Ada Venture's page

So we have taken to a very literal approach to awarding hero points in a session. Every hour we take a break as players. As the GM, I also look over the past hour's play and award a hero point to the the hour's MVP. All the players are in the discussion so its pretty fairly awarded, and tying it to the hour break means we aren't hero point starved that session by forgetting it.

As a side benefit, when the players know they can win a hero point each hour, they are both more likely to use it and more likely to do things that may warrant it then they would if it was never awarded throughout a game session. It brings the mechanic front and center. Sure, its a bit clunky compared to a more elegant in-game at the moment awarding, but it seems to work for us.

I am a 'came from 5e' person. I DMed 5e since launch. Ran maybe half of every campaign WOTC put out to at least lvl 5 and two to level 10. Was an Adventure League DM for a year too. Even have a weekly homebrew game in 5e. So I would say I was and am a fan of their stuff. But lately I felt, i dunno, bored with their campaigns. Something was missing. I started not caring about the new product releases and I wasn't sure why.

Then I happened to pick up the PF2 Core book at Gencon this year with Hellknight Hill (signed by the author, which was a nice bonus). I read through the rules and the adventure and saw something I was missing in latest D&D modules; a deep story set within a deeper setting and run in a tactically interesting system. I think PF2 is exactly what I was missing.

Now I have convinced my 5e group to give the Age of Ashes AP a try. We had a playtest of PF2s rules first on New Years with Plaguestone and everyone had a great time. The module had interesting things happening for non obvious reasons (good storytelling) and every combat with the group was fun and fresh. People really seemed to grok the 3 action economy quickly. At one point the druid asked if he could use an action he had on his sheet to calm the guard dogs instead of fight them. That was a perfect example of PF2's explicit actions helping players be creative. I loved it.

I'm honestly more excited for the next session of PF2 with AoA this sunday than I am for tonight's year long homebrew game in 5e.