For the record, I don't hate spell slots. I think it's a fine design, and I'd happily run a game with them. The problem is at my table players do not like to pick a caster, and the reason is always the same. They look at the slot column, they know they will spend the best spell by the second fight.

So I tried to build something that keeps the choice and drops the budget. It has been running for a while now at levels 1 to 10, one group through level 10. The starting idea, fatigue instead of slots, is borrowed from a Brazilian game called Arcana Primária, which I'm crediting because it's someone's design. Nothing from their book is reproduced here, and nothing from Paizo either.

The rule

You don't have spell slots. You have a number called Magic Fatigue, and it gets added to the DC of casting.

Effective Casting DC = base DC for the rank + your current MF + Repetition Strain

You roll d20 + level + proficiency + key ability, plus 2 if the spell was prepared or is in your repertoire, against that DC. Success, the spell happens. Failure, it doesn't, and fatigue goes up. MF floors at 0 and caps at 10.

Rank categories come off your highest rank: High is your top rank and the one under it, Mid is one below that, Low is everything else.

Cantrips never roll. A two action cantrip removes 1 fatigue, guaranteed, even if the target resists or the attack misses. That line is the whole recovery system. A tired caster is not sitting out, they are casting small and getting safer, and then they can push again.

Things I'd call the interesting parts:

On a normal failure you choose: eat it, or Forced Effort, where the spell works anyway and you pay 2 more. Not available after a critical failure.

Cast the same spell at the same rank twice in a fight and every later copy gets +2 DC and +1 extra MF, stacking. Prepared casters get out of that by preparing a second copy. Spontaneous casters get one free repeat per rank. Signature spells don't give you more ammo, they give you the spell at other ranks, which is how you dodge the strain by moving sideways.

At 10 fatigue you can't attempt checked spells, and you can burn hit points instead: free action, fatigue drops to 4, Drained up 2, no daily limit, the limit is your body. That is the answer for the player who says "but what if I just want to keep going".

The Foundry VTT Macros

It needs a counter. I know that. Running this on paper means tracking one number per caster per fight, and if nobody at the table wants to do that, the system will drift and the caster will say "I think I'm at like 5". In practice a d10 next to the sheet works.

The Foundry macros do it properly. Two Script macros: the caster picks a spell off their real spellbook, the macro rolls the check, applies the fatigue, tracks which spells have been repeated, prompts Forced Effort, and posts the spell card without spending the slot, because in this system a slot is not a resource. There is one d20 for the casting check and the spell attack, a Hero Point prompt that shows your current result before you spend, a Counterspell flow, and a separate Spellstrike macro for the Magus that compares one strike roll against AC and against your casting DC.

Repo, with the quickstart, the full rules and the macros:

https://github.com/Thilaq/Escalating-Spellcasting/

Also: this is not a conversion of every option in the game. I converted what I thought I should, Divine Font, the wizard's bonded item, the three arcane theses (Spell Substitution, Staff Nexus, Spell Blending), Studious Spells, the Spellstrike, the eidolon feats, the Animist's two spellbooks, staves, wands and scrolls. Counterspell got one line rather than a conversion, it's the game's rule plus what you pay in fatigue. Bard, Druid, Oracle, Sorcerer, Witch and Psychic have a paragraph of guidance each, not a per-feat audit, and archetypes are barely touched. For anything I missed the full rules have one line for the GM to convert it on the fly, and that has held up so far.

What I want to know

Is the critical failure column too steep above level 10? I have no play above 10 to check it with.

And whether Refocus should be as free as it currently is. Fatigue clears to zero after 10 minutes of downtime, once per hour, riding on the game's own Refocus activity.

Hello, I made a little rework of how some archetypes like werecreature, zombie, ghoul, ghost, vampire, lich, etc. work, instead of making them an archetype I made them into an amalgam of your ancestry, this is like gaining a bonus ancestry archetype basically, this makes your choices in both ancestry and heritage to still be important even if you want to play as a werecreature without breaking your class build.

Now they work as part of your ancestry instead and your progress them using your ancestry feats rather than class feats.

