Dreamtime2k9's page

Miss chance is too high.

1st attack for level equivalent monster should be 70-80% hit chance, depending on character optimization.

Right now 3rd attack is just time wasting in search of a 20.

having 80/55/30% hit chance would be more streamlined and more reliable
than 50/25/0*
*- crit that is not

Wholeheartedly agree with this one. Saves/AC's are just too high in general resulting in feeling like your playing an incompetent person. It was already stated that likely monsters should have everything lowered by around 2, so if you double that... you'll have about the right number.

Lowering all AC's/Save's by about ~4 (assuming equal level or higher encounters) and removing the skill DC table entirely and utilising some degree of your own perceptions and logic for how hard something would be to do would likely fix a whole lot for a homebrew game.

Such changes at least made the system enjoyable to play compared to the current version of the system; at least for me personally.

Considering the concern was the critical system... I'll propose an alternative then; Have you considered just lowering the penalties of your first itterative attack along the lines of maybe basing around the quality of potency rune so each +1 lowers it by an additional 1? You could have the spellstrike wand/alchemist goggles and the like come up a few levels earlier to avoid it being just a weapon thing. Even making lesser versions for those would help out those classes aswell.

When i was making my alchemist for the 14th level adventure... i honestly missed the fact that they weren't getting mutagens and was reminded when the session started. It felt really awkward when this was pointed out as there aren't enough alchemist recipes in the book past the early levels where you get a bunch of cool utility elixers but around level 13; if you don't include mutagens then what will you take besides lower level poisons which don't really scale unless you take the feat for it?

It also feels really weird having your "typical" combat option of bombs as an alchemist be tied to a field in order to actually hit something some of the times.

What are the other options ment to do in the typical rounds of combat? Especially the chirurgeon made me wonder how i was going to do anything in a straight up fight.

I could be terrible at shooting a bow, terrible at throwing a bomb or multiclass into something like wizard and hopefully gain enough value there although that would be a heavy feat investment.... anything else i missed?

I like the idea behind the fields but i think they currently specialise to the point of competence rather so then expertise which feels a bit awkward as it feels like i was building half an alchemist at best when going with the chirurgeon one as it stands, the poison and mutagen one didn't really look all that much better for the same reasons.

In the end, i just gave up on most of the alchemist stuff and invested heavely into a wizard MC; believing it to be one of the better options which probably wasn't the intention?

#1 : Another consideration would be a way to reduce the iterative attack penalty as you level up, potentially tying it to potency for weapons which could be an option. I noticed the same that when casting haste on a martial character; it didn't really amount to much and especially not compared to what you expect the spell to do as a pf veteran because of the exact reason listed.

#2 : Yup, i concur. The alternative would be to go through the feats that currently exist and retune them to allow them to be less situational. Some options like "Cat's fall" and "Kip up" feel very strong skill feat wise because they come up often enough and feel impactful when they do come up, having more feats like those would help a lot.

#3a : I don't mind the proficiency system personally, i understand that i am a minority regarding. The bigger issue is that the DC's currently factor in too many unspoken variables(between stats/skill increases/items not everyone will buy/magical buffs not every group has/etc are all factored into the table), resulting in a optimized character feeling less successful then desired(when consulting medium/hard table) and a supposed competent character not feeling all too competent at all. The numbers are better with 1.3 but they aren't quite there yet.

#3b : I've stated this before but i have a strong suspision that this is because of the +10/-10 critical system and while i'm personally a fan of the idea behind it; i also feel like it might be getting in the way. If you have 75% chance of success on something for example, that translates into a 25% chance of a critical success and a 50% chance of success a lot of the time and because criticals are ment to be relatively infrequent; its caused the very tight math to feel like a 50% a lot of the time which might be mathmatically correct, it comes at the cost of fun factor for many.

Edit: Lyee worded #2 quite well and i especially agree with his closing remark.

I remember a lot of times where we barely hit the DC with the old ones, i can imagine that with the new DC's; it would end up in more frustration after failing consecutively because of absurd number requirement.

We had ~5 attempts before finding the gnomes by themselves and if we hadn't found the clue early on, we probably would've taken much longer as at one point we were heading in a direction we thought made sense but contradicted the clue which is why it "only" took us ~5 attempts. So i'm certain we had more then 10 although the gnomes did take us the longest.

I do remember some tabletalk about how empty the map was at several points through out the session.

Nevertheless, that part was the more enjoyable one for us in any case. I think with more failures, it might've turned into a more negative experience which is why i was so surprised the DC's got raised with the latest update.

That is actually a really good point. Archetypes for example didn't come along until much later. It's just that - having seen how archetypes are proposed to work in the playtest rules - it seems that PF2 is looking to cut back significantly on that flexibility that we'd all gotten so used to.

I'm still hoping they'll adjust how archetypes/multiclassing work and not have them cost class feats but instead have them draw from another pool at least.

You want an archetype then these are the feats you'll invest, you want to multiclass, these are the types of feats you'll be investing. You don't have or want either of these; you get a general feat instead.

At least that would promote choice

Okay then, Vic, let numbers speak why it is dishonest in an objective way. The PF1 fighter has "tons of feats", from level 1 to 20 he gains 21 feats. The PF2 fighter, though, gets 31 feats, that's 10 feats in addition to what a PF1 fighter gets. Even if PF1 classes get more fixed abilities, the amount of choices in PF2 is way superior. In fact in PF2 I can decide myself to chose the abilities while PF1 simply lacks this choice. Before this background, yes, claiming that PF1 is more flexible is objectively dishonest.

