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These Hero Points work differently and replace the ones from the rulebook.
You start the campaign with 2 Hero Points. You gain one more for every adventure book after the first in the adventure path (each AP features six books), so your hero can expect roughly ~7 Hero Points over twenty levels. You can never have more than 2 Hero Points, so if you don't use at least one during each book, you will waste them.
When you spend a Hero Point, choose one out of three benefits:
1) change a failure or critical failure your character just witnessed into a success, or change a success into a critical success
2) immediately gain and take 2 actions
3) be removed from current danger; personal survival ensured
You can spend one (or both) Hero Points at any time, not just during your own turn.
Hero Point Usage Details
1)
Use this to ensure that your character succeeds where you feel failure would ruin the character's story or reputation. You can choose to spend your Hero Point after seeing the result. You can improve the results of other characters, as long as your character is present during the scene (physically or otherwise).
2)
You gain 2 actions, and use them immediately. If you do this during your own turn, you have two extra (normally 5) actions to mix and match as you please. If you do this during another character's turn, you interrupt them. Consider this to be a free action with the trigger "at any time, for any reason" (see page 461). Your initiative is not changed. You can do this to jump out of harm's way, cast a spell quickly, or use a skill before it's too late.
3)
This is a genuine "extra life" where you and the GM comes up with a story of how you end up alive, despite the odds. Spending a Hero Point this way will take you out of action and out of the scene. Classic examples: you fall from a cliff but a thorny brush catches your fall. You're in a shipwreck, but wash up ashore on a foreign beach. You're a soldier losing a battle, but are left for dead and wake up bloody beneath some dead bodies. Even assured death can be averted – if you fall unconscious on the elemental plane of fire, *something* makes you survive! (Perhaps a fluke portal whisks you to safety, or perhaps you spontaneously gain temporary fire immunity?) Spending a Hero Point this way only saves you (and your gear) personally. You can't save your friends and allies this way, only yourself. At the very least you're preventing a Total Party Kill.
(Saw the existing thread on Hero Points, didn't want to hijack)
My reasons for replacing the rulebook system include:
The RAW Hero Points can work well when you play, say, a Pathfinder Society four-hour game with people you have never met before. Each hour the GM selects one of the player for a nice little reward, and over four hours everyone gets something.
It doesn't work at all for me, playing Sundays from 1 p.m. to maybe 10 p.m. with the same five friends each week. Being taken out of the game every hour would wreck the rhythm of the game; being asked to continously select that hour's "best roleplayer" or whatever feels entirely unwarranted and unwanted.
Also, the rulebook Hero Point rule is too generous and too stingy at the same time.
Too generous in the sense that you get rerolls every single session, reminding me of D&D 5's Inspiration. Getting things for free that you otherwise have to fight hard to attain just short-circuits good play.
Too stingy in that a re-roll can just fail again. The narrative power just isn't there. Especially since the power is at its weakest when you try something hard! And the auto-stabilizing thing definitely does not save you from death. Honestly, it comes off as a stop-gap measure to mitigate swinginess - as something Paizo felt forced to add to shut up complaints from playtesters.
In short, the system involves the GM too much for the relatively weak benefits. I want something more hands-off, and I definitely want something much more powerful (narratively speaking).
As you can see, my system gives real narrative power to the player. If failing at a given skill check would ruin your character's core "schtick", then use a Hero Point to... not fail!
And if a TPK is looming, use a Hero Point to miraculously survive. Even if your friends all perish, you live to tell the tale, and more to the point: gather a new party and continue the existing adventure!
Thank you for reading,
Quote: It doesn't work at all for me, playing Sundays from 1 p.m. to maybe 10 p.m. with the same five friends each week. Being taken out of the game every hour would wreck the rhythm of the game; being asked to continously select that hour's "best roleplayer" or whatever feels entirely unwarranted and unwanted. I am running in a shorter session window, more akin to PFS, and I have considered the effect of suddenly jumping out of the game to award a hero point. So far, it hasn't been an issue because a couple of my players are relatively new to 2E so we are somewhat consistently jumping out to discuss or clarify how something works as compared to 1E. However, at some point that will not be much of an issue anymore. At that point, I am considering just awarding the hero point without actually announcing it. We are playing online using Roll20 and using the Deck mechanic to track hero points. I could easily deal out an HP without so much as a break in my narrative and it'll just be there next to the player's name. They may not even notice right away they got one.
