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As much as 2e combat can be fun and engaging, with the amazing 3-action economy and some incredibly fun feats like Whirling Throw in the game, I've been having a feeling recently that there was something a bit missing compared to other editions of d20 systems I used to play, and I think I finally managed to pin down what it is a little better. As much fun as it can be to get a Bleeding Finisher crit on a Swashbuckler or to have an enemy crit fail one of your spells as a Wizard, it seems like the great, great majority of cool moments in Pathfinder 2e boil down to one thing: extreme luck.
What's really missing, in my opinion of course, is limited-use abilities that let you, the player, choose when you're gonna have your flashy spotlight moment, or at least give yourself a huge chance that that will happen. Actively seeing you have a great opportunity in hand and making yourself shine, instead of just reacting to a moment of dice luck with a cool description. The great, great majority of martial abilities and feats are at-will, and even for casters using a top level slot hardly ever feels like something out of the ordinary. You have your rare thing like Quicken Spell in the bunch, but they're usually restricted in so many different ways that they're rarely worth using.
That being said, I do think there are some outliers. Ki Strike is a very cool Focus Spell for Monks that let you specifically have this one, powerful alpha strike when you want to, for no added action cost. Path of Iron from Martial Artist is another good example. Even more so than these two, the PT Gunslinger feat called Dance of Thunder, despite the not-so-perfect execution and being quite a weak feat for its level, shows the potential this kind of ability has if it's executed on a little better. I really hope we see more stuff like this in the future.
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I feel like the idea of Confident Finisher is to try and be this... even on miss, you get something.
It is, actually. But not even getting in the merit if the miss effect is strong enough to make you feel good or not... Panache > Finisher is still a routine, just a slightly different one from what normal martials do. Your ultra-finishing-move isn't as ultra when your main gameplan is doing it every round.
I would agree that there's plenty of design space in a lot of classes to add feats that give them limited use tricks that promise to do more than the things you can try every round.
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I'm good.
A lot of the at-will abilities have cinematic effects: leaping, knocking enemies around, and so forth. And I like the reliability of having these flashy effects available for multiple uses, being able to attempt them until they land.
Which might be why I dislike Ki Strike, somewhat for the same reason you seem to like it. It has limited use, therefore dramatic potential.
Except...
"I call upon my alpha strike!!" *whiff* "Ah...man"
Which is to say it has the opposite potential too of dramatic letdown.
That said, I think Swashbuckler has been made to have that higher risk/reward mechanic (which might explain why Investigators have that "predictable" Devise a Stratagem mechanic).
I don't know that Paizo wants to stray too much further away from the baseline since the dice already lend for randomness as you've noted, and high variability favors the NPCs who are the underdogs.
As for spellcasters, I think they already have their limited use abilities as in their highest slots which they break out for the boss battles. I can't see much stacking on top of that since the power curves are so tight in PF2 (thankfully).
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Can you give an example of what you're looking for? I don't disagree that 2e doesn't emulate this well, but I'm not sure most editions do it very well.
Uses/day abilities tend to be kinda poorly balanced. There's stuff like the 5e Frenzy Berserker for a one/day super mode but it's pretty mathematically bad too.
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Not to mention, there's a lot more manipulation of the odds of getting those huge crit swings in this edition. Even against a creature two levels over the party, you can turn what used to be a long shot, "need that 20" 5% chance into a 20% chance for a crit. To say nothing of what that style of play can bring for at-level or lower level creatures.
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What's really missing, in my opinion of course, is limited-use abilities that let you, the player, choose when you're gonna have your flashy spotlight moment
The reason this was removed in 2E is as follows:
If you have a win button that's limited to once per day, players will fight 1 encounter, then rest for a day. 1E full casters would do this a lot.
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You know, I've heard that idea so much, but only ever actually played in one game that went that way. Otherwise it's been like "ok, after that encounter everyone goes to sleep for the night in a cozy extradimensional space. Fine. Plot happens, because you aren't there to stop it, enemies find the damage you already did and consolidate defenses, the hostages you were going to save get executed, etc."