Here's my reasoning using the fighter as per your example;

You get 21 feats in total in pathfinder 1e; 11 combat feats (~40% of feats in the system) and 10 feats to choose from between all of the feats in the system. You've already been given all of your racial abilities upon race choice including the custumization of alternate racial traits. You were already given your choice of traits (and potential drawback(s)).

You get 31 feats in total in pathfinder 2e; 11 fighter feats, 10 skill feats, 5 ancestry and 5 general. Your race is now 5 feats and base vision/speed/hp. Traits and drawbacks are sort of replaced by background but arguably more impactful due to determining stats.

Your choice in pathfinder 1e would already let you draw from a bigger pool; not only because there was more content but also because you were free to make your own choice in what type of feat you wanted for your general feats.

It does help PF1e that class feats didn't exist and thus more interesting and thematic "off class" options being available for any character which could change the vibe and theme of a character entirely with but a few feat choices and thus allow massive diversity for those seeking such a thing.

Pathfinder 2e is dictating;

• 1)What type of feat you get at any given point. This takes away from custumization already.
• 2a)Your choice of "combat feat" being limited by class feats and thus having reduced options across the board compared to being able to grab from all combat feats. This takes away from custumization as you only have your class feats instead of all combat feats.
• 2bIn addition most of them are feat chains that because you don't have the flexibility of choosing what type of feat to select; you will struggle with to keep multiple up to date throughout the levels. Several options for each class such as "unyielding fortitude" and other feat "choices" being non-abilities that don't provide something new to play with as they are things that should just be a part of class design especially as the monster DC's are keeping them into account for sake of the system math. Again, this is taking away from custumization.
• 3)Your choice is limited with ancestry feats due to lack of good options beyond the 2nd/3rd ancestry feats(for the better ancestries) and the power scaling at point of obtaining the 4th/5th as the feats themselves don't really scale all too well across levels. This is compared to being a full race at level 1 at pf1 which actually had more custumization as a whole. While inherently this is a better option, i wish the options themselves actually offered more choice instead of 2-3 good options and some things no one really cares for.(I won't even argue that some races are massively better in quality than others)
• 4)Skill feat wise you are gated behind the skill progression system which means your amount of choices are a lot less then what they appear to be as you can only raise so many skills which in general is less then pf1e, even more so when keeping into account the scaling DC system that if your not maximising something, you'll really struggle to keep up with even the medium/hard DC's unless it also happens to be your main stat.

----

In pathfinder 1e; your class felt like it ment something more then which pool of feats you were allowed to choose from because each class had their own unique mechanics that were devoid from feats but could be enhanced by feats. You were able to build your own character, one that you wished to play, one that you were allowed to design yourself.

Pathfinder playtest currently does not meet that same concept, which is why i at least feel like its less custumizable because a lot of concepts i have in my mind, i have no way of actually creating in pathfinder playtest while i can in pathfinder 1e and a large portion of other d20 systems.

Balance is dependant upon viewpoints.

In 1e; a crowd controlling/buffing wizard that is enhancing and enabling the rest of the group with optimized DC's is probably overpowered from a GM's point of view but because he is helping others with his own might, no player really minds them being around. An optimized blaster however will deal damage, and thus be "competing" with other damage roles in the party and will likely be the subjects to balance discussions if doing more damage then other people in the role.

Personally (as is true for most of my tables for that matter); i value options and theme a lot more than i value balance. In the end, if someone is playing a stronger character, they (as players) can just hold back a little bit to be in line with the rest of the group or at least allow others to shine during the moments they specialized for.

I just think roughly equal if covering simular roles within a group would be balance, which at this point in the system isn't quite the case.

For example: as a skillmonkey rogue vs an attempted skillmonkey fighter will have a large gap between them. A martially inclined sorcerer will struggle a lot more to hit anything with his weapons then a martial character with sorcerer dedication, etc.

I'm glad this was posted, i filled out the survey and thought i'd add my own personal opinion. Maybe it'll be useful.

1. Create a new edition of Pathfinder that's much simpler to learn and play—a core system that's easy to grasp but expandable—while remaining true to the spirit of what makes Pathfinder great: customization, flexibility of story, and rules that reward those who take the time to master them.

The pathfinder playtest has become simplified, especially regarding problem areas of the previous edition such as for example grappling. I'm actually glad that is the case personally, and as a whole i think its a lot easier to explain the rules for this system compared to 1e which means its barrier for entry is much lower. I would say its a little bit more complex then 5e which admittedly, has a good entry point. The organisation in the rulebook however needs quite a bit of work to really have everything be beginner friendly.

In my eyes though: it came at a large cost however which is the custumization that made pathfinder 1e absolutely fantastic, even when comparing it to 3.5. Hell, it is what first drew me into pathfinder from 3.5 when i noticed small little things that made it feel more rewarding to gain a level with pretty much every single class. I honestly miss those small little custimization options such as for example rogue talents that (for the most part) had minimal effect on combats but would have alternative effects enhancing the overal feel and vibe of a class through sheer custumization that i as a player had full control over. It was glorious!

I also no longer have any option to play (for example) a fighter like a skill monkey, reducing their OPTIONS in combat(But not competence) and trading those in for some extra out of combat utility options in the form of skill viability or minor magic to enhance daily activities. The same is true for most of the minor magic oriented martial characters i've had over the years as most of them don't really care about DC's or higher level magic but instead enjoyed having multiple low level spells to make use of in order to enhance what was already there or even open up an entirely new path.

