Isn't the solution to the "monsters keep pace with the party numerically" some linear combination of:
- Plot drives the PCs to one place and not the other, sure they could go slaughter all the trolls in the troll village, but that's not where the world ending threat is so.
- Players aren't necessarily that interested in picking fights they will just auto-win.
With these two you can populate the world with a bunch of low level areas, mid-level areas, and high level areas and the scaling will seem less artificial.
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I do want to have the option of being bad at a skill. If I pretend to not be good at what does not fit my character concept--for example, a big clumsy barbarian who shouldn't be good at picking locks--then I would be letting down my party by not using all the abilities my character has. The party rogue thinks that lock might be trapped, so could the very tough barbarian please pick the lock for him? If I say no for roleplaying reasons, "Brock hates fiddly work. He wants to noisily smash door into kindling with greataxe instead," then the other players would suffer due to my roleplaying. If I made a trade-off--Brock became better at athletics because he never wasted time studying lockpicking--then the other players would understand that Brock is good at what makes sense for him.
You can get accused of subpar character play right now, in PF1; if you have 2 + int skill points per level, and you put max ranks in spellcraft, knowledge (arcana), and knowledge (local), then your group complains because you suck at perception and didn't put any points in it; or, your group complains because you are supposed to be the "smart guy," but have only two or three ranks in Knowledge (history) or Knowledge(Nobility) because there aren't enough points to go around?
Well, sucks to be you, you should have foreseen needing those skills in the game. Same thing for a Rogue player who has no skill in lockpicking, EVEN IF it doesn't fit your character concept. "It's a class skill, what on earth were you thinking?" You don't need PF2 to be accused of your character not using their resources well enough for the group. I've been the butt of table jokes plenty of times because of my crappy Perception, or crappy climb skill, or crappy knowledge skills, etc. because I wanted to have a LITTLE bit of proficiency in a backstory skill. This happened often enough that our group adopted the PF Unchained system of Background skills/Lore so that we each had an extra 2 skill points per level just to put into non-critical skills so we had some mechanical demonstration of having non-adventuring skills.
All of this is also ignoring the whole "Untrained/Trained/Expert/Master/Legendary" system in PF2, which solves that problem easily. Someone wants your barbarian to pick a lock because "it might be trapped?" Well, if it's an Expert lock, there's no way in the Hells you can do that, anyway! Tell them to get their lazy butts in front, stop being a "milk-drinker", get that fancy door open and earn their share!
Going by the Monster creation guidelines, PF1 monsters increase their AC about 1.26 per level, and their 'high' attack modifier goes up about 1.47 per level between CR 1 and CR 20.
+1 per level seems reasonable as long as there aren't too many other bonuses.
I do want to have the option of being bad at a skill. If I pretend to not be good at what does not fit my character concept--for example, a big clumsy barbarian who shouldn't be good at picking locks--then I would be letting down my party by not using all the abilities my character has. The party rogue thinks that lock might be trapped, so could the very tough barbarian please pick the lock for him? If I say no for roleplaying reasons, "Brock hates fiddly work. He wants to noisily smash door into kindling with greataxe instead," then the other players would suffer due to my roleplaying. If I made a trade-off--Brock became better at athletics because he never wasted time studying lockpicking--then the other players would understand that Brock is good at what makes sense for him.You can get accused of subpar character play right now, in PF1; if you have 2 + int skill points per level, and you put max ranks in spellcraft, knowledge (arcana), and knowledge (local), then your group complains because you suck at perception and didn't put any points in it; or, your group complains because you are supposed to be the "smart guy," but have only two or three ranks in Knowledge (history) or Knowledge(Nobility) because there aren't enough points to go around?
I think the description is missing a piece: is the character with 2+Int skills a human wizard who gets 8 skill ranks per level or a gnome sorcerer who gets 3 skill ranks per level? The first can max 8 skills. The second can max 3 and spellcraft, knowledge (arcana), and knowledge (local) would be a reasonable choice.
In my last campaign, the players coordinated with each other as to who would learn particular Knowledge skills. Having two people good at a particular Knowledge protects against bad rolls, but three is more than necessary. Likewise for Perception. The personalities and backgrounds of the PCs decided the specialties.
The party had no rogue. The gunslinger took a trait, Local Ties, that gave her Disable Device as a class skill. She picked the locks for everyone, with the magus as a backup.
