When creating an ancestry paragon character, instead of starting with one ancestry feat and gaining another at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th levels, the character starts with two ancestry feats and gains another at every odd level thereafter (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and so on) for a total of 11 ancestry feats. Your modifier for a task is usually made up of your relevant proficiency bonus and ability bonus, though it may also include various other bonuses and penalties. Other bonuses or penalties come in three types: circumstance, status, and item (you can also have untyped penalties, but not untyped bonuses). If you have more than one bonus of the same type, you use only the highest bonus. Likewise, you use only the worst penalty of each type. If you grew up with no family, you had to learn to survive on your own. Add a Strength ability boost and a Constitution ability boost to your options. Roleplaying games are, at their cores, simulations, with most rules focusing on how to perform epic feats and participate in the fantastic adventures of legendary heroes. When to Design? This alternative ability score generation method replaces ability boosts and flaws with a number of Ability Points. Players determine their ability scores by investing Ability Points into each score, as seen in Table 4–1: Cost for an Ability Score. These give players more customization in their ability scores and can allow a player to really prioritize their favorite ones, but the system is significantly more complicated to use. Table 4-1: Cost for an Ability Score Total Ability Points Spent

Mediator: Just as GMs make sure all of a game’s plots and rules work together to entertain, they must also ensure that the players themselves mesh and cooperate. Unfavorable Terrain for the PCs: Monsters are designed with the assumption that they are encountered in their favored terrain—encountering a water-breathing aboleth in an underwater area does not increase the CR for that encounter, even though none of the PCs breathe water. If, on the other hand, the terrain impacts the encounter significantly (such as an encounter against a creature with blindsight in an area that suppresses all light), you can, at your option, increase the effective XP award as if the encounter’s CR were one higher. NPC Gear Adjustments: You can significantly increase or decrease the power level of an NPC with class levels by adjusting the NPC’s gear. The combined value of an NPC’s gear is given in Creating NPCs on Table: NPC Gear. A classed NPC encountered with no gear should have his CR reduced by 1 (provided that loss of gear actually hampers the NPC), while a classed NPC that instead has gear equivalent to that of a PC (as listed on Table: Character Wealth by Level) has a CR of 1 higher than his actual CR. Be careful awarding NPCs this extra gear, though—especially at high levels, where you can blow out your entire adventure’s treasure budget in one fell swoop!

Class Abilities

While you probably won’t need to adjust combat challenges at all for simplified skill feat characters, skill-based challenges—especially social challenges—will be tougher, especially at higher levels where it’s expected characters will have more efficient skill-based abilities due to skill feats. If you prefer more baseline difficulty, you could adjust the expectations down slightly.