Also, its not like you can't have a limited use ability that is worthwhile but isn't a full "I Win Button".
It's a difficult one, because Paizo sees a lot of games but we only see our own.
An example from my personal experience is that my parties are usually happy to run away because we have a lot of wargamers and system optimizers, but I'm told that in general an RPG party will TPK rather than run.
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Plenty of once per minute or once per day abilities exist already.
Once per minute: Dragon’s Rage Breath (a bit special because it can be done again with second wind, but also it has a secondary restriction of becoming weaker if done more than once per hour), Cadence Call, Astonishing Explosion, Enduring Debilitation, Path of Iron, Tumbling Opportunist
Once per day: Arrow of Death, Determination, Phase Arrow
Some of these don’t even have a magical flavour, they’re purely martial. And no one is complaining about them. I think it would be fairly easy to add more once/day or once/minute feats with a higher power level.
What's really missing, in my opinion of course, is limited-use abilities that let you, the player, choose when you're gonna have your flashy spotlight momentThe reason this was removed in 2E is as follows:
If you have a win button that's limited to once per day, players will fight 1 encounter, then rest for a day. 1E full casters would do this a lot.
I always think that usage-per-day limitation of "spotlighty" effects will never work well for balancing because of this 5MWD (5 minute work day) problem. Hence I'd rather handle things the "charge on the spot (the longer the ability's potency is stronger) then fire away" style, just like this video game handled its spells without even using mana points.
5MWD is a table issue, not a game issue. If the players and the DM all agree to play that way, then that's how they'll play and there's no sense in having Paizo or people on the forums police them... and 5MWD only works if the people involved consent to that kind of game.
If we were really that worried about longevity, even having spells/day in PF2 clearly exacerbates that problem. It's just inevitable that having adventuring days that go way too long or way too short throw off the game's balance and it doesn't make a lot of sense to be concerned over what-ifs like that.
Can you give an example of what you're looking for? I don't disagree that 2e doesn't emulate this well, but I'm not sure most editions do it very well.
Uses/day abilities tend to be kinda poorly balanced. There's stuff like the 5e Frenzy Berserker for a one/day super mode but it's pretty mathematically bad too.
I mean, I did in the post. Ki Strike, Path of Iron and Dance of Thunder (playtest) are three really cool examples IMO. The last one is on the weaker side but that's fine balancing, the idea is awesome!
Exocist also gave other examples, and most of them are great. I'm not really asking for some paradigm in the game to completely change or something, just a "hey, this kind of stuff is cool, can we get more of it?".
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I've noticed 1/day effects usually seem to be more the province of ancestry feats and magic items. By and large, class feats are generally more consistent.
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Quickened spell is basically the epitome of "limited use instant cool button" and it's... not exaftly popular.
I'd also disagree that the player's coolness is all from luck. Pf 2e's math is built around the party setting each other up and going for a big hit.
Now, in my houserules, I do actually have a function you're looking for, as a hero point ability: for 3 herp points, instead of rolling, you can just choose to get a nat 20, or choose a single opponent to get a nat 1 on save. I typically give out 4-5 hero points a session, at each 1 hour mark, so everyone have the ability to use this basically every game. I like having the option there, but most players at my table still use the points to try risky moves with a failsafe reroll is something goes awry, since a lot of times, they can make their own luck by just working together
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Can you give an example of what you're looking for? I don't disagree that 2e doesn't emulate this well, but I'm not sure most editions do it very well.
Uses/day abilities tend to be kinda poorly balanced. There's stuff like the 5e Frenzy Berserker for a one/day super mode but it's pretty mathematically bad too.
I mean, I did in the post. Ki Strike, Path of Iron and Dance of Thunder (playtest) are three really cool examples IMO. The last one is on the weaker side but that's fine balancing, the idea is awesome!
Exocist also gave other examples, and most of them are great. I'm not really asking for some paradigm in the game to completely change or something, just a "hey, this kind of stuff is cool, can we get more of it?".
