Let's Create: A Horrifically Overpowered PF2 Feat! (Patreon)

Despite my marketing it as a product you should not use, and shouldn't even buy, one of the most popular books I wrote for PF1 was "The Genius Guide to Horrifically Overpowered Feats." In fact, it was so popular, we went on to produce 4 more "Horrifically Overpowered" PF1 books, and one "Horrifically Overpowered Feats" book for Starfinder.

So, obviously, I have to do at least one HOF ("Horrifically Overpowered Feats") books for PF2. I was originally going to release one in early 2020 but... stuff... happened. So now I have part of a manuscript, a backlog of other projects that are late and higher-priority, and a tiny fraction of the time I can work each week.

Which, of course, is why my brain has been hammer on this project for days. And, since I also have an obligation to product blog posts for my Patreon backers, this seems like a great subject to get some gaming content back in these posts.

But I don't want to just list some Horrifically Overpowered PF2 feats (though if that's what you patrons want, just tell me!). Instead, I want to look at how a Horrifically Overpowered feat is conceived and developed, from start to finish. So yes, you'll get a HOF, but you'll also get to see how that particular sausage got made.

So, as if often the case with HOF, I started with a base mechanic for PF2. Since it's a big part of what got attention early on, I began with the game's the 3-action economy (every characters gets 3 actions every turn, with basic things like Striding and Striking being 1 action, and more advanced things like most spells and many special attacks taking 2, or in some cases 3 actions). There is, very specifically, no way to get a 4th action in the game.

So, that's easy, right? We make the feat Over Active, giving you a 4th action each round. But, what KIND of feat?

(Art by Jesse-Lee Lang)

PF2 has Class Feats (for each class), General Feats, Skill Feats (a subcategory of general feats), and feats for Archetypes, Ancestries, Lineages, and so on. While a case may well get made for Ancestry/Arcehtype/Class/Skill feats, for the moment I think we'll go with General for "Over Active," though we obviously also need to add the Horrifically Overpowered trait to it.

So, that gives us the following:

OVER ACTIVE          [Feat 1][General][Horrifically Overpowered]  [First Draft]You simply get more done in a few seconds than others. You gain a fourth action each round. If you make a fourth attack in a round, it suffers the same multiple-attack penalty as if it was your third attack.

Okay, that's great. It's unquestionable horrifically overpowered, and it gives you all the rules you need to add it to a game. But... there *is* a problem. If a GM adds HOFs to a campaign, and this is an option? *Everyone* will take it.

Now, I do not worry unduly about "game balance" when writing HOFs -- the two concepts just don't go together. It's like a liver-and-jelly sandwich. Even if you like each thing separately, they don't make sense together.

But.

I DO want a game that adds HOFs to still present interesting choices to players. The truth is, I have other ideas for HOF, and a 4th action all the time you can use for anything is always going to be picked before any of those. That's just not as interesting as having different options to choose from, or as having players end up with different abilities.

So, let's look at some different ways of doing this.

OVER ACTIVE          [Feat 1][General][Horrifically Overpowered]  [Second Draft]You simply get more done in a few seconds than others. You gain a fourth action each round, which can only be used for Stride, Strike, or a manipulate action that is not an attack or the Cast A Spell activity. If you make a fourth attack in a round, it suffers the same multiple-attack penalty as if it was your third attack.

Okay, that's not nearly as broad as the first draft, but it's also still *really* useful and, well, horrifically overpowered.

That immediately makes me think about another HOF.

OVER REACTIVE          [Feat 1][General][Horrifically Overpowered]  [First Draft]You simple react more quickly than others. You gain a second reaction each round. You can't use it to target a creature with an activity you have already targeted the same creature with this round.

For some builds, that'll actually be better than Over Active, which is exactly what we want!

Now, let's try a third HOF that isn't action-economy-related, so we can see if it stacks up.

OVERPOWERED ROGUE DEDICATION          [Feat 2][Archetype]-Dedication]Multiclass][Horrifically Overpowered]Prerequisites Dexterity 14; Rogue Dedication or Rogue ClassSelect a rogue's racket you do not already have. You gain all the benefits of this racket, using your class level as your rogue level for any level-dependent calculations.Special: This counts as a feat from the rogue archetype for purposes of the Rogue Dedication feat.

Yep, THAT is some HO stuff, right there. And, I can see someone taking it rather than Over Reactive, so we seem to have some winners!

Now, I just need 20 more pages of Horrifically Overpowered Feats, and I can make a product!

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