Published on 12, July, 2020
I'll start off. I was in a Pathfinder game, playing a catfolk rogue named Fergus the Glim. He was abandoned as an infant in a gnomish village, where he was raised under their... peculiar sensibilities. In adolescence, his curiosity saw him follow a merchant wagon all the way to a city, completely losing track of the way home. Now he lives in the city, with no common sense and a liberal sense of ownership.
So Fergus had this bucket. And on this bucket was a carved list of things he wanted to do before he died. Steal a noble's trousers, dance with a princess, come back from the dead, that sort of thing. He took this bucket everywhere, including to a dinner invitation at a noble's house. Well, he didn't make off with anyone's trousers, but he had another use for the bucket. He would offer it up to the noble family for anyone who wanted to donate alms to the poor. Quite a genuine gesture, as his personal current adventuring goal was to make a birthday feast for a slum boy he knew.
Well, the nobles weren't as magnanimous as they pretended to be. But next to Fergus was sat the family's youngest child, who carried the family cat in his lap. At some point during the evening, the cat leapt into the bucket for a spot to rest, as cats are wont to do. This I took note of, and the DM swiftly forgot. So when it was time to leave, and I made special mention of retrieving my bucket, no word was said about the sleeping cat. Not all the way home, to the other side of the city.
I still remember the shock and horror when I asked the DM how much I could get for selling such a fine and pristine cat to a new home. "You stole their cat?!" she exclaimed. "Nay I did not," I replied, "The cat clearly donated herself!"
So let me set the scene I'm the dm we have arrived at a seemingly empty Inn(the stonehill inn)e party had just killed one of two groups of cranium rats they go back to the common room and open a small room "a halfling sits on the privy and shouts ina scared voice PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE" the human rouge says I will stab him with my dagger I decide to take it upon my self to roll this action due to its unusual nature and it not overly fitting any skill check I decide it will carry a 15 dc bang nat 20 "you hear the last breath of the poor innocent halfling" cue the halfling dmpc "blimey what was that for you murderer" the halfling dmpc wouldn't let it drop for a whole 11 sessions when I decided to resolve that the deceased was actually an agent of an evil cult of demons sent as a spy who in this 11th session was resurrected by a spell let out by a necromancer in his dying breath ... he explains himself... cue the words "I kill him with my dagger" i decide on a dexterity check nat 20 but I decide to contest this with a perception check nat1 "'the halfling doesnt notice you grabbing at your dagger holster he once again gasps a final breath"
That's a cracker and boy don't you wish for situations like that? Well I guess you got to live it so good for you. My luck has been getting my characters instant-killed by the DM rolling triple natural 20s on two different occassions. I made them glorious deaths though.
It is. Pathfinder was founded by Paizo, a company that used to do a Dungeons and Dragons magazine, until Wizards of the Coast cut them out. In response, Paizo made their own game system that was heavily based off of 3.5, but avoided any content that was copyrighted by WotC.
I think as a dm your players happiness is important as long as it doesnt cross any moral lines or make you unhappy
Session zero in a new game is so important that way you know how players want to advance after a total party kill or whatever
Pathfinder sound alot more like 3.5e than 5e to me
I haven't dabbled much in homebrewing myself, as I'm often dealing with new groups due to schedule changes taking players out of my games. The most intensive idea I've tried was in a recent steampunk style Pathfinder game with plenty of firearms around. The system has rules for making firearms martial weapons in these cases, but a lot of my players didn't want to use them. So I allowed characters with full martial access to keep firearms as exotic but instead pick up Dodge as a bonus feat to give them a better chance at avoiding firearms instead.
The last boss fight of that campaign went rather amusingly. The party was faced with an Emotion Ooze; a psychic ooze that can, as you might guess, influence the emotions of creatures around it. Villains were using products from it to stir rage in the city above. The goal of the fight was to have the party try to take down this ooze that has substantial damage, while being mentally afflicted by the ooze to respond to ALL attacks of opportunity, even ones provoked by allies.
Didn't quite turn out that way. Our ice kineticist entangled it with a frost blast, which halved its dex. The other party members spread out to deal with other enemies. The ooze rushes the kineticist because she was the closest target, enterring her area of frigid cold which... reduced its dexterity to 0. I really couldn't justify the ooze choosing to do anything else in that situation as it's still a basically mindless creature, so yeah that player felt super good about building their character that way and I let them have that easy win.
See this is the thing a nat20 or a nat1 are either the best or worst things depending what your dm does with it and like you say with a player character death just make it a good one so your legend is worth the folk in town remembering
I actually made a rule for our homebrew game where the character who is now the new dms dmpc but was a PC till now has 4 items that belonged to the god of life and death which he got from defeating the necromancer and the final item was gifted by my dying cleric whose goal in life was to guide the chosen one to his destiny
Anyway with all the items 2 things can happen if the staff is wielded and the player says "I much desire to speak with you" the spirit of the cleric can be summoned for a hint or to take 1 round in battle
The main one though is as long as you own all the items you become immortal but not invulnerable so if you go to 0hp you are unconscious you must be carried to a safe rest area but thersa a huge draw back you take 1 week or 1 session which ever comes first to wake up
I made up my own homebrew rule too if you score a nat20 on an ac check and thus getting a crit hit the hit is automatically fatal if the creature can be assumed to be weaker than your PC
Oh yeah and also I use rules as written so if it says extra action I take that as an extra action onto of my action and bonus action where as in rules as intended extra action is bonus action