I also wonder why every caster has to increase their DC's and give up a class feat to do so, i have several styles of casters that aren't too bothered with DC's because they use touch attacks or are primairly buffers/healers that are not bothered by having lower save DC's, but i get it automatically and don't get the choice of a class feat instead which doesn't quite feel great either. The same is true for a variety of other things in the class system that forces you to play a certain way.

Every time i pick up a class presently in the playtest; I just feel shoved into a specific path/role based on the class that i selected which feel very uncomfortable with a restriction that i feel shouldn't be there, especially when comparing to the original system that drew me to pathfinder initially.

I also feel like i have to choose between competence and fun in many cases which isn't a great feeling to have as a player. It isn't very fun to pick up a "will save increase" as a feat for example, despite it being a solid choice to pick from. It just feels like a whole lot of feat taxation for a lot of classes/feat chains that prevents you from picking up interesting or fun options that would allow you to do something new or different.

I think a big portion of it is because there are a variety of types of feats that each are locked to the class, it means the type of feat is ultimately decided by my class which prevents custumization as it no longer is my choice to focus more on my combat prowess, skills or something else entirely. I don't have the option to say that i'd rather not have another class feat and would rather have a skill feat or even a skill increase as all of that is decided by my initial choice.

Multiclassing/archetypes; I have to give up what makes my class unique in order to get the custumization of a secundairy class, the same being true for archetypes. In many cases the initial dedication feat is also very weak compared to a typical class feat. I'd honestly prefer this to be an (additional) alternate path where i would be able to choose between dedicating myself further to an aspect of my class in the form of an archetype or if i wanted to broaden my options by multiclassing. If i wanted to multiclass a spellcaster: i would also prefer the option to say that i don't wish to have higher level spells but instead have two or even three times as many spell slots for my lower level slots as a trade-off.

TLDR: I just like options, in the end its what had me gravite towards pathfinder in the first place... not because it had so much content and therefor options but because i was able to make my own choices as to who my character was and what he would be good at, even if it wasn't fully in line with my class: i had the option to make a character i wanted to play based upon my own preferences.

I also would say that competence requires a lot of investment and is not quite in line with the math currently in the system.

2. Ensure that the new version of the game allows us to tell the same stories and share in the same worlds as the previous edition, but also makes room for new stories and new worlds wherever possible.

Well as a game master i certainly can, however most of the pathfinder games that have been going on for 2-6 years... my groups wouldn't be able to convert to PF2 because the characters wouldn't be convertable and maintain their vibe, or even feel competent at the things they were ment to be competent at.

3. Work to incorporate the innovations of the past decade into the core engine of the game, allowing the best rules elements and discoveries we've made to have an integrated home in the new system (even if they aren't present in the initial book).

Honestly, i'm on board with a large majority of changes that the system has gone through such as (the idea) behind resonance instead of the slot system, (the idea) behind bulk and the three action system all of which i believe are good additions (some better then others and some could use a bit of a tweak). I think we are indeed moving forward in most areas and the core of the rules are superior to the 1st edition.

4. Forge a more balanced play environment where every character has a chance to contribute to the adventure in a meaningful way by allowing characters to thrive in their defined role. Encourage characters to play to their strengths, while working with others to bolster their place in the group.

This seems opposite to my own views of what i would prefer the system to be like by forcing defined roles based upon class choices. I would love a system where everyone feels like they can contribute in a meangful way though by excelling at what they are ment to be good at!

However when i thought about this, i believe the system still requires quite a bit of work as some strengths are vastly superior and more common to others because some options are vastly stronger than others. Some roles/classes such as healers clerics are done better than others.

5. Make Pathfinder a game that's open and welcoming to all, no matter their background or experience.

Admirable goal, but at this point: i believe the system will speak to low fantasy oriented players as in essence, i would argue that is what the system currently caters towards. The crunch is absent and as such, i doubt it'll lure in anyone who is seeking it; namely the old 1e playerbase.

So i assumed manbearscientists latest post was correct after reading Mark's first post which is what i wanted to clarify, but with Mark's new one... i'm unsure again. Sorry guys, i still massively appreciate you taking your time to explain it.

It does seem odd to me from a design point of view to have all of these abilities tied to paladins when they aren't stacking, two of which are based around the blade ally or am i just missing something entirely?

Although one is admittedly a rune choice where you could take an alternative rather so than going with holy.

Back on topic;

So assuming a +x weapon that has a holy rune in it and blade ally is used for flaming against a demon with weakness 10 for both good and fire. The paladin has aura of faith for his party to make use of.

Would it be fair to say this would be the result?

Strike;
- Weapon damage as per normal
- ("Trigger") Holy rune -> +1d6(rune base)+10(from weakness to good)
- ("Trigger") Flaming rune -> +1d6(rune base)+10(from weakness to fire)
- 1 extra (good) damage from aura of faith (weakness already applied after all from the holy rune, or would that be another weakness trigger?)

Do both runes trigger(each applying weakness) or does it just trigger one of the runes and morph the base damage of the swing into either fire, good or weapon type(or does it have all 3 types?)?

Or would weakness only apply once regardless of an attack fulfilling multiple criteria?

Those parts are essentially pretty unclear to me at least.

