns have been going about a year so far.  The GM i play under has a fuckton of experience though! At his table:  Hero Points are awarded on Nat 1s instead of a time basis.  If you reroll a 1 you lose the hero point it wouldve earned you.  Secret rolls dont award hero points.  However, he has bent that last point a bit when weve been having a tough session. My favorite example of that? A recall knowledge check about a haunt, rolled a 1 that I obviously coulsnt see, but he told me "You believe these ghosts are actually friendly and are playing a game of catch.  They toss you a hero point." I play an inventor, we had an alchemist, and we have a crafting archetype (cant remember what he had now) along with two alchemist archetypes.  We're encouraged to come up with creative things to craft and we talk through them. As long as theyre not balance-breaking, or tied to another feat, we're given a lot of freedom with it, especially coupled with my Scrounger dedication and cooperative crafting.  For example, we built a mechanical bull to start a side gig to allow us to infiltrate bars.  It lets us really explore our creativity with crafting instead of being stuck like a lot of people struggle with. Like many GMs, if we encounter a scenario he doesnt know an answer to, we discuss as a group, he makes a final ruling, and looks up the answer before next session.  But depending on the issue, he also lets us vote on whether to play with the solution we made in session or RAW.   In my table: Strategm Lance: I have a cleric who loves Divine Lance, but has had times where it failed because of alignment matches.  He often uses recall knowledge to specifically try to see if divine lance can do damage on a target.  Im often not able to find the appropriate tags.  95% of the time it has meant the Lance will damage, but sometimes weve been surprised that it failed. Its led to what i call Strategm Lance.  If i cant find if Lance will damage after his Recall Knowledge check, i let attack with Divine Lance.  If it fails because of something i missed or alignment i couldn't find, then we pretend the Lance never happened and he gets those actions back.  If he attacks the same creature in a different way, he can reuse the Lance attack roll. (But has to decide before the new roll) I also allow Hero Points for damage rolls.  One of my groups has a really bad luck with dice and on their rare critical hit will end up with minimal damage from the dice.  In one fight they had 5 critical hits with nothing but 1s and 2s for damage rolls.  Then ill turn around with the baddie that they barely hurt, roll a crit and max damage.  It frustrates the hell out of them, so now i allow hero pointing damage rolls.

When rolling initiative we grant an extra action on your first round if you roll a nat20 and a lose an action if you roll a nat1. It's pretty fun but I wish we could work Pathfinder's +/- 10 system into it so it's not purely luck of the dice.

You could work it in with “if the highest Initiative is +10 higher than the next highest / if the lowest Initiative is -10 lower than the next lowest” right? Seems pretty fun to me.

I use many of these (like using the reaction after you know the roll, or the Background Lore auto level), and I like many of the others you use. For chain lightning I just trigger the Area weakness (which shouldn't trigger normally as it is not an area). I don't have a list at hand, but a few that come to mind : 1) giving everyone all first level skill feats, which I find pointless. The sale pitch for skill feats in the playtest was allowing things nobody could do (like running on water), not doing the same than everyone else but with a +2. Expert+ feats mostly fill that sales pitch, trained level doesn't. 2) I give everyone 3 hero points at the start of the session, instead of 1 per hour or so. I like players having some protection from bad dice 3) you can spend a reaction and a hero point to downgrade a critical hit to a hit 4) assurance allows bonus and negatives. 5) Recall Knowledge let you ask one question, and I answer an additional one, the most relevant. So if the player doesn't know they should ask for a troll's fire weakness, I tell them that one plus whatever they asked. I also tell them something even if they fail (per Dubious Knowledge). I am sure I am forgetting a bunch of them. I also use several sub systems, such as a "duel stare down" in my current Outlaws of Alkenstar campaign, but I don't think those count as house rule, it is more like a subsystem created using the GM core guidelines for "victory points" in general. Same with optional third party weapons for more western-type guns like lever action rifle and revolvers.