I don't think players generally remember how many HPs they have until/unless they fail or suspect they failed a die roll or are dropped to Dying. Then their eyes shoot to their HP bank to see what they have to spend.
Spending a hero point of course will always interrupt the game, though you could mitigate it by requiring the player to do something in-game. In our case, spending the HP requires them to toss the HP on the "table" and then I take it back into the deck. They could do that somewhat seamlessly by saying, "[preferred deity's name], please guide my hand to complete this task, blah blah blah." It doesn't even need to be the deity they worship. It could be one more applicable to the action being performed. YMMV
Zapp, have you been using your alternative Hero Point system? If so, how's it been working out? It looks to me like there would be a risk of it draining tension from the game when everyone has a guaranteed survival method in reserve. But maybe that doesn't happen in real play?
Matthew Downie wrote: Zapp, have you been using your alternative Hero Point system? If so, how's it been working out? It looks to me like there would be a risk of it draining tension from the game when everyone has a guaranteed survival method in reserve. But maybe that doesn't happen in real play? We're using it, yes.
More importantly, we've been using Fate Points in Warhammer FRP for decades, so I feel I am positioned to give you an honest reply to your specific inquiry:
While your concern is understandable, it quickly evaporates in actual play. Yes, you have effectively an extra life, but since those are still very limited, players still avoid losing them like... players try to avoid dying...! That is, with the possible exception of a newcomer, players don't do reckless acts just because they have a Fate Point. They know that death is looming once you start using them up. Each fate point is meant to be used when you would otherwise become a cold clammy corpse; as a way to extend the heroic journey of your particular character.
The key, and this is borne from lots of playing, is to restrict the number of Fate/Hero Points you can accumulate. The core rules of Warhammer never limits this, and back in first edition we found that once a player has more than two, and definitely when she has 4-5, the illusion breaks, and the player is tempted to act like an immortal: "I'll run into the burning building. Sure my chance to save the countess is slim, but it's not like burning alive is gonna kill me! So let me roll the skill check - worst case scenario you'll dig me out of the wreckage in the morning or sumthin'".
That would indeed be bad. Still, let's not forget why we're incorporating Fate Points into our Pathfinder 2 game: in order to justify our time and attention the mechanism needs to have real narrative power, and the RAW implementation (a mere reroll) simply does not deliver.
We learnt the hard way that the solution here is to strictly limit Fate points to a maximum of 2. Not necessarily 2 in total, even over a whole mega-campaign with a hundred sessions - as GM you can award more (depending on campaign length and lethality). No, I'm talking a maximum of 2 at any one time = if you haven't used up one of them when you're awarded a third, you simply lose that reward without recompense.
As you can see, I have simply carried across this learnt experience to my PF2 Hero Point redux.
I notice you've argued in other threads for giving suitably important enemies some equivalent of 5e's legendary saves (to replace the incapacitation trait). Could you combine the two ideas together, and give enemies hero (villain?) points? Or, if you don't mind things being a little metagamy, give the GM some villain points which he can use on any enemy he likes?
You might have to restrict the "incredible survival" option though, since it's expected that enemies will be killed in the encounter they appear in so it would arguably be rather silly of them to squander their points on anything else.
Re: villain points.
It comes down to to this:
Should the GM actively use meta points against the heroes?
For some, even the notion that the GM gets to decide which monsters get plot armor is too much. They prefer the hands-off approach taken by Incapacitation: any monster that fulfills this or that criteria, gets plot armor.
I have no problem with this level of "meta assistance". After all, you decide that more as an adventure writer than as the games master. It is decided well before the encounter is played out. It doesn't change once the encounter is underway. Which monsters that are designated legendary doesn't change during play at all. It's preordained (for any given campaign).
I do however have a problem with villain points. They're meant to be used right there, in the encounter. Should THIS monster get them, or the NEXT? should I hold on to my villain points for "later" or spend them now? That makes me an active participant to a degree I find uncomfortable. Not to mention the added admin; I'm the GM - I already have my plate full. I don't need more variables to track.
