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I thought we could share here our own houserules, coming from more than 4 completed AP with a DM/Players turn over, with around 3-4 PC with 25 Points Buy, and many hombrew and little one shots.
First of all, the first Houserule: if anything is broken or bad, we nerf or up it. If anything in the houserule change a capacity of a class/feat and the like, we change it too to adapt with our houserule in mind. All houserules are for PCs and NPCs/Monsters.
Character Creation and Progression:
- 25 Point Buy, all Archyves of Nethys allowed.
- No more than three classes (counting dips and Prestige Classes) and 2 Archetypes in total allowed.
- Consolidated Skills from Pathfinder Unchained.
- Martial Prof for everyone, one Exotic Prof for Martials.
- One bonus feat for everyone (in addition to Human for example, or the weapon rule above).
Combat:
- Finesse is a Weapon property. Not a feat. You can add DEX to hit & dammage with a Finesse weapon if you got only one finesseable weapon and nothing in the other hand. You still need Slashing Grace for a Bastard Sword, and Double Finesse for TWF or Agile, and the like for other fighting style.
- Power Attack, Deadly Aim, and Combat Expertise are not feats, but attack options avaible for everyone. You choose to use them at the start of the round.
- Maneuvers don't provock attacks of opportunity. All the other standards rules are still working as in the book. The first feat for each maneuver is not mandatory to access the feat tree.
- You can take your Simple action whenever you want inside your movement action. You can start the movement, hit or cast in the middle, and finish it. (You still follow all the other rules, like Acrobatics or Attack of opportunity)
- You take not penalty other than cover for shooting in a melee, so Precise Shot is useless.
- When you do a touch attack for whatever reason, you can chose to hit the normal AC and do a punch in the same time. Cleric with Touch Powers and a Spiked Gauntlet are a thing, and a fun one. If you miss, you miss both the punch and the touch ability.
Abilities:
- Strength 16-18-20 remove the movement and skill penalty of armors (light, medium, heavy) and shields. Not the Dex bonus though.
- A character with a Charisma of 16+ start the game session with a free scroll or potion in accordance of his chossing in accordance with his level. Because he is either "always ready" or "well connected", and because Charisma is a dump stat.
Magic Items and loots:
- Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder Unchained.
- Consumables scales on the DC and abilities of the user, like a Staff. They tend to cost a LOOOT more (like 3-4 times the base price), are rarer and way more powerfull. You will rarely see a full wand with 50 charges, but it will make very memorable use of a Fireball scroll for example. And a 12 Charges Cure light Wounds is an awesome loot for low level party.
- No UMD require to use an item. Use your best mental stat. Yup, the Fighter can suddenly put off a scroll and Summon a Dire Lion, big effect.
- We go wild in the loot department, from body part of monster as a one time ingredient for a spell that give +1 DC or something, or a story feat, or a possessed item than each session you got to save to avoid mental domination, and the list goes on. Magic item tends to be more rare but more impactfull, but loot will be plenty, and always of use. If you like an item, you can disenchant it with Crafting Feats, and put some of it inside another one, and we tend to scale the DC of the big items of an AP on level progression. Of course you got to loot the strong item from the baddie first, so he will be more dangerous. I would say the frequency of loot is midway between a regular AP and a DnD 5 adventure.
Buff & Magic:
- Buff (and only buff, no hostile effect) duration is called "scenes". A scene is a narrative moment that make sense, like a room with one fight, or a chase in an alley, or a conversation in a social gala. So a scene can be 2 min in story time if you kill the monster quietly in the room, or 20 minutes because they came in wave after wave. The DM always call: The scene is over.
- 1 hour/ level is the whole day, 10 min/level is three scenes, 1 min/level is two scenes, less is 1 scene. Why? To avoid the "rush while buff are active, roleplay or caution later", to avoid the "my buff at low level suck and are not worth it" and the "late game I go all buff all day".
- No more than two pets, summons or the like for one player or one NPC. To reduce time of turn.
- Dispel Magic is a Swift Action that target an effect of your choice of the lowest level on the target (or in the area). Dispel Greater is the same but without level restriction on the dispelled effect. (You still roll the check of course). Mage Disjunction is banned from the game. Dispelling what you made 10 min to number check suck. Pathfinder is done poorly to handle huge dispells. So it is nerfed, but it's Swift Action so still worth it for that Mirror Image or Stoneskin.
Trivia:
- Death is death. All rez spells are banned, and you got to go to great length, sacrifice and roleplay to access a rez. We had, for example, mecanical reaincarnation in Iron Gods, Undead Rising as part of a deal with a Ghoul of Nemret Nektoria, or divine intervention through act of faith.
Each houserule is voted by the group, and at the end of each huge chapter of a campaign we reavaluate the list together. The list has been consistent for the last two years, so I am finaly confortable enough to share it here. I hope it inspires some of you. Feel free to ask questions!
In general, feat tax is reduce, loot is stronger and more flavorfull and thematic and rare, combat are more mobile and polyvalent, and roleplay take a bigger place than in regular Pathfinder because over optimization and rush has been reduced, and PC will be stronger but NPC too, and death will be scary. You will see the Barbarian use a Scroll, or the Wizard critic with Deadly Aim on the crossbow. You will have your players in joy on a Wand of Mirror Image or a Book that give a perma +2 into one SKill, and people will move around trying to bullrush into hazards or trip as AoO way more.