Well, sucks to be you, you should have foreseen needing those skills in the game. Same thing for a Rogue player who has no skill in lockpicking, EVEN IF it doesn't fit your character concept. "It's a class skill, what on earth were you thinking?" You don't need PF2 to be accused of your character not using their resources well enough for the group. I've been the butt of table jokes plenty of times because of my crappy Perception, or crappy climb skill, or crappy knowledge skills, etc. because I wanted to have a LITTLE bit of proficiency in a backstory skill. This happened often enough that our group adopted the PF Unchained system of Background skills/Lore so that we each had an extra 2 skill points per level just to put into non-critical skills so we had some mechanical demonstration of having non-adventuring skills.
My GMPC in the above campaign, an Int 12, Wis 11 bloodrager, had terrible Perception and the party laughed about it, too. But being lookout wasn't her job.
We don't mind wasting a few skill points on backstory, because we know how to use skill points efficiently. And we tend to play higher Intelligence: that Int 12 bloodrager was the not-quite-as-smart blonde in the party. And sometimes those backstory skills are useful. A gnome character of mine put a rank in Craft(carpentry) because he was helping rebuild a village, and that skill let him get through a boarded-up door quickly during a chase.
All of this is also ignoring the whole "Untrained/Trained/Expert/Master/Legendary" system in PF2, which solves that problem easily. Someone wants your barbarian to pick a lock because "it might be trapped?" Well, if it's an Expert lock, there's no way in the Hells you can do that, anyway! Tell them to get their lazy butts in front, stop being a "milk-drinker", get that fancy door open and earn their share!
If Untrained would let Brock the barbarian be bad at a lockpicking, then that will be good enough for me. If he is still great at opening peasant-level locks, then I would roleplay him as opening the door by pulling the door latch through the cheap wooden frame.
If you're Untrained in Thievery you can't pick a lock at all, even the simplest of locks are a Trained-level activity.
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The rules that govern the game do not have to govern all of the fantasy reality they live in. They are game rules, not physics, whatever is not happening as a tactical challenge at the table, can be handled by GM decision.
Some people prefer this to be the case. Some other people prefer that the rules do more or less accurately reflect the 'laws of physics' of the world, not necessarily with total accuracy but with enough that the implications of them are substantially correct.
I don't see any reason that the people in the latter category (which I admittedly tend towards personally) can't be catered to a little as long as it doesn't interfere with actual game play.
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I don't personally believe in slippery slopes Its might be because I'm part mountain goat. (You can tell by the beard.)
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The rules that govern the game do not have to govern all of the fantasy reality they live in. They are game rules, not physics, whatever is not happening as a tactical challenge at the table, can be handled by GM decision.This is an old argument, and a slippery slope.
Maybe, but it's true. Even in Pathfinder 1e and 3.5 D&D I as a GM would rule whether one army would win or another, or if a dragon attacked a city maybe I'd have the local militia shoot it down with a catapult or ballista or something. Or if it's meant to be a challenge for the PCs, they miss, the dragon lands and it's PC hero time.
Anyway, universal verisimilitude is so low on the list of priorities for a fun game.
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Maybe, but it's true. Even in Pathfinder 1e and 3.5 D&D I as a GM would rule whether one army would win or another, or if a dragon attacked a city maybe I'd have the local militia shoot it down with a catapult or ballista or something. Or if it's meant to be a challenge for the PCs, they miss, the dragon lands and it's PC hero time.
Anyway, universal verisimilitude is so low on the list of priorities for a fun game.
This is all true inasmuch as the perfect is the enemy of the good. Perfect verisimilitude is not desirable or achievable.
But pretty good verisimilitude is both achievable and helps to keep people invested in the world and characters, and thus remains useful and a generally good goal most of the time.
Is it paladium I'm thinking of that went for as close a possible to real life simulation as possible? To the point where you had to calculate physics to figure things out sometimes?
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To who?Maybe, but it's true.The rules that govern the game do not have to govern all of the fantasy reality they live in. They are game rules, not physics, whatever is not happening as a tactical challenge at the table, can be handled by GM decision.This is an old argument, and a slippery slope.
I mean, you cut off the rest of the post, but I mean, I don't sit down for hours rolling dice against myself to figure out who wins in a battle of a hundred guards vs a dragon. I just narrate a what's needed for the game to keep going and move on. I bet most GM's do.
