Heroic PF2e

Heroic Variant is a broad set of opt-in changes designed to make PF2e more heroic, increase player agency, reduce frustration, and try to do all that without making things harder for the GM to prepare for sessions.

Heroic Adventuring Day

This variant reworks the hero points system and adds a wound tracker.

The hero point changes are an anti-frustration feature that help to counter the frustration of a series of low rolls in an encounter.

The wound tracker establishes limits for an adventuring. Without it, a party of martials and kineticists can have a "forever adventuring day", with only the (not too punishing) Fatigue condition to hold them back. With the wound tracker, wounds start to matter beyond just the individual encounter.

Additionally, the changes are inspired by MCDM’s experiment with Victories and Recoveries. The hero point rework rewards more encounters per adventuring day, while Wound Tracker is in tension with these stacking hero points.

Heroic Defeat

This set of rules concerns death and dying. Version 2 is currently up and it has variant rules to make defeat less gritty and more granular (no wordplay intended).

The rules will allow the GM to push their PCs to extreme tactical edge without necessarily killing the PCs. They also provide a wealth of narrative options that both PCs and villains can engage with: holding someone hostage, humiliating someone with defeat, making the party desperate enough to seek help from suspicious strangers.

On the other hand, the variant rules for dying (semi-conscious) are mostly there to prevent player disengagement when their PC is downed. It slightly increases PC power and so it should be used with some GM discretion. The current recommendation is to continue using existing encounter building rules even with this variant.

Any and all feedback is appreciated since it will determine the direction of the whole project.

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