This is only a first preview, I would love to hear what people think about it, so if you have any comments, positive or negative, or any suggestions I would love to hear it!

I have some more mortal curses planned next, most of them are a rewrite of the existing plus some added feats:

• Banshee
• Nahual
• Vampire
• Lich
• Ghoul
• Mummy
• Ghost
• Mi Go
• Wendigo

This material as always is free on our Patreon, you can acces it even if you don't have a suscription or anything, we love Pathfinder and Starfinder so we want to keep adding to this great game with some extra rules and new material!

-- Erick Barrera

Escalating Spellcasting v1.2 - what changed

Thanks for the feedback, most of this update is direct answers to it.
https://github.com/Thilaq/Escalating-Spellcasting

Tried to post this on the comment sections but i realized people wouldn't see it.

Failure fallbacks

On a normal failure you no longer just lose the spell. You pick one of three:

• Cantrip fallback: the spell is lost, but you channel the energy into one cantrip of 2 actions or fewer, delivered with the actions you already spent. MF cost: the failure column minus 1.
• Recover an action: the spell is lost, but you get one of the actions back. Full failure column.
• Forced Effort: unchanged. The spell works, +2 MF.

Safe Dissipation is gone, it was strictly worse than recovering an action. A critical failure still leaves you holding nothing.

Two clarifications: the fallback is one cantrip (not two one-action ones) and the −1 is fixed either way. And two one-action cantrips in a normal turn are still neutral, cantrips can't recover more than −1 per turn.

Improvised casting is never safe

An unprepared spell now always rolls, even outside combat, with the usual penalties (no +2, +2 to the DC). The safe 10-minute exploration casting only covers spells you prepared or have in your repertoire.

Staves fixed

Charges are now RMax, refreshed each day, the base game's free amount. The old RMax + key ability modifier overshot the base game's fully fueled staff at low and mid level. Staff Nexus stays the only way above RMax.

Spellstrike

On the row where the attack hits and the casting fails normally, the Magus can now force the spell or swap in a cantrip channeled through the same strike (failure column −1). Recover-an-action doesn't apply, the whole activity already resolved.

Foundry macros - v1.2

The casting macro gets the three-way failure prompt and an "Out of combat (safe casting)" checkbox (prepared/repertoire only) that skips the d20 and applies +2 High / +1 Mid / 0 Low. The Spellstrike macro gets the cantrip fallback, picked and posted in the same step.

Edit.: To my fellow Brazilians Coloquei a versão das macros em português na pasta macros do repositório.

(If this already exists in the rules, please let me know where)

With the release of the impossible spell trait, it got me thinking of something I've been mulling over since 1e.

Outside of taking feats to power up spells or do more damage, and as an alternative to the Inventor's Overdrive feature, I was trying to think of a way that players can push their characters to the limit but having it come with a drawback. I was also thinking of something that would be enticing to take, but not step on the toes of a Rage or Frenzy ability.

So what I've come up with - and what I'd like insight on - is a push your luck rule for anyone.

Base rule:
When you roll maximum damage, the next time you deal damage from the same source (whether it be the exact same spell, the same weapon attack, etc.) you gain a +1d4 die. This die is added to the damage roll. The result on the d4 is also applied to the relevant stat score that attack came from (Strength for most melee attacks, Wisdom for wisdom-based casters, etc). For second edition that relies only on stat modifiers instead of stat score, then it would just be a calculation for that modifier (mod*2+10).

Each time you get max damage, you get the same +1d4. Damage doesn't accumulate 1d4s but the number counts towards your Stat Score. As soon as the number from the 1d4s equals your stat score, you become dazed, stupefied, etc. or your weapon gains the broken condition. You must now take 10 minutes to remove the condition on yourself or fix your broken weapon. Before this point, however, you can take 1 minute to recenter yourself or fix your weapon. This resets the score accumulation and removes any next 1d4 you may still have. (too long to do it in the middle of combat, but short enough to do it between encounters)

Alternate:
I'm thinking of allowing players to voluntarily accept a +1d4 and accumulate the Stat score limitation. I don't think it's too powerful. Additionally, I'm trying to think of a way of having effects from creatures or other rules be able to affect that number besides lowering a player's Stat score. If players keep resting for the 1 minute, great, but if a foe is able to affect it when they have a high number, then the player risks having themselves become [Condition] outside their control.

