For my Abomination Vaults campaign:
Potent Potions
Healing Consumables generally heal 10 hp per item level, unless they provide some kind of additional bonus or benefit, when they generally heal 6 hp per item level (often rounded up to a multiple of 10). Also, you can draw a consumable as part of the action that activates it. You still need a free hand.
Example: A Lesser Elixir of Life now heals 30 hp (since it is a level 5 consumable with additional effects) instead of 3d6+6 hp. The item goes from 0.55 hp per gold piece and more importantly 5.5 hp per action taken (assuming you need three actions to draw and drink the elixir and then re-wield your weapon) to 1 hp per gold piece and 15 hp per action taken (assuming two actions needed: draw and drink, then re-wield).
Rationale: nobody ever purchased RAW healing potions; they're just too expensive, heals too little (with too much variability) and takes too long to use. Also, makes having a healbot Cleric less mandatory and saves on useless dice rolling.
Special Note: The Abomination Vaults campaigns caps magic item purchases to level 5,
but not for consumables.
Hero Points
I hand out four (4) hero points each time the party ventures forth. This replaces unused previous hero points.
Rationale: Not gonna interrupt the game every hour to hand out a reward akin to how all the kids get a gold star thus making the reward meaningless. This gives the players an incentive to return to civilization despite there really being zero risk in just camping out in a cleaned-out section of the dungeon. And returning to civilization is where you can role-play against NPCs.
New ways to spend hero points:
- Spend 1 Hero Point to add +5 to any check, before you make that check. This is a fortune effect.
- Spend 1 Hero Point at the start of your turn to gain an additional action. You can only do this once per turn.
- Spend all your Hero Points (minimum 1) to convert instant death into a critical hit.
- Spend all your Hero Points (minimum 1) to grant one Hero Point to a creature of your choice. If it isn't used when you gain new Hero Points, it is lost.
Recall Knowledge
Everybody gets a free monster knowledge check at the start of an encounter. (More recall knowledge checks can be taken by spending actions as normal.)
This greatly reduces the impact from the thoroughly broken (not as in overpowered but the complete opposite) Recall Knowledge rules. Wasting combat actions for a ~50% shot at learning something that might or might not be useful just isn't thought through by Paizo. I'm not gonna come up with three or five instant facts just because Paizo says I must in various stupid feats, or come up with instant false facts just because Paizo says I must on rolling a critical failure. The developer who came up with that needs to lose their job.
My players simply accepted that in the rare cases when everybody failed the free check, they did the fight "blind". And nothing of importance was lost.
No Runes!
Runes cannot be purchased, only found through adventure. (So it's not quite no runes, just few runes, but that wouldn't make for a catchy title)
Enchantments are (re)-introduced as non-transferable bonuses providing the necessary basics the game expects: the bonuses to attack, damage, AC and saves. You can purchase a +1 sword just fine, it just doesn't have a "+1" thingy you can transfer elsewhere. Enchantments work exactly as runes except they can't be moved.
Note: this stocks the magic shoppes with the basics: the bonuses to "the big four": attack, damage, AC and saves. You still won't find a +1 Flaming sword to purchase. Loot it or craft it.
Putting the magical back into magic items. Specific magic weapons go from vendor trash you first strip for runes to actual desirable items to use. Runes themselves go from ho-hum to highly-sought after.
By the way, I combine this with
High-Quality Weapons and Armor as written, simply because I dislike a world where everything is magical. Other than possibly making it harder to use Detect Magic to find loot this has very little practical impact on your campaign.
