Pathfinder 2E PF2e House Rules:

[dave2008]

Is 4 days after release to early for house rule? I don't think so!

Now, to be clear, I have only started going through the rules (the SRD - I haven't purchased anything yet). However, there are some things I and my group have become accustomed to if we want to give PF2e a try we would need to make some changes.

I'll get started:

HR-01, Hit Points: Every since 4e added the "bloodied" condition my group has been dissatisfied with the pure abstraction of hit points. So we have created Bloodied Hit Points (BHP) in our 5e game. I would do the same in PF2e. BHP are actually meat points. When you are taking BHP you are taking real damage. Here is what we do:
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• Hit Points work normally.
• Each creature gets BHP equal to its size (1d8 for Medium) + Str mod. There are modifiers for creature type also, but PCs generally don't get those.
• You take damage to your BHP when:
  • When you have 0 HP, any damage you take, including additional damage from the attack that reduced you to 0 HP, is deducted from your BHP total.
  • Your are hit by a natural critical hit (refer to HR-06) when you have more than 0 HP.

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HR-02, Armor Class / DR: We like armor to have a bit of DR. Here is my proposed House Rule (please not it is integral with HR-01).
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• When you are hit and take damage to your BHP (refer to HR-01), the damage you take is reduced by the armor your wearing. The damage reduction is equal to the armor's AC bonus. If the damage is reduced to 0, the hit is considered a miss (not 100% sure on this part).

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HR-03, Ranged Weapons: There doesn't seem to be any action cost for loading some ranged weapons. This would need to go in the weapon property, but generally:
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• Bows: 1 action (load 1)
• Crossbow: 2 actions (load 2)
• Hand Crossbow: 1 action (load 1)
• Heavy crossbow: 3 actions (load 3)
• Composite Longbow: 1 action (load 1)
• Composite Shortbow: 1 action (load 1)
• Longbow: 1 action (load 1)
• Shortbow: 1 action (load 1)
• possibly feat to reduce load cost?
• possibly reduce load cost by 1 with a -5 penalty to hit?

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HR-04, Death, Dying, and Wounds: The rules for death, dying and wounds do not appear to be in the SRD yet (or I am looking in the wrong place). So I can't provide a finalized alternate, but here is what I have so far:
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• Death at 0 BHP. When your BHP reaches 0 you are dead. No save, no negative hit points, just dead.

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HR-05, Healing & Rest: I need to review the SRD on this first. However:
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• BHP heal at the rate of 1 BHP per week of rest or by magic.

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HR-06, Critical Hits: To accommodate HR-01, I would add (the +10 rule applies normally) the following to critical hits:
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• When you make an attack and roll a 20 this is called a natural critical hit. If you naturally critically succeed with at a Strike, your attack deals one weapon damage to the BHP of your opponent.

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HR-07, +Level: There will be an officail option for this in January, so I will reserve this space for that.

How about you, any changes you have to have? Any changes you want to see?

 

[FowlJ]

Reload is actually a mechanic for ranged weapons, technically. Not for actual bows, but light crossbows and slings are take 1 action to reload and heavy crossbows take 2.

 

[zztong]

Is 4 days after release to early for house rule? I don't think so!

It's certainly not too early. While folks might quibble that it's too early to be fixing broken rules, it isn't too early for a DM to be making changes to support their custom setting or the homebrew story they're telling.

Ranged Actions: There doesn't seem to be any action cost for loading a ranged weapon. This would need to go in the weapon property, but generally: Loading a ranged weapon: 1 action

I could also see an "aim" action that integrates with improved range modifiers. High rates of bow fire are usually associated with snap shots at close opponents. So decrease the range modifiers and then let an aim actions restore them.

How about you, any changes you have to have? Any changes you want to see?

I sometimes want a game where magical healing only restores non-physical damage. That is, on the assumption that hit points largely mean using some available energy to avoid taking damage, that magic (and short-term rest) can then restore that energy. But any significant real damage to the body needs extended rest and time that cannot be cured by magic, or at least not cured as quickly as many RPGs let it happen.

In PF1, this can kind-of be accomplished by damaging CON after a character runs out of hit points. I'm not sure what all I'd have to change with PF2. Death, Dying, Healing, Rest for sure.

 

[Mycroft]

Omission of +Level; tried it during the playtest, really worked for us.

 

[Jer]

Reload is actually a mechanic for ranged weapons, technically. Not for actual bows, but light crossbows and slings are take 1 action to reload and heavy crossbows take 2.

If you're trying to figure out where this is in the SRD, the rules for reloading are in the page on weapon rules: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=218

The actual stats of how many actions it takes each weapon to reload are in the ranged weapon table under the column titled "Reload": https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx

 

[dave2008]

Reload is actually a mechanic for ranged weapons, technically. Not for actual bows, but light crossbows and slings are take 1 action to reload and heavy crossbows take 2.

Yes, that is what I was referring too. The fact that bows don't require an action to load I would house rule from 0 to 1.

 

[dave2008]

If you're trying to figure out where this is in the SRD, the rules for reloading are in the page on weapon rules: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=218

The actual stats of how many actions it takes each weapon to reload are in the ranged weapon table under the column titled "Reload": https://2e.aonprd.com/Weapons.aspx

Yes, that is what I was referring to. I think bows should be 1 action.

 

[Jer]

Yes, that is what I was referring to. I think bows should be 1 action.

Ah - you only said "ranged weapons" so I thought the whole rule might have been missed.

Are you going to increase the action cost required to load a crossbow to then? It seems strange to require the same amount of time to knock an arrow as it does to load a bolt into a crossbow mechanism (at least it does when I compare their modern equivalents to each other).

 

[dave2008]

I could also see an "aim" action that integrates with improved range modifiers. High rates of bow fire are usually associated with snap shots at close opponents. So decrease the range modifiers and then let an aim actions restore them.

Yes, I could see a bunch of different options. There could be a feat that increases your rate of fire too.

I sometimes want a game where magical healing only restores non-physical damage. That is, on the assumption that hit points largely mean using some available energy to avoid taking damage, that magic (and short-term rest) can then restore that energy. But any significant real damage to the body needs extended rest and time that cannot be cured by magic, or at least not cured as quickly as many RPGs let it happen.

In PF1, this can kind-of be accomplished by damaging CON after a character runs out of hit points. I'm not sure what all I'd have to change with PF2. Death, Dying, Healing, Rest for sure.

Yes, I don't know the PF2e rules on this yet, so I need to review it in detail first.

 

[dave2008]

Ah - you only said "ranged weapons" so I thought the whole rule might have been missed.

Are you going to increase the action cost required to load a crossbow to then? It seems strange to require the same amount of time to knock an arrow as it does to load a bolt into a crossbow mechanism (at least it does when I compare their modern equivalents to each other).

The heavy crossbow is already 2 actions, so that is good already. The question is should the light crossbow require an additional action. I don't know. I have never seen a "light" crossbow loaded IRL. That being said from what I have read, real heavy crossbows could take 15 seconds or more for an experienced person to load aim and fire. So I could see heavy crossbow have a loading time of 3 and light crossbow a time of 2.