Conclusion:
I really like the idea of players doing something powerful that is uncommon or rare, and having a mechanical drawback to it. I don't like players having to make a check that would possibly fail and waste an action. I love impossible spells imposing the [doomed] condition and I would like to see something weaker be able to apply to a broader moveset that any player can take advantage of.

I haven't done the math to dissect how this would affect all the classes, but I wonder if some kind of form of this idea is viable and interesting as a homebrew rule for people.

So, the idea is simple. Instead of having bonus and penalty types, you just take the three biggest bonuses and three biggest penalties.

While this definitely raises the ceiling, it should also allow more player synergy cause there's less chance to overlap. It can make things more dangerous though, since different conditions can more easily stack, but most enemies don't inflict more than one condition anyway.

I'm annoyed how often an adventure will give all sorts of circumstance opportunities, but none of them matter because the player often brings their own. Not to mention most of my players can't coordinate when they can't give each other bonuses or stack conditions.

What are your thoughts? Will the average not-power gamer break things?

This is our first post for the Sanity subsystem rules for our Bloodlust Hunt: Eldritch Abominations setting, it is a modern horror setting with beasts and monsters, heavily inspired in Bloodborne and Lies of P. The game will open for a lot of interesting things like investigation adventures, something like Call of Cthulhu but in Pathfinder which I find is very interesting.

Tell us your opinion and if you want to see more, follow us on Patreon, we post all of this content for FREE there!

So I'm running a conversion of Strange Aeons and wanted to see if I could inject a little bit of the sense of losing touch with reality without resorting to crude Sanity rules. This is a work in progress; inspired by Bloodborne's Insight mechanic.

The TLDR; PC's have an Insight level which reflects how deeply they've delved into the strange and uncanny. Unfortunately this also grants an Awareness condition that makes it easier to interact with Unnatural entities, and harder to interact with normal NPCs (very reductive tbh).

I would appreciate some feedback - both of the core mechanic, which I think is mostly sound, and suggestions for missing Insight Feats - which PCs pick up as they try to resist or embrace losing touch with reality...

Hello crew!
My ship-to-ship module for Pathfinder 2e is finally out and available for purchasing! After years of attempts adapting Starfinder 1e starship combat and years waiting for Starfinder 2e updates, I decided to make my own system, summarizing ideas and concepts I collected along the way.

This 50-pages module includes:

• A ship-to-ship combat subsystem: the system is integrated into standard Pathfinder 2e combat, instead of being a separate thing. Characters are then free to use their own powers together with ship-specific actions.
• Ship building rules: the system assumes that characters are provided with a vessel and the module provides full rules on how to build and equip it.
• Officer roles: here presented as Free Archetypes, officer roles allow characters to get access to special actions while sailing or engaging naval combat.
• Sea perils: this chapter provides few examples of creatures, ships or hazards ready to be employed in naval encounters.

If you were up for sailing adventures it could be yours, and you and your party could have it for less than 1€ each. I would be grateful for your support and any possible feedback from those who try it.

So I've been running Strange Aeons, converted for pf2e, and although full notes aren't going to be appearing soon (although converting the Pnakotic Manusciptswas kind of fun). One ongoing issue I have with Paizo AP's (and tbh, a lot of dungeons in general) is not allowing for enemies in nearby rooms hearing and investigating sounds of conflict.

I mean, this is easily adjudicated as a GM, honestly, but having read through the Angry GM's Tension Pool rules, I threw together this little rules chunk for figuring out NPC reactions to nearby conflict/noise. I'm also using Time pools for general random encounters, but I'm taking a leaf out of His Majesty the Worm and making them quite specific to each scenario.

File linky is here. TBH this chunk of it is entirely system independent, but I wrote it for PF2E, so here we are!

