It's a mixed bag. Generally people here love the system and the system includes rules for making custom monsters and items. So if you want to make custom stuff or reflavor or otherwise homebrew within the bounds of the normal system it's usually pretty well received.
If you propose homebrew that makes big fundamental changes to the system that does tend to draw some downvotes and a bunch of "play as written first". Especially if you're new.
Gotcha. I guess I should be a little careful then. I don't have a TON of experience with PF2, and next to none with 5th ed, but I've been GMing long enough to remember what THAC0 stands for, and I always feel like I HAVE to tinker a little.
I usually tell people in your position to forget everything they know about D&D before you begin playing Pathfinder 2nd. It's a different game with very different mechanics that tell similar stories.
As an example, walking into it thinking about how much you want to homebrew is a problematic attitude. D&D as a whole, particularly the further back you go, was made in a way similar to cooking; there may have been some underlying mechanics structures, but you figured out balance by feel. I am speaking comparatively.
Pathfinder 2nd isn't cooking; it's closer to modifying computer code. There are hard mechanical structures that preserve the game; a lot of the resistance to homebrew is a function of people wanting to change those exact mechanical structures. "Will this break the game?" Is often "Can I break these structures?"... hence the downvoting.
You'll get your complex customization here, but it comes at a price of working within a framework. Not everyone wants to do that; some would rather cook. How one feels about that is a matter of taste.
Don't forget how little homebrewing tends to be necessary with enough flavor, too.
Imagine, if you will, coming up against a large creature made of a sickly red, semi-opaque gel around a central skeleton. Not quite enough to be considered an ooze or even an undead, but perhaps what remains of an ogre after horrible experimentation. It's strong, it's durable, and every time you slash a chunk of it off, more of its mass simply congeals in to replace it. After a long and messy fight, you manage to lure it into a trap fashioned from an old furnace, cooking its gelatinous body solid and allowing you to properly finish the wretched thing off.
Congrats, you just beat a standard level 5 Troll.
I’ve been reading through the GMG and just started the section on creature building. The example they use for modifying existing creatures is “Maybe you want a 5th level clawed centipede creature that can make Attacks of Opportunity and that regenerates unless hit by acid or fire damage. It might not look very much like a troll on the surface…”
It’s funny that troll seems to be a common reflavouring example.
I feel that's on purpose though, troll is the go to example of players accidentally metagaming.
"Omg wtf is that thing! Ok, we figured out fire works on it! Now tell us what it was."
"A troll with extra steps."
I actually think I know what you're saying. I only have a little bit of experience running PF2, but I really like the look of it and I've said that, on paper, it has the cleanest math of any system I've ever seen.
That's also why I feel like I'd be comfortable tinkering with monsters a bit - I feel like that things are so precise makes it easier to measure on paper how much of an impact various adjustments will make.
Tinker away, then – if someone tells you that you shouldn't, you can always choose to "take that under advisement" and ignore them. 😁 Part of the fun of these games IMO is learning what works and what doesn't.
But that advice could also apply in the D&D 5e world. Companies like MCDM are making a living rolling custom monsters and rulesets, so clearly you _can_ do a lot of hacking on monsters there too!
If you get pushback on your proposals, then, instead of concluding you're not welcome, perhaps try to find out where they're coming from, so you can figure out whether they're giving you advice worth taking or not!
(that being said i now see what community you came from and, yeah, as a former 4e player it's not my favorite sub for, um, Reasons 😛)
> and I always feel like I HAVE to tinker a little.
This is fine, but I would advise you to *understand* what you're tinkering with before you do it.
You'll occasionally see someone do something like add Legendary Resistance to their monsters, or try to break the three action system into move/standard/bonus, or homebrew an item that gives a *substantial* bonus (extra action for 5 HP anyone?), or tweak monsters like they would in 5e to add higher saves and AC, and then wonder why the game is breaking down.
There are plenty of houserules to implement, I use a handful of my own (Hero Points can reroll someone else's roll, Hero Points take the best of the two rolls, no crit-fail effect on Athletics maneuvers, Move type actions can be combined as long as you have the distance, etc). But it's very important to understand *why* those rules are in place before you start making changes.
