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I just start all my players off with two hero points and do not award additional ones most of the time
What about just not using hero points at all? Does this game need them to function?
What about just not using hero points at all? Does this game need them to function?
No. I modified hero points to be better and provide a minimum of 10 on the roll, so they are very valuable in my game. The base hero point isn't particularly valuable given the number of complaints when the player rerolled and missed making them feel not so special.
With my modified hero points, 1 per hour proved way too much. I'm trying the give 2 and maybe an additional in extreme circumstances. Don't spend any more thought on it after that.
What about just not using hero points at all? Does this game need them to function?
I don't use hero points much. My intial player group had a couple of players who point blank refused to use them at all.
Most of my games tend to have 5 players so as a group they are more resilient.
So every hour, are you guys handing out a Hero Point to each player or one Hero Point to one player.
Except for extraordinary cases, I only award one hero point to a single player each hour.
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My Foundry players recently discovered that I use an automated timer to remind me to give out a hero point each hour.
Soon after, everything in our games slowed down so that our two hour sessions have more than doubled to five hours!
Change the timer to two hours.
I mean how's that a problem?Alternatively, assign hero points to players who keep the action going, so that the slow ones end up at a massive disadvantage and the behaviour eventually dies down.
You're the GM, man. Stop giving yourself bad rules.
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What about just not using hero points at all? Does this game need them to function?
No. I modified hero points to be better and provide a minimum of 10 on the roll, so they are very valuable in my game. The base hero point isn't particularly valuable given the number of complaints when the player rerolled and missed making them feel not so special.
With my modified hero points, 1 per hour proved way too much. I'm trying the give 2 and maybe an additional in extreme circumstances. Don't spend any more thought on it after that.
One of my GMs uses the same house rule. It definitely cuts down on heartbreak. It also means that we tend to use them to reroll crit failures on saves, since a 10 will almost certainly be an improvement, even if not an outright success.
You could just give them more hero points.
=)
What about just not using hero points at all? Does this game need them to function?
I think, having considered the Hero Point thing for a few days now, I will henceforth… not use them. Having played with them and used them…they personally feel…off. Happy for other people to use them of course, and won’t stop players from using them when I am running games. But as a player…I’m happy to accept fate. The first time.
Obviously some will opine that this “hurts the team”. Which I guess…it could. But no more than having them and just “not choosing to use them right now”. You know, in the big final fight against the BBEG… ;)
But seriously, I’m over the whole concept. I feel like they actively remove consequences by exactly (x = number of Hero Points) more than I care for.
@TOZ: I have never used Hero Points for anything except a reroll, so you make a good point. Given that my main beef is with interrupting the “force” of fate - i.e. the random die roll, I had not remembered not considered it.
However, I said I wouldn’t stop players from using them, so they can still use that facility.
Even if I decide to ban them completely in games I run, I wouldn’t make the campaign any less deadly. I just don’t see what is “heroic” or even…remotely “fun” about auto-stabilising/avoiding death. It makes little narrative sense** to me and completely trivialises…death. Which I guess means I really *do* take exception to the whole concept of “Hero points”.
**I mean…I guess I do get that it might be all part of the “hero’s journey” to overcome that amazingly gruesome and clearly fatal wound. It appears again and again throughout legends tales and mythologies. I guess I’m not interested in that style of narrative. In my elf-game. I know.
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Re: "Are hero points required?"
One thing I realized from the recent Glass Cannon podcast stuff (really rough encounters and bad rolls not helped by the GM's reticence to give out hero points) is that Hero Points for survival are really useful early game. PF2 is much deadlier at low levels, and it can feel like hero points are basically required to survive past level 1 or 2.
In my own games, after level 1 or 2, hero points are almost always used to reroll a bad check because the player wants their character to succeed at something they're supposed to be good at.
So, hero points definitely aren't required BUT they certainly help early level survival, help protect from raw bad luck, and help players tell the stories they want to tell when the dice are being mean.
I guess I’ve reached a point where I only want to tell the stories the dice want me to tell.
I don’t believe in “mean dice”. I’ve definitely seen runs of deadly (for the PC’s) rolls.