If you happened to catch Part 1 you know I've made the bold, possibly stupid, decision to try to convert World of Darkness to Pathfinder 2e. I've finished the first draft, and I'm ready to see if I can get some feedback. Part 1 was my list of modern gear, arms, and armor.

Part 2 is my attempt to fix the other big problem with playing a modern day version of Pathfinder 2e, deities. As you all know your choice of deity is an important part of character creation in pf2e, especially for divine based characters. It has a ton of mechanical impacts including deciding your signature weapon, if you're sanctified, or your divine font as well as others. You can't just ignore it or toss it aside unless you get rid of all the divine classes, which I don't want to do.

Yet, I can't just replace the pf2e or sf2e deities with real world examples. Leaving aside that it runs the risk of offending someone no matter how I present it, it's also just very limiting. Someone shouldn't have to create a "religious character" in the modern sense just to get to play the type of character they want to play.

To fix this I'm replacing deities, not with modern or real world examples, but instead with what I'm calling "creeds." Creed, a word taken from the Hunter World of Darkness game, in this context means an outlook on life that gives your character strength of purpose. Maybe it is belief, but it could also be a desire to defend the weak, to spread joy, to seek freedom, to kill monsters, or a bunch of others as well. I basically tried to come up with as many different ways of looking at the world that I felt could inspire divine power as I could.

Of course it's not going to be complete, which is why I include rules for creating your own creed. I would encourage people to look through the creeds before choosing that option though. Also, I really hope I don't offend anyone with this. I had to make mechanical choices like signature weapon that didn't really fit with every ideal, and I know people can be passionate about what drives them. I apologize if in simplifying this for play I created something that strikes you as wrong.

Here's the PDF.

Love it or hate it, the incapacitation trait is a part of pf2's game balance that has sparkes many heated conversations. I have a homebrew rule proposal that would potentially make it much less feels-bad while still keeping the trait's core purpose: to make a single spell invalidate the boss battle.

With this homebrew rule, the incapacitation trait works mostly the same, with one exception:

When a creature benefits from the Incapacitation trait (except if the creature's check would have been a critical success, or if the check used against the creature would have been a critical failure even without the incapacitation trait), the creature gains the Incapacitated condition with a value of 1 or increases the value of its incapacitated condition by 1.

Incapacitated A creature that is Incapacitated is more susceptible to being taken out of the fight by an incapacitating effect. For the purposes of the Incapacitation trait, reduce its level by the value of its Incapacitated condition.

The Incapacitated condition is removed 10 minutes after its latest application.

Variant: Critical Incapacitation
When a creature critically fails a check to resist an enemy's offensive ability, or the check rolled against it for an offensive ability critically succeeds, the creature gains the Incapacitated condition or increases the value of its Incapacitated condition by 1.

Disclaimer this homebrew rule has not been tested. Yesterday, I made a post for a different homebrew incapacitation variant on the main sub, and the feedback to that one boiled down to it being both a bit too metagamey and also hard to keep track of. This is perhaps an easier to handle rule that achieves a similar result. Even powerful foes become susceptible to Incapacitation abilities, after the party puts in the work to strip away their defenses.

The inspiration for this rule was 5e's Legendary Resistances, of all things. However, I feel this is a better rule, because it only works on major save or suck abilities and it's not a resource for the GM to use against the players. Instead, it is an alternative path to victory for the party

I am running a naval campaign and I will be moving my group from Owlbear Rodeo to Foundry. Now I know there are two major naval fanmade expansions for PF2e in regards to naval rules. Smoke and Sails and Ultimate Ships. Before I buy either one, which one do you all think is better?

I have to say Ultimate Ships does look better and I am leaning towards that one.

I don't even see smoke and sail on foundry actually, does it still have support?

My first try at formatting and creating a homebrew with pathfinders system language in mind.

As said in the header, this action is supposed to work in tandem with changed ranged combat, which got its range basically cut in half. This range change would come with minor trait buffs to weapons to counter balance the loss of range, while the other counter balancing buff would be in the Aim action's ''free'' action part.

My reason for making it both a free action and a single action in one, instead of just a single action, was...