On retributive strike
- Weapon damage as per normal
- Holy smite in charisma + 10 (weakness to good) as persistent damage
- Holy rune rune will trigger the damage from the rune but not the weakness considering holy smite already made use weakness mechanics.
- Flaming rune will trigger the damage (and i assume also the weakness?)
- 1 extra (good) damage from aura of faith (weakness already applied after all)

My guess is that its players choice to have holy smite function instead of holy rune properties in that case as persistent is typically more disirable over the static damage?

Can the holy (healing) effect also trigger when it isn't your turn or can it only be activated on your turn?

Litany of wrath;
- Just deals its normal damage unaffiliated with anything else but would apply weakness in addition to its regular effect.

I know a lot of people dont think cha/int should be dump stats, but lets be real. You cant max every stat, regardless of stat generation method, and most spellcasters can safely dump strength, since it really does not matter much for a spellcaster.

I personally don't think they should be dump stats, more or less the same reason i don't feel like dump stats should be a thing.

I believe they should be a choice with every choice providing opportunity for an alternate way of contributing to a character/group. This is my idealistic viewpoint though as currently, its not really the case.

I think strength and charisma to a degree will be dumped less now with resonance and bulk(encumbered is nasty), but intelligence feels very lackluster if you don't require it for your class/multiclass purely as it doesn't really do enough presently compared to other stats. An extra skill at trained(not qualifying you for most interesting skill feats as skill increases beyond trained is what matters.) and an extra language for having a starting score of 14 is not really anything incentivising to write home about after all; at least in the average game. The skill feats for mental rolls also appear to be weaker and more uncommonly relevant in general which doesn't really help.

The biggest issue for any d&d system besides 5e where they tried to adress this somewhat by having 6 saving throws instead of 3, is that the stats that provide saving throws are more valuable than others. If those then also provide your defensive stats(Dex matters for AC) and initiative(Wisdom or stealth are the common ones utilised from what i've seen) aswell as govern a bunch of useful and relevant skills(Acrobatics, stealth and thievery are all pretty strong with the skill feats) where as the others are less commonly used in practice besides the potential athletics.

It creates the issue that the system resolved around the big 3 stats where as the others could be raised mildly and still feel perfectly fine for more combat oriented players.

Combine that with the proficiency system where adding bonusses based on level, resulting in it being the primairy contributor to modifiers across the board, it makes dumping them feel less punishing despite the system math requiring you to be optimized for succeeding routine skill checks more than 50% of the time anyway.

In the past, we had classes designed around utilising intelligence(Duelist comes to mind) and charisma(paladin in particular) to enhance defensive qualities which made them options for builds that wished to take an alternate route to help with that while still getting good skill value. PF2 doesn't have that presently, and i believe will result in a lot of people gaining the same mindset as your players as it stands.

Because for barbarian, it states specificly what you get at every single level where as drained or enfeebled aren't referenced in such a way.

Hence the exception is referenced for barbarian, where as things that aren't referenced are still subject to the default.

Most of paizo content works (and has always) worked this way. They state the default and then if there is an exception, they'll state the exception specificly without mentioning its an exception. That is the norm for paizo.

So barbarian is an exception to the general rule.

Drained or enfeebled and other conditions providing conditional bonusses/penalties not stating this aren't stating it, thus they are not exceptions and are limited to the +4 or -4 as per default.

It felt odd only being able to pick one class per ancestry. I've played several humans/half-elves, at least more so than any other ancestry purely because extra class/general feats are overpowered as far as ancestries go.

Am i expected to fill out the survey multiple times in that case as i only got to review about half of the classes i played at this point?

In general, my loves/hates all revolve around the same two things. I love the _concept_ of nearly everything introduced. The ideas and intentions behind them are great and it's what got my group interested in trying a d20 system again (even though we're not huge fans). What I hate is the _implementation_ of most of those concepts.

So here's the list.

Love:
1) Choices. The flexibility of 3 actions, non-linear class options, archetypes replacing class feats, 1-3 actions on spells affecting the result, etc. My daughters, who sometimes play with our group, both made multi-class characters and had a blast.
2) Tiered Success/Crit/Fail system keeps everyone on their toes.
3) The dedication to the Paizo team to actually listening to feedback and not coming in looking to steamroll the new system into existence. They get that not everything is perfect yet and are willing to work with the community to get it right.

Hate:
1) The illusion of choice. While the blogs seemed to refer to the myriad of options and ways to build your character, I'm not seeing that play out. Instead, whether you want to go multi-class, archetype, or simply build a cohesive single class character, you need to plan out at least the first 8-10 levels ahead of time to make sure you meet all prereqs by the time you're able to take the things you want. Even the basic single class characters are shoehorned in on most options to choosing a path early on and sticking with it to get optimal results in later abilities. This is a far cry from blog posts that assured us that nearly anyone could have a familiar/animal companion if only you spent the Feat on it (as just one example).
2) The handbook reads like a technical manual. Repetitive language, terminology everywhere that points you to another page halfway across the book, dry textbook descriptions. I get that pictures will help, but I usually can consume the general idea behind an entire new system book in a day or two. I found myself falling asleep reading this one.
3) As stated a number...

I was going to make my own list, but honestly. This covers my thoughts so i might aswell just quote it and state that its my list aswell.

I will add to this thread untill i am finished with all domains and cleric feats although with the limited editing time for OP's, it will be done so in posts henceforth.

This Google Doc will always have the latest updates, including any potential adjustments made and will include images to each individual power without having to open the pdf for conveniance.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Clerics are presently strong in the pathfinder playtest, however after playing several of them throughout the doomsday dawn adventure as well as a few pfs modules; i kind of started to wonder about my choices in character creation as most of them turned out with very similar choices where i felt constricted for options: not because of lack of options which’ll naturally improve with more content but instead because there was a lack of viable or worthwhile choices.