Life is hard, then you die. Between those two constants we strive, sometimes heroically. But there aren’t any breaks given.
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I guess I’ve reached a point where I only want to tell the stories the dice want me to tell.
I don’t believe in “mean dice”. I’ve definitely seen runs of deadly (for the PC’s) rolls.
Life is hard, then you die. Between those two constants we strive, sometimes heroically. But there aren’t any breaks given.
I prefer my heroic PC not to die because of a single Nat1 on the wrong roll.
Now, when I spend a hero point and still get a crit fail, really it is the deities' will that today my PC dies.
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I prefer my character not die because the GM feels the need to wax philosophical on the hardships of real life during a fantasy roleplaying game.
I would advise against turn timers through. All it does is give people anxiety. Which can lead to the game not feeling fun because people will stop trying tactics or trying new classes. One of the bigger issues I had when one of my DMs suggesting it was. "If I only get 2 minutes then I'm playing only Barbarian or Fighter because I understand the quick concept of swing big weapon repeatedly." I was too scared to EVER touch a caster in case I "lost" turns and the DM dropped it because he found the fact I'd only play Strike based characters boring since some of my finest are Casters which take multiple mnutes since i can't keep every spell I know memorized.
One of my groups actually has a player with anxiety issues, and it is in fact this group (and this player) that has implemented what we called the "6 seconds" rule. They are also a player who has gone out of their way to try new things; they have questions, of course, but I make sure to clarify it simply and concisely, and the game doesn't bog down that much as a result. Really, if the GM isn't helping to keep the pace of the game, that is a GM issue, because it is the GM's duty to keep the pace of the game.
Also, the argument of 'spellcasters are hard to play because I don't know my spells' doesn't make sense. Very rarely would a spellcaster simply take a spell that they don't know what it does, mostly because that is a dumb thing to do as a player in general (and is also why spells like Miracle and such were terrible choices anyway). It would be like if a martial took a feat that they didn't know what it did. And it's not like the player can't do some spell research on their own if they had an idea in mind of what they wanted; it might have been harder back in the day, when players didn't always have access to rulebooks, but it's 2024 now, and people can literally pull up rules information or class/spell guides on their phones, tablets, etc.
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The issue is that "lolrandom" isn't actually good storytelling.
The story is something the players and the GM discover together in conjunction with the dice. It is not something that needs to be controlled or predetermined. That the outcome you might desire is not guaranteed is part of the fun. You need to be creative enough to handle the result.
im not sure how I feel about them yet.As a GM im rooting for my players as much as they are so I'm not against the idea of a safety net but I worry we will all feel victories are cheapened by the free rerolls that come in every hour.Thats my reservation.
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My players burn them like candy. We usually only play for 2 to 2 and a half hours so I just give one at the start of the session and one that the players nominate for themselves, usually towards the end of the session. probably 90% of the them are spent outside of combat for narrative rolls that the players feel particularly invested in, sometimes even when another character might have a chance to complete the task on their own. I think they do this largely because they would rather spend their hero point as soon as it feels like it could have a fun change in the outcome of the story far more than they are worried about their characters dying.
I don't think there is one right way to do hero points, but figuring out what makes things fun for everyone at the table is probably the best way to get any value out of them.
No offense...but there's no need to tell other people how to GM. Just saying.The issue is that "lolrandom" isn't actually good storytelling.The story is something the players and the GM discover together in conjunction with the dice. It is not something that needs to be controlled or predetermined. That the outcome you might desire is not guaranteed is part of the fun. You need to be creative enough to handle the result.
Let me try to phrase it in a less intrusitve manner. I myself find great enjoyment in my players taking narrative control of the campaign. This is demanding on my own improvisation skills when they go off in a direction not covered by the module, but they usually envision a story with greater scope and depth than can fit into a module.
As for the randomness provided by the dice, it makes up for my own predictability. I would not try to kill off a PC, but I would risk their death for a solid combat challenge and sometimes the dice increase that risk greater than I would have.
The comment I was replying to stated that the GM should never give out hero points. The thing is, there are sometimes very good reasons to do so which have absolutely nothing to do with the story being "predetermined" or "controlled". Butchering the entire party because they cannot roll above a 10 and the GM can't stop rolling crits leads not to creative solutions, but the end of the campaign.