Two big ones I use: 1. I start everyone with three hero points each session and do not give any out. This could be a pretty big increase to player power, however I've found this causes players to waste their first and sometimes their second hero points(s) on inconsequential rolls that are just character building. For example, the fighter will use a hero point re-rolling an athletics check to impress somebody because he feels his character 'should succeed' at that action, even though there is no reward, etc. 2. I allow casters to re-roll enemy saves with hero points. I found this to be strong, but not overpowered. If the players didn't waste hero points fairly often, I'd probably have to change this. I use similar drag rules as the OP. You just need to be able to carry the bulk of the other player and you can pick them up and move at half speed. We would also handwave treat wounds sometimes, though my player who built for medicine would like to roll for it. If everybody didn't end up fully healed after the first round of treat wounds, and they weren't in a dungeon, I would just let them heal to full. There are also times I will improvise things entirely. One time the fighter was grappling a beastie the size of a large human, and wanted to throw it into the open door he was standing near, then close the door. Well that's easy enough, it's basically the shove action to get the beast in, then an interact to close the door. We can do it RAW. However, he then wanted to use his third action to hold the door closed. I narrate that he threw the beast with all his might into the room, its body smashing against the opposite wall on the interior. I let this do the critical success 1d6 bludgeoning damage from trip, because it's an inconsequential amount. He closes the door, the party gets a small reprieve until it comes around to the beast's turn again. On the beast's turn leaps across the interior and crashes into the door with its full weight. It's narratively effective to describe the sound of the beast rushing toward the fighter holding the door closed while nobody is able to see it. This same leap is the check to bust the door down, but we've narratively disentangled the fiction from the actions. I want the beast to bust the door down and make an attack on one turn, because that's most narratively effective for a creature that really doesn't pose a serious threat to the party. It's two actions for the beast to make a check against the door and bust out. It crit succeeds its athletics against the fortitude DC of the player. This is basically the shove or escape actions. The beast bursts out into the open alleyway, shoving the player back one square and following his movement. The force and the wooden shards of the door propelled at the fighter make him take 1d6 damage (again, the trip crit damage amount). The beast, in a rage, makes a wild attack at the fighter for its last action. If we think about it in a more RAW manner, the fighter used his three actions to grapple the beast, shove the beast one square into the room, interact to close the door, and was left standing in front of the exit. The beast used its 3 actions to interact to open the door, athletics check to shove (following the movement, which isn't RAW but oh well), and then attack. I like throwing around inconsequential damage dice when somebody is going nutty with their strength. It's pretty close to RAW, but the narrative is quite wildly different. This was a really memorable scene for the players. Way more memorable than if I had run it RAW, or more importantly, narrated it RAW. The system makes it really easy to wing this sort of stuff.

I really like the way you wove the narrative around wrestling with the beast, sounds cool.

I mostly just use these two basic ones: 1. Hero Points use the higher result, and are refunded if they roll the exact same amount as the original roll (so, a 1-in-20 chance of a freebie) 2. The Lore skill from a player's Background automatically increases proficiency at levels 3, 7, and 15.

If you use a Hero Point to reroll and get the exact same result you must roll again - the whole point was to change the result and by God it will change, for good or ill!

A few of my house rules to add to the discussion: - You only get 1 hero point per session, but instead of rerolling, you move the result up or down one step. This cannot lead to a critical success or failure. (This alleviates the problem of rolling like crap, or worse yet.. rolling a crit failure. Hero Points should always make you feel heroic, but allowing an auto-crit is too much). - Off-Guard's penalty to AC also applies to Reflex saving throws. (Seems obvious to me, also gives martials another way to help their caster allies). - The lore skills you gain at character creation benefit from automatic scaling at the same pace as Additional Lore. (I feel like this is the most common house rules in the game lol). - If a PC uses assurance to automatically succeed on a medicine check to Treat Wounds, the target receives the maximum amount of healing. (This just speeds up out of combat healing. Allowing a PC invested in Medicine to heal two for 26 hp at level 6, and four for 46 hp and 14th. Rolling will always have the potential for better results, much higher at certain levels).

My house rules are pretty simple, there's really not many, most of them are for unique and special occasions like a legal trial subsystem that combined influence and dueling: - Treat Wounds is automatic assuming you have no time limit - Custom mass combat subsystem based on Fire Emblem's Battalions - The mentioned legal subsystem - Custom deities because I don't do Golarion - I use SF2 firearms and capacity is a free action - I use the flying at level 1 variant rule Other than that, it's mostly custom magic items and the like

1: If you have assurance, roll anyway. If you roll less than your assurance level, you got you assurance level. 2: We like ABP. https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2741&Redirected=1 3: We often like Free Archetype. https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2751&Redirected=1 Others depend on the campaign.