I think PF2 makes it far easier to town things down than PF1. E6 seemed to work alright in PF1, but there were some major issues. Some classes didn't handle E6 progression well because they didn't have choosable class feature lists to expand on (basically, extra feats meant more for a Rogue who could take an extra Rogue Talent instead than it did to a Paladin). Some classes/builds were much more frontloaded and worked far better with a level 6 cap than others.
In PF2, you can convert it to have 5e-like bounded accuracy pretty much just by limiting level to 6, or 8 if you want master proficiency to be a thing. Level-based bonus between 1 and 6 mirrors 5e proficiency well. Progression once you hit the cap is super easy: just continue to give more class feats, skill feats and ranks, ancestry feats, and general feats at the normal rate. Or, you could instead give extra feats and skills between slow level-ups so that you don't hit the +6 bonuses from level until the equivalent of 20th level. You can end up with PCs that have as many abilities as a 20th level character without the numbers getting crazy. Classes have more similar progressions so fewer classes are likely to be traps in E6.
5e's gritty feel, for games that want it, with Pathfinder's focus on customizable characters is pretty exciting I think.
Now, I generally try and avoid personal comments, but this attitude of "don't talk about what I don't agree with" - especially from someone who walked away from Pathfinder in 2008 after Paizo refused to convert to 4e - stinks of hypocrisy.it’s becoming tiresome to constantly hear the same few posters ...
To those posters, I say; you’ve said your piece, we know your opinions and your feelings... Surely that’s better than insisting on changes to PF2 to make it into PF1 from a position of incomplete information?
I’m sorry that you’ve interpreted my expression of frustration as a demand for silence. The frustration arises from the *repetition* by particular posters - people are absolutely entitled to their opinions but after expressing the same opinion on every thread, everyone is clear on what that opinion is.
I’m also sorry that comparing this post with the single post I made a decade ago saying why I wouldn’t be continuing with pathfinder makes me a hypocrite in your eyes. I feel that it is, if anything the opposite, since that was my last post until February this year.
Starfinder and PF2 brought me back to the fold after years of not playing anything.
I think PF2 makes it far easier to town things down than PF1. E6 seemed to work alright in PF1, but there were some major issues. Some classes didn't handle E6 progression well because they didn't have choosable class feature lists to expand on (basically, extra feats meant more for a Rogue who could take an extra Rogue Talent instead than it did to a Paladin). Some classes/builds were much more frontloaded and worked far better with a level 6 cap than others.
In PF2, you can convert it to have 5e-like bounded accuracy pretty much just by limiting level to 6, or 8 if you want master proficiency to be a thing. Level-based bonus between 1 and 6 mirrors 5e proficiency well. Progression once you hit the cap is super easy: just continue to give more class feats, skill feats and ranks, ancestry feats, and general feats at the normal rate. Or, you could instead give extra feats and skills between slow level-ups so that you don't hit the +6 bonuses from level until the equivalent of 20th level. You can end up with PCs that have as many abilities as a 20th level character without the numbers getting crazy. Classes have more similar progressions so fewer classes are likely to be traps in E6.
5e's gritty feel, for games that want it, with Pathfinder's focus on customizable characters is pretty exciting I think.
The only thing that could cause a snag is the limitations of feats. Since There's a gating of many feats by level (which previously was often done by large prerequisites, but in an E6 game could be eventually taken), I'm afraid, at least early on in the system's life, there's going to be a point where every feat just feels lackluster. Maybe cutting some of those requirements could help, but it might not solve the problem of wanting a gritty game, if later feats represent greater power levels than befit a gritty feel.
I don't mind the +1/level that much (though I would rather have a +1/2 to level, but it doesn't bug me much), but I also like some E8 feel every once in a while, and I think E6 is going to have some issues unless the breadth of low level feat options is much wider than indicated (at least based on the 4 class feat options per 4 levels as shown at paizocon)
I think that problem may manifest at first. Once a few more hardbacks hit, I doubt it'll continue to be an issue. That four per four levels is almost certainly just a starting amount. If the GM is open to a bit more work, I bet a fair number of the higher level ones would still be acceptable in terms of keeping the math pretty flat. Compared to PF1, that's a small list of problems for E6.
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Anyway, universal verisimilitude is so low on the list of priorities for a fun game.
Not for me.
Perfect verisimilitude isn't desirable, as most of us aren't physicists, but I absolutely HATE when rules are written in such a way that they make no sense in the context of the world. (Like PF2's shield mechanics.)