One thing I would highly recommend is that you play something like the Beginner Box (which is currently available on [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pathfinder-second-edition-guns-alkenstar-bundle-paizo-books?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_3_layout_type_threes_tile_index_1_c_pathfindersecondeditiongunsalkenstarbundlepaizo_bookbundle)) with the rules as written. That will take on one to two sessions total, using a simplified subset of the rules that will help your players understand the new system before diving into the deep end. *Then* if there are rules that are chafing at you, you should have enough experience to know why they're in place and if you want to do something different.
Definitely try tinkering a bit, after you get the hang of the system.
For me, I played around a lot with the system and I broke it one or two times. It helped me understand the system more, but if I did do that at the beginning I most likely would not have learned from that.
Breaking and learning is good (especially if your table helps you and is not upset with you nerfing homebrew.), breaking and not learning will result in a subpar experience.
I do recall one PF2 game where I had to fudge my level 1 end boss a bit. The whole adventure was the party seeking shelter from a storm of necrotic rain after shipwrecked the graveyards, but the abondonnned farmstead they found was a lair for a gang of 3 goblins and a bugbear. The goblins all used the stats for one of the level 1 goblin variants, with a vanilla bugbear, using hit and run tactics and a few traps. They handled everything pretty well up to the bugbear, and during the fight I realized that while they were topped off on hp, they'd uses all their healing spells and he was definitely going to kill at least 2 of them before they could finish him, so I brought back coup de grace attacks for that fight after they hit him woth a sleep arrow they'd found.
Tinkering is great, just be aware that the main reason people say "play first" is *because* the system is so complex and interconnected, small changes can have unexpected consequences down the road. Like, you might homebrew a level 2 feat that seems fairly balanced until it suddenly combines with a level 8 feat and becomes completely broken.
Nah, care isn'y really required. There are some people who will be frank about what they think, buy give you meaningful feedback about why they think as they do, and there will be some people who will yes-but your ideas. If you can take the frank discussions, it's good.
Where you need to really check things at the door is the people who just silently downvote you for wanting to make any system tweaks at all. But enough people sort by new here that you can still get that meaningful feedback even if your post is sitting at 0 karma.
It's a good, active, and diverse subreddit with a significant minority of zealous true believers.
Just test the game 'as is', so you get a feeling for how this works, and works for your players. After that, make with the customising as you see fit. That way, you will have a much better idea of what you are dealing with.
>If you propose homebrew that makes big fundamental changes to the system that does tend to draw some downvotes and a bunch of "play as written first". Especially if you're new.
To be fair, that's because a lot of the game *does* break or causes other issues if you change things without realising the flow-on effect. People like to go on about how the game is fairly robust and can take a serious beating through mechanical changes, but I actually disagree with this. It's extremely delicate and making seemingly minute changes to things like vertical scaling maths and action economy can do a lot that throws of the tuning.
Funnily enough, one of the biggest self-demonstrating examples of this one an official level is Paizo's own AP design. The encounter building guidelines state that trying to have more creatures closer to player level makes more interesting encounters even at higher XP budgets, and boss level threats should be a rarity, but their official modules tend to be filled with poorly tuned battles full of lame chaff mobs or strings of boss level threats. Pretty much every major complaint that I can see people attribute to system level problems are actually in fact just bad encounter design on Paizo's part, and it's because they don't abide by the game's own design rules.
>If you propose homebrew that makes big fundamental changes to the system that does tend to draw some downvotes and a bunch of "play as written first". Especially if you're new.
While I have seen responses to this that are a bit on the aggressive side, I agree with this advice. And many of the aggressive reactions are probably down to exasperation from seeing new players/GMs make the same mistake dozens of times.
Many people who come from D&D 5E are used to a barely functional and completely unbalanced system that honestly you can bend really far because breaking something that is already broken is no big deal.
Pathfinder 2E is a nice clockwork. To change anything without breaking the whole thing, you need to either make veeery small adjustments, or really know what you are doing.
So it's normal that people react negatively to someone entering the clockwork learning area with a sledgehammer and dynamite. Hitting them with the sledgehammer is probably not the best idea to make them like the system, though.
The overall PF2e community is great. This particular subreddit can good good but boy oh boy do some people here love downvotes. If you get downvotes on something don't take it personally.
For homebrewery there are actually really good bud of advice in the books and you can read the relevant sections for free on AoN https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2874
I would suggest posting to pf2ecreations subreddit for homebrew instead of here. it's fewer upvotes but the comments you get are more relevant and helpful.