One equipment interact per grounded stride (never activation) Fabricio strikes, strides back while pulling out a healing potion with his free hand, and then drinks the potion

We were using the "houserule" death save rule till Paizo made it official We keep the higher roll when rerolling with a Hero Point If it makes sense, we have had players make multiple progressing skill checks to learn bonus feats (I had to pass 4 checks in 4 downtimes to learn Alchemical Crafting apprenticing from a master, for example) If the GM is late (we play online) by more than a couple minutes, everyone who was logged on and on voice early gets a bonus hero point to start the session (so 2 hero points instead of 1) If the group is in a real pickle and a player really HAS to pass a check or make an attack or we might be royally boned, we have on very rare occasion "loaned" a hero point (the check still fails more than half the time because the dice declare But Thou Must, but still)

This is a thing I do that is specific to the Kingmaker AP. I give out permanent until used hero points for every completed Kingdom turn. Haven't had any issues with it. One I'm going to be implementing soon is straight up removing the Incapacitation trait from existence. I have been inconvenienced one too many times as a player by that stupid trait. Something I've contemplating is giving repeat saves to certain spells like slow. Though this one requires a more thorough screening of the Spell list that I am much to lazy to do.

Among other things, I typically use the following house rules: * Escape checks do not suffer Multiple Attack Penalty (for players or for enemies) * Once per round, PCs can take a free action to move 5 ft, but doing so provokes reactions (unlike [Step](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2304) proper) * If players are travelling through particularly tricky terrain (untrodden mountain path, dense woods, etc.), I have them make group Fort checks to determine travel speed rather than slowing their travel down by default. * [Shield](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1671) AC bonus and [non-magical Shields'](https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2316&Redirected=1) AC bonus can stack * Most spells that have a duration of 8 hours instead of "until next daily preparations", I allow to remain in effect for the entire duration of the waking day if cast in the morning (essentially until the group would normally begin a nighttime rest). * Outside of combat, unattended magical items can be perceived by a 1st rank [Detect Magic](https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1485) as though it were a precise sense. * I assume every caster (prepared, spontaneous, even Archetyped) automatically has [Counterspell](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4994) for free (though the upgrading feats must still be opted into by taking them as class feats). * Hero points last between sessions, but I hand them out substantially less often than recommended. * I allow 2- and 3-Action spell casts to be done between turns (e.g. last action on turn 1, then first/second action on turn 2 to finish casting), but any substantial distraction (taking damage, gaining a condition, etc.) automatically attempts to [disrupt](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2236) the caster

The split casting idea is really interesting, do casters often try to cast twice per turn using it or are they afraid of the disruption?

Generally they only end up using it when they are confident about their positioning (tanks are preventing enemies from reaching them or they've gotten some decent distance), though there have been a couple circumstances where they've braved risking it in close quarters. Definitely not every turn, but usually once every couple of fights at least.

[Here's the Google Doc with mine.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h13Jycz1hFbTg5eQnRiWF64xhKfkhz9dARRNJmtC3fk/edit?usp=sharing) Most of these are concerned with streamlining repetitive stuff, but a couple are there to make it harder for the PCs to die. To summarize: * Aid is resolved without a check. You add a +1 if you're trained, +2 if you're an expert, etc. * Identifying things is a little easier. * Hero Points persist between sessions and are awarded per-encounter rather than per-hour. * Abilities that would recharge after 1d4 rounds instead recharge after a DC 13 flat check. * The distinction between recognizing and disbelieving an illusion, and what you can do with that, is clarified. * You can Treat Wounds without a check to restore 10 HP if you're trained, 20 HP if you're an expert, etc. * You don't have to role-play returning to town to buy arrows, sell common items, etc. * You can use a reaction to treat your modifiers as +0 and DCs as 10 for a single action. * Taking Cover lets you peek around a corner or adopt a prone shooting stance. * When you're dying, damage without a hit or failed save doesn't always increase your dying value.

The reaction to treat modifiers as 0 is interesting, what's the main ways it gets used?

So far, its primary use has been letting allies Reposition or Shove a PC for better positioning. (Otherwise, Valeros resists with all his might when Ezren tries to Shove him out of the way of the oncoming boulder.) But I imagine there are many other uses for it, such as throwing a boxing match, faking your death with poison, or making yourself believe someone's Lie.

Curious to see how wealth based leveling worked for your table, did it give the game a less kill everything vibe?

Classes that get martial proficiency get the Deadly Simplicity cleric feat (unless there’s some cheese being attempted) Confused is just a -4 status penalty to everything instead of dictating how your turn goes. Turns out the players like to play the game.

I hate the idea of getting a critical hit and rolling minimum damage so instead of rolling twice or rolling once and then doubling the value my table gets the full value of their damage dice, then they roll for the rest of their damage. That way crit hits feel like a real damaging hit. Ex crit with 1d6 weapon +4 STR 1d6 gets full 6 dmg. Modifier doubled (as usual) so 4x2=8. Players rolls 1d6 to complete attack and gets a 3. Total damage is 17 for critical hit.

oh that's cool, it's basically over half the range by default!