"Fun" is a delicate balance between verisimilitude, balance, and ease of play. Too much or too little of any of these will ruin a game.
The shield rules make absolute sense. It doesn't take 0 effort to use a shield even if it is easy. The basic measure of effort in PF2 is 1 action. Therefore, 1 action is a perfectly reasonable cost to use a shield, as long as the math works out, which it seems it will with the info we have so far.
Don't mistake 'Doesn't make sense to me' with 'doesn't make sense to anyone'.
The shield rules make absolute sense. It doesn't take 0 effort to use a shield even if it is easy. The basic measure of effort in PF2 is 1 action. Therefore, 1 action is a perfectly reasonable cost to use a shield, as long as the math works out, which it seems it will with the info we have so far.
Don't mistake 'Doesn't make sense to me' with 'doesn't make sense to anyone'.
Yeah, that doesn't make sense at all.
Do you do HEMA? I have only done a small amount, but I have watched the guys (generally) that do and they seems to put a lot of effort into using their shield effectively.
Although I do think they could have some passive bonus. A shield that is hanging out on your arm is going to be more effective than no shield at all.
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Non-suicidal creatures help make even high powered settings make sense. The monster might be able to take out a small village no problem but that's going to get the kings high level enforcers (PCs?) hunting him down the next week. Having such a setup could keep most intelligent monsters in check without having widespread high level PCs.
It would take a while but less intelligent monsters could be taught the same lesson. I grew up in a place with mountain lions and it was known that if a mountain lion wanted to it could rush into a backyard barbecue and kill everyone there no problem. But years of having every mountain lion that wanders too close to town get hunted down by the specialists make sure that the don't come close.
Remember that predators need to hunt the next day to eat, too. And don't have healing abilities beyond normal recover.
In RL a mountain lion that get a paw crushed while killing a bull will be crippled forever, so, unless driven by hunger, it will prefer easier prey.
An infected wound can easily spell death, so it will try to avoid being wounded. Or it will die young for its mistakes.
That is why most predators don't fight to the death with difficult prey. Even if they win, they risk serious damage that will reduce their ability to hunt for days or weeks.
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Yes, unfortunately.Have you played Pathfinder past level six?+1 per level seems reasonable as long as there aren't too many other bonuses.On top of ability score mods, on top of proficiency bonuses, on top of weapon quality bonuses, thank god for the 4-tiers of success system, or this would seem like number porn for the sake of it.
Sorry, but thatsound as "I want PF2 to be a E6 game." A very different argument and one that merit its own thread. it is out of bounds in a thread about playing a 20 levels game.
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Is it paladium I'm thinking of that went for as close a possible to real life simulation as possible? To the point where you had to calculate physics to figure things out sometimes?
Not in the books I know. Some version of Traveler, on the other hand ... Fire, Fusion and Steel had rules to calculate the kinetic energy of projectiles based on the gunpowder used, the caliber and the length of the barrel. And that was needed to determine the damage.
And Dtons. Displacement of a ton of liquid hydrogen. Used in spaceship construction as a measure of volume (14 and something cubic meters, if I recall correctly) to as a measure of weight too. Like measuring a vehicle characteristic using the volume and weight of gasoline.|
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Remember that predators need to hunt the next day to eat, too. And don't have healing abilities beyond normal recover.
In RL a mountain lion that get a paw crushed while killing a bull will be crippled forever, so, unless driven by hunger, it will prefer easier prey.
An infected wound can easily spell death, so it will try to avoid being wounded. Or it will die young for its mistakes.That is why most predators don't fight to the death with difficult prey. Even if they win, they risk serious damage that will reduce their ability to hunt for days or weeks.
While true for most real world predators (though there are exceptions), this is also true for the vast majority of monsters in Pathfinder. Fast Healing and the like make it less so, but also aren't super common and don't remove the issue entirely.
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Now, I generally try and avoid personal comments, but this attitude of "don't talk about what I don't agree with" - especially from someone who walked away from Pathfinder in 2008 after Paizo refused to convert to 4e - stinks of hypocrisy.:
it’s becoming tiresome to constantly hear the same few posters ...
To those posters, I say; you’ve said your piece, we know your opinions and your feelings... Surely that’s better than insisting on changes to PF2 to make it into PF1 from a position of incomplete information?I’m sorry that you’ve interpreted my expression of frustration as a demand for silence. The frustration arises from the *repetition* by particular posters - people are absolutely entitled to their opinions but after expressing the same opinion on every thread, everyone is clear on what that opinion is.