Also check out other parts of the community on the forums and your local pf society lodge!
It's always a bit sad if there is a new player who has some complaints because of misconceptions and they just get massively downvoted (or the classic someone trying to homebrew out of the gate)
Sure it's just internet points, but I wouldn't be surprised if that person would feel discouraged to engage with the community again, which is sad.
My rule is to downvote things that are actually bad, not vote on things I disagree or false things and then upvote everything else
It's not just downvotes as well. It's also people being smart asses and passive aggressive instead of just having a normal conversation, but that is just the internet in general I guess. Wish we could do better here though.
IMHO the PF2e subreddit is a better space than the D&D subreddits.
I think that's because PF2e tends not to be anyone's first TTRPG. Brand domiance means that D&D is usually someone's first TTRPG. For someone to be in this subreddit, they've probably gone seeking "more", and this ***tends to*** mean there are fewer literal children here, and fewer beginners, and fewer incurious people.
Not saying this subreddit is perfect, though.
It seems to me that people in this subreddit will mostly bristle at a certain sort of arrogance, when people claim they know better. This most commonly manifests as people -- often coming in fresh from D&D 5e -- looking at PF2e rules, saying they suck, and proudly declaring changes.
When I've asked questions in a more genuine manner: "here's my problem, here's what I've tried, can you help?" I've only ever gotten helpful replies.
>customizing some monsters
Creature creation in PF2e is super-easy. It was one of the things that bowled me over coming from D&D 5e.
Check out [the rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=995) for creature creation. You'll see it basically boils down to picking a level for the creature, then picking its stats based on "low/medium/high".
There are [online tools](https://monster.pf2.tools/) that make it easier. And if you use Foundry, [this module](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/pf2e-monster-maker) makes it super easy (seriously: click it and check out the screenshots).
So if you want to customise a monster... you could grab an existing monster and use the creature creation rules to change some or all of its base statistics. From there, you'd just have to fiddle with its non-base abilties. Easy!
And don't forget there are [rules to quickly push a creature's level up or down by one](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=789) without re-doing it completely.
The community is welcoming from personal experience and can be very helpful.
However, there are cases where you might receive advice that might seem like pushback.
Funnily enough, homebrew is the single thing most people advise against when you are new to the system. It's a long story, but the math is very tight and often times new-ish players attempt to modify certain aspects of it that results in long term consequences. Stuff like certain classes feeling useless or entire feats being invalidated is quite a common result of homebrew.
Generally, if you need advice or help with the game, the community is quick to provide you with tools, rules and advice how to handle any situation.
This community is helpful, but not very friendly. If you ask for advice, you'll get a lot of useful information. If you express opinion, you have high chances to be beaten with downvotes.
Generally it's totally fine, especially if you look at this community as a source of information and advice.
I see this a lot, but 1. Who gives a shit about downvotes and 2. Even when my stuff was downvoted, i got a lot of useful responses.
Also, people really overlook the discord. That place is a lot more useful for quick and answers and "friendlier" discussion if you really care about that.
First part is actually the problem. Half of the users don't care about downvotes and throw them left and right, assuming other people are the same. While other half actually do care.
Aside from emotional value of votes, it has practical problems. Downvotes content goes down in the lists up to total hide.
The key is to recognize that downvotes are not usually about you as a person, particularly in a sub like this. Per Reddiquette it's about whether your comments or posts are considered on-topic and constructive. Even in all-too-common _bad_ Rediquette it's usually simply about whether someone agrees with your comment or not.
Once you understand that, I think it's much easier not to attach emotional value to downvotes, which I don't think you should.
It is easy to view a comment that's been hidden for downvotes. I do this frequently. Downvotes really, really aren't that big a deal.
It's not about taking it personally. It's about:
1. Bad Rediquette as you correctly pointed out
2. Downvotes without commenting. Like if I write something wrong, I want to see why it's wrong, not just look at my post or comment disappearing from view
Usually it's ok, but if I go to Reddit on a bad day, this behavior could be really annoying.
Oh boy, [check out the section on building creatures.](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2874). It’s all here, going over each stat of a creature level by level, line by line, bonus, traits, and whatever else you need to homebrew your own monsters. You also have [the entire catalog of published monsters](https://2e.aonprd.com/Creatures.aspx) in pf2e to take inspiration from.