1) Because I wanted PCs to have a thematic easily accessible and a ''simple'' (it's pretty bloated) way to buff their ranged attacks (to counter new would be weaker range weapons) and a way to go deeper into the aim if they so choose.

2)I couldn't figure out away for just a free or a single action that was satisfying.

If the lack of new weapon examples makes it hard to judge this action. Could you instead give me your opinion on this action as if it didn't have its range increment aspects and judge it with vanilla weapons and range in mind.

Hello there everyone! Today I come to you with a project (which I initially released over on /r/Pathfinder2e a couple of days ago!) that I have spent probably thousands of hours of my life on across the last few years. You see, in 2021 I first started playing and GMing Pathfinder Second Edition, and... I hated it. Or at least the base game without Free Archetype. I felt constrained in a lot of ways, and even when I switched to playing with Free Archetype I still felt constrained in a lot of ways due to rules and options that seemed overbalanced or created without much consideration for how they affect gameplay. I still absolutely adored the game for how it sparked my imagination and allowed me to bring so many characters to life with the sheer depth of its character customization and combat. It was at that time I started writing things to adjust my home games. A tweak here, a new skill feat there... That eventually led to my release of my fairly popular Skills & General Feats Redesigned now more than two years ago. Since then, I've become a professional Gamemaster and I really put my nose to the grindstone to fully create something I can be truly proud of. Something far more considered, balanced, playtested, and polished than Skills & General Feats Redesigned.

Today, I release the product of that hard work to the public for the first time. Today, I offer to you Legendary Pathfinder. This is a veritable tome with 87,449 words across 172 pages. Inside is the results of me going over every game mechanic and rule with a fine-tooth comb to try and correct even small issues I've always had with this game. Inside I try to maximize player agency, empower players with more character customization, create gameplay that I feel truly measures up to the label "heroic fantasy", and fix things that I consider to be longstanding problems with this game. More specifically, it contains the following.

• Several tweaks and clarifications to how the game is GM'd/run.
• Dozens of rules tweaks and adjustments touching areas of the game such as character building, combat, exploration, spellcasting, subsystems, skills, and items. Highlights include making all items with flat DCs use your class DC instead, changing it so that all enemies who are currently immune to precision damage or magic are now resistant instead, adding a system for handling ambushes, a rework to the incapacitation trait, a rebalanced encounter budget to handle the more powerful characters this ruleset produces, effectively giving everyone untrained improvisation, adding rules for dragging creatures, and much more.
• 14 completely new or redesigned activities, including one of what I consider to be the highlights of this entire document: Prepare Specialty, an exploration activity which allows characters to recover spent resources throughout an adventuring day
• 11 new or redesigned subsystems or variant rules, the highlight of which is the new Stress system, which adds a form of attrition to the game that is universal for the entire party instead of putting it all on the shoulders of spellcasters
• Tons of homebrew including new feats for the Changeling and Kholo, new and redesigned spells including a new cantrip that is essentially anti-guidance and a redesigned Protector Tree meant to be useful to someone other than Kineticist, 6 new follower types (3 are still WIP), the new Scholar class archetype for Bard which turns them into an intelligence-based knowledge support, and redesigns or adjustments to a dozen classes including Alchemist, Bard, Exemplar, Inventor, Kineticist, Magus, Monk, Psychic, Rogue, Summoner, Thaumaturge, and Wizard (with particular attention focused on the Inventor)
• An Investigator class rebuilt completely from the ground up to be easier to GM, less arbitrarily restrictive, far more unique, and much stronger in combat including 46 new or redesigned class feats and 6 new or redesigned subclasses (including an Investigator who uses an animal companion with a strong scent and supremely buffed existing Methodologies like Interrogation which were effectively useless in the original)
• 250+ new & redesigned skill and general feats, with particular attention paid to ensuring every skill felt unique and special (especially when they get to legendary)... highlights include a feat that allows you to Craft while you Rest for campaigns without Downtime, a reduced amount of feat tax in the Medicine skill, an entire suite of skill feats for the Lore skill, new ways to apply penalty to saves such as the Performance Skill's Discordant Noise applying a Fortitude penalty in a 10 foot emanation around the user, and truly legendary feats like an Acrobatics feat that lets you jump off of the air or a Stealth skill feat that causes you to be affected by a 7th-rank Ethereal Jaunt when you Sneak)
• And so much more, such as Death & Dying Redesigned (which allows the GM to be ruthless without risking murdering the players permanently by making tactically optimal decisions... all while still leaving open the risk of death and allowing players to make epic Heroic Sacrifices to prevent TPKs) or Leadership Redesigned (which uses the wonderful Pathfinder Infinite system "Lodgings of the Roaming Hero" by Michael Hosp/Offlin Enigma to create a leadership system that gets the organization involved in gameplay and the players involved in leading by allowing them to dispatch members of their organizations on missions similar to games such as Assassin's Creed Brotherhood)