What's an example from another system that you would like PF2 to emulate?
The main concern I have is that if something is SO good, then it would need to be limited to 1/day. If it is 1/encounter, like an ability that uses Focus Points, then it would be the go-to thing to do. To refer to a recent term of late, it would create an "Illusion of Choice" and you would spam it all the time. And it is 1/day, then it would incentivize resting before the party anticipates any significant danger.
And the 5 Minute Adventuring Day is not simply a "table problem"; any reasonable set of players will do what the system's balance choices will trend them towards doing. It defies disbelief that an adventuring party will always be in danger of a random encounter in the entire variety of environments they'll be in in the course of their career.
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And the 5 Minute Adventuring Day is not simply a "table problem"; any reasonable set of players will do what the system's balance choices will trend them towards doing.
Any "reasonable" set of players will do what they find engaging and good content, regardless of balance. In fact, I'd say most groups I've seen make their decisions largely irrespective of overall balance trends.
If your tables rest after every single encounter that doesn't have some sort of time pressure, that's fair enough, but none of the tables I've played at or seen other people play at even remotely follow that paradigm... which lends credence to the notion that we're talking about table variation more than anything else.
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any kind of 'invade enemy stronghold' dungeons should be doable in one rest I think.
Why should that be the standard?
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There's some room for variation, obviously. You could have a large enemy camp thats trying to keep some operations running, where "everyone pulls into one room" doesn't make sense, but some other kind of high alert status (doubled up guard posts on important things, additional active patrols, etc) do. Definitely agree that starting to assault an organized group of enemies, stopping halfway and expecting nothing to change makes no sense at all, and can hardly be considered the default way for a game to unfold.
And the 5 Minute Adventuring Day is not simply a "table problem"; any reasonable set of players will do what the system's balance choices will trend them towards doing.Any "reasonable" set of players will do what they find engaging and good content, regardless of balance. In fact, I'd say most groups I've seen make their decisions largely irrespective of overall balance trends.
If your tables rest after every single encounter that doesn't have some sort of time pressure, that's fair enough, but none of the tables I've played at or seen other people play at even remotely follow that paradigm... which lends credence to the notion that we're talking about table variation more than anything else.
It is important for the OP to give specific examples of abilities from other systems, so they actually are demonstrating what specific changes to PF2 they are looking for. Then their proposition becomes actually constructive instead of being the occasion for people to engage abstract debates about gaming philosophy where personalities clash and accusations fly.
My point was simply that tentpole abilities creates an incentive for reasonable players to have "5 Minute Adventuring Days," which is shorthand for saying resting more often in a way that strains verisimilitude (and makes intelligent enemies respond in a way that breaks encounter balancing in PF2).
So are there examples the OP has so we can actually test what the OP is proposing? Because if they don't, then internet tangents this way lies.
I haven't had issues with short adventuring days because I don't keep the 'dungeon' static. What that means is, if my players pull out and rest, the dungeon will be reinforced, a bad guy in it will add traps/perform rituals, ancient machines will crank out an extra golem, or some other increase in the danger levels in response to the invasion.
My table knows this and they always weigh the value of the rest against the expectation of an increase in danger. It usually incentivises them to push until they are almost completely out of resources to minimize the number of rests. And when they do rest, the increase in difficulty means it doesn't make life easy.
The issue with the short adventuring days is not just "can the players rest and continue after eight hours of sleep?", but also a much more common thing:
Do I have to make sure every day in game has several encounters so I do not end up making it trivial because of player resources?
My experience with Pathfinder 1e was that this WAS a big issue.
Lots of abilities were based on daily uses so if you did not include enough battles per in game day to actually challenge the players to not be able to always be under Bard song, always be raging or always use one of your best available spell slots each turn, this had a really big effect on balance.
Having a lot more resources that are expected to usually recover between encounters or be based on action economy is a VERY welcome change there.
It is really hard to balance strategic daily resources. Not unless you want to take away a good bit of flexibility for the game master to create his story as it makes sense.
