| D Dog |
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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?