I’m also sorry that comparing this post with the single post I made a decade ago saying why I wouldn’t be continuing with pathfinder makes me a hypocrite in your eyes. I feel that it is, if anything the opposite, since that was my last post until February this year.
Starfinder and PF2 brought me back to the fold after years of not playing anything.
I somewhat agree with Dragonstriker. When you see a thread when every third post one of two persons say: "X is too similar to 4e. That is horrible." without giving any real explanation of why the rule is bad mechanically or role playing wise we don't have a constructive argument. We simply have 2 people repeating "No!". That don't get anywhere and isn't useful after they have said that once in the thread.
It is simply added noise.Make an argumet about why it is bad and I will read it and maybe comment it. Repeat "its is similar to 4e and so bad as a principe" and after a couple of time it will be skimmed and even the constructive posts by the same person will be skimmed and lost in the noise.
Sorry, but thatsound as "I want PF2 to be a E6 game." A very different argument and one that merit its own thread. it is out of bounds in a thread about playing a 20 levels game.
There are many reasons someone might dislike high-level Pathfinder play. Maybe they don't like tracking multiple buffs. Maybe they don't like the way characters can go outside the bounds of sensible numbers (AC 60+, for example). Maybe they prefer game-changing abilities like teleportation to be rare and limited.
And it's perfectly possible to imagine a 20-level system that doesn't work that way.
While true for most real world predators (though there are exceptions), this is also true for the vast majority of monsters in Pathfinder. Fast Healing and the like make it less so, but also aren't super common and don't remove the issue entirely.Remember that predators need to hunt the next day to eat, too. And don't have healing abilities beyond normal recover.
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I agree with both of theese posts.
I think you're referencing the table of CR Equivalencies. Which shows that doubling the number of creatures, raises the cr by 2. Which is definitely a non-linear progression. The number of creatures grows geometrically/exponentially with CR, or the CR grows logrithmically with number of creatures.
In my opinion, the “+1 to everything problem” is not a problem. It’s a feature which is a component of a deliberate design direction, one that I wholeheartedly embrace.The deliberate design feature is not the +1 to everything nor the unbounded accuracy. It is the Challenge Rating (CR) system. The Pathfinder CR, which is much better than the D&D 3rd Edition CR, is exponential...Do you have any evidence this is true? Because there's evidence to the contrary. The CR for PF1E suggest that adding a creature of the same CR increases the CR by a flat 1 per creature added, meaning that CRs are linear not exponential.
Granted, in practice, I'm not sure this was actually true, as was evidenced by the PF1E issue with "5 Goblins at level 4" for earlier scenarios, but it seems like that was, at least, the design principle. If it helps, I can cite these things, but I assume they're easy enough to look up as well.
Here is the actual table, from the Gamemastering chapter of the Core Rulebook.
Table: CR Equivalencies
1 Creature CR
2 Creatures CR +2
3 Creatures CR +3
4 Creatures CR +4
6 Creatures CR +5
8 Creatures CR +6
12 Creatures CR +7
16 Creatures CR +8
It is not +1 to CR for each additional creature. It is +2 for the second creature, then +1 each for the third and fourth, the fifth would have +0.64 so they skipped that, and +1 for the jump from 4 to 6.
Look at when the number of creatures is a power of 2.
2^0 = 1 gives +0,
2^1 = 2 gives +2,
2^2 = 4 gives +4,
2^3 = 8 gives +6,
2^4 = 16 gives +8.
That is an exponential curve. The number of creatures to get +X to the CR is 2^(X/2).
The curve is also in Table: Experience Point Awards. CR 1 is worth 400 xp, CR 2 is worth 600 xp, CR 3 is worth 800 xp, CR 4 is worth 1200 xp, CR 5 is worth 1600 xp, etc. Every odd CR X is worth 400*2^((X-1)/2). Every even CR is worth 600*2^((X-2)/2). The fractional CR 1/X is worth 400/X, so that section is not exponential.
Really, the xp should be increasing by 41.4% at each step, but Pathfinder alternates a 50% increase and a 33 1/3% increase to keep the numbers round. (1.5)(1.333) = 2, just like (1.414)(1.414) = 2.
The text that describes how to construct a challenge with given CR says to use the tables, and does not mention the formulae built into the tables.
I don't have a problem adding 1+1.