Classes with focus pools get all the Focus Points granted by all of them. These share one focus pool as normal, with the standard cap of 3 maximum Focus Points. The initial implementation is fairly straightforward: the proficiency bonus just becomes +2 for trained, +4 for expert, +6 for master, and +8 for legendary. We recommend giving an untrained character a –2 proficiency modifier instead of a +0 proficiency bonus. During character creation, there are 4 steps that are used to determine your ability scores. Each ability score starts at 10, representing human average, but as you make character choices, you'll adjust these scores by applying ability boosts, which increase a score by 2, and ability flaws, which decrease a score by 2. As you build your character, remember to apply ability score adjustments when making the following decisions. When you gain multiple ability boosts at the same time, you must apply each one to a different score. As with all content that might be uncomfortable for some players, you should make sure to have your table’s consent before introducing the harvesting of trophies into your game. Harvesting Trophies If you grew up with one or two family members, your closeness to them made you highly aware of their feelings, and you. Add an Intelligence ability boost and a Wisdom ability boost to your options.No-Limit StaminaIf you want a fast-paced, almost superheroic game, you can skip the Resolve Point component of this subsystem and simply make Taking a Breather and Rally free. This gives the characters a lot of staying power, meaning that the group will typically keep adventuring until they run out of spells for the day, rather than having the additional pressure of running out of Resolve Points. If you use this approach, omit the Steel Your Resolve feat, as it’s too powerful if there’s no cost to use it! Alternatively, if you want to keep it, you can require a character to Take a Breather before they can Steel their Resolve again. While the rules presented in the Core Rulebook are designed to give you and your group a baseline experience that’s easy to learn and fun to play, sometimes you’re looking for more customizable options. That’s where variant rules come in: options to alter the game’s rules to fit your needs. This chapter adds a collection of variant rules to your toolbox, often with additional options for how to use them. Most of the variant rules in this chapter involve characters, how they progress, and how those pieces fit together. The variants included in this chapter are divided into the following sections. Adding NPCs: Creatures whose Hit Dice are solely a factor of their class levels and not a feature of their race, such as all of the PC races detailed in Races, are factored into combats a little differently than normal monsters or monsters with class levels. A creature that possesses class levels, but does not have any racial Hit Dice, is factored in as a creature with a CR equal to its class levels –1. A creature that only possesses non-player class levels (such as a warrior or adept) is factored in as a creature with a CR equal to its class levels –2. If this reduction would reduce a creature’s CR to below 1, its CR drops one step on the following progression for each step below 1 this reduction would make: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8. Many character options will have traits listed with them, which look like this: Trait. A trait is a keyword that conveys additional information about a rules element, such as a school of magic or rarity. Often, a trait indicates how other rules interact with an ability, creature, item, or another rules element that has that trait. All the traits used in this book are listed on the Traits tab on the sidebar, roughly organized by type. Combining Variant RulesIf your group is playing a game with themes that call for it, you might wind up combining multiple variant rules together, possibly applying several options at the same time. For instance, in a gritty, low-magic, survival-horror game, you might start the PCs as 0-level characters, remove alignment to allow more shades of gray, alter the proficiency bonus progression to remove level, and remove magic items—all at the same time. In general, the variant options in this chapter are sufficiently self‑contained, with explanations of how they change the game, that you should be able to combine them without trouble. When you design your own variant rules, be on the lookout for places where new rules might have unexpected overlapping effects on each other and the game.

Affinities A devil’s tongue is infused with the word of law. It can be used in the creation of any magic item that has a spell with the lawful descriptor as a requirement. Doppelgangers And Mimics If the story you want to tell is about characters who have started training to become a particular class, you can grant them a small number of additional abilities. An apprentice character is trained in the skill or skills specified for their chosen class (such as Occultism and Performance for a bard) in addition to the skills they gain through their initial proficiencies. They also gain benefits based on the class.Magic Item Variants contains rules deconstructing the magic item bonuses, allowing you to progress them automatically or via craftsmanship to more easily run a lower-magic game.

At 5th level, you gain a +1 potency bonus to AC. At 11th level, this bonus increases to +2, and at 18th level, to +3.Dual-classing in two similar martial classes to double up on their advantages can result in characters who, instead of increasing their flexibility, become drastically more powerful in one focus. For instance, a fighter/ ranger with the flurry hunter’s edge gains access to incredibly accurate press actions, and a barbarian/fighter has the barbarian’s high damage plus the fighter’s high accuracy. One way around this is to simply disallow combinations that double down on a narrow ability, and instead encourage dual-class characters that open up narrative options and increase the character’s flexibility. The other solution is to raise the challenge from the opposition, treating the party as if the characters were a level higher. However, this is a choice that affects the whole group, even if only one character is built to mow down foes. Game Designer: Even with the vast range of options available, only GMs know what threats their players might face or powers they might come to control. Just as GMs arbitrate the rules within their games, so can they manipulate, repurpose, and wholly invent new rules to improve their games. Fine Artwork (100 gp or more): Although some artwork is composed of precious materials, the value of most paintings, sculptures, works of literature, fine clothing, and the like come from their skill and craftsmanship. Artwork is often bulky or cumbersome to move and fragile to boot, making salvage an adventure in and of itself. Masterwork Tools (100–300 gp): This category includes masterwork weapons, armor, and skill kits—see Equipment for more details and costs for these items. Apex items work as described in the Core Rulebook. They can increase an ability score to a maximum of 24. Table 4-2: Ability Points Gained Level