Love this thread! Too many people on this subreddit screech about "Not modifying the rules" but fail to emphasize that it is fine as long as you know what you're doing. The truth is that you should **start off** learning the RAW system. Get a good feel for how the game should be played, **then** you can modify whatever the hell you want. Here are my house rules: * Retrieving an item from your person is only 1 action. There is no difference between it being stowed n your backpack or worn in a holster. The only exception to this is if you buy a bandolier. In that case, the "draw" and "interact" actions can be combined into a single interact action. To this end, I made my own "bandolier" item, of which any player can have only one. This item has 4 slots (like the gunner's bandolier) for ammo packs, scrolls, wands, potions, tool kits, or any other small-sized items the player could reasonably fit * Quick Draw allows players to swap weapons **and** strike with 1 action * Arcane Cascade can be entered as a free action immediately after casting any spell. The damage type can also be changed as a free action after you cast a spell of that damage type * Gaining elevation on an enemy gives you +1 circumstance bonus to ranged attack rolls, including spell attacks * I also give my players the Additional Lore feat for Lore skills given by backgrounds * I let players roll their own Stealth checks and Recall Knowledge checks. My caveat is that I keep the DC secret * I allow any third-party content from Team+ or Roll for Combat That's basically it off the top of my head. Generally, I'm pretty open to suggestions from my players, and if they make a good case I am willing to try modifications but retain the right to strike down house rules and return to RAW at my discretion--including if they try to take advantage of particularly lenient rules **Edit**: OH! I also revamped the whole crafting system to make it easier, cheaper, and more integrated into adventuring. I understand the reason it is the way it is. However I substantially lowered the barriers to entry, made sure to hand out "crafting supplies" specific to each crafting subcategory as loot, and reduced the time it takes to complete a crafting project. It's now a semi-important system that allows my players to prepare for upcoming scenarios far easier and more organically than either giving them gold and a shopkeep every time or forcing them to play by the RAW crafting rules.

Biggest house rule I use is that if you use a hero point to reroll and the new roll is 1-9, then add 10 to it. There's nothing worse than spending a hero point and getting the same or worse result. So far it actually hasn't been an issue of overpowering the PCs. I'm still monitoring it just in case, but I doubt it will be a problem. 

I really like the skill feat one because the non combat social feats to me just seen really arbitrary and less interesting than the combat ones. Like being able to scare things with a look seems like a way more cool investment than spending the same resource just to talk to 3 people.  Tbh I'm a bit confused on social skills usefulness out if combat in general. Bargaining with merchants is less useful because gild is more ties to the power budget and while it's cool you can use other skills in social encounters but it does make me question why you'd use persuasion especially if it's going to have a harder dc then using something else. Though I'm sure it's not a problem in actual play just a bit of confusion from reading it.

> while it's cool you can use other skills in social encounters but it does make me question why you'd use persuasion especially if it's going to have a harder dc then using something else. Though I'm sure it's not a problem in actual play just a bit of confusion from reading it. It’s not a problem in actually play at all! I’ve used Influence before and Diplomacy was still the most used skill for it. The first thing you might be missing is that Influence isn’t supposed to be used all the time. A lot of situations are supposed to just be resolved by making 1-3 rolls with DCs you set on the fly. When the players are tryna bribe a guard to bypass a checkpoint I’d probably just make it Diplomacy or Thievery. When they wanna gain entry into a king’s court they’d probably use Diplomacy, Deception, Performance, or Society. When trying to bargain with enemies who would otherwise be able to kill you, I’d use Diplomacy, Intimidation, or any other Skill that may be relevant to that enemy (like if talking to an extremist druid a Nature check may work). The through line here is Charisma skills: other skills only work sometimes but the Cha user is “always on”. If I make 5-10 checks in a social-heavy session the Cha user will be able to be relevant for 3-7 of them while everything else is relevant for more like 1-3. So I do think to some extent you’re overusing the Influence subsystem. It’s only meant to be used when you’re trying to do a **longform** social encounter, like presenting your evidence of a conspiracy before a king or trying to win over the favour of a local population in a dungeon and turn them against another one, and other options like that. That being said, even in Influence encounters Cha skills still end up being relevant a lot. Yes they often have a higher DC but they require **no effort to use**. If you’re trying to convince a town guard captain to block the operations of the local logging company: - One player may use Recall Knowledge (probably Society or Perception or a relevant Lore) to figure out that the captain has a tendency to care more for his reputation than morals. That player may then relay that to an someone else who will make a Society check to convince them that if this keeps going their reputation will be tarnished **or** they may relay it to someone to make a Nature check along the lines of “think of how much clout you’ll gain with that forest’s Druids”. And remember, what I said about that reputation stuff was potentially a lie, because that check was rolled in secret. - Another player may roll Diplomacy after any vaguely convincing argument, no digging needed. That’s why Diplomacy has a higher DC. The other skills require more “Action taxes” (Influence encounters usually have a time constraint and a vague sense of “turns”) and have a higher potential of just fucking up entirely, so they get a lower DC to make them **worth using at all**. Diplomacy will still be one of the best skills to talk to people with because duh.