Now, of course I agree in principle with not railroading players and being flexible whenever possible - monsters can and should take PCs prisoner, be surprised by unexpected allies of the PCs showing up to help, and so on. However, I also think there is a reason the [incapacitation] keyword exists for monsters - because randomly rolling a critical failure on a saving throw vs. a punishing effect and getting instantaneously vaporized isn't always "creative" or "fun".
I remember why I started using hero points in PF1. My wife was the original GM in our Rise of the Runelords campaign, which was the original D&D 3.5 version converted to PF2 rules with fan-created material. The party was fighting the final boss at the end of The Skinsaw Murders, who I later learned was a notorious party killer (Paizo toned her down for the Anniversary Edition). And we had found her at 5th level instead of 6th level due to good detective work. Our reward for that was that she was mopping the floor with the party. Due to her high AC, only the wizard could damage her on less than a natural 20. So she attacked the wizard and rolled a critical hit. He would have been splattered instantly dead against the wall, but the GM decided to fudge the damage so that he was only dying. The cleric healed him but he pretended to still be unconscious.
The boss charmed half the party, the wizard pretended to be charmed (another fudge in the rules about whether the spellcaster can automatically tell whether a spell failed), and other half of the party fled. One level and some new recruits later we won the rematch.
When I took over as GM in the next module, I decided that I did not want to have to fudge damage. I adopted the optional hero point rules.
Hero points are specifically designed to avoid situations like the "Aragorn slips, falls, and dies, sucks to be him" one I noted earlier. And I'm not going to fault anyone for removing them, I'm merely pointing out that I understand why they exist and the alternative can result in unfun absurdities along the lines of snapping your neck getting out of bed in the morning.
I remember a short story by Orson Scott Card about that situation (I don't recall the title and might have the wrong author). In the afterward, the author wrote that he had watched a show in which the leader invented clever multistep plans that he did not tell his crew, so that they and the audience would be surprised by all the clever preparation. In this story, the clever leader slipped on mud after setting up his plans and died from the blow to his head. The crew had to improvise as they belatedly discovered planned tricks that would have helped except they figured them out too late.
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I would not try to kill off a PC, but I would risk their death for a solid combat challenge and sometimes the dice increase that risk greater than I would have.
I try to play the monsters differently. Animals tend to run away when it becomes obvious they can't win. But other opponents can be very aggressive.
This week it was Soul Eaters. I tried very hard to kill PCs. I got PCs down most rounds and the PC made their roll against the soul suck ability. It was a Severe encounter that the monsters had set up to their advantage making it Extreme. The players loved it. If I hadn't had them on the edge, if they hadn't seen that I was really trying to get a PC killed - I came close on 3 occasions - then they wouldn't have enjoyed it so much.
I don't do this every session.
I would not try to kill off a PC, but I would risk their death for a solid combat challenge and sometimes the dice increase that risk greater than I would have.I try to play the monsters differently. Animals tend to run away when it becomes obvious they can't win. But other opponents can be very aggressive.
This week it was Soul Eaters. I tried very hard to kill PCs. I got PCs down most rounds and the PC made their roll against the soul suck ability. It was a Severe encounter that the monsters had set up to their advantage making it Extreme. The players loved it. If I hadn't had them on the edge, if they hadn't seen that I was really trying to get a PC killed - I came close on 3 occasions - then they wouldn't have enjoyed it so much.
I don't do this every session.
Some monsters should definitely being try to kill PCs.
Some you can roleplay other ways.
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I would not try to kill off a PC, but I would risk their death for a solid combat challenge and sometimes the dice increase that risk greater than I would have.I try to play the monsters differently. Animals tend to run away when it becomes obvious they can't win. But other opponents can be very aggressive.
This week it was Soul Eaters. I tried very hard to kill PCs. I got PCs down most rounds and the PC made their roll against the soul suck ability. It was a Severe encounter that the monsters had set up to their advantage making it Extreme. The players loved it. If I hadn't had them on the edge, if they hadn't seen that I was really trying to get a PC killed - I came close on 3 occasions - then they wouldn't have enjoyed it so much.
