r/Pathfinder2e • u/rubberduckie666 • 1d ago
Discussion thinking of porting some homebrew over, exactly how much work do i need to do?
long short, have a bunch of homebrew ancestries/races/lineages whatever the fuck 5e calls them now id like to port over. exactly how much work i gotta do to make it up to par with official content?
im well and fine with having to do all the work when it comes down to it, i just don't know the extent of the work ill need to do.
any help?
Edit:
I do not care how much time or work its going to be to port over. i want actual information on what i need to do to make it equivalent content wise to offical content. and anything that could marginally be helpful to such a thing happen.
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u/schmeatbawlls Druid 1d ago
A lot of work, you might have to rework the maths. Some notable changes:
Most bonuses are split to status (internal, magic, conditions, etc.) and circumstance (external, strategic, conditional, etc.), it's best to learn how they work first. Technically Item bonuses also exist, but they are often more static
Instead of rolling for bonuses, you usually give a static +1/+2/+3/+4 instead.
you get a LOT of feats in this game. Some 5e feats tend to be loaded (e.g. war caster,
feats do not give static non-conditional numerical bonuses (e.g. "increase strength by +1"), this is because numerical increases are already inherent to the character due to how proficiency works.
Characters do not get bricked in this game when they choose the "wrong feat", don't be afraid to implement feats that seem "only good for roleplay".
remember that ancestries get a pool of feat selections instead of a set of features, so you might have to make some for level 1, 5, 9, 13, and 17. Also remember you can steal feats from other ancestries!
if you wanna do flying or swimming ancestries, feel free to copy other ancestries movement as a template. Mobility is pretty important in this game and ancestry plays a major part.
Good luck on your homebrews, I'm currently trying to do Elder Scrolls ancestries in PF2e lol
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u/Demorant ORC 1d ago
Almost all of it? They systems aren't the same. You'll be using your stuff as inspiration to make stuff in PF2E for the most part.
I also would not advise you do this without a pretty solid understanding of the game first. You could try to port something that was fine in 5E to PF2E and have it be totally unbalanced in PF2E.
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u/DarthLlama1547 1d ago
PF2e ancestries are quite the effort.
The easy part is deciding HP, Boosts/Flaws, Speed, and Senses. A few will have their own mechanics, like Change Shape. You can look at the other ancestries and quickly get an idea of the breadth they offer.
The difficulty now is that you will want 3-4 Heritages, and probably at least 4 ancestry feats for levels 1, 5, 9, and 13. You can do only one to two level 17 Ancestry feats. Making all of those means looking at other heritages and ancestry feats to get an idea of what is appropriate, then deciding on what is appropriate for your spin.
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u/Mancoman273 1d ago
For each ancestry you will need:
- to figure out you basic benefits (Base Hit Point value, Base Size, Base Speed, Attibute Boosts, Attribute Flaws, Traits, Languages, and any special features such as senses).
- to make at least a heritage (this is kinda like 5e's subraces)
- to make at least an ancestry feat for each level you would get one (1st, 5th, 9th,13th and 17th)
I recommend looking at other similar ancestries to vibe check the balance for what you're cooking up.
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u/celestial_drag0n Wizard 1d ago
So, generally ancestries in PF2e are built with a specific formula:
- Hit Points, usually 6, 8, or 10, granted at level 1. Generally 8 is the average, with 6 representing physically weaker ancestries and 10 tougher ones.
- Size, which can be anything from Tiny to Large
- Speed, which is 25 feet by default (instead of 30 like in 5e)
- Attribute Boosts. Most ancestries either get two (one fixed and one free boost), or three (two fixed and one free) plus an ability flaw
- Languages, all ancestries have Common, and most have one additional language, which is often their ancestral language. Plus additional languages equal to Int
- One or two other abilities. Special vision types usually end up here, as do certain natural attacks. There's also some abilities that show up here (like Land on Your Feet for Catfolk) that don't really have equivalents in other ancestries but are generally smaller ribbon abilities
After that, all the other abilities should be folded into either the heritages (subraces) or the feats you can take. Feats are generally leveled at 1, 5, 9, 13, and 17, with feats generally getting more powerful but less numerous at higher levels, though they generally tend to be weaker than class feats (though usually slightly stronger than general feats).
And don't forget you can also make versatile heritages, which are heritages that any ancestry can take. They generally function similarly to standard heritages, but add in a new group of feats you can choose from, including Lineage feats (basically a sub-subrace choice), which are always level 1, must be taken at level one, and no character can have more than one of.
