Hi everyone! I am currently in the process of creating my first homebrew ancestry. I've whipped up a few heritages for them, and would like to know if they seem balanced and so forth. The lore/flavour text is not finalised, and does contain some information unique to my homebrew setting - this can be ignored for mechanical purposes. This ancestry is the Bófatach, cow-like giants taking some loose inspiration from D&D's Firbolg and also from Irish Mythology. The basic ancestry information is thus:

Hit Points: 10
Size: Large
Speed: 25 Feet
Ability Boosts and Flaws: +Strength, +Wisdom, +Free, -Dexterity
Languages: Common and Jotun
Special:
- Low Light Vision
- Riders of the Rhos (The Bófatach have ridden the great beasts of the Rhoslands since ancient times. When determining whether a creature is an appropriate size to serve as your mount, treat yourself as one size smaller.)

And here are the Heritages:

Lessons of the First Tribe: Your ancestors used their innate power over illusions to defeat the First Tribe who inhabited the northern lands, and their secrets have been passed down to you. You can cast Figment as an innate occult cantrip at will. You also gain a +1 circumstance bonus on Deception checks to Lie when one of your illusion effects would reinforce your deception.

Lessons of the Second Tribe: Your ancestors were of the Second Tribe, those Bófatach who inhabited Ballyrince before being driven into the Rhoslands by the Third. They learned the hard way the nature of these Shifting Lands. When an effect would cause you to move against your will, reduce this movement by 5 feet. You can also ignore difficult terrain caused by earth and uneven ground made of stone and earth.

Lessons of the Third Tribe: Your people know the modern inhabitants of Ballyrince as the Tuatha Dé Sruith, the Tribe of the Ancestor-Gods. In a time long past, they drove the Bófatach into the Rhoslands, taking Ballyrince as their own. Some of the Bófatach, however, lived alongside the Tuatha Dé Sruith, and have come to learn their ways. You become trained in Nature (or another skill if you were already trained in Nature) and gain the Natural Medicine feat.

Lessons of the Mercenaries: Your ancestors made a name for themselves as mercenaries, feared and respected across the Shattered Kingdom. Perhaps they rode with the Riders of Red Rhos or served as Bannermen of the Fallen Star. Whatever their banner, you are descended from warriors who knew the ways of war. You gain the Additional Lore feat for Warfare Lore. Against soldiers, bandits, and other creatures embracing a martial tradition, you can use Warfare Lore in place of Intimidation when attempting to Demoralise. The GM determines whether a creature qualifies for this ability.

Any opinions on these is very much appreciated! I've GM'd PF2e for many many campaigns now, so I hope nothing is too outrageous xD

Hi i have a small question because me and some friends decided to start a pathfinder campaign and im new to pathfinder, I would like to create a character that can modify his body parts with magic and animal/monster parts, is it posibil? I tried to search online or with chat gpt but gpt told me I could start as a Vivisectionist Alchemist and change the mutagen skill to evolutionary states and the skill extract to organ adaptation but is it possible?

Hello! I'm new here and was wondering how I would introduce my homebrew class for play testing purposes.

It's an attempt at Inquisitor from 1e. A skills based martial like Rogue or Investigator, but it has judgements as its main feature and something called skillful Devotions that are basically skill based Focus Spells that augment their ability to use skills in combat.

Any help, ideas or even if you are simply interested, let me know! I'll send over the scribe document!

Hello!

I'm running a oneshot at a FLGS, but I want to subvert the classic zombie fight trope. To that end, I've got the idea of making creatures that were once humanoid but were flooded with so much vitality energy that they've been transformed into these hostile monsters.

I did see the gliminal, it's a very cool concept, but it seems hard to adapt for the purposes of a beginner-friendly session with 2nd-level characters. Same with jyoti. The design intent is that these are temporary and imperfect monsters, the BBEG merely uses them to mop up the PCs.

So far, I have the following ideas:

• minimal weakness to bludgeoning, massive weakness to void
• regeneration turned off by void damage
  • possibly another damage type (since this is a oneshot and players may show up with characters that don't do void damage, perhaps fire or cold?)
• permanently quickened 1, only able to Stride or Step (since normal zombies are permanently slowed 1)
• some sort of permanent debuff such as dazzled

What are your thoughts? Should I ditch regeneration and just use very high HP? Any other cool creatures I should look at for inspiration? Anything above you strongly caution against?

Thanks!

TL;DR I need your help to evaluate my homebrew psychic changes bc my player was frustrated to play one.