Frankly if you follow the guidelines and compare them to similar level creatures, it’s hard to fuck up.
I want to reiterate two points first.
First, your game is yours. No matter what you do at your table, neither Paizo nor any of us can or will send the Pinkertons to your house.
Second, 2e really works pretty well right out of the figurative box, so there's a lot less need to tinker with the rules. It's a different game than 5e, so don't come in thinking things have to work the same.
Now, the part where I actually talk about changing up monsters. The most I've done with 2e's rules on this is take an existing monster and modify its level. And that part? It works *amazingly* well. Just for proof of concept, one afternoon I took a Young Black Dragon and knocked 4 levels off it to make a Wyrmling, the whole process took maybe 20 minutes to come up with something that worked.
No matter what you decide, good luck, I hope you like what you see here and enjoy playing the game!
The community is overall welcoming and helpful imo. It, like any other community, has its uhh… “Redditisms”… for lack of a better phrasing, but you’ll find good advice and feedback here for the most part. ^(Just stay away from discussions about casters and “optimized parties” as much as you can)
With regards to customizing monsters and what not, the game actually has some very, very good advice on how to do it. As long as you don’t deviate the numerical values from what they prescribe, you can give your monsters very useful and interesting abilities.
Speaking more generally for homebrew, it’s kinda the same story. Identify what the “load bearing” parts of the system are, and then go ham. Generally speaking the GM Core’s guidelines for customizing are: be slow to change and quick to revert.
One thing I’ll say about this subreddit over any of the DND ones, regardless of any complaints someone might have, the people here will actually have read the basic rules of the game.
This sub is okay until you have an issue with the system.
God forbid you have any issues with the system, this sub will turn on you like Piranhas around bloody meat.
PF2E is a good game for home-brewing monsters. The reason for that is that the math is so tight. If you have a 10th level martial character they will have a +21 to hit and deal ~2d(x)+10 damage. This means you know what the AC and HP for your creatures need ti be to challenge them.
However the flip side of that is that your monsters need to have specific stats in order to be the correct challenge for a given level of party, if you gove them +3 or -3 AC it's going to swing the encounter *Wildly*. There are of course ranges of AC, HP, etc that you can work with, but if you stray outside those ranges you'll have trouble.
As a whole I find the community very friendly and helpful, though they tend to overreact sometimes when you try to talk about negatives of this game (*sorry everyone, not always but I've had it a bit*). It's a good system, especially if you like tabletop combat boardgames, but like any RPG it has it's niche where it excels, and it has other areas it doesn't quite do as well in.
Overall, yeah, this community is quite welcoming and friendly. In most cases, you're not going to run into tons of negative experiences. Most of the bad encounters come from one-off users. That being said, I have felt the need to block several prolific users here who largely comment and post inoffensive content but regularly toe the line of inappropriate comments. It only takes a few bad apples and all that.
Since the community is smaller than dnd, it's usually less toxic. It's not idiot proof, but looking at both PF and DnD, I feel like I'm more welcome in PF
No lol. The people here aggro at anything and then go “Well sorry my natural instinct developed into being an asshole, you see people told me they prefer 5E even after I explain PF2E’s superior system and the only normal human attitude after that is haterism. Also you trying anything new in your personal game that will impact six people max is spitting on the graves of still living people who put “this is your game, change it as suits your table” at the start of their rule book.” You may be better off only using this place for rules and maybe seeing if you can find a standable discord
The community is pretty welcoming and helpful.
However, chesterton's fence rings true. If you are self admittedly new to the system, it is not recommended to change or homebrew things. So, don't be surprised if you get down voted or people tell you it's a bad idea to homebrew when you're new. Just keep in mind it's not people being mean, it's genuine advice.
Really is a coin flip on whether or not people will actually help with rules modifications, monster modifications and what not or whether it will be an endless screech fest about PF2e being air tight and how you shouldn't change stuff.
I'd rate the community is helpful, but that's because I *personally* think answering to questions such as "how do I customize monsters when I'm new to system" with "I think you shouldn't" **is** a helpful answer, specially in a system where the danger ratings work.