The issue with the short adventuring days is not just "can the players rest and continue after eight hours of sleep?", but also a much more common thing:
Do I have to make sure every day in game has several encounters so I do not end up making it trivial because of player resources?
My experience with Pathfinder 1e was that this WAS a big issue.
Lots of abilities were based on daily uses so if you did not include enough battles per in game day to actually challenge the players to not be able to always be under Bard song, always be raging or always use one of your best available spell slots each turn, this had a really big effect on balance.Having a lot more resources that are expected to usually recover between encounters or be based on action economy is a VERY welcome change there.
It is really hard to balance strategic daily resources. Not unless you want to take away a good bit of flexibility for the game master to create his story as it makes sense.
You do not have to do that, a fully rested party will feel a lot of pressure as they fight the encounters on the difficult side of the default guidelines. I'd describe it as elastic-- PCs can take enough damage quickly enough, and heal easily enough that grinding down their HP over multiple fights isn't a thing if they can take breathers between fights, its both not normally possible and not necessary.
Casters will eventually run out of gas, but how fast varies a lot by class, and how they spent their money, and whether they have focus points, and their class features.
But it doesn't matter because the PCs will be in danger from a 'single' encounter, their resources don't trivialize encounters, they're the things they use to survive and overcome tough fights in the first place. Which means that as they fight, players are spending resources fairly liberally, and that feeling of having to spend those resources to make it is itself higher impact.
Basically, there's no portion where players can make choices to truly hoard their resources in the traditional way, they need those to overcome the obstacles-- its about resource management, but in a moment to moment sense of 'ok this is the right time to use this, oops I wish I had that thing I had to use last encounter'
In other words, the limiting factor isn't the number of fireballs you can throw per day (although its still a thing) its how many fireballs you can throw per turn and whether you feel like it'll be enough, whether other people can help you make it worth more, and so forth. You're not debating if you might need those fireballs later, so much as you're looking at your spell list to try and get the most bang for your buck in the desperate situation you're already in.
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...The issue with the short adventuring days is not just "can the players rest and continue after eight hours of sleep?", but also a much more common thing:
Do I have to make sure every day in game has several encounters so I do not end up making it trivial because of player resources?
My experience with Pathfinder 1e was that this WAS a big issue.
Lots of abilities were based on daily uses so if you did not include enough battles per in game day to actually challenge the players to not be able to always be under Bard song, always be raging or always use one of your best available spell slots each turn, this had a really big effect on balance.Having a lot more resources that are expected to usually recover between encounters or be based on action economy is a VERY welcome change there.
It is really hard to balance strategic daily resources. Not unless you want to take away a good bit of flexibility for the game master to create his story as it makes sense.You do not have to do that, a fully rested party will feel a lot of pressure as they fight the encounters on the difficult side of the default guidelines. I'd describe it as elastic-- PCs can take enough damage quickly enough, and heal easily enough that grinding down their HP over multiple fights isn't a thing if they can take breathers between fights, its both not normally possible and not necessary.
Casters will eventually run out of gas, but how fast varies a lot by class, and how they spent their money, and whether they have focus points, and their class features.
But it doesn't matter because the PCs will be in danger from a 'single' encounter, their resources don't trivialize encounters, they're the things they use to survive and overcome tough fights in the first place. Which means that as they fight, players are spending resources fairly liberally, and that feeling of having to spend those resources to make it is itself higher impact.
Basically, there's no portion
Throwing multiple fire balls in a single encounter is only likely to happen in an encounter against targets very weak against fire or against lots of enemies. In either instance, it is very difficult to imagine needing to use more than 2. Most wizards will be able to pull that off in two encounters a day, without any kind of item investment to help give them more boost. They could fireball and then true strike acid arrow in 4 encounters a day though.