DISCLAIMER
Everything i wrote, i am doing out of my own perspective as someone who has been playing role playing games since early 2000’s, i have done some homebrewing for my own games across various systems but that’s about as close to game designing i have come, meaning it is completely possible my suggestions are over the top and not balanced but they would (hopefully) lead to a discussion that would (hopefully) lead to having options in the system that would at the very least be situationally useful to the point someone in a future game would feel like they had options and be willing to pick any of them up if the option would fit their concept.

I’ll start with domains, especially as they are essential to the cleric class as a whole and it’ll assist me when i would be talking about feats in the future and their combo potential with some of the domain abilities as a result.

I will state the following as a general consensus for all domains and just look at the quality instead of also taking into account the feat cost for the second domain powers so just keep in mind that as long as the feat tax exist practically every 2nd domain ability is actually a whole lot worse as a general rule of thumb.

I also have a strong suspicion that the domains were created before it was decided to only have them be available through a feat judging from the overall power level of them across the board as only a handful of them would actually be worth the investment for the benefit they provide when compared to feats in general.

I originally planned to add some color coding for whether or not something is amazing, good, situationally useful or just plain bad. I decided against it in the end as several of them were hard to rate considering combat vs skills vs roleplay opportunity being hard to balance in such a rating system as each of us values other things.

This will be very wordy to provide as much feedback as i can muster. Sorry in advance! With that being said, Lets begin.

Ambition (Zon-Kuthon)

Air (Gozreh, Rovagug)

Cities (Abadar, Cayden Cailean)

Confidence (Asmodeus, Gorum, Iomedae)

Creation (Shelyn, Torag)

To do list:
I will do these as my spare time would allow, i should be able to keep a pace of a part every 2-3 days most likely.

I decided to do domains 5 to 6 at a time, mostly because i'm trying to do so in depth. I fear if i made it any longer then no one in their right mind would ever read it. Splitting it up in parts might help is what i was thinking.

OP summarizes my own experiences aswell as a variety of concerns of people i've been playing with. I think there are one or two that i personally would argue but concidering the sheer amount of feedback and it being done in an easy to read format.

Devs should really have a look at this because i believe its exceptional feedback.

It's also not backed up by Paizo. I'm playing Doomsday Part 4, the level 9 section, and every DC is in the 24-28 range. At no point does it say 'scouting the wilderness is relatively mundane, so the DC is only 16' or 'these guys actually really need help, dispite their standoffish nature, the situation is in your favour and it's a DC 14 diplomacy' - nope, everything is 24-28. It's rubbish. My players don't feel particuarly competent even at their specialties. I understand that 'oh, you're trying to talk to that powerful beast? The inherently hostile one? Yeah, that's a level appropriate challenge. A really tough one, even. DC 30!' Not everything should be easy. But... have some range to these DCs!

As one of his players, i concur with the above statement. We pretty much just started assisting the person with the highest modifier because it was the only way most of us felt we could contribute with our modifiers and have a chance at success against the harsh DC.

Having a table like this that scales with level; it doesn't feel like you progressed with your character, which is taking away the player feeling of realising that the character has improved after going through countless encounters with dangerous foes to improve ones own abilities which i would call growth; i think its a big part of roleplaying games thats important to have in order to be enjoying yourself. It is just absent because of this particular table.

It also doesn't make sense, if you climbed the same tree every single day for an entire year, you would expect the person climbing the particular tree to get better at it and either his modifier to go up or the difficulty class to go down for climbing the tree as effort was put into getting better at this particular task. You probably wouldn't start struggling more as you get stronger yourself, right?

Each of these sequences of 3 attacks are exceedingly unlucky. But to have them happen sequentially is effectively impossible with fair dice (0.0005% chance). I feel very confident in saying that your GM is messing with you and inventing dice roll results.

If you are a skeptical person and doubt that something happened because it is improbable, then that is your choice. It doesn't take away that it was indeed very improbable, it doesn't take away that it did happen. I'm certain it'll happen again as with enough dice rolled, eventually the improbable will occur. I didn't check your math and wether or not it kept into account that it would only have the 15 instead of 16 to hit when something isn't prone already and wether or not you applied the prone condition to your numbers.

This was highly improbable but even without the highly improbable, it doesn't take away that with criticals as they are; combats feel very, very swingy which only gets worse as the level difference between the group and encounter grows(in both ways) and the chance of crit increases. (This was level +3 and i believe like level +4 is also an option for encounters...)

The rolls were public when it came to combat rolls, so there was no inventing of dice rolls. I will say that i am not familiar enough with maptool to determine if their dice are in fact fair.

In the end because the math is so tight and currently off as shown by any of the math posts on the forum, especially so when compared to the goals the devs have which they already stated in other posts that they have for the chance of success.

Vestris; i get your point and i agree with it. If it happened in playsession, they likely would've come up with some form of ruling. I suggested shove but i suppose interact would probably function better.

I was just surprised there was no reason for dragging as i'd assume it would be a common occurance for grabbing creatures and the sort.

so I would assume a class with 10 HP/Level is the frontliner, with con 14, 60 damage don't drop such a character.

With someone in the party being able to heal, and heal being a single action you should easily out heal the golem's damage for a couple of rounds.