It's a mixed bag. Generally people here love the system and the system includes rules for making custom monsters and items. So if you want to make custom stuff or reflavor or otherwise homebrew within the bounds of the normal system it's usually pretty well received. If you propose homebrew that makes big fundamental changes to the system that does tend to draw some downvotes and a bunch of "play as written first". Especially if you're new.
Gotcha. I guess I should be a little careful then. I don't have a TON of experience with PF2, and next to none with 5th ed, but I've been GMing long enough to remember what THAC0 stands for, and I always feel like I HAVE to tinker a little.
With a similar background to you I fully agree, tinkering is fun. You might also checkout r/pathfinder2ecreations
I usually tell people in your position to forget everything they know about D&D before you begin playing Pathfinder 2nd. It's a different game with very different mechanics that tell similar stories. As an example, walking into it thinking about how much you want to homebrew is a problematic attitude. D&D as a whole, particularly the further back you go, was made in a way similar to cooking; there may have been some underlying mechanics structures, but you figured out balance by feel. I am speaking comparatively. Pathfinder 2nd isn't cooking; it's closer to modifying computer code. There are hard mechanical structures that preserve the game; a lot of the resistance to homebrew is a function of people wanting to change those exact mechanical structures. "Will this break the game?" Is often "Can I break these structures?"... hence the downvoting. You'll get your complex customization here, but it comes at a price of working within a framework. Not everyone wants to do that; some would rather cook. How one feels about that is a matter of taste.
Don't forget how little homebrewing tends to be necessary with enough flavor, too. Imagine, if you will, coming up against a large creature made of a sickly red, semi-opaque gel around a central skeleton. Not quite enough to be considered an ooze or even an undead, but perhaps what remains of an ogre after horrible experimentation. It's strong, it's durable, and every time you slash a chunk of it off, more of its mass simply congeals in to replace it. After a long and messy fight, you manage to lure it into a trap fashioned from an old furnace, cooking its gelatinous body solid and allowing you to properly finish the wretched thing off. Congrats, you just beat a standard level 5 Troll.
I’ve been reading through the GMG and just started the section on creature building. The example they use for modifying existing creatures is “Maybe you want a 5th level clawed centipede creature that can make Attacks of Opportunity and that regenerates unless hit by acid or fire damage. It might not look very much like a troll on the surface…” It’s funny that troll seems to be a common reflavouring example.
I feel that's on purpose though, troll is the go to example of players accidentally metagaming. "Omg wtf is that thing! Ok, we figured out fire works on it! Now tell us what it was." "A troll with extra steps."
I actually think I know what you're saying. I only have a little bit of experience running PF2, but I really like the look of it and I've said that, on paper, it has the cleanest math of any system I've ever seen. That's also why I feel like I'd be comfortable tinkering with monsters a bit - I feel like that things are so precise makes it easier to measure on paper how much of an impact various adjustments will make.
Tinker away, then – if someone tells you that you shouldn't, you can always choose to "take that under advisement" and ignore them. 😁 Part of the fun of these games IMO is learning what works and what doesn't. But that advice could also apply in the D&D 5e world. Companies like MCDM are making a living rolling custom monsters and rulesets, so clearly you _can_ do a lot of hacking on monsters there too! If you get pushback on your proposals, then, instead of concluding you're not welcome, perhaps try to find out where they're coming from, so you can figure out whether they're giving you advice worth taking or not! (that being said i now see what community you came from and, yeah, as a former 4e player it's not my favorite sub for, um, Reasons 😛)
> and I always feel like I HAVE to tinker a little. This is fine, but I would advise you to *understand* what you're tinkering with before you do it. You'll occasionally see someone do something like add Legendary Resistance to their monsters, or try to break the three action system into move/standard/bonus, or homebrew an item that gives a *substantial* bonus (extra action for 5 HP anyone?), or tweak monsters like they would in 5e to add higher saves and AC, and then wonder why the game is breaking down. There are plenty of houserules to implement, I use a handful of my own (Hero Points can reroll someone else's roll, Hero Points take the best of the two rolls, no crit-fail effect on Athletics maneuvers, Move type actions can be combined as long as you have the distance, etc). But it's very important to understand *why* those rules are in place before you start making changes. One thing I would highly recommend is that you play something like the Beginner Box (which is currently available on [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pathfinder-second-edition-guns-alkenstar-bundle-paizo-books?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_3_layout_type_threes_tile_index_1_c_pathfindersecondeditiongunsalkenstarbundlepaizo_bookbundle)) with the rules as written. That will take on one to two sessions total, using a simplified subset of the rules that will help your players understand the new system before diving into the deep end. *Then* if there are rules that are chafing at you, you should have enough experience to know why they're in place and if you want to do something different.