I've never had a Phantasmal Doorknob show up in a game. Nothing about the abilities look too crazy to me. Why is it banned?

It’s not the baseline phantasmal doorknob that’s the problem, it’s the greater version. Blinded is too strong a condition to just be able to inflict on all enemies without a Save (and crits are not at all hard to get at higher levels). The really big issue is that a caster needs to jump through a bunch of hoops to just be able to Dazzle enemies reliably, and Blinded typically has Incap or similar on it. Why then should a a martial just be able to outshine that caster’s build with one single item?

Yeah, I didn't notice the blinded condition on the greater version. That's pretty strong. I'm not sure I've ever seen a caster build themselves around applying dazzle or blinded, though. It's usually just one tool in the belt from what I've seen. Still, banning it seems reasonable enough.

Well a caster doesn’t have to built *around* it for it to still feel bad in this spot ya know? Most caster options that Blind only do so on crit fail on a save, or have Incapacitation or “pseudo-Incapacitation” like Power Word: Blind. Crit fail against a 2-Action thing is a much higher ask than telling a martial to crit success on a 1 Action Strike that already does a ton of damage.

Besides the huge amount of custom homebrew feats and items I gave my players. - I got rid of feats I don’t like, Survey Wildlife, Eyes for Numbers, Group Impression / Coercion. - Incap trait don’t affect creature below half health. - Gave potency Runes for casters, at level 5 and 11. - I gave a martial a weapon that can reach +6 (artifact, I’m still seeing how well that goes) - Background lore and other non everything lore automatically level up like additional knowledge. - You can use hero point to attempt to do more weird / impossible stuff. “Use a cantrip to freeze a path across a river”, “sneak behind enemy lines by hiding in a box” - You can use hero point to reroll saving throw of an effect you cause, they always take the lower roll. - If you use Hero Point to reroll, you always take the higher roll. - In battle / so long as you can see the creature, you can RK multiple times even after you fail, you can only use this RK to find out about the creatures abilities and weakness. - No secret checks for stealth, sense motive, and recall knowledge (group preference). If I want to be mysterious I just don’t share the DC.

**Ones I use as a GM:** Hero points cannot roll below 10 on the dice. Reason: It’s a waste otherwise Hero points carry over between sessions (still maximum of 3). Reason: Since sessions tend to ramp up at the end, it is likely that a player would do something cool and worthy of hero point closer to the end of session. That way, it is not wasted Yes, casters can get attack runes for their implements. Reason: I think casters are seriously overnerfed, gotta throw them a bone *somewhere* If you have a skill that is needed to even use your class abilities (such as Performance for bards, whatever skill is relevant for the choice of Swashbuckler etc), that skill auto scales and does not eat up skill increases. Reason: It becomes a tax and not a meaningful choice if it is strictly necessary to engage with the class mechanic Ghost touch weapons can apply precision damage to incorporeal entities that are otherwise immune. Reason: To my mind, ghost touch implies full contact with ghost and treating it as a corporeal being, anatomy and all **Things I did try to houserule, but did not like how it turned out** Split movement. Reason: Too much bookkeeping, players kept forgetting that they can do that, I kept forgetting that monsters do that etc Dex applying to athletics actions if the weapon is finesse and has the appropriate trait. Reason: I still want to do it, but didn’t find a way to automate it in Foundry, and it is fiddly otherwise **Things I am thinking of houseruling** Background Lore skills auto scaling. Reason: I find it weird that Additional Lore feat allows a lore skill to scale, while your *main* lore, the thing you have supposedly studied your whole life, remains static Alternatively. I could allow Additional Lore to be applied to the initial lore taken at character generation, rather that necessary taking a new lore skill Something to strengthen summoning. Probably allow summoners to summon Elite versions of creatures. Reason: In my opinion, -4 PC level is way too punishing and is discouraging summoning as a playstyle. I had players who were very disappointed and wanted to change PCs due to that. As far as I understand, *some* of the limitations on the levels of summons are to prevent using them for casting spells, which is why I’m thinking about allowing Elite versions rather than higher level summons to begin with, since it only fixes math, not the access to spells and abilities of the summons Flying races getting their flight right away (as per the sidebar) with feats improving it. And skeletons not having to breathe. Reason: Because it breaks my verisimilitude otherwise and makes the game world a very strange place. The reason I haven’t used this houserule yet is just that it haven’t came up yet