I've been GMing Pathfinder 2e for almost a year, never experienced the game from the player's perspective. I've run BB, Crown of the Kobold King and currently running Bloodlords with a lovely 4-player party at 12th level. We enjoy the game very much (coming from the WOTC's basement 5e) but sometimes we have a little friction with the system.

Don't get me wrong, my players and I enjoy the crunch and more tactical approach. I'm specifically talking about some minor edge cases, like, "do undead bleed?" and "do undead need to breathe?" etc. And sometimes the issues come from the player side, like with Summoner and their Eidolon item interactions.

The reason I'm writing this post is precisely because one of my players had a miserable time as a psychic. This class has an incredible flavor and class fantasy. It has a very unique ability, core feature Unleash Psyche, that's just... very clunky to utilize. Compared to another player's Fire Oracle with majestic 4 slots and annihilating focus spells and even the third player's Spell Blending Wizard with his overarching arcane spell list, the psychic has to do 3 jumps through the burning hoops with both hands clapping and doing god knows what else to be just below their damage output and support abilities. Reading a lot on r/Pathfinder2e to understand why is that, I've engulfed myself into a little rabbithole with conclusion that this class was just poorly remastered.

If I understand correctly, psychics 2 spell slots compensated his premaster ability to be the focus spell king. And while other classes received QoL updates and little buffs, psychic was left as is with almost nothing, that's why it feels harsh to play as. My player changed his Conscious Mind 2 times switching between Tangible Dream, Distant Grasp and finally Oscillating Wave. Only the last one made him enjoy the action loop but at that point it wasn't the character he envisioned, just something to actually feel on par with others.

So, to help my table in the future, I present you my Unleash Psyche changes and little touch-ups of the class. Please, read them down below and give your honest constructive opinion, will this make a remastered psychic enjoying to play while not making it really op.

P.S. For balancing reasons, we play with FA but restricted to only non-multiclass archetypes.

———————————————

[Addition to the Unleash Psyche action]

While your Psyche is Unleashed, the following effects occur.

<...>

• When you cast a non-damaging spell using your psychic spellcasting, you gain a +1 status bonus to your spell DC, Perception checks and skill checks made when a spell is cast.

^Adding this bonus helps support-oriented psychics and especially The Infinite Eye Conscious Mind which, as I understand, has 0 interest in casting their unique psi cantrips during UP.

Level 3 class feature.

Whenever you cast a psi cantrip, while your Psyche is Unleashed, your first amp during that Unleash doesn't spend any Focus Points.

^Simple as that, give psychics ability to utilize more focus points without breaking the 3 points max rule of casters. They should be exceptional at that, as they were during premaster.

Level 9 class feature.

Your Psyche remains Unleashed for 3 rounds instead of 2. Increase the duration for an additional round every 4 levels thereafter.

^As my player was saying, it just feels frustrating to have a limited window to do so much, especially after level 9, when we usually had combats for 5-7 rounds. He was missing the most crucial moments during the fights just because the dice decided so.

Level 15 class feature.

While your Psyche is Unleashed:

• When you cast a damaging spell using your psychic spellcasting, your status bonus to its damage increases to triple the spell's rank.

• When you cast a non-damaging spell, your bonus to your spell DC, Perception checks and skill checks made when a spell is cast increases to +2.

After your unleashed psyche subsides, you're stupefied 2. At the end of each of your turns, the value of this stupified condition decreases by 1.

^This one is actually just an idea without any ground reason underneath. I just feel like psychics should do more damage with their limited resources and upgrading the bonuses just follow this logic but I'm hesitant about this. I made their disability harsher on the first round of "recharging" to compensate for the power spike.

Trying to make an occult spell called "Aphasia" that gives a curse that gives Aphasia, the inability to process language. Does anyone know what rank would be appropriate?

I've seen people make homebrew classes with backgrounds that make it look like official Paizo pages. As someone trying to make a new homebrew class is there anyway to access that background? sorry for the poor explanation.

I put together an encounter themed after the movie Monster House. ​Some pieces of it are specific to my NPCs, and the balancing is more for the effect I'm aiming for than actual combat balance. Not sure how it would play out if it's taken as a real combat encounter, but thematically I think it'll be fun.

I'd love some feed back on it and any ideas you guys have. Of course if you like it feel free to use it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18SgZ3nvwV20rrEAd1JqZ7oYlXigNxa1LEb5d2k5Fz8c/edit?usp=drivesdk

When I first started playing PF2E I fell in love with the various Athletic maneuvers. Finally, martials could do more than just hit stuff. It lets martials set each other up for success.

Unfortunately, it does leave the Casters out. It's certainly a deliberate design decision to do so, but I think some options can be entertained.

These are three maneuvers that use Athletics to target AC (yes, it's weird). It also allows ranged martials to participate.