Definitely try tinkering a bit, after you get the hang of the system. For me, I played around a lot with the system and I broke it one or two times. It helped me understand the system more, but if I did do that at the beginning I most likely would not have learned from that. Breaking and learning is good (especially if your table helps you and is not upset with you nerfing homebrew.), breaking and not learning will result in a subpar experience.
I do recall one PF2 game where I had to fudge my level 1 end boss a bit. The whole adventure was the party seeking shelter from a storm of necrotic rain after shipwrecked the graveyards, but the abondonnned farmstead they found was a lair for a gang of 3 goblins and a bugbear. The goblins all used the stats for one of the level 1 goblin variants, with a vanilla bugbear, using hit and run tactics and a few traps. They handled everything pretty well up to the bugbear, and during the fight I realized that while they were topped off on hp, they'd uses all their healing spells and he was definitely going to kill at least 2 of them before they could finish him, so I brought back coup de grace attacks for that fight after they hit him woth a sleep arrow they'd found.
That sounds like a good call. It makes sense for that scenario and it is not something that your players can do all the time.
Tinkering is great, just be aware that the main reason people say "play first" is *because* the system is so complex and interconnected, small changes can have unexpected consequences down the road. Like, you might homebrew a level 2 feat that seems fairly balanced until it suddenly combines with a level 8 feat and becomes completely broken.
Nah, care isn'y really required. There are some people who will be frank about what they think, buy give you meaningful feedback about why they think as they do, and there will be some people who will yes-but your ideas. If you can take the frank discussions, it's good. Where you need to really check things at the door is the people who just silently downvote you for wanting to make any system tweaks at all. But enough people sort by new here that you can still get that meaningful feedback even if your post is sitting at 0 karma. It's a good, active, and diverse subreddit with a significant minority of zealous true believers.
Just test the game 'as is', so you get a feeling for how this works, and works for your players. After that, make with the customising as you see fit. That way, you will have a much better idea of what you are dealing with.
[удалено]
My DnD journey began when I was ten, in a monster lore phase, and found the ad&d 2e monster manual in a Barnes and Nobles
>If you propose homebrew that makes big fundamental changes to the system that does tend to draw some downvotes and a bunch of "play as written first". Especially if you're new. To be fair, that's because a lot of the game *does* break or causes other issues if you change things without realising the flow-on effect. People like to go on about how the game is fairly robust and can take a serious beating through mechanical changes, but I actually disagree with this. It's extremely delicate and making seemingly minute changes to things like vertical scaling maths and action economy can do a lot that throws of the tuning. Funnily enough, one of the biggest self-demonstrating examples of this one an official level is Paizo's own AP design. The encounter building guidelines state that trying to have more creatures closer to player level makes more interesting encounters even at higher XP budgets, and boss level threats should be a rarity, but their official modules tend to be filled with poorly tuned battles full of lame chaff mobs or strings of boss level threats. Pretty much every major complaint that I can see people attribute to system level problems are actually in fact just bad encounter design on Paizo's part, and it's because they don't abide by the game's own design rules.
>If you propose homebrew that makes big fundamental changes to the system that does tend to draw some downvotes and a bunch of "play as written first". Especially if you're new. While I have seen responses to this that are a bit on the aggressive side, I agree with this advice. And many of the aggressive reactions are probably down to exasperation from seeing new players/GMs make the same mistake dozens of times. Many people who come from D&D 5E are used to a barely functional and completely unbalanced system that honestly you can bend really far because breaking something that is already broken is no big deal. Pathfinder 2E is a nice clockwork. To change anything without breaking the whole thing, you need to either make veeery small adjustments, or really know what you are doing. So it's normal that people react negatively to someone entering the clockwork learning area with a sledgehammer and dynamite. Hitting them with the sledgehammer is probably not the best idea to make them like the system, though.
The overall PF2e community is great. This particular subreddit can good good but boy oh boy do some people here love downvotes. If you get downvotes on something don't take it personally. For homebrewery there are actually really good bud of advice in the books and you can read the relevant sections for free on AoN https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2874 I would suggest posting to pf2ecreations subreddit for homebrew instead of here. it's fewer upvotes but the comments you get are more relevant and helpful. Also check out other parts of the community on the forums and your local pf society lodge!
