Have anyone try to play as the non-hero?
The idea is simple, you make a level 0 character, and give them one level 1 class feature and Feat.
Then replace Hero point with Relationship point, which can only be spend to reroll or give yourself a +3 to the roll, Relationship point can only be gain by spending quality time with your Touchstone, wheather that be a organization, a community, a place, an object, or a person.
Since they don't have level, they would be using Proficiency without Level rule, with having -2 to Untrained skill. When you would level up, you don't go up a level, instead you get Legend, Legend range from 1 to 24.
Everytime you level up you gain HP equal to half of your Ancestry Hit Point, One General Feat, One Ancestry Feat, and One Skill Boost.
You get One Archetype Feat and One Skill Feat at every Odd Number Legend.
And One Partial Attribute Boost and Odd Number Class Feature every Even Number Legend.
You gain Even Number Class Feat at Legend 6th and Every 6 Legend After, and Gain another Background at Legend 4 and every 4 Legend After.
At Legend 2 you get All the Class Feature and Feat from your Class Level 1.
Have anyone try this?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I feel like just playing an OSR game is simpler than tearing apart PF2, personally.
I feel like just playing an OSR game is simpler than tearing apart PF2, personally.
Maybe, but PF2 have a lot of cool thing that I don't want to convert to OSR system.
The idea is simple,
I politely disagree. But from what I am understanding of it, it could be an interesting idea.
I also recommend that this be moved to homebrew so that it doesn't attract a lot of negative attention.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have done something similar in the past, but not to this extent. I ran a level 0 game with the goal of making the world feel big and dangerous before the players advanced to level 1 and began to play "Pathfinder proper."
The thing is... it isn't fun? Like, I should say, there's an extra burden on the GM of not outright murdering the party with even a slightly too powerful encounter as well as still providing meaningful challenges that are interesting to interact with. After getting a walloping by a raven, my party - in the very least - felt quite demoralized, moreso when they lacked any of the tools to really interact with the fight beyond "Ready an action for one it comes close and really hope to hit."
Now, I would say there is room to make a homebrew system for it, but you would be better served, I feel, making an adventure that suits this style of play better. "Children slipping their bonds to rescue the adventurers," "Awakened animals navigating the dangers of the first time," or even "Freshly risen undead coming to terms with their existence." Presenting it as just low fantasy makes me feel like there's just not enough reason to justify doing all of that (unless, of course, you have a group that's greatly interested in the concept).
As Ruzza noted, you kinda need a group that's greatly interested in such things. This is not "Let's play PF2" or even "let's play a fantasy game" as players will understand it, so you'll need to sell them on the idea, and then make the bother worthwhile with a story that delivers something PF2 otherwise couldn't provide. But it's quite easy to be non-heroic at 1st or higher because heroism (at least in the sense of power) is relative to one's surroundings.
Heck, it was considered odd for me to begin 3.X campaigns at 1st. Yet I did, and faced some of the same obstacles. One player/DM thanked me for demonstrating how a DM could pull off worthwhile low level battles. In that specific case, 1st level as a PC was noteworthy, while in others I've had 1st level represent what you're looking for: a rookie.
Such as in one campaign where every Hobgoblin outside of their country was at least 6th level. The party had fought some as notable enemies, later coming across a patrol who stopped the party to question them. One player hadn't picked up on the power difference so talked smack while all the other players panicked, pleading him to shut up.
"They're only hobgoblins." Lol, and they'll TPK you.
I had to step in and remind that player about how the only hobgoblins he'd encountered all had multiple attacks.
So yeah, you can be the heroes of the town at 1st or schmucks at 4th, all depending on the setting's setting for normal. And without the need to fiddle with tested mechanics and teach new ones.
I have done something similar in the past, but not to this extent. I ran a level 0 game with the goal of making the world feel big and dangerous before the players advanced to level 1 and began to play "Pathfinder proper."
The thing is... it isn't fun? Like, I should say, there's an extra burden on the GM of not outright murdering the party with even a slightly too powerful encounter as well as still providing meaningful challenges that are interesting to interact with. After getting a walloping by a raven, my party - in the very least - felt quite demoralized, moreso when they lacked any of the tools to really interact with the fight beyond "Ready an action for one it comes close and really hope to hit."
Now, I would say there is room to make a homebrew system for it, but you would be better served, I feel, making an adventure that suits this style of play better. "Children slipping their bonds to rescue the adventurers," "Awakened animals navigating the dangers of the first time," or even "Freshly risen undead coming to terms with their existence." Presenting it as just low fantasy makes me feel like there's just not enough reason to justify doing all of that (unless, of course, you have a group that's greatly interested in the concept).
That why I have the system that kind of act like a level up, without making the character too powerful, they have more choice of what to use during encounter, but they should be afraid of combat encounter, and have solve problem using their brain other people around them, and through social combat system that I homebrew a bit so that the character have Social Hit Point. While they have Legendary skill early, they don't get to add Level to them, so it isn't that good.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm just curious, as this is a more ambitious homebrew project than you may be envisioning - what about PF2 do you want to keep so badly that you would prefer to run this system over another?
It really sounds to me that what you're looking for is already covered much better in other systems whereas tinkering with some decidedly tight math can be an undertaking that may not get you the result you want (or leave a GM having to fudge a lot more tableside).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Jason Bulmahn (of Paizo fame) has made a couple of heavily modified versions of PF2 for purposes like this (Hopefinder and Hellfinder). AFAIK a fair bit of work went into at least one of them on "how do you make characters not be heroically strong in a system built around heroic fantasy."
Might be something to look into if you're interested in trying to do something like this.