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As much as 2e combat can be fun and engaging, with the amazing 3-action economy and some incredibly fun feats like Whirling Throw in the game, I've been having a feeling recently that there was something a bit missing compared to other editions of d20 systems I used to play, and I think I finally managed to pin down what it is a little better. As much fun as it can be to get a Bleeding Finisher crit on a Swashbuckler or to have an enemy crit fail one of your spells as a Wizard, it seems like the great, great majority of cool moments in Pathfinder 2e boil down to one thing: extreme luck.
What's really missing, in my opinion of course, is limited-use abilities that let you, the player,choose when you're gonna have your flashy spotlight moment, or at least give yourself a huge chance that that will happen...
I think what you are missing is the ability to build up enough of a static bonus to ignore the swinginess of the d20. That ability to use multiple things together to have a low-to-no chance of failure.
That does not exist in PF2 in 2 facets. Raising static modifiers to that degree, and using multiple abilities at once.
...The issue with the short adventuring days is not just "can the players rest and continue after eight hours of sleep?", but also a much more common thing:
Do I have to make sure every day in game has several encounters so I do not end up making it trivial because of player resources?
My experience with Pathfinder 1e was that this WAS a big issue.
Lots of abilities were based on daily uses so if you did not include enough battles per in game day to actually challenge the players to not be able to always be under Bard song, always be raging or always use one of your best available spell slots each turn, this had a really big effect on balance.Having a lot more resources that are expected to usually recover between encounters or be based on action economy is a VERY welcome change there.
It is really hard to balance strategic daily resources. Not unless you want to take away a good bit of flexibility for the game master to create his story as it makes sense.You do not have to do that, a fully rested party will feel a lot of pressure as they fight the encounters on the difficult side of the default guidelines. I'd describe it as elastic-- PCs can take enough damage quickly enough, and heal easily enough that grinding down their HP over multiple fights isn't a thing if they can take breathers between fights, its both not normally possible and not necessary.
Casters will eventually run out of gas, but how fast varies a lot by class, and how they spent their money, and whether they have focus points, and their class features.
But it doesn't matter because the PCs will be in danger from a 'single' encounter, their resources don't trivialize encounters, they're the things they use to survive and overcome tough fights in the first place. Which means that as they fight, players are spending resources fairly liberally, and that feeling of having to spend those resources to make it is itself higher impact.
Basically, there's no portion
Top 2 spell levels are typically considered the useful ones, so its more like 5-8 slots max, discounting any Wizard School Slots, Spell Blending, Drain Bonded Item, Cleric Font stuff, or magic items like Wands, Scrolls, or Staves designed to increase your casting output (which my players assure me is the most obvious way to spend gold on a caster since you don't need to pay off weapons.)
Top two spell levels are for damage. All spell levels are useful for buffs and debuffs
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Not exactly. Spells that deal damage or have the incapacitation trait lose value unless you are using your top slots for them; the others usually don't, and are definitely relevant for combat.
Things like True Strike or Slow can definitely be cast using level 1 or 2 slots, and still contribute even when you are fighting big stuff.
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@dmercless, I am interested in whether you are saying you miss these moments as a player or GM?
As a player, I would agree that you have to build into the role you want to play in the party and that some classes have more opportunities for flashy big play moments than others.
As a GM, if you feel like your players are not experiencing them enough, there are numerous threads of GM advice about how to help your players realize those expectations.
@dmercless, I am interested in whether you are saying you miss these moments as a player or GM?
As a player, I would agree that you have to build into the role you want to play in the party and that some classes have more opportunities for flashy big play moments than others.
As a GM, if you feel like your players are not experiencing them enough, there are numerous threads of GM advice about how to help your players realize those expectations.
As a player. Like I said, PF2's combat is fun and more diverse than most previous games, but I do miss things like 5e's Action Surge or 4e's Encounter and Daily Powers. Having a "time to use my Ace card" moment. The only way I was sortakinda able to replicate that feeling was with Ki Strike Monk.