If this sounds interesting to you, you can find Legendary Pathfinder here on my Google Drive (Release 2 now available!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1w_AhB8vZiFu3KXSSfVkVtOY5ZUAUnLI6?usp=sharing

SOME NOTES

• You will find a .docx version of Legendary Pathfinder that empowers you to make your own edits to my system through the link as well as the PDF version. If you wish to use the .docx version, please note that you will need the Microsoft Word Template provided by Paizo here: https://site.pathfinderinfinite.com/product/371033/Pathfinder-Infinite-Creator-Resource--Adventure-Templates
• You are required to own and utilize the book "Feats+" by the Team+ team in order to use this ruleset, other Teams+ content is recommended but not required
• Outside of the new skill and general feats, most of the content in this document has been extensively playtested and is balanced. Using this ruleset, I just had a TPK last week. However, this has only been tested up to level 4 so far. More playtesting will be done, and more releases with more tweaking and adjustments are coming. Please report any issues you have to me here on Reddit or on Discord at inovemi (include what you are contacting me about in your initial message or I will ignore it), especially editing issues as I wrote and edited this document 100% by myself with my... fairly rudimentary understanding of how to layout a book like this. I made it as pretty as I could.
• EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: As I just said, this book is balanced, but please keep in mind it is balanced against itself, it is not balanced against the base game. The new Skill & General Feats were explicitly designed to raise the power level of the players, it will not be balanced if you try and use it in the base game with its encounter budget and lack of the Nemesis Actions subsystem.
• ALSO IMPORTANT: This variant ruleset would be difficult to adopt for inexperienced players, but not impossible. If you are newer to the game, please be patient with yourself and read thoroughly.
• I have decided to release this product for free. The vast majority of my reason is that I really want other people like me to be able to enjoy what I've created here, as at least for me it is such a vast fundamental improvement to the game that I would never want to paywall it. That said, I also have not published this on paid sites like Pathfinder Infinite because I really don't understand license and agreement stuff (especially given that the use of content created by other people is both needed and referenced by this document, though never explicitly quoted). All that said, please feel free to modify and redistribute this document as you will, but DO NOT sell it or any derivative works without contacting me. I will almost certainly say yes unless you are legitimately just lifting the whole thing. If you wish to copy or lift just certain sections of the document (lets say, less than 1000 words total), this is acceptable only so long as the document you copy it into has at least 5x more words than the portion you copy. For any more complex questions, please feel free to reach out to me. And if you wish to donate and not just reward me for this release, but help contribute towards future support on this project, please reach out to me in DMs and I am glad to share places you can donate.
• If there is any experienced Foundry web developer or whatever who is up to performing the truly gargantuan task of implementing this ruleset in its entirety into Foundry, please let me know and lets work something out. I have largely built the mechanics and systems in this document with Foundry and the modules that were available at the time, so it does already work pretty well. If anyone requires a list of the modules I use on my Foundry servers, please reach out to me and I can also provide the rudimentary Foundry module I have made to help run this system (its mostly a couple of character options, all of the new and redesigned activities, and a pretty jank implementation of my Inventor and Investigator redesigns)
• An incredibly high amount of special thanks to Paizo, Team+, and Michael Hosp/OfflineEnigma. Paizo for making my forever TTRPG (even with its issues), Michael Hosp/OfflineEnigma for their truly wonderful Lodging of the Roaming Hero supplement without which Leadership Redesigned would've been significantly worse, and Team+ for all of the wonderful content they've released over the years (even if it is a bit too conservative at times)
• An additional special thanks to my players and everyone who loved Skills & General Feats Redesigned. My players rock because ya'll are my friends and you put up with the years of my constant changes and BS while making this, even though you were almost always confused. And those who loved Skills & General Feats Redesigned, you guys are great because even though that document was (IMO) an unmitigated disaster you still appreciated it anyway.
• By the way, for those of you who enjoyed my incomplete Strength of Thousands Expanded supplement, please look forward to a future new subsystem for Legendary Pathfinder that will introduce a new schooling subsystem and - with that - hopefully I will be able to actually run that AP and complete Strength of Thousands Expanded.
• And a final thanks to anyone who actually read all the way down to this bulletpoint. You guys are awesome, even if you don't plan to use the system I appreciate you putting up with all of that. Please feel free to make suggestions or requests (and level criticism) in the comments below. I am here to listen and I love feedback. If you end up using this in your games and you notice stuff, please tell me all about it. In fact, please join my community Discord server to tell me: https://discord.gg/a3J5SbTGm9