Deciding when I write an adventure that Mr X gets plot armor is not shafting the players. Deciding on the spot that the monster suddenly gets to reroll a failed save does. It makes me feel like a dick, especially to the spellcaster whose spell now goes down the drain.
But mostly it comes down to this: I'm the GM, I can *already* help or hinder the NPCs as I see fit, to create the best experience for the players. I am not gonna pretend I play fair by using points accurately and stop when they run out! :-)
Look at it like this: every GM is already using invisible villain points of sorts, behind the scenes. And in one scene there might be zero villain points available, yet in the very next one, suddently there's a limitless amount!
These invisible villain points are of course not used for benefits as tangible as re-rolls or anything the players can detect. There aren't really any points, and nobody's keeping count. It's just that some monsters get lots of little benefits - where they're placed (can they escape), do they start the encounter already pre-buffed, are there any scrip-based events that will help or hinder them, and how they are directed to act (will they put themselves into situations that are extra dangerous? will an ally sacrifice itself to help you?), and so on and so on.
So no, I prefer to leave actual points that you count to the players and their characters.
Regards, Zapp
Zapp wrote: Re: villain points.
It comes down to to this:
Should the GM actively use meta points against the heroes?
For some, even the notion that the GM gets to decide which monsters get plot armor is too much. They prefer the hands-off approach taken by Incapacitation: any monster that fulfills this or that criteria, gets plot armor.
I have no problem with this level of "meta assistance". After all, you decide that more as an adventure writer than as the games master. It is decided well before the encounter is played out. It doesn't change once the encounter is underway. Which monsters that are designated legendary doesn't change during play at all. It's preordained (for any given campaign).
I do however have a problem with villain points. They're meant to be used right there, in the encounter. Should THIS monster get them, or the NEXT? should I hold on to my villain points for "later" or spend them now? That makes me an active participant to a degree I find uncomfortable. Not to mention the added admin; I'm the GM - I already have my plate full. I don't need more variables to track.
Deciding when I write an adventure that Mr X gets plot armor is not shafting the players. Deciding on the spot that the monster suddenly gets to reroll a failed save does. It makes me feel like a dick, especially to the spellcaster whose spell now goes down the drain.
But mostly it comes down to this: I'm the GM, I can *already* help or hinder the NPCs as I see fit, to create the best experience for the players. I am not gonna pretend I play fair by using points accurately and stop when they run out! :-)
Look at it like this: every GM is already using invisible villain points of sorts, behind the scenes. And in one scene there might be zero villain points available, yet in the very next one, suddently there's a limitless amount!
These invisible villain points are of course not used for benefits as tangible as re-rolls or anything the players can detect. There aren't really any points, and nobody's keeping...
That's a fair point. And yeah, I'd noticed there's a...resistance to the idea of legendary saves around here. But why not give 1-2 of these hero points to individual enemies when making the adventure, instead of giving them legendary saves in 5e style? You could fluff it as certain creatures being chosen by Pharasma for great things, to give an in-universe explanation of why the PCs and "important" NPCs have the points and others don't.
Obviously, it might be a good idea to rename them to something less protagonist-centred, like "fate points".
Doing it this way means that there's some equality between the PCs and the NPCs - the plot-important NPCs are just receiving the same powers the PCs do, which may make it more palatable for people who don't like legendary saves. Burning away a hero/fate point is also more significant than burning away a legendary save - each point you force an enemy to spend in negating a nasty spell is one fewer two-action abilities the enemy can interrupt you with, so you've still achieved something significant. Rather than just getting the BBEG one step closer to actually being able to affect him with a spell.
As I think I said before, I'd suggest making the third option (surviving death) restricted to the PCs, and perhaps one or two enemies who you want to become recurring villains.
pi4t wrote: I'd suggest making the third option (surviving death) restricted to the PCs, and perhaps one or two enemies who you want to become recurring villains. If a GM wants a particular villain to survive death, then the villain should just survive death until the plot is ready for them to die. You don't need hero points for that.
But it should be restricted to a very select few NPCs and done sparingly.
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