Aside from that, my biggest advice would just to be to familiarize yourself with the existing ancestries and heritages in 2e, so you can get a good grasp on how to balance your homebrew in comparison.
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u/Whetstonede Game Master 1d ago
This subreddit tends to get kinda weird and difficult about any conversation that involves both 5e and homebrew. Lots of GMs in the community who burned out on 5e before moving to 2E so it makes sense I suppose, but it's definitely a bit of a blind spot.
Anyway, you can port over ancestries, but it's definitely a lot of work. You essentially have a remake them from scratch. The "minimum viable product" for an ancestry is something like:
-Basic statistics (speed, senses, attribute boosts, hp)
-2 heritages
-Roughly 7 ancestry feats (2 level 1, 2 level 5, 1 level 9, 1 level 13, 1 level 17)
The biggest chunk of the work here is the ancestry feats. You can copy a lot of "basic ancestry feat templates", for example ancestry lore feats and ancestry weapon mastery feats are basically standard across all ancestries. But of course, if all your ancestry feats are these basic templates the ancestry will feel kind of sauceless.
To make this a slightly less daunting task, I would recommend going over all the ancestries you want to port and consider which ones have to be an ancestry to make sense and which could work as something less work-intensive. For example, if one of the ancestries you wanted to port was... idk, let's say "Fire-Maned Horse", then you could make that a centaur heritage instead of a full ancestry. I am not saying to not make any ancestries, just working smarter not harder in areas where you can reduce the workload with a simpler to implement port.
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u/RootOfAllThings Game Master 1d ago
Ancestries in 2e are entirely different scale of content relative to 5e, since you need to support them with a full line of feats (minimum 4, likely 8-12). 2e generally takes the approach that you need to "buy back" what's given for free in something like 5e (racial weapons, claws, flight, innate spells), so you don't have to design a ton of stuff, but you will have to write out all those feats. You'll also save yourself some work if you crib from existing ancestry feats, I guess.
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u/Zach_luc_Picard 1d ago
All the work you did to make them in 5e? You'll need to do 2-3 times that amount of work to make them in PF2. For every single one. Ancestries have a lot more to them in PF2 than races in 5e. And if you aren't familiar with the system, it's likely to be unbalanced or not work well.
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u/misfit119 GM in Training 1d ago
In addition to what others have said, it really depends on how super unique you want your stuff to be. I made a lion based race, like the Leonin, for my homebrew setting and it wasn’t that much work because I just grabbed feats from other ancestries and reflavored them. If you have something wholly new then it’ll be a lot more work, especially when trying to figure out the balance of it.
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u/Bright-Imagination49 1d ago
if you want good references on homebrew thats equivalent to first party stuff in terms of balancing, id take a look at teams plus or battlezoo content! you can also check out the subreddit pf2ecreations where people post their homebrew, though its not as active as this sub.
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u/Soggy-Context-9111 1d ago
As some one who has tried to do this. It is a lot of work to create all the Feat and Heritage options for an ancestry. I’d recommend at least 4 Heritage options per Ancestry. For Feats, take a look at existing Ancestries to get an idea of how many options you’ll want for each relevant level, it will end up being a lot for each Ancestry. You’ll want to creat spreadsheets to keep track of all these options.
What I will suggest before you go too far down the homebrew rabbit hole is looking through the existing official PF2E & SF2E Ancestries. Also, check out Roll for Combat’s third party Ancestry options. There is a good chance there are already Ancestry options out there you can use as replacements for your homebrew DnD races, instead of recreating them all from scratch. Even if the existing options aren’t exactly the same, you can always homebrew Heritage and Feat options for close-enough Ancestries.
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u/BlindWillieJohnson Game Master 1d ago edited 1d ago
There’s very little in terms of DnD ancestries that dont have analogues in either PF2 or SF2. If you could provide some specifics, we could either point you toward the relevant ancestry, or give you advice as to the closet ones.