One of the coolest RPG moments I ever had was provided by a 4th Edition Warlord ability called Fearless Rescue. Essentially once per day when an ally gets downed you can immediately run to them and rally them back to battle, and the more heroic and inspiring the rescue is (which was translated to how many AoOs you provoke), the more HP they recover. It wasn't even a very good Power, but using it in a clutch moment was so satisfying. It just... isn't the same thing when you're doing the same Stride + Battle Medicine that you do all the time. Both thematically and because balance doesn't allow very unrestricted abilities to give you a big burst of power.
So you wished more martial characters had focus spells? I think that the developers wanted to walk a fine line of keeping magic as a special thing you invested into, so they didn't really want most martial classes to have too easy a path into them. I think the Magus is going to have a lot of this kind of potential in their class as well. As far as casters go, this is what spells were in 4e and many casters have ways of getting nasty with their spells by going all in on casting them with metamagic or spell boosting focus powers.
I liked 4e as well, but I think it requires a pretty fundamental shift in world building to look at characters as basically all having this magical force inside of them that was limited into the daily, encounter, and at-will powers, and I think that shift was not something that people collectively really enjoyed trying to fit over fantasy worlds where it had never existed before. It was a probably a system that needed to launch with its whole own new world that acknowledged that each being had this magic inside them, and it wouldn't have been so upsetting to people asking "what did you just do to my favorite setting?"
So you wished more martial characters had focus spells? I think that the developers wanted to walk a fine line of keeping magic as a special thing you invested into, so they didn't really want most martial classes to have too easy a path into them. I think the Magus is going to have a lot of this kind of potential in their class as well. As far as casters go, this is what spells were in 4e and many casters have ways of getting nasty with their spells by going all in on casting them with metamagic or spell boosting focus powers.
I liked 4e as well, but I think it requires a pretty fundamental shift in world building to look at characters as basically all having this magical force inside of them that was limited into the daily, encounter, and at-will powers, and I think that shift was not something that people collectively really enjoyed trying to fit over fantasy worlds where it had never existed before. It was a probably a system that needed to launch with its whole own new world that acknowledged that each being had this magic inside them, and it wouldn't have been so upsetting to people asking "what did you just do to my favorite setting?"
Not necessarily spells / magical things. See, I can agree that 4e pushed really hard on a kind of fantasy that many people can find uncanny, but my other example, 5e Fighter's Action Surge, is the exact same type of ability and I've always seen zero pushback against it. It's really a matter of what the abilities actually do and how you frame them. PF2 actually has a couple of these like Path of Iron, Dance of Thunder and the other ones I mentioned. I just want to see... a lot more of them. And at a not so absurdly high level.
PF2 made a pretty active choice to cut back on resource tracking. By having 3 actions a turn, it is much cleaner to just have 2 action attacks that are more powerful, but things you can't expect to do every turn, rather than giving out a bunch of abilities with arbitrary restrictions about how often you can use them, when they aren't tied to a specific magic source that works that way. The probably float a couple of them in there a bit too much really, (like 1x day ancestry abilities, although, at least those are almost always tied to some kind of magical source or font).
I would argue that PF2 2 or 3 action attack powers are pretty much designed to be that thing too, it is just that canny players, especially ones playing tactically as a part of team, can be pretty good at letting those martial 2 and 3 action attack powers be feasible 4 or 5 times a combat.
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So you wished more martial characters had focus spells?
Here's my issue (unrelated to OP). I, personally, didn't want focus spells to be just spells. Focus is a neutral term that implies neither magic nor physical might, and "Focus abilities" could have been a thing. Make them use Caster DC/Attack for caster classes, and class dc/weapon attack for martials.
I've heard the arguments for why they didn't want to do that. But they clearly were comfortable using focus spells with martials when it made sense for those classes to be spell-users, like with champions, rangers, and monks, so I'm not really swayed by the logic. And honestly there's some non-focus abilities that were clearly written to mimic the focus system but not use it, which just seems silly.
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So you wished more martial characters had focus spells?Here's my issue (unrelated to OP). I, personally, didn't want focus spells to be just spells. Focus is a neutral term that implies neither magic nor physical might, and "Focus abilities" could have been a thing. Make them use Caster DC/Attack for caster classes, and class dc/weapon attack for martials.