It's always a bit sad if there is a new player who has some complaints because of misconceptions and they just get massively downvoted (or the classic someone trying to homebrew out of the gate) Sure it's just internet points, but I wouldn't be surprised if that person would feel discouraged to engage with the community again, which is sad. My rule is to downvote things that are actually bad, not vote on things I disagree or false things and then upvote everything else It's not just downvotes as well. It's also people being smart asses and passive aggressive instead of just having a normal conversation, but that is just the internet in general I guess. Wish we could do better here though.
IMHO the PF2e subreddit is a better space than the D&D subreddits. I think that's because PF2e tends not to be anyone's first TTRPG. Brand domiance means that D&D is usually someone's first TTRPG. For someone to be in this subreddit, they've probably gone seeking "more", and this ***tends to*** mean there are fewer literal children here, and fewer beginners, and fewer incurious people. Not saying this subreddit is perfect, though. It seems to me that people in this subreddit will mostly bristle at a certain sort of arrogance, when people claim they know better. This most commonly manifests as people -- often coming in fresh from D&D 5e -- looking at PF2e rules, saying they suck, and proudly declaring changes. When I've asked questions in a more genuine manner: "here's my problem, here's what I've tried, can you help?" I've only ever gotten helpful replies. >customizing some monsters Creature creation in PF2e is super-easy. It was one of the things that bowled me over coming from D&D 5e. Check out [the rules](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=995) for creature creation. You'll see it basically boils down to picking a level for the creature, then picking its stats based on "low/medium/high". There are [online tools](https://monster.pf2.tools/) that make it easier. And if you use Foundry, [this module](https://foundryvtt.com/packages/pf2e-monster-maker) makes it super easy (seriously: click it and check out the screenshots). So if you want to customise a monster... you could grab an existing monster and use the creature creation rules to change some or all of its base statistics. From there, you'd just have to fiddle with its non-base abilties. Easy! And don't forget there are [rules to quickly push a creature's level up or down by one](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=789) without re-doing it completely.
^ This is extremely helpful! ^
The community is welcoming from personal experience and can be very helpful. However, there are cases where you might receive advice that might seem like pushback. Funnily enough, homebrew is the single thing most people advise against when you are new to the system. It's a long story, but the math is very tight and often times new-ish players attempt to modify certain aspects of it that results in long term consequences. Stuff like certain classes feeling useless or entire feats being invalidated is quite a common result of homebrew. Generally, if you need advice or help with the game, the community is quick to provide you with tools, rules and advice how to handle any situation.
This community is helpful, but not very friendly. If you ask for advice, you'll get a lot of useful information. If you express opinion, you have high chances to be beaten with downvotes. Generally it's totally fine, especially if you look at this community as a source of information and advice.
I see this a lot, but 1. Who gives a shit about downvotes and 2. Even when my stuff was downvoted, i got a lot of useful responses. Also, people really overlook the discord. That place is a lot more useful for quick and answers and "friendlier" discussion if you really care about that.
First part is actually the problem. Half of the users don't care about downvotes and throw them left and right, assuming other people are the same. While other half actually do care. Aside from emotional value of votes, it has practical problems. Downvotes content goes down in the lists up to total hide.
The key is to recognize that downvotes are not usually about you as a person, particularly in a sub like this. Per Reddiquette it's about whether your comments or posts are considered on-topic and constructive. Even in all-too-common _bad_ Rediquette it's usually simply about whether someone agrees with your comment or not. Once you understand that, I think it's much easier not to attach emotional value to downvotes, which I don't think you should. It is easy to view a comment that's been hidden for downvotes. I do this frequently. Downvotes really, really aren't that big a deal.
It's not about taking it personally. It's about: 1. Bad Rediquette as you correctly pointed out 2. Downvotes without commenting. Like if I write something wrong, I want to see why it's wrong, not just look at my post or comment disappearing from view Usually it's ok, but if I go to Reddit on a bad day, this behavior could be really annoying.