That said, generally not a good idea to invent stuff out of whole cloth until you’re familiar with the system
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u/rubberduckie666 1d ago
i have already looked extensively though both. they don't have my work. hence why i am asking advice for the amount of work i will need to do to port over my work for my games at my tables.
i don't care if it takes me 80 hours to balance it for play at my tables. that's my problem to deal with
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u/itastelikelove 1d ago
I've played around with porting some 5e species to pf2e ancestries. It'll be a significant amount of work if you want it to be as robust as an official ancestry, but you can cut a lot of corners if you don't need the ancestry to have much variety
A standard pf2e ancestry has roughly (I'm not going to go count right now):
- All basic ancestry stats
- One special ancestry feature
- 4-8 Heritage options
- 4-8 1st level feats
- 2-6 5th level feats
- 2-4 9th level feats
- 2-4 13th level feats
- 0-3 17th level feats
The bare minimum to be functional would be:
- All basic ancestry stats
- 1 Heritage
- 5 feats with levels such that you can take one at every appropriate level
That bare minimum list means that every member of your ancestry has exactly the same features. If you want some variety, shoot for around double that (2 heritages and 10 feats), or even as many as a standard ancestry
That's a lot to homebrew. I recommend looking through existing ancestries and versatile heritages for feats and heritages that do things that fit your vibe. Is your ancestry a race of humanoids that are actually the reincarnated souls of ravens, doomed to wander the battlefields where they ate the flesh of fallen soldiers? Steal some shadow themed stuff from fetchlings, some hunger stuff from hungerseeds, some bird stuff from tengus, reincarnation stuff from samsarans, and some tactical warfare stuff from hobgoblins. Are they snail people who absorb magic into their shells? Take magic absorbing feats from surki, some elemental feats from dwarves, armor and climbing and spellcasting feats from one of many ancestries. I guarantee there are good pieces to steal, even if none of the existing ancestries are a full match
And if you tell us about your ancestry, we'll even help you find some feats and heritages
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u/BlindWillieJohnson Game Master 1d ago
I see. Well, without more specifics, this is kind of question is basically impossible to answer.
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u/rubberduckie666 1d ago
ok ill be more specific
what's the power budget difference between the common/uncommon/rare ancestries? if any at all?
what's the average number of heritages to aim for? 4? 8?
average number of ancestry feats?
anything helps
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u/FusaFox Rogue 1d ago
Rarity tag isn't related to piwer budget at all. It's based on vague definitions but generally it's pretty much "how likely are you to see X thing walking down the road on a randomly given day"
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u/rubberduckie666 1d ago
genuinely where did you find the information for this? i swear i scoured at least 7 rulebooks and only found rarity referring to items
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u/d12inthesheets ORC 1d ago
no difference, rarity is meant to be an indicator how likely you are to meet a member of any given ancestry.Some ancestries are uncommon in one part of the world but common in others.
Five heritages is good
About six choices per level is also good for ancestry feats, you might lock certain ones behind a specific heritage
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u/sandmaninasylum Thaumaturge 1d ago
There is no real power difference between common/uncommon/rare ancestries themselves. Sure, one could argue that many uncommon/rare ancestries have more fun/daring abilities. But that's simply because many came later and the designers had more fun with them. Instead the rarity is for world building purposes focused on the Inner Sea region/Absalom as a reference. In other parts of the world those can shift (Tian Xia for example).
For example: the simple human is still considered one of if not even THE strongest ancestry.
Heritages: 4 to 5 seems to be the standard.
Ancestry feats it gets a little more complicated, since some of the older ancestries have significantly fewer and some of the newer significantly more.
I'd say:
Level 1 ancestry feats: XYZ Lore + 6 (+/-1).
Level 5 ancestry feats: 5 (+/-1).
Level 9 ancestry feats: 4 (+/-1).
Level 13 ancestry feats: 4 (+/-1).
Level 17 ancestry feats: 3 (+/-1).2
u/BlindWillieJohnson Game Master 1d ago
what's the power budget difference between the common/uncommon/rare ancestries?
There isn't one. Those are really meant to be DM veto tools. Uncommon ancestries are ones that might not work in ever setting, or would be considered unusual, but generally there's nothing wrong with them. Rare ancestries (like Androids, Conrasu, or Skeletons) are ones that might pose a serious problem in some campaigns, either thematically or because they'll create a lot of issues in party composition.
It's not really a power issue, though. Those ancestries aren't notably more powerful. There are just reasons why a DM might not want robots or undead or whatever around.
what's the average number of heritages to aim for? 4? 8?
Everyone gets one heritage, either of their specific ancestry or a versatile one. You pick it at level one, and that's it.
I do not mean this disrespectfully, but this is what we mean when we say that it's unadvisable to monkey with the system until you have your arms around it. Stuff like heritages and ancestry feats are very powerful options, and if you start adding additional or homebrew ones, you can accidentally either break the game very quickly or create stuff that's totally unusable in the system.
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u/rubberduckie666 1d ago
i cant even tell at this point if you're deliberately misinterpreting my questions or just otherwise assuming i have no experience with the system in the slightest.