I don't do this every session.
Some of my creatures do want to kill the party.
In this week's Strength of Thousands game session, a Will-o'Wisp, creature 6, was upset with Roshan, a 2nd-level fleshwarp rogue/sorcerer/Gelid Shard bearer. It zapped her twice without mercy, because Roshan had grappled it (She spent a hero point to reroll her inital grapple failure and succeeded on the reroll). I could have had the Will-o-Wisp finish Roshan off, but it used its third action to zap another character beating on it (and missed due to the -10 multiple attack penalty). Wiser actions would have been to fly away or use its Feed on Fear ability to heal a little, but the party had been deliberately taunting the Will-o'-Wisp into recklessness, so it was angry. And metagamingly, I did not want the Will-o'-Wisp to escape, since the party was trying to save a village from it.
But I myself want the PCs to live, so I arrange methods by which they can protect themselves. I could have had the Will-o'-Wisp appear as a surprise, so the Magambya students' spells would mostly have been useless. Instead, I had Teacher Takulu Ot contact the village before their visit. He learned about the Will-o'-Wisp and warned the party so that they prepared Magic Missile/Force Barrage spells that morning. I was surprised by Roshan's grapple, but the grapple lowered the Will-o'Wisp's AC so that the starlit-span magus hit it with an arrow. The Will-o'-Wisp went down faster than I planned.
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I would not try to kill off a PC, but I would risk their death for a solid combat challenge and sometimes the dice increase that risk greater than I would have.I try to play the monsters differently. Animals tend to run away when it becomes obvious they can't win. But other opponents can be very aggressive.
This week it was Soul Eaters. I tried very hard to kill PCs. I got PCs down most rounds and the PC made their roll against the soul suck ability. It was a Severe encounter that the monsters had set up to their advantage making it Extreme. The players loved it. If I hadn't had them on the edge, if they hadn't seen that I was really trying to get a PC killed - I came close on 3 occasions - then they wouldn't have enjoyed it so much.
I don't do this every session.
Some monsters should definitely being try to kill PCs.
Some you can roleplay other ways.
Some GMs try very hard to kill PCs.
Even when it is not fun for the players.Even when it makes no sense in-world for the monsters.
I prefer my heroic PC not to die because of a single Nat1 on the wrong roll.I guess I’ve reached a point where I only want to tell the stories the dice want me to tell.
I don’t believe in “mean dice”. I’ve definitely seen runs of deadly (for the PC’s) rolls.
Life is hard, then you die. Between those two constants we strive, sometimes heroically. But there aren’t any breaks given.
I prefer for a Nat 1 to mean something. Every time. It’s a matter of preference. I understand the desire for more “heroism”. My dial just doesn’t have a safety valve.
Now, when I spend a hero point and still get a crit fail, really it is the deities' will that today my PC dies.
Yep. That makes perfect sense. Reminds me of the old Schwarzenegger version Conan the Barbarian line from his dead friend-as-angel “Do you want to live forever”, only in the version where he crit failed his Hero Point reroll, he…doesn’t. Good times.
The issue is that "lolrandom" isn't actually good storytelling.The story is something the players and the GM discover together in conjunction with the dice. It is not something that needs to be controlled or predetermined. That the outcome you might desire is not guaranteed is part of the fun. You need to be creative enough to handle the result.
I guess I totally agree with Gortle? In my games? I prefer for the randomness to be unfettered by “safety valves”, no matter how also random they may be. I just don’t think you need an extra veneer of “heroism” that is a currency to be spent.
Look I totally get the point of them, and that people like that they allow them to tell a certain kind of tale. And that they can be freeing rather than a constraint. I just don’t like them and don’t want to use them.
I guess I’ve reached a point where I only want to tell the stories the dice want me to tell.
I don’t believe in “mean dice”. I’ve definitely seen runs of deadly (for the PC’s) rolls.
Life is hard, then you die. Between those two constants we strive, sometimes heroically. But there aren’t any breaks given.
The issue is that "lolrandom" isn't actually good storytelling.
