[chrishajer]

Your users probably want to mark a topic as a favorite if they want an email when there is a reply. A topic created by a member does not automatically subscribe them to it as a favorite (I think in some versions of phpBB that’s how it works.)

For buttons, you probably want one of these two plugins:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbcode-buttons/

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/quicktags-4-bbpress/

You’ll find with bbPress that most of the things you want to do can be accomplished with plugins.