Hero Points

[orphias]

Not a huge fan of the arbitrary nature of hero points. Had a play and pinched some stuff dark heresy.
Thoughts ?

Basically each campaign a PC starts with 3 hero points. You get a hero point back at the start of each chapter of a campaign. If you use a hero point to save you from death your max points are reduced by 1.

Hero Points

Heroic characters are unusual individuals with abilities, backgrounds, and experiences well beyond those of ordinary citizens or creatures of their race. More than anything, the role of Fate in such an individual’s life is what separates them from the masses.

All characters begin play in a campaign with 3 Hero Points (also known as Fate Points). For some, these Fate Points represent destiny, a sign that a higher power has marked them for greatness. For others, Hero Points may be the benefits of a powerful and magical bloodline, a faerie godmother, a dark pact or some other supernatural occurrence.

Using Fate Points

Fate Points allow an individual to manipulate situations by mitigating bad results or turning a mishap into fortune. Among other things, this allows players to take more risks, which makes the game faster and far more exciting.

Hero Pints have a limited pool, and when a Fate Point is spent, that pool is reduced by one. Spent Fate Points are restored at the beginning of the next gaming session, or possibly under special circumstances in the middle of a game session that the GM deems appropriate. A Fate Point can be used at any time, either on the character’s own Turn or in reaction to the action of another character.

Spending a Fate Point is a Free Action.
Spend one Fate Point allows you to do one
of the following:
• Re-roll a failed check once. The results of the re-roll are final.
• Add an extra Degree of Success to a test. This may be chosen after dice are rolled.

Burning Fate

Sometimes a re-roll or an extra Degree of Success is not going to be enough to save a hero’s life. In these instances, the character may choose to burn a Fate Point and permanently reduce his Fate Points by one.

The result is that the character survives whatever it was that would have killed him, but only just. For example, if the character was shot with a disintegrate and suffered a Critical Hit that would have killed him, instead he is only hideously burnt and rendered unconscious. In more extreme circumstances, such as being trapped on a skyship during an arcane drive implosion, it is up to the player and the GM to work out just how the character survives.

Gaining Additional Fate Points

Heroes are awarded additional Fate Points as the main adventure reaches certain milestones. They can at the DMs discretion also be rewarded for particular acts of heroism.

[Skeld]

Meh.

-Skeld

[Perpdepog]

I'm not sure why you'd ever want to re-roll a check using a hero point if you can also use a point to automatically bump your degree of success up by one step, aside from perhaps whenever you crit fail at something. Not to mention that given the party the ability to choose when they critically succeed can skew things in their favor, because now they can spend a hero point with every especially large and painful spell to reap its greatest benefits.

[ApoApostolov]

I agree with Skeld. Bumping success needs to cost 2 or 3 HP to be viable when you know you cannot get critical success but you can hit success easily, you simply choose not to waste 2 or 3 rerolls and get the crit effect.

[HumbleGamer]

It would make the deed heroic, without having to rely on fortune.

You are about to fail against a dragon breath...but then somehow

- manage to take cover with your shield
- your armor absorb part of the damage
- roll and manage to take half damage

Etc...

Personally I prefer this way, but:

Hero points should only be given by DM.

- no free hp at the start of each session

- no free hero point after every X hours of session

- hero points should be rare. Maybe 1 every 3/4 lvls. Or a campaign chapter (4-5 heroic actions per party, depends the party size, every 3/4 lvls ).

- increasing your degree by 1 step doesn't allow you to trigger your saving throws effects.

Ex: A fighter fails a Fortitude check. On a success he won’t consider it a critical one ( because of his perk ), but just a success. Same goes with anything else ( not only saving throws )

[RicoTheBold]

orphias wrote:

Hero Points (also known as Fate Points)

I think the worst thing about these rules is purely an editorial thing. Why do hero points have two names here? That's unnecessarily confusing, especially when it literally changes from sentence to sentence (and even mid-sentence).

Similarly, there's not really clear terminology for when the pool is spent vs. permanently reduced.

And there's contradictory rules here about getting hero points back: First it says they get them back at the start of each chapter, then later spent Fate Points are restored at the beginning of the next gaming session.

These seem, if anything, more arbitrary than the PF2e baseline rules. There are some flavor sentences in there that are pretty clearly trying to justify this approach or whatever, but that explanation could apply to the existing rules if that's what's needed.

Basically this feels like it could have been summed up with:
- Each character starts with a hero point pool size of 3
- This pool is refreshed to the character's current pool size each session, with possible bonus points mid-session at GM's discretion
- Hero points can be used to reroll a failed or critically failed check as per standard PF2e rules; this decision can be made after knowing the result of the check
- Hero points can also be used to make a success into a critical success
- If a hero point is used to stabilize from dying, the character's hero point pool is permanently reduced in size by 1
- It is also possible to spend a hero point to prevent death more narratively than just stabilizing from dying; the details must be worked out with the GM and the character's hero point pool is permanently reduced in size by 1

Note that I apparently interpreted the "add a degree of success" thing totally differently than everyone else based on the previous line because as they're pointing out, no one would ever choose to reroll a failure if they could make it an auto-success. Tweaking it to cost two hero points to make a success into a critical success could be done as suggested, I don't know if it matters that much, especially once the pool starts shrinking.

Similarly, there were multiple rules for when the pool refreshes, so I just went for the simplest one provided - every session. I think it makes the permanent reduction in pool size a pretty significant cost, which is actually kind of cool if your goal is to give a character a finite number of escapes from death and for each one to be really costly.