I completely disagree. The line “truth is stranger than fiction” ensures that lolrandom happens…what was it Terry Pratchett said….”million to one chances happen 9 times out of 10.” And that makes me feel comfortable. Knowing that stuff happens and that no matter how heroic you are, fate, causation, the universe etc has no truck with your mortal self-importance.
This isn’t some philosophical edgelord desire to be gritty or grimdark or tell truer tales or any of that - it’s just letting the dice fall where they may.
And players get exposed to a lot of randomness and variance.
They sure do. Compared to PF1, in my experience PF2 is a meat grinder. The action economy on the monster side alone means that as a player I’m facing a lot more hostile rolls. And I like it much more.
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People can obviously have varying preference for or against hero points, no issue there.
I've just found that we don't get nearly enough truly meaningful rolls to rely on the law of large numbers, and it can really suck when your character never once gets to BE the character they envisioned starting out due to bad rolls. Hero points don't even guarantee that, they just help tip the scales a bit.
Luke Skywalker puts away his targeting camera and shoots at the fatal weak point in the Death Star, and nothing happens.
IMO When Luke disengaged the targeting visor he stopped rolling dice.
So we've devolved into the age old argument of 'random' versus 'story'. Each side is absolutely right and the other side are fools.
tRPGs have been having this fight since somewhere in the mid late 80s, or at least that's when I first started seeing it. And I've been on both ends of the spectrum.
These days my preference is a third side that no game really offers. Tactics.
If I could make my perfect tRPG is would have tactical gamist play on the level of Chess or Go. Where nothing is random nor is it plot driven. Every choice has a specific consequence that can take many moves to see play out. For me, that's how life usually seems to work.
But that kind of tRPG doesn't exist (all the diceless games went the story route instead). There was an old Marvel 'stones' RPG that almost did it.
Lacking that - I like hero points for a different reason than most. To undo bad random that is out of sync with good tactics.
I am a 'gamist' player - something that is often a slur in tRPGs but it's where I stand. I came to that realization after almost 2 decades in MMOs.
So I'm a fan of Hero Points and things like it because anything that can cause the results to be determines by the quality of choices more so than a gambling implement or a Shakespearian moment is a good thing for me.
I don't care why Luke pulled off hitting the fatal weak point. That's a story. I'm not playing a story, I'm playing a game. But the worst reason for why he did it for me, would be that the dice said so. Because I don't want to be gambling; I want to be gaming.
I tolerate dice only because the other options I've seen thus far were even worse. Hero points let me make dice a little less bad.
A world without Hero Points doesn’t mean you can’t roll a natural 20 at all. And Bard and Luke clearly did. Or as Bluemagetim kinda points out, they probably used a Hero Point or similar. And my take on Pratchett’s point was that the imagined “incredibleness” of million to one chances was lessened by the fact of them occurring rather frequently. Because causality is like that. [But mostly I was focused on his point about how when you properly wanted to be stealthy you had to make an appreciable amount of acceptable noise so as not to incur the interest of the guards by being a (highly suspicious) moving dark vaccuum of no-sound - in my old brain I thought both concepts were in Pyramids].
I guess I don’t see the realworld analogies of gangrene from a stubbed toe at the campfire or the inexorable doom of the empire of all-evil relevant, and to me the ubiquity of using hero points is the depressing thing. Or at least, to get back to the initial post, people *gasp* roleplaying longer (in a roleplaying game) than they would normally to get them.
So we've devolved into the age old argument of 'random' versus 'story'. Each side is absolutely right and the other side are fools.
tRPGs have been having this fight since somewhere in the mid late 80s, or at least that's when I first started seeing it. And I've been on both ends of the spectrum.
These days my preference is a third side that no game really offers. Tactics.
If I could make my perfect tRPG is would have tactical gamist play on the level of Chess or Go. Where nothing is random nor is it plot driven. Every choice has a specific consequence that can take many moves to see play out. For me, that's how life usually seems to work.
But that kind of tRPG doesn't exist (all the diceless games went the story route instead). There was an old Marvel 'stones' RPG that almost did it.
Lacking that - I like hero points for a different reason than most. To undo bad random that is out of sync with good tactics.