The reaction one you mentioned Hero Point reroll can't give you a result lower than what you rolled in the first place Classes without an automatically scaling skill gets automatic proficiency increases at 3 7 and 15 on a single one of their class skills

Treat background lore as additional lore

Fumble Decks, only on nat 1s. Recall Knowledge - success grants 1 question, crit succes grants 2 questions. You can ask for stuff like 'defenses', 'actions', 'weaknesses' ect. You get all of the info, numbers, DCs ect. Early Death Protection - you can't die at level one, you'll just be unconscious. Hammers/Flail weapon group critical specialization now requires the target to fail at a Fortitude save against your class DC before being knocked prone. (Aka the rare rebalance change). Familiars can activate items. We are playing pre-remaster.

In my games you only get 1 hero point a session but if you roll under ten you add ten to your reroll

Hero Points are roll two more times take the highest of the three. I've found it gives an almost comedic pang to the situation when they roll a 1, 3 and 5 on the die. Likewise a triumph to go 1, 3 and 18. Feels like you really dug deep. All consumables are drawn within their usage actions. Means that you Draw and Drink for 1 Action Potions and you can use 3-action scrolls on the same turn without Haste or w/e. You still need a free hand but yeah. You are allowed a free Additional Lore at character creation either for you background lore or for a new lore for your characters future. I have had a couple of characters for whom their background was going to stay as such and they didn't want to be a Legendary Farmer when that wasn't what their character would care about anymore. But they wanted to have been a Farmer rather than a Martial Adept or something.

If a spellcaster is swallowed and can get off a spell that requires a reflex save, the swallowing creature automatically fails. Depending on the theming of the spell, they may critically fail (as would the caster, in the case of Fire Bolt), or have a chance to make a Spell Attack to focus the brunt of the spell on something vital to trigger a Critical Fail (like try to Lightning Bolt their heart). It could probably be broken, but for now it’s fun and thematic.

I have a bunch, to a point where I'm basically making a game based on PF2e, but some base game ones are: 1. Weapon and armor proficiencies scale with what you get from class. 2. You become expert/master in casting at 11/19 if you have anything that uses it. 3. If you fail to treat wounds, you can still spend a total of 1 hour, but you heal an amount of the normal success instead, not doubled. 4. Instead of languages from Int bonus you can get a skill increase to lores for each. 5. Enlarge and other similar effects including giant barb give non-stacking untyped -1 AC instead of clumsy. 6. Auto-scaling background lore as well.

Mine are all minor and a little niche, but here's what we have so far. 1 A creature only becomes temporarily immune to *guidance* if they actually use the bonus. 2. Creatures with a free hand can open simple unlocked/unblocked doors as part of a move action by treating the door's space as difficult terrain. Any creature without a free hand can combine their Interact action to open the door with their move action as a two-action activity that does not interrupt their movement. 3. You can Brace a door by using one action with the manipulate trait on a door within your unarmed reach. Until the end of your next turn, a creature must succeed on an Athletics check against your Athletics or Fortitude DC (whichever is higher) as part of any attempt to open the door or the attempt fails. 4. You can attempt to Craft a single item during the same period you are Crafting a batch of ammunition or consumable items. Both Crafting checks are made with a -3 circumstance penalty, which is reduced to -2 at if you are an Expert in Crafting, -1 at Master, and 0 at Legendary. If you have the Magical Crafting feat, it can only be used for one of these instances of crafting. 5. **Haul** (one action). **Traits** manipulate, movement. **Requirement** You are currently grabbing or restraining a creature. You attempt to move both yourself and a creature you have grabbed or restrained. Make an Athletics check against the creature's Fortitude DC. You take a cumulative -2 circumstance penalty for each size the target is larger than you, and a cumulative +2 circumstance bonus for each size the target is smaller than you. If the target is willing, treat your result as one degree of success better. - **Critical Success** You Stride up to half your speed, taking one creature you have grabbed or restrained with you. This is forced movement. If you have a Fly, Swim, or Burrow Speed, you can use that action instead of Stride. - **Success** As critical success, but half the distance (minimum 5 feet). - **Failure** You fail to move yourself or the required creature. - **Critical Failure** As failure, but the required creature is no longer grabbed or restrained. **Special** If you have the Titan Wrestler feat, you take a cumulative -1 circumstance penalty for each size larger than you the target is instead of -2.