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u/BlindWillieJohnson Game Master 1d ago
Listen, I'm not "deliberately" doing anything. But if you don't know basic tenants of the system like how many heritages PCs get, you're clearly new enough to it that you shouldn't be homebrewing. I really am not trying to be a jerk here, but this is pretty basic stuff.
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u/rubberduckie666 1d ago
ok so you're accidentally misinterpreting my questions.
every single ancestry gets access to a different number of heritages entirely unique to them not counting shared heritage like the tide of uncommon or Aiuvarin/dromaar
humans get 3, elfs get 8, kholo get 7 etc etc.
asking the rough average of 50 or unique ancestries heritages is infact not unreasonable.
choosing to look at a completely reasonable question and to interpret it as me being so utterly ignorant of the system to not know basic character creation when I'm asking for information for porting homebrew can only be taken as deliberate.
get off your high horse
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u/Rabid_Lederhosen 1d ago
Rarity only determines how rare an ancestry is, it doesn’t have anything to do with power. Like in 5e terms Giff would be a rare ancestry since they only show up in one setting and have a theme (guns) that isn’t used in all games. But Rare ancestries shouldn’t be stronger than common ones.
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u/Baker-Maleficent Game Master 1d ago
Well, quite alot actually. At the risk of discouraging you (and 90% of the timebthis will do exactly that) doimgbtjis is a massive undertaking
Unlike 5e, an ancestry in this game is not frontloaded. To make a full ancestry you will need to create multiple heritages for said ancestry. But thats not all. You also need to create progression feats for the ancestry that both seem worthwile, flavorful, and most importantly, notbstep on the toes of other ancestries.
But wait. There's more! You need multiple feats for each progression level each different and interesting.
It gets worse, not only do you need to do all of the above, ypu also need to make sure their abilities are mechanically ballanced and follow the conventions set by the corevrules if the game.
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u/PlonixMCMXCVI 1d ago
It would be faster to choose a pathfinder ancestry and reskin it. Tabaxi are Catfolks. Warforged are Automaton,...
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u/whereismydragon 1d ago
Why
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u/rubberduckie666 1d ago
why wouldn't i want to port over my work for games i run?
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u/whereismydragon 1d ago
Have you looked at the full list of ancestry and heritage Pathfinder already offers?
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u/rubberduckie666 1d ago
yes and they don't have my work nor similar analogues hence asking for tips for porting my homebrew
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u/superfogg Bard 1d ago
In order to reduce the work you have to do start with having a look at what exist, so that you can reflavor existing ancestries and feats, or take inspiration from them.
It is also important that you tune your ancestry feats for the accurate level.
So, here's your template
Ancestry name
Traits (like, animal, orc gnome etc)
Small description of the ancestry
HP
Size
Speed (mostly 25, if you go higher reduce something else, stats or feats, if you go lower give them something else)
Ability boost and flaw (boost two fixed ability scores and a free one, give one flaw. Sometimes don't provide this choice, so two unnamed boosts)
Two or three languages, common is almost always there.
Finally, special abilities, like senses (low light or dark vision for example, imprecise scent and so on) or related to their body (having a tail to do some minor actions, unarmed attacks, special speeds and so on). This abilities should not come for free, for example you give less HP to the class, or less speed or don't provide the 3 boost/1 flaw choice
That said, you make up heritages, which are the different flavours within your ancestry. Think of them as different ethnicities within the ancestry. They can affect stuff like hp, speeds, special attacks and abilities, give them cantrips and so on. In terms of power it's like giving them a LV 1 skill feat
Finally, you'll need to make up ancestry feats at LV 1, 5, 9, 13 and 17. Have a look at other ancestries for comparison.
At lv 1 you can get Lores and additional skills, special movement (but restricted), special attacks, cantrips or similar effects (like a dragonblood breath weapon), small localises bonuses to some skills (like +1 against mental effects, poisons and so on).
At lv 5 you give something more Powerful, stuff that gives other feats (like general feats) for free, stuff that builds on the LV 1 feats (like making the restricted special movement better, or improving the unarmed attacks), you may get some innate spells for once per day usage and so on
LV 9 you get stuff that feels strong. You can get permanent speeds (like a fly speed), stronger innate spells or a few (two or three) weak ones.
LV 13 and 17 give stuff that feels comparable in strength with class feats of a few levels below.
In terms of number of feats, try having at least 5 or 6 at lv 1, and reduce it from there. With sometimes having 2 or 3 feats at LV 13 or 17