D Dog's page

I totally agree with OP. Abilities don't need to be equally useful for every class, but investing in a stat should have some utility for any character.

INT should be pretty easy fix, just needs to boost skills in some way as others have posted.

STR affecting heavy armor would be simple. Alternatively, maybe Strength needs a proper saving throw now. Currently, Athletics is basically performing this function for the Break Grapple action. On the flip side, Grapple and Shove are being made against the opponent's Fort DC, while some monster abilities (Golem inexhorable march) require a Fort saving throw. Wouldn't strength be more important than Con (which I think of as hardiness) for resisting physical movements like these? My guess is that these are relegated to Con so that Athletics isn't a mandatory skill to train just for defense. So, why not add a Str based save. (Not a fan of every ability having a save though.)

So, I gave the 75% hp thing a try and I'm pretty happy with the results. Four level 5 PCs versus two Bearded Devils with the elite adjustment (making this a 120XP encounter). Combat lasted for exactly 3 full rounds, with the tank Barbarian down and the Wizard saving the day with his second fireball. Other 2 PCs expended some resources but didn't take any hits. Probably lasted around 45 minutes.

That seems about right for our group for both pace and challenge. If the devils had done better on their fireball saves, the fight would have probably gone 4 rounds with the possiblity of another PC down or the barbarian up and down again at a decent risk of dying.

Tridus, you are right that blasting spells could one shot someone at this point. The devils had 60 hp after adjustment, so a critical fail against fireball could do it.

Besides reducing the number of rounds, my take away is that one crit fail/success can make a much bigger difference with less hp.

To those of you talking about player vs monster hit chance, I feel you. Creatures with CR higher than the party get a lot of crits on the PCs with little effort. But, I'm with Captain M - I think that's just how balance works here. As in his flat footed/demoralized example, tactics can make a big difference. My current goal as GM is not to out-tactics my new players - yet.

I'm running a home campaign with some friends using the playtest rules. I've been playing PFS for about a year now, but this is my first time GMing. My players are all new to ttrpgs. We're playing via Roll20, with usually 4 players.

One issue keeps coming up: combats are running too long for us. We're about to do session #10 ( roughly 3 hours a session for us) so everyone is pretty familiar with their character's abilities and how to play at this point. I've been following advice from this post - https://theangrygm.com/manage-combat-like-a-dolphin/ - for the last few sessions, which has sped things up and made combat more engaging for everyone. But, I think we're still at a point where we are mentally running out of steam by the end of combats. As an example, our last session ended with a high/severe threat, 100 XP, combat. With 4 players and 3 monsters, this combat ran for about 1.5 hours.

I thought maybe things just felt different 'behind the screen', but I played a PF1 game for the first time in a few months the other day, and we got through 2 minor and 2 major combats in about 2.5 hours (and it was a lot of fun).

Considering I've heard others mention slow combats here, I think it might just be the PF2 system itself that is making things slower. So, here's my thought: lower all PC and monster HP to 75% of it's current value. Is this a reasonable house rule? Any other suggestions? (For that matter, is the dpr to hp ratio in PF2 different from PF1?)

TL;DR
As a house rule, would it significantly unbalance PF2 to reduce HP for PCs and monsters, for example, by reducing HP to 75% of the original value?

Loves:

1. New style archetypes
Viable spellcasting multiclassing and it's a perfect fit for prestige classes.

2. Strong support for varying builds within a class itself (in core).
Druid and fighter are great examples. I'm surprised I haven't seen almost anyone else mention this.

3. Charisma is not a dump stat for everyone but faces / spontaneous casters.
Cha needed some love. The details of focus need some work, but I would love to make a 16 Cha fighter who uses powerful magic items but doesn't feel obligated to do all of the talking.

Honorable mentions: No save or suck. Weapon traits. Precise language and traits as 'tags'.

Hate:

1. Limited payoff for skill investment.
Legendary is barely better than trained.

2. The skill feats that currently exist are pretty lame.

3. Heavy armor penalties too high.

House Rules:
1. Multiclass feats can be taken two levels earlier than listed.
2. Skill feats are acquired half as often, but are significantly more powerful.
3. Skill proficiency = level + 1/2 ability bonus + UTEML, where U -3, T +0, E +3, M +5, L +7
This makes ability score less important than skill investment, more along the lines of PF1 (except early levels), while still keeping the overall proficiency bonus relatively similar to the current system. Maybe everyone gets an expert rank at level 1, since ability score bonuses are lower.
4. Heavy armor stays -10 speed but either gets positive traits like weapons or a +1 AC.