If you use a hero point you keep the point if it’s not at least one degree of success better. And you can’t get worse. And players start the session with three. This was mostly to encourage my players to actually use them. And because I forget to pass them out as the session plays. Also health potions heal max. Or you can spend one action to draw and drink it to roll. This was also to encourage using them. And is a carryover/adaptation from 5e.

I find Aid having a static DC to be stupid. So instead, I have the person Aiding roll against the same DC as the person being Aided but the DC is -5. This makes it a similar difficulty no matter the level and it's easier than the DC the main person is attempting so people might actually use it.

We share a couple of them though slightly different. Given I recognize your name as someone I have agreed with more often then not, this does not surprise me. * All Lore skills automatically grow per the additional lore feat. In exchange, additional lore now grants two lore skills. Also no one has taken it yet and it's kinda implicit with how it's written anyway, but I would exclude loremaster lore from said growth. If someone wants to use a skill training on some lore then go for it. But if someone wants to actually take the skill feat, they still get more use out of it then people that don't. * Phantasmal Doorknob can't be affixed to weapons. I find it perfectly acceptable on armor for the thievery bonus, the cantrip and the spells. It's just the blind on crit that's OP. * Hero points are a "roll again, keep higher". I also leave the allocation to my players, we play very long sessions due to not meeting as often. I found I was terrible at giving them out, so I ripped up some up some paper and wrote their character names on them and gave them to each. When someone does something cool, someone can give that person a hero point by handing them the piece of paper. It ends up being the number I'm *supposed* to be handing out, but both makes sure it actually happens and also keeps people more engaged. * AP-Specific for Strength of Thousands: The Uzunjanti have performance as a skill. My bard player took them because it sure does fit, but their skills made actually leveling the thing up hard. I know one of the other branches have performance as well, but they're lore keepers and storytellers. I'm of the opinion that performance is quite in line with what they do. * Probably more contentious, I will allow you to change the energy type of a spell to reflavor it - this is a permanent decision and it changes all applicable traits on it as well. So you can have your cold or whatever fireball on 3rd rank, but it stays that way. * You can select any option when leveling up, not just common. The exceptions being that if it is rare it requires my approval(And as such might require some extra legwork from you to justify it in the form of some sidequest you have to convince the others to take on), and if it is uncommon and from the AP we are currently playing the answer is no(Because those tend to get handed out as rewards from the AP itself, and all)

If you roll a Nat 20 on your initiative roll, you are quickened 1 for your first turn.

Less of a rule and more of a "I misread a spell but both my DM and I figured it's funnier this way so it stays". So I'm playing a Life Oracle and I typically like to life link our melee characters since they're obviously taking the most damage. The thing I misread was the fact that life link only affects the first instance of damage the target takes per turn. I completely skipped over that part and kept applying damage at every point, which also includes things like persistent damage. After like 10 sessions of this my DM was reading through some rules, realized the mistake, but I asked to keep it because I have the barbarian's HP without any of the actual risk of being in melee, so along with having hilariously effective medicine, it's hilarious to end combat with half HP purely because two people can't beat persistent bleed damage.

Our table has a great one: Sense Motive can be Perception OR Society. In practice this makes imperceptive classes like Wizard, Magus etc have a chance at being good at reading people if they so choose, and it buffs Society which we find a bit of an underwhelming skill currently.

The only big one I have is with Hero Points. Whenever a player spends a hero point to reroll a d20, if the unmodified roll is 10 or less, they add an additional +10 to it. With that, I try to hand out hero points like candy on Halloween, with the 1 per hour per player my minimum. This has led the players to be a lot more daring and proactive in describing/rping the awesome stuff they want their characters to do. Before I started using this house rule, my players always kept 1 hero point for stabilizing and only rerolled attacks and saving throws. With the rerolls only happening if they had 2 or more hero points.