The encounter should drain quite some resources as of its leve. The cleric falling first due to a lucky crit. was the issue and should not be the mean.

I played a couple of DD adventures so far and most encounters have been pretty easy for a rested party, while the groups where able to manage to pull through 2-3 encounters per rest. And that with some relatively hard encounters in between. No cleric in either of the groups. Combat plays very different to PF 1 though which I like a lot. In total 2 of my players went down once not more.

And yet said character with such HP did get dropped in round one because of the hot rolls.

Heal being a single action can add quite a bit of burst healing, however if you would read the prior encounter had, you would realise that resources would already be drained a lot from the attempt at retrieving the corpse. I put up quite a fight with my remaining heals but in the end got overwhelmed as being on the backfoot snowballed the fight.

I finished the following(DD);
2x the lost star (TPk because deadly weapons+Clear with 2x paladin, cleric, wizard)
0x Pale mountain's shadow (at recommendation to avoid it because a close friend pointed out that this adventure would trigger me.)
1x Affair at Sombrefell Hall (Clear. We basicly ran 4x tanky healers with minimum damage outputs and ran through all but the fight before the last one before we had a downed person, who would never die with the setup.)

We required 0 rests across these sessions to get through.

Regarding how the golem fight should start; It wouldn't make sense for initiative to start before the golem would be freeing itself from the wraps as thats the action that starts it, hence it would have full actions. In addition unless the players would go against the assumed guards reasoning that putting it down would harm the investigation(which makes sense) and was pointed out by the guards as to why they didn't do this, it would be odd for it to be player instagated if your not in a murderhobo game.

Note: i'll split up my responses as i went in length on this one. Assume more to come.

Lets say the cleric does not fall in round 1, the fight will be completely different. The same should be assumed for the paladin and the fighter in the subsequent turns especially when the cleric is then ready to heal.

I agree with this, alas it is what occured nevertheless.

You stated you didn't see a mechanical issue with the system, so let me break down my reasoning and that'll indicate an issue potentially depending upon viewpoints and player expectations. I know what mine are in any case, i am unaware of yours presently.

------

So the Golem would reliably deal about 19 damage as the average on a minimum per hit(i'm using anydice for this kind of math and utilising the number closest to 50% on "at least"), with a 15% chance of a critical(18+ roll) on the first attack and subsequent 5% chances on 2nd and 3rd attacks which would mean just shy of 40 damage per round as an average assuming no criticals.

Assuming a critical + regular hit; this would mean just shy of 60 damage assuming it does not go over its average minimum damage resulting in very decent odds of knocking out someone out who is barely above 60hp.

Concidering its attack modifier and the maximum AC values at this level, you'd be looking at it hitting twice on average unless you have someone who managed to get bane off, you have a shield focussed character as the character it is whacking on for the extra +2 AC.

The max HP's in the party being the following;

* Cleric 63: (8 race/ 8 Class / 14+ toughness con.(Effective modifier of 3, max being 5 at this level)
* Ranger 71: 6 race / 10 class / 16 con, no toughness. (Effective modifier of 3, max being 5 at this level)
* Paladin 73: 8 race / 10 class / 14+ toughness con.(Effective modifier of 3, max being 5 at this level)
* Fighter 83: 8 race / 10 class / 18+ toughness con. (Effective modifier of 5 of the maximum of 5)

This means the maximum hp a character could have at this level assuming human or gnome's 8 (Thus could be raised by 2 for half-orc/dwarves, lowered by 2 for halfling/goblin) and maxed out con + investing their only general feat at this level in toughness would be;
< 93(D12), 83(D10), 73(D8), 63(D6)
< D12 classes: 1, D10 classes: 4, D8 classes: 5, D6 classes 2.

This costed them 4 of 13 statboosts(again, assuming human for conveniance as they kind of represent the default in any case), their only general feat at level 5(assuming they did not invest the ancestry feat in it being human).

In theory average constitution would be defined as 14 (in my opinion, concidering they are trying their best to prevent dumpstats with bulk for str/resonance for charisma) with 13 statboosts to be split between 6 stats. Meaning the (quick math) average HP across the board would be 58-68hp(which means average of 63 exactly) across all classes/races/stats.

The difference between average and maximum is only a 2(3 for hp because toughness is a feat), however but because of the statblocks in the game and the math being so tight... you'll need to have those maximum's to be effective for sake of offense, ac and hp. Which means 3 stats need to be 18 resulting in a single 12 which for some builds is not feasible to muster, in addition unless you'll also want to shore up your saves which are tied to 2 of those 3 stats aswell unless your a character utilising wisdom as an offensive stat.

Moving on from maximum HP's;

A single heal utilising the cleric(who is vastly superior in healing compared to any other class by quite a wide margin)utilising its most powerful 3 action heal that would output this amount of healing;

6d8(3rd level heighten+healing hands)+4(wis)+1(staff of healing)+12(healer's blessing) - average minimum 38-39 points of healing. This is assuming the target is in touch range otherwise; 1d8+2 or +12 would be substracted to create a ranged heal instead.

In a sense, i could accept this if there were more/better ways for after combat recovery or incase you would have 1 to 2 combats per day at most, otherwise... those recovery resources you'll have with these averages will not manage to get you through unless your group is specificly tailored towards it.

Good luck to the unoptimized character to get through this module, good luck to the party that lacks a divine caster to get through this encounter, etc. Again, the averages in the system are the inherent issue in a sense in this module which appears like a trend thusfar across doomsday and this particular module; thus the playtest. At least that is my reasoning.