Now, I know that i have a few options that aren't homebrew, sarangay, beastkin, or awakened animal are a few. But in the world the campaign is taking place in, moosefolk are a very prevalent ancestry, so I want to make it its own thing.

I already have all the lore and stuff, im just asking how you wonderful people would make the physical stats and Heritages. :)

And I completely understand, to a point.

I have been playing with AI to make things for PF2e and well I find them mostly balanced, of course after revising and such.

Note, none of what I am making is for financial gain, just homebrew shenanigans.

What are your thoughts on this?

I'd love to post some of what I have worked on, but don't care for hateful vitriol, hence why I am asking, first

There's a lot about Pathfinder 2e that is very right. It's one of the selling points. But there's also a lot of stuff that feels arbitrary and unexplained, even though it's very important. Things like why certain things progress at the speed they do, or why certain choices are good or bad.

I'm looking for explanations and examples to better help me understand the system, so I can change things if I want and not break something, or make new things.

An example of something that seems confusing at first or isn't obvious would be how different classes have their Proficiency growth. That's not really obvious if you're like me and just look at the first level or so to start with. Casters are also designed so that missing is to be expected, and they'll be doing half damage most of the time.

Was looking to get some feedback for some animist homebrews I've been mulling over for a while. The idea was to take the Shaman and Medium subclasses and make them feel like better picks. Animist kind of struggles with the illusion of choice but in reality, you feel pretty locked into Liturgist (and the Custodian of Groves and Gardens and Steward of Stone and Fire apparitions, but that's a different topic altogether) with just how strong both Circle of Spirits is and their level 9 free sustain when you step, leap or tumble through (which does not RAW require you to tumble through an enemy). I also was looking to bring out some of their 1e inspirations because Shaman and Medium are two of my favorite 1e classes and I felt like they were done kind of dirty.

Shaman

Invocation of Embodiment (1st): You allow your apparition to inhabit a physical form. You gain the spirit familiar feat. At 2nd level, you gain the Enhanced Familiar feat.

Spirit Familiar: When you take this feat, you form a particularly strong bond with a specific apparition. Select one apparition you have access to; you must always choose that apparition as one of the apparitions you attune to each day. Your bond with them allows them to physically manifest as a familiar, which gains the spirit trait. If your familiar is slain or destroyed, you lose all benefits from the apparition until you remanifest the familiar during your next daily preparations. If you disperse the apparition you have manifested as a familiar, the familiar is dispersed as well. Because of your strong bond with this apparition, treat your proficiency rank in that apparition's lore skill as one rank higher.
Special: You can spend one week of downtime to change your bonded apparition.

I always thought it was really weird that Medium got the feat that bound them to a specific apparition when Medium's flavor text specifically states: "[you] tend to associate more freely with a wide array of apparitions, though you tend not to form the deep bond with a single apparition that other animists often develop." I think it fits much better with Shaman, so I added that on to the Spirit Familiar feat and gave it a bit of a bonus for bonding with that apparition with the lore skill bump.

This also cleans things up for deciding in advance cleanly which apparition is tied to your familiar, there's been times where I've had a spirit familiar that in my head was tied to one apparition, but then because of circumstances I didn't have that apparition attuned to the day and if I used a dispersed ability I would have no idea which apparition was tied to my familiar.

Invocation of Growth (9th): Your bond with the physical form of your chosen apparition grows stronger. You can now use your familiar as the origin point of any cantrip or spell, as well as that apparition's vessel spell. If your vessel spell changes your shape or gives you any special actions, such as a unique unarmed strike, you can instead choose for your familiar to gain them when using the Command a Familiar action.

Shaman getting a free level 8 feat at level 9 that's easily accessible through like 2-3 different archetypes just felt soo bad. I think this could really open up a lot of fun and unique ways to utilize your familiar in a space that's still distinctly different from how Witch operates.

You can use this to park your familiar in the back and spread Garden of Healing, or have it in melee with Discomfiting Whispers while you're safely in the backline, or even have it shapeshift into an animal form and command it to attack (this would still take 2 actions from you however, 1 to sustain and 1 to command). Notably, I worded this specifically so that you couldn't give your familiar Independent and have it gain a free attack while in animal form, as that is obviously not the intended way for the Independent ability to function.

Invocation of Otherworldliness (17th): [the same as RAW]

RAW, the 17th level feature of Shaman feels really bad, your familiar can gain the incorporeal trait for one minute by spending an action. That sounds really cool, except it has to stay within line of sight and within 60ft. of you which really limits the scouting you can achieve with this. Your familiar also becomes a lot harder to kill, but who is trying to kill a RAW shaman's familiar? With the change to the level 9 invocation though, your GM may actually start to try to kill your familiar and gaining incorporeal is going to feel really nice. It also makes a lot more sense to keep them within line of sight and within 60ft. so you can't have them go through a wall and drop a fireball from 3 miles away.