I am a 'gamist' player - something that is often a slur in tRPGs but it's where I stand. I came to that realization after almost 2 decades in MMOs.
So I'm a fan of Hero Points and things like it because anything that can cause the results to be determines by the quality of choices more so than a gambling implement or a Shakespearian moment is a good thing for me.
I don't care why Luke pulled off hitting the fatal weak point. That's a story. I'm not playing a story, I'm playing a game. But the worst reason for why he did it for me, would be that the dice said so. Because I don't want to be gambling; I want to be gaming.
I tolerate dice only because the other options I've seen thus far were even worse. Hero points let me make dice a little less bad.
Well to be fair if Luke was doing something that was not certain failed and used a hero point to reroll and still failed that would not have made the movie what it was.
When Luke put away his targeting visor he didnt need to roll because there was no longer any uncertainty for the outcome.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@arcady: I don’t agree that this is random vs. story. Or that there are sides. I see them inextricably bound. Random can be story. Story can be random. But neither have to be, nor is there a requirement for them to be to enjoy the game. And there is control in both “styles”.
I like a little bit of gamism too. But I really like the act of rolling dice to see what happens. Because I like for there to be a uncontrolled wild-card narrative force that all the participants (the GM and the players) can adapt, adjust and riff off.
I do like your idea about Tactics, though I must admit it does sound a lot like a boardgame. And I like boardgames.
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Lacking that - I like hero points for a different reason than most. To undo bad random that is out of sync with good tactics.
This is the closest thing I’ve seen to a good argument for Hero Points. But even here, where you *want them to be* they still aren’t reliable. ;)
Lacking that - I like hero points for a different reason than most. To undo bad random that is out of sync with good tactics.This is the closest thing I’ve seen to a good argument for Hero Points. But even here, where you *want them to be* they still aren’t reliable. ;)
Like a bad beat in poker but you can ask the dealer to redeal the last card?
Hooboy, so sorry you have to go through this. Bad-faith players make me go a rubbery one.
Every couple of sessions I try to gamify the distribution of HP around recaps.
My current favorite is:
1) 5 players recap one bullet point apiece then receive face-down hp
2) 5 players say something meaningful they noticed or liked about another player’s character in previous session then receives face up hp
3) Players trade face-up hp if desired
4) 5 players decide if they want to trade face-up card for random item from alchemy deck (per Garden of Wonders in Treasure Vault)
5) Players trade items if desired
6) Any hp after that is Rule-of-Cool disbursal at GM discretion with the understanding that scene-tones shape the frequency/infrequency of distribution
Gamification on the front end lets them feel like they can manipulate the hp cards in a way that doesn’t just make me want to pack up and go home.
I really hope you find a solution that works for the needs of your group.
@Nykrat: what are face down and face up HP’s?
@Nykrat: what are face down and face up HP’s?
Face down hero points: use them as a reroll then give it to GM
Face up hero points: Use it ONLY BY MEETING THE REQUIREMENTS…then flip it face down
This makes it so you get a possible 3 HP situation to build a session with (along with the alchemy/talisman/Item card)
Lacking that - I like hero points for a different reason than most. To undo bad random that is out of sync with good tactics.This is the closest thing I’ve seen to a good argument for Hero Points. But even here, where you *want them to be* they still aren’t reliable. ;)
True. And that's why I note that there is no tRPG in existence that really caters to my preference. Something I find curious given that catering to 'gamist' is the norm in MMOs which is our closest 'video game competitor'.
Most MMOs don't have random chance in their outcome formulas. They have your choice of action, position, timing, aim (for action based or hitscan based games), etc.
- All tactics things.
For some reason tRPGs have not been able to figure out doing this at a table top.
So I tolerate dice in my tRPGs. I like Pathfinder because it tries to reward smarter tactics and over the arc of time with many thousands of tasks done - tactics shows influence over random.
Hero Points don't solve the problem for me. But they help alleviate it.
I'm plotting out my switch to becoming a GM, so I'm following this thread as I think about how I will hand out Hero Points. Originally I was going to do the common '1 per hour' routine. But the thread is making me think I need a more complex answer.