---

Now i'll ask you again;

Do you not see an issue with the combat math and what this would do for build variety in the system as a whole?

As i do think if you really look at the above, you'll realise why this system is currently in a problematic state to play without a healing cleric(seems to be a universal complaint already judging from the forums), why this system is downright impossible to play with the expectancy to live for any imperfect defensively rolled character(many TPK's are had, again looking at the forums).

I went through the first 3 doomsday dawn modules aswell, twice for the first part even; most of them had simular issues with the combat math that was very bursty in addition to high average substained damage resulting in needing above average rolls for the group and/or a healing cleric to make it playable. I will state now that we made it through the first and the last part; largely in part because we played with two clerics and at least one additional healer, all rolled for optimum tankyness to prevent having someone being bursted down which still felt like a challenge in the sense that when crits came into play; it wouldn't work 100% of the time. (Hence use of shield other and the like.)

All of this indicates that the system expects you to do certain things but doesn't make such an indication when creating a character, its why i stated in my TLDR that i believe defensive quality for PC characters SHOULD be raised or the statblocks of encounters reduced or not have encounters above the party level because their math just does not support that what so ever.

This is not assuming saves which for the record to regain conciousness when the fighter did fall, who had a +11 modifier which is the absolute maximum, they still required to roll a 12 to pass the dying save.

Regarding the "why didn't you prebuff" comment.

IF you see the following in chat; (direct copy of some of the golem relevant bits until we started investigating it further)

< "We had received reports about some kind of break-in," the light-brown-haired Eiab explains to the party, "so we rushed over here, saw a berserk golem, and subdued it. We avoided taking further actions to dispose of the construct, because we wanted to preserve any evidence of the crime."

< In one corner of the room, an unburnt yet badly shrapnel-damaged flesh golem bound with sturdy silk rope twitches, groans, and strains against its bonds.

Let me ask you this; Would you assume you needed to pre-buff concidering they subdued the golem in question prior to our arrival after being pointed out its badly injured in addition? The golem did not appear threatening until it started swinging.

While the cleric(myself) may have been a bit careless as to believe she could inspect the golems wounds, it is only because of the context provided. The other 3 were preoccupied with a peculiar package; what i assume(never quite made a succesful roll there) was part of the evidence as to the culprit.

In addition to that, as mentioned in the OP both fighter & paladin were NPC's in essence to assist the party. We as players had control over them but concidering we were pre-occupied with our own characters actions and they had found the package and were already dealing with that... neither of us thought more of it concidering the situation presented. I assume the golem rolled a 2(was GM rolled so unclear) before it got to act.

The golem is not prone according to the pdf, in order to inspect the wounds of the golem one would be close by, hence why the closest target was the cleric and resulted in a triple swing.

I do agree the fighter & paladin probably could've been closer if we did assess the golem was a threat, which we didn't in part due to poor rolls on identifying the creature due to high DC's and lack of trained skills across the group and the other part due to player strain of having multiple characters to control which was not the plan but with people flaking last minute... that was the way the cookie crumbled.

Regarding rolls; 2d12+3+d4 for berserk slam, obviously multiplied incase of a critical. Average minimum damage roll of 19 is correct according to my math.

15/11/6 attacks against 23/21 AC.
+15 vs AC 23 -> 8 to hit, 18 to crit. (Would be at +1 subsequent rounds due to targets already being prone)
+11 vs AC 21 -> 10 to hit, 20 to crit.
+6 vs AC 21 -> 15 to hit, 20 to crit.

Those to hit rolls sound about right from memory - i remember the cleric & paladins sounding just about right but the fighter rolls are a bit more fuzzy concidering raised stress levels of attempting to think of a way out of this. I won't claim the GM didn't roll very hot this particular encounter. Sadly, i didn't save the log from maptools to confirm but i probably will henceforth.

The creature never did anything to provoke an AoO concidering the combat never moved from the position it started in with people subsequently going prone/going into dying and being unable to get back up with the moving initiatve upon death, After the paladin engaged in the fight they healed and went down before their next turn came around and never regained their ability to use a reaction before being downed again.

The ranger was investigating in exploration mode instead of worrying about combat.

While some GM's are a bit more loose for their home games, because PFS support the idea of following suggestions exactly as its presented and there being a lot of GM's out there like that, it would result in this being a downright rediculous challenge level in this particular module.

If you aren't playing as written, then it would be hard to test what is presented to a new playergroup with a new GM who'll have an easier time following something as its written up instead of adding too much of their personal touch, especially so if they would not be confident in doing so just yet.

For what its worth; If i were in my homebrew game, i'd be a lot more loose aswell and applaud inventive or particularely clever ways to circumvent the encounter to a degree(such as the example you provided) but with PFS stuff the idea is to playtest the system and module which is the approach we took and the results speak for itself i think.

If it was a homebrew game, i likely would have left this golem alone after seeing the first hit and seeing how powerful it is. For sake of testing however, we continued to see if it felt playable.

There is a TL:DR at the end for those seeking just a small summary.

Party:
Human Cleric of Sarenrae. (Healing domain, Staff of healing+Shield)
Half-Elf Fighter (2h Guisarme)
Half-Elf Paladin of Iomedae. (2h Guisarme)
Halfling ranger (Crossbow)

All of these characters optimized for sake of having maximum AC values at lowest potential penalty to movement/skills. Thus Hide/breastplates were worn all around. Reach weapons are traditionally good and thus where opted over a sword and board style. All characters had 23 AC(Cleric at 25 when shield raised), HP's were (63/83/73/65) to provide an idea.

