How can I get a custom number of posts on the front page without views? I need to have 16 nodes on the front page. Drupal only allows 1-10, 15, 20, etc. I'm using views now but it breaks the AJAX of the rate module.
The default front page article count is on the Site Information admin page @ admin/config/system/site-information. For some reason you can't select 16 as a value. If you have drush you can manually set the default_nodes_main value:

drush vset default_nodes_main 16


If you don't have drush you can set its value in the variables table.