I've heard the arguments for why they didn't want to do that. But they clearly were comfortable using focus spells with martials when it made sense for those classes to be spell-users, like with champions, rangers, and monks, so I'm not really swayed by the logic. And honestly there's some non-focus abilities that were clearly written to mimic the focus system but not use it, which just seems silly.
I agree on the idea that focus powers need not be magic, but can be. There is nothing wrong in concept of a fighter using a moment of intense focus to perform a possible but still amazing act of physicality. However, current design says all focus abilities are magic, which invokes an unnecessary restriction on expanding its use.
I agree on the idea that focus powers need not be magic, but can be. There is nothing wrong in concept of a fighter using a moment of intense focus to perform a possible but still amazing act of physicality. However, current design says all focus abilities are magic, which invokes an unnecessary restriction on expanding its use.So you wished more martial characters had focus spells?Here's my issue (unrelated to OP). I, personally, didn't want focus spells to be just spells. Focus is a neutral term that implies neither magic nor physical might, and "Focus abilities" could have been a thing. Make them use Caster DC/Attack for caster classes, and class dc/weapon attack for martials.
I've heard the arguments for why they didn't want to do that. But they clearly were comfortable using focus spells with martials when it made sense for those classes to be spell-users, like with champions, rangers, and monks, so I'm not really swayed by the logic. And honestly there's some non-focus abilities that were clearly written to mimic the focus system but not use it, which just seems silly.
If nothing else, since they did go with that "all focus is spellcasting", I really don't see why they didn't just go ahead and call it a mana pool. Then the "Mana Wastes" would retroactively be referring to magic when I'm not sure it is referring to anything at the moment.
Maybe copyright issues? I would think it would be fair use by this point, but I'm not certain.
Though at least they aren't spell points anymore. That was potentially awkward.
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Hero points.
Alchemic_Genius in comment #18 also described using hero points. Hero points are the best tool to create flashy moments.
Hero points as written in PF2 (Hero Point rules from Chapter 9: Playing the Game) have only two uses:
(1) reroll a d20,
(2) stabilize.
However, the PF1 hero point system allowed spending hero points to
(1) Act out of turn,
(2) Add +8 to a roll, spent before the roll,
(3) Add +4 to a roll retroactively after rolling,
(4) Take an extra move, standard, swift, or immediate action,
(5) Ask for a hint,
(6) Recall a spell,
(7) Reroll a d20,
(8) Attempt the impossible,
(9) Cheat death (takes 2 hero points).
I kept the PF1 hero point system in my PF2 campaign, except for dropping the +8 and +4 options (PF2 shuns numerical bonuses) and buying an action is just an action in PF2. Those +8 and +4 are really the best option for being flashy. The PF1 hero point rules say, "Although hero points do not drastically increase the power of the PCs, they do grant the PCs the ability to greatly increase their chances of success during critical moments."
Hero points.Alchemic_Genius in comment #18 also described using hero points. Hero points are the best tool to create flashy moments.
Hero points as written in PF2 (Hero Point rules from Chapter 9: Playing the Game) have only two uses:
(1) reroll a d20,
(2) stabilize.However, the PF1 hero point system allowed spending hero points to
(1) Act out of turn,
(2) Add +8 to a roll, spent before the roll,
(3) Add +4 to a roll retroactively after rolling,
(4) Take an extra move, standard, swift, or immediate action,
(5) Ask for a hint,
(6) Recall a spell,
(7) Reroll a d20,
(8) Attempt the impossible,
(9) Cheat death (takes 2 hero points).I kept the PF1 hero point system in my PF2 campaign, except for dropping the +8 and +4 options (PF2 shuns numerical bonuses) and buying an action is just an action in PF2. Those +8 and +4 are really the best option for being flashy. The PF1 hero point rules say, "Although hero points do not drastically increase the power of the PCs, they do grant the PCs the ability to greatly increase their chances of success during critical moments."
If the bonuses are the best option for being flashy why don't you use them?