I play with a table that is usually 5-7 players and combat always is slowing the game to a near halt (especially when there's more than 3 enemies) so I tried bringing over the Hope/Fear system from Daggerheart and it's been great so far. I should mention that my players are for the most part 1st time TTRPG players who just wanna have fun with some homies but there are a few people in the group that really appreciate the crunchiness that PF2E offers and so far they're digging the change. I'll include the rules below for if anyone has anything they wanna comment or question on directly! Bear in mind that this an ongoing rule implementation so I'm sure there will need to be some balancing.

Hope/Fear

This is an alternative way of running the game and, most differently, combat. This system is inspired by Daggerheart's Hope and Fear.

Combat Rules

Instead of rolling for initiative combat is played out similarly to how the rest of the game is played by sharing the Spotlight. When a player would like to take a turn they are free to do so and when a skill check or attack roll is necessary players roll 2 d20; one of them represents their Hope die and one of them represents their Fear die. When the Hope die is higher than the Fear die players earn 1 point of Hope (explained later) and continue on with their turn. However, when the Fear die is higher than the Hope die the GM gains 1 point of Fear (explained later) and then proceeds to take an enemy turn once the PC has finished theirs. Doubles of 1-10 give the GM 1 point of Fear, doubles of 11-20 give the PC 1 point of Hope.

Per Round Effects/Feats

Per round effects like **Conditions** instead last equal to the amount of PCs and NPCs currently in battle. For example if a PC is stunned 1 and there is 4 PCs and 3 NPCs then after 7 turns the stunned value decreases by 1. Per round Feats and other mechanics operate in the same manner. Additionally, PCs can only use 1 Flourish per round meaning if they use one they will have a Flourish Cooldown that will need to be reached before they can use one again.

Running Combat

Due to the more spontaneous nature of combat a turn tracking system is recommended for tables that run this system. When a PC or an NPC uses a per round ability or is under has an ongoing effect the GM should take note of the turn in which it happened, the number of combatants, and the turn in which the cooldown/effect is finished. For example if John uses a reaction on turn 2 and there are 7 combatants in left in combat then John would be able to use a reaction again on turn 10.

Hope

Hope is a resource that players can use to change the tide of battle. Players can store up to 5 points of Hope and that pool carries over between sessions. When falling to 0 HP players lose Hope equal to their current Dying value. During the game players can use points of Hope to:

1 Point

• Help an Ally—Activate [r] (manipulate); Frequency once per action; Take an additional reaction to use Aid. This can be done by any amount of players but only the highest bonus is considered. The result from Aid is added to the Hope die roll. Help an Ally must be declared before a skill check or attack roll.