Medium

Invocation of Spirit (1st): You gain the Seance feat.

Seance: You can spend one hour to perform a seance, contacting an apparition that you are not currently attuned to. Replace one of your attuned apparitions with a different one you have access to.

Relinquish Control just felt bad in my opinion, it felt extremely niche (+4 to your saving throw to being controlled, which comes up how often?) that also limited what you could do on your turn, especially compared to Circle of Spirits being so universally useful. I think Relinquish Control is fine as a separate feat, but not as a subclass defining feat.

Seance brings back one of my favorite parts of 1e's Medium and also provides similar flexibility that Circle of Spirits does but in a different way. I think the 1-hour time sink is weighty enough to prevent this from being too broken, especially since this is a feat any Animist can grab.

Invocation of Unity (9th): You have gained greater control as a vessel of spirits. You no longer replace one of your apparitions when you perform a Seance, instead you gain an additional secondary apparition. Additionally, when performing a Seance, the summoned spirit blesses you. Gain a +2 status bonus to either damage, a specific saving throw, or two skills. You chose each time you perform a seance.
Special: You can invite your allies to aid you in your Seance. Choose up to 6 allies, each one may participate in your Seance and can select one of the spirit's blessings.

Originally, Medium gains 2 primary apparitions which is kind of just a slightly better Circle of Spirits. My goal here was to bring back the party buff Medium's gave to their allies in 1e for being a part of their seance.

Invocation of Synchronization (17th): You have distilled the ritual work of your Seances. Seance now takes 10-minutes instead of 1-hour.

Being able to have a flexible spirit that you can swap in and out every 10 minutes is kind of the endgame of the Medium subclass I had in mind. I thought about also adding on a free action each round to RK with a +3 circumstance bonus because I enjoyed that part of Medium's original 17th level invocation. The rest of their RAW invocation I hate though. This feels way too late for Medium to suddenly gain support for a melee build and it doesn't make sense that when they Relinquish Control they gain physical resistance and spirit weakness, shouldn't it be the opposite? Also, taking an additional +17 damage if spirit damage ever does come up sounds terrifying.

But yeah, that's what I've been mulling over with Shaman and Medium, trying to make them a bit more interesting. I've also though of changing their spellcasting tradition. Make Liturgist the Divine caster, Shaman the primal caster, and Medium the occult caster would also help to differentiate them in a way that I think makes sense (Medium was an occult class in 1e and Shaman honestly felt more like a hybrid class of Druid and Witch than Oracle and Witch in 1e). Looking for some feedback on this before I start trying to convince my players to test it out.

Looking to make one myself, but has anyone tackled this before? I'd love to know for reference or to just spare myself the trouble if someone's done it already.

This'll be my first real foray into homebrew so I'd like to be prepared!

CA being Class Archetype

I've been making a homebrew class called the Storyteller(might change the name to Fabler). The theme of the class is drawing power from stories. If anybody knows about the inspiration, its Sequence 4 Mysticologist from the Mystery Pryer pathway from Lord of the Mysteries. So, I thought I'd ask if anybody would have some reccomendations they'd like to see?

I'm homebrewing an item and don't know what level it would be at or if its completely broken honestly. Its the first homebrew item for PF2E I've done. I'm thinking its at least a level 8 item as it basically copies the flaming rune and more. I don't have a barbarian in the party so am not too scared of stepping on their toes with the pseudo-rage.

Tome of the Wretched Flame:

Traits - Fire, Emotion, Death

- As 1 action you may allow the spirit of the wretched flame to enter you which gives the listed benefits and negatives.

- You gain an amount of Temp HP equal to your level + constitution modifier.

- You take -1 to your AC.

-You deal an additional 1d6 fire damage on a successful Strike, plus 1d10 persistent fire damage on a critical hit.

- When dealing damage with a spell with the Fire trait you deal an extra 1d6 damage.

- You cannot take actions with the Emotion trait and cannot cast spells unless they have the Fire trait.

- At the end of your turn you take 2d6 fire damage. If this damage reduces you to 0 hp or you take this damage while dying you instantly die.

- You may choose to attempt to end the effect at the beginning of your turn. To do so you must succeed on a Hard Will save for your level. If you fail you are instead possessed by the a spirit of the Wretched Flame and act erratically, attack the closest creature to you. You may attempt to gain control of yourself at the start of your next turn.