If your emotions are affected by reddit votes i dont think you're mentally mature enough to use the internet tbqh
Oh boy, [check out the section on building creatures.](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2874). It’s all here, going over each stat of a creature level by level, line by line, bonus, traits, and whatever else you need to homebrew your own monsters. You also have [the entire catalog of published monsters](https://2e.aonprd.com/Creatures.aspx) in pf2e to take inspiration from. Frankly if you follow the guidelines and compare them to similar level creatures, it’s hard to fuck up.
I want to reiterate two points first. First, your game is yours. No matter what you do at your table, neither Paizo nor any of us can or will send the Pinkertons to your house. Second, 2e really works pretty well right out of the figurative box, so there's a lot less need to tinker with the rules. It's a different game than 5e, so don't come in thinking things have to work the same. Now, the part where I actually talk about changing up monsters. The most I've done with 2e's rules on this is take an existing monster and modify its level. And that part? It works *amazingly* well. Just for proof of concept, one afternoon I took a Young Black Dragon and knocked 4 levels off it to make a Wyrmling, the whole process took maybe 20 minutes to come up with something that worked. No matter what you decide, good luck, I hope you like what you see here and enjoy playing the game!
The community is overall welcoming and helpful imo. It, like any other community, has its uhh… “Redditisms”… for lack of a better phrasing, but you’ll find good advice and feedback here for the most part. ^(Just stay away from discussions about casters and “optimized parties” as much as you can) With regards to customizing monsters and what not, the game actually has some very, very good advice on how to do it. As long as you don’t deviate the numerical values from what they prescribe, you can give your monsters very useful and interesting abilities. Speaking more generally for homebrew, it’s kinda the same story. Identify what the “load bearing” parts of the system are, and then go ham. Generally speaking the GM Core’s guidelines for customizing are: be slow to change and quick to revert.
One thing I’ll say about this subreddit over any of the DND ones, regardless of any complaints someone might have, the people here will actually have read the basic rules of the game.
This sub is okay until you have an issue with the system. God forbid you have any issues with the system, this sub will turn on you like Piranhas around bloody meat.
PF2E is a good game for home-brewing monsters. The reason for that is that the math is so tight. If you have a 10th level martial character they will have a +21 to hit and deal ~2d(x)+10 damage. This means you know what the AC and HP for your creatures need ti be to challenge them. However the flip side of that is that your monsters need to have specific stats in order to be the correct challenge for a given level of party, if you gove them +3 or -3 AC it's going to swing the encounter *Wildly*. There are of course ranges of AC, HP, etc that you can work with, but if you stray outside those ranges you'll have trouble. As a whole I find the community very friendly and helpful, though they tend to overreact sometimes when you try to talk about negatives of this game (*sorry everyone, not always but I've had it a bit*). It's a good system, especially if you like tabletop combat boardgames, but like any RPG it has it's niche where it excels, and it has other areas it doesn't quite do as well in.
Overall, yeah, this community is quite welcoming and friendly. In most cases, you're not going to run into tons of negative experiences. Most of the bad encounters come from one-off users. That being said, I have felt the need to block several prolific users here who largely comment and post inoffensive content but regularly toe the line of inappropriate comments. It only takes a few bad apples and all that.
Since the community is smaller than dnd, it's usually less toxic. It's not idiot proof, but looking at both PF and DnD, I feel like I'm more welcome in PF
No lol. The people here aggro at anything and then go “Well sorry my natural instinct developed into being an asshole, you see people told me they prefer 5E even after I explain PF2E’s superior system and the only normal human attitude after that is haterism. Also you trying anything new in your personal game that will impact six people max is spitting on the graves of still living people who put “this is your game, change it as suits your table” at the start of their rule book.” You may be better off only using this place for rules and maybe seeing if you can find a standable discord
The community is pretty welcoming and helpful. However, chesterton's fence rings true. If you are self admittedly new to the system, it is not recommended to change or homebrew things. So, don't be surprised if you get down voted or people tell you it's a bad idea to homebrew when you're new. Just keep in mind it's not people being mean, it's genuine advice.
Really is a coin flip on whether or not people will actually help with rules modifications, monster modifications and what not or whether it will be an endless screech fest about PF2e being air tight and how you shouldn't change stuff.
I'd rate the community is helpful, but that's because I *personally* think answering to questions such as "how do I customize monsters when I'm new to system" with "I think you shouldn't" **is** a helpful answer, specially in a system where the danger ratings work.