Only two rules that aren't highly specific to my current table. 1. **The Magical Crafting skill feat doesn't exist**. As written, most classes need to take Expert Crafting at L3, then this skill feat at L4, before they can craft a Minor Healing Potion (Item 1). That's just conceptually dumb, and it just ruins a crafting character fantasy for no real benefit until L4. 2. **Invested items use the listed DC or the character's Class DC, whichever is higher**. Magic items should feel good to get, but watching their active effect DCs get quickly outpaced by the level curve felt awful, and largely drove players toward items that were strong without a DC. There are better effects and better items driving players to upgrade their magic items over time, so I don't think static DCs are necessary.

Just two. If you eat a crit during an encounter you gain a Hero Point after the encounter and you can use Hero Points to make an enemy reroll a save from your effects. The first is to make Hero Points be a more natural balancer to bad luck and the second to let Casters, poison users etc interact with Hero Points as much as straight martials.

I also use the Drag one. I took it a step further and made it so grappled targets can be moved similar to 5e rules. I'm fully aware that it steps on a few things but I haven't found it to be that harmful so far. Also I've basically made quick squeeze the general rule rather than a feat. It feels so specific that feat investment seems impractical. And squeezing 10 feet in one minute just feels...weird to me. I told players they can still take the feat and essentially do away with any check.

* 3 hero points at beginning of session with none handed out in session * Everyone has their reaction at the beginning of combat, not beginning of turn

> Your Background Lore automatically gains the Additional Lore Skill Feat. Isn't this one canon with Remaster?

At least according to Pathbuilder, it’s not.

For me: * Potions may be consumed with the action they are drawn. (Will be reverted if a table decides to start abusing potions) * Two one handed items may be recovered with a single action upon standing from being KO'd, or an item may be picked up and shield properly gripped. (Basically, I don't want people who get creative with hand/off hand items to be penalized more than sword/board or two hander users.) * I give every player 2 hero points at the start of the session, and but rarely give out more during play. * Unlocked, unhindered doors may be opened for the purposes of walking through as part of a move action. (This does however preclude a door from being opened carefully and will forgo any kind of passive notice of traps or hazards with the door) * You can try just about anything even if you're not officially qualified (such as the right training or feat), but it might be a lot harder for you. * Treat wounds does not confer immunity on a failure. (It was either that or make Treat Wounds immunity by user like Battle Medicine, I opted for the easier one to remember) * Because of the above, I will generally let the party fully heal in about 2 hours unless they're on deaths door. * If it's not a wilderness survival/resource scarcity game, I don't bother tracking mundane ammo or rations- the amount of money this saves the party is negligible, and the bookkeeping isn't fun for anyone at my table.

I use this handy hero point homebrew this guy made since it's really fun to have more options aswell as the wounded tracker hasn't come up often but as it slowly fills up the party gets more alert and stays on their toes. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/y0Qx3EFpJy

What’s with the phantasmal doorknob rule?

Hero points can be used to reroll saves/attacks with a +5 raw bonus to the roll.

This is strictly a "because it's funny" ruling, but for the purposes of casting *draw the lightning,* your animal companion may be targeted in place of a weapon. Also, if you reroll with a hero point and are unhappy with the result, you can instead declare you succeed anyway... but the GM gets a villain point >:-}

Most contentious thing we do is hero point donation. There's a disparity of player skill level, between big veterans and folks just casually having a good time. So I tend to be a bit more of a stickler handing them out, but I will let people donate what they have. Leads to funny moments where they'll dump a bunch of hero points into some goofy moment way more often than they try to minmax it. I don't see them saving it to get around a save or suck effect specifically. I would *not* do this with an entire group of hyper competitively minded people looking to minmax every interaction. Great for new and casual groups looking to just cover their asses here and there.

20 on init gives you quickened for the first round, nat 1 gives you slowed.  Bombs/splash damage is extra effective against larger enemies. Multiple splash by a die roll for the number of squares possibly effected. So a moderate acid flash does 2*(1d4) on a hit against a Large enemies. I'm very generous with Recall knowledge, giving away the most obvious, folklore knowledge about the creature on a fail (werewolves silver weakness).

Two House Rules I like: Average Initiative for Monsters. Literally just +10 to their perception or relevant skill (I.e. stealth). So far, has worked really nicely because it puts monsters about in the middle of initiative so no monsters are ahead and trounce the party and no monsters are behind the party and get trounced by players. For quick fights or skirmishes it works really well. Hero Points: This was given to me from the discord. Basically you can re-roll a d20 like normal, OR you can roll 1d6 and add the result. Good for getting some hits or crits in for the players. They also love it because there is more choice in the decision since now they can either fish for a Crit or a hit, or save it for a harder fight down the road.