this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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I know this isn't what Ronald is in any way saying, but this video dropped on Patreon right as I was mulling over how some of the more active members of the PF2 subreddit treat the published rules, and how hostile (not necessarily aggressive, but absolutely hostile) that space is to discussing house rules and homebrewed systems.
The discourse around "suboptimal" systems breaks down into the search for the optimal version of the system as published, as if that is some global optimum, and not one of countless local optima.
This comes out in phrases like "I think this is too powerful". But different tables are going to want different things, and the game actively encourages players to figure out what works best for any given group.
All of this is to say, I see nothing wrong with hero points increasing the level of success of your previous roll, if that's what the table wants. Some people want a safety blanket, and there's a mechanic right there that gives one. Some people are going to want something else, and that's great, too.
But it would be really nice if we had some kind of house rule and homebrew repository where people could see the range of things people have tried, without a bunch of seagulls flocking in to as "Why?" over and over.
I think (some of) the hostility towards homebrew might come from the fact that PF2 plays very much "numbers first" in the sense of balancing. So I feel this is one of its greatest appeals for players of the cellar lizard game who couldn't stand the wobble of that system. When those people associate "homebrew" only with "fixing the dang game" of course they get confused when people try to "fix" a game that doesn't have any such glaring mechanical oversights.
That's of course not helpful though. As I see it, mostly people homebrew because they are going for a different experience but with a familiar game system or just 'cause it's fun to try and see what you can do with the game.
I've only been running PF2 for a short while and haven't really tried changing anything as I believe I should know how it works before messing with it. In other systems I've homebrewed quite a lot and optimizing the balancing was more of a helpful creative framework and never the sole point of it.
So yeah, I like the idea of encouraging people to share their rule variants. Wasn't this the whole point of having a better open license anyway? So everyone could share their custom stuff without worry and everyone else would have a better and richer game for it? ๐
(with homebrew here I mean changes to the core rules only and not adding your own creatures/items/... That I already do because it's baked into the core rules in PF2)
The thing is, because it's numbers-first, it's -- theoretically, anyway -- much more easily extensible than those games with thinner, less detailed, but just-as-expensive books.
And that's just if you care about balance. Sometimes you just don't. The game's core audience to this point has very much seen the strict balancing as the core identity of the game -- and it is a core feature, with how it ties into the four degrees of success system (the true core of the game, as far as I'm concerned), but there's so much good Pathfinder content out there that one shouldn't need to worship at the alter of Thanos to be interested in the game.
The bestiary is kind of amazing, and is worth the cost of admission all by itself. The Monster Core has some really compelling creature changes, too. And the creature creation space is incredibly inspired. The Battlezoo bestiaries are so far above and beyond anything I've acquired for 5e, I don't even know how to speak to it.
If anyone wants to join in on that, they basically have to do it in secret because trying to create content for the game in public and seeking feedback turns into a recreation of the "never again" meme.
We learn through trying and failing, and there's currently no room for failure in the largest community for the game.
The fact that it is actually somewhat balanced (not perfectly of course but much better than anything else I've seen.) means that purposely ignoring part of the balance is possible. You don't need to hail mary a change and hope it won't break the campaign. It's an informed decision instead of a blind guess.
Yes, exactly! Enabling informed, purposeful choices is what it's really all about!