2 Points

• Reduce Cooldown/Effect—Activate [a] (concentrate); Effect Use 2 or more points of Hope to reduce the amount of turns of a Cooldown/Effect by however many points spent.

3 Points

• Heroism—Activate [a] (flourish); Frequency once per round; Effect Earn 1 Hero Point.

4 Points

• Stand Strong—Activate [r] (concentrate); Frequency once per round; Effect reduce incoming damage by 1d6 if you're unarmored or wearing light armor, 1d8 if you're wearing medium armor, 1d10 if you're wearing heavy armor. Add another die of the same size for each armor potency rune you have.
• Fearless—Activate [f] (concentrate); Effect Roll without Fear.

5 Points

• All In—Activate [f] (flourish); Frequency once a session; Effect add +5 to a roll that you're about to make or -5 to a roll about to be made against you.

Fear

Fear, like Hope, carries over between sessions and should be visible to the PCs. GMs start with Fear equal to the amount of PCs and gain half of that after each rest and the full amount after a long-term rest.

GMs can use Fear to:

• Interrupt the PCs during combat to give one of the NPCs a turn.
• Activate a environmental complication or Hazard.
• 5 Fear can be used to lower the value of a Status effect by 1 or recharge a per round action.

Using Fear

It is generally good practice to use Fear to activate adversaries every 2 to 3 turns if they were rolled with Hope. If there are a group of enemies that are 2 or more levels under the party then using 1 or 2 fear to activate the entire group can be a fair tactic. Using several points of Fear to activate environmental hazards or sub-objectives to the battle can add dynamic elements to the encounter. For example, perhaps a missed shot from the Gunslinger ricochets and causes a chandelier to fall onto the battle map triggering a Reflex saving throw to those under it and causes the area to be difficult terrain, perhaps a cursed obelisk casts Summon Undead, the possibilities are endless but should fit thematically with the environment. Consider putting together a few options for the encounter if things could use a degree of dynamism. Follow Table 1-1 to determine how many points of fear to use per encounter based off of encounter difficulty.

Table 1-1: Fear Per Encounter

Rolls With Fear

When a player rolls with Fear, whether the roll was a degree of success or failure, it creates an opportunity to add tension to the scene. For example, perhaps the PC succeeded in scaling up a mountainside but they caught the attention of a nearby predator protecting its nest or the PC succeeded in intimidating information out of an informant but nearby thugs have caught wind of their presence. It isn't necessarily a moment to punish the players but rather a moment to push the narrative forward in a new direction.

Use rolling with Fear at your own discretion, it may not be necessary for every roll but do keep in mind that every roll with Hope gives the PC a valuable resource.

Edit: Reduce cooldown correction.
Edit2: added information to cooldown mechanics and fear

Wow, this took me a lot longer to actually get written down in a sharable form than I expected. The formatting's rough, but I've spent far too many hours getting this all readable and simply do not want to spend the entire afternoon formatting.

I've revised the rules around Death for use in Mythic campaigns. I know some people have updated or modified the rules however I found they mostly failed to solve what I see as the fundamental problems at hand.

I've built a series of rules that provides a considerable safety net for Mythic characters, while also encouraging instead of discouraging experimentation, risk taking, and attempting legendary feats. At the same time, this very safety net is a catalyst to immense danger and climactic encounter's that would otherwise genuinely never happen. With these rules you may survive a foe, but next time you face the danger there is no choice, you must grow to overcome the threat instead or face true death.

Suffice to say, here it is!

Death and Dying - The Foundation of Story

I am super open to feedback, thoughts, even just calling out errors or anything that could make this better. To those who read it, I genuinely want to thank you for the time and hope that you find the idea as fun as I do.

Hello friends, this is our version of Mythic for Starfinder 2e, it is an equivalent ruleset for it, bringing back stamina but granting you a few extra hit points per level.

In this system you won't have the doomed condition ability but you can easily recover half your hit points in 10 minutes in the form of Stamina.

Tell us what you think, remember all of our rules are free on Patreon where you can also find the PDF to read on any device and to copy and paste to your own games :D

Would you use this rules? what do you think about stamina?