Heroic PF2e

Heroic Variant is a collection of playtested variant rules designed to make PF2e more heroic, increase player agency, reduce frustration, and do all that without making things harder for the GM to prepare for sessions. 

The document contains the following sections, along with design notes on why the variant exists and if you should use it.

Teamwork Combos

A way for players to combine their turns for tactics and circumstance bonuses. Designed to encourage cinematic teamwork.

Epic Hero Points

Codified and diegetic ways of earning and resetting hero points. Designed to reduce the frustration of a string of bad rolls.

Additional ways to spend hero points, including an option for casters.

Down but Not Out

Downed: a way to increase player engagement while their character is at 0hp.

Raw Scars: an attrition mechanic attached to the wounded condition. It can be combined with Epic Hero Points to create a push-your-luck mechanic.

Post-Death Narratives

Surgical Recovery: a risky and time-consuming procedure for reviving the recently dead using non-magical means.

Lingering Trauma: a way to heighten the mechanical and narrative consequences of recovering from death.

Final Words: a narrative technique to allow departed souls to say their last words.

Monster Templates

Little Critters: a template to increase the threat of low-level monsters. Designed to increase the gameplay satisfaction of casters, area effect abilities, and effects with the incapacitation trait.

Phalanx Bonus: an incentive for enemies to end their turn adjacent to each other. Designed to reward abilities that target adjacent creatures.

Energy Weakness: a quick guideline on adding energy weakness to a monster that does not have it.

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The document also includes a couple of house rules that you may find useful, including a way to decrease the frustration of low-level caster play.

You can get the free companion module for Foundry v11 and v12 here: Link to the Foundry page. If you are on foundry v11 and it asks you to update your PF2e system, you can do that by installing this update to PF2e while still staying on foundry v11.

For more of a back-and-forth discussion, you can come over to my mostly empty discord - https://discord.gg/sqM8ASsg9e

[No AI tools were used in the game design, writing, editing, or layout of this product. Care has been taken to ensure that only art made by real people was used, but I do not know if the artists used AI tools themselves. ]