Note: Due to flaky people, we had to run with 2 DMPC's that players had control over, both half-elves were GM creations but were both capable and build properly.

Note 2: I checked the module after the game ended to ensure i covered everything necessary.

Retrieving the arclords corpse:
None of us are intelligence based characters, we did not pass the DC 18 recall knowledge check to know more about the Quantium.
> The highest modifier we had was a +5 untrained, the average was a +3. Succeeding this was statistically improbable already based upon these numbers. The game master explained the creature would be moving at 40ft per round.

GM explained our options for retrieving the corpse.

< besides the ranger none of us were particularely stealth, especially so with armor check penalties resulting in most of us having a 3-4 modifier for stealth . As such we opted to attempt the (seemingly) penalty-less deception/intimidate check of 19 that as written had no failure penalty although one could be assumed as otherwise it could be attempted over and over and it would be an easy finish at no risk. The GM mentioned that such a thing would not make sense as grabbing its attention with the stealth option would result in it swatting, we agreed to it as it does not make sense as if that is not the case it is a clearly superior option comparatively to go with the social roll incase it wouldn't have that (assumed) penalty. It really isn't clear if there is a failure penalty or not but it wouldn't make sense to have both options be present if one is risk free and the other is not. And so the creature would swat at the creature for failure on the deception/intimidation check, the same way it would for stealth failures with the same range utilised of being within 10ft for the attempt.
< The fact this creature is moving at 40ft (Party moves at 25/25/30/35 respectively) and you would require a hide action, you would be out of actions even before attempting to retrieve the corpse, if attempting this route by double moving in addition to stealth. You could pre-empt 1 of the movement actions by getting ahead of the golem and attempt the consecutive stealth + acrobatics + athletics rolls which besides the stealth check are all pretty difficult checks for a 5th level party in the first place and has a major chance at failure.

We debated our choices and our Strategy turned into the following; The cleric casted shield other on the paladin who would be attempting the intimidate/deception check as they had the highest intimidate modifier of a +7 against the DC of 19. Once successfull, we would all attempt to interact with the body and get it free.
< It resulted in the paladin taking 3 hits in 9 turns, essentially utilising 1 turn to attempt, 1 turn to heal up, 1 turn to move ahead of it again.
< The paladin and cleric could split the (melee +28, 3d10+10 damage) attack which was crit every time as the creature only required to roll a 5 or more to do so for 6d10+20 damage. Mind you this is against the optimized AC the party had of 23(Max at this level without a shield) as thats the way the new system works.
< If it weren't for shield other, this attack by itself has the potential to one shot even the tanky paladin with 73 HP(Con 14+toughness on a d10 class, having maximum AC while not choosing to use a shield for their build which in fairness, would still have the creature CRITICAL more then 50% of the time).

Needless to say, we were already rather miffed despite our strategy preventing death at least. Our ranger was very glad he didn't attempt to stealth in before the successfull distract as such hits would likely kill him outright as he did not have shield other on him.

Essentially the gm wasn't sure how to handle the third failure which would result in the golem attacking for stealth failures but no mentions made for any kind of social failures what so ever, all but guaranteeing a TPK assuming the party was within 20ft range. In the end, having no idea how to actually interpret the rules of the challenge, they gave up on trying to interpret the stipulated scene and simply had the corpse fall of the foot as recommended for multiple failures.

The cleric with a medicine of 10 required a 12 on the roll now which even with hero point spending, did not get. The ranger attempted the same with a +7, using lucky halfling to retry again but to no avail. The fighter & paladin both required a natural 20 to succeed and did not do so.

We gave up on the quantum golem after informing the authorities the corpse should be checked out and given burial.

We went to the scene of the crime and were offered the following bits of information by the guards;
< They managed to subdue the golem that was going berserk, it was done to preserve the crime scene for investigation. Golems are immune to most magics but;
< Electricity spells would be healing it.
< Fire did not appear to be effective(contradictory to its statblock), The gm phrased it as such because the fireball trap appears to have little effect on the golem. (Its really awkward, definitely misleading according to both my gm and myself.)

To quote the misleading aspect of the module which is where my GM phrased it as such; "a fireball trap that had little effect on the magic-resistant golem". This is terrible writing, its misleading and i feel cheated now by the module itself.

We checked out the scene, We made half of the (high) DC checks of 18 despite none of the group being good at arcane or occult modifier wise. We got bits and pieces of information but in the end, all we knew is some form of earth conjurerer was involved but not in which manner.

Before we could react to this newfound information, the golem awoke.

-Round 1-
< Golem goes first and (unsurprisingly) Hits(Prone) + Crits the cleric who only has 23(max for level) ac without the raised shield, as such went down before they got to do anything. If shield would've been raised, the crit would've just been an actual hit but can't do multiple things at once in exploration mode which is a bit frustrating and a huge flaw in the exploration system as is.
< The fighter missed both its attacks after moving after the cleric went down.
< The paladin moved over to the cleric and brought her back to conciousness by utilising its channel life.
< The ranger missed with its attack after using hunt target, running reload afterwards to gain distance towards the door.

- Round 2 -
< The NPC guards give it to the nearest person, such would be the ranger who was near the door. We asked if the sword was magical and it turned out, no it was a simple (not even expert) longsword with something drenched on it. The sword remained not used for the remainder of the combat therefor as the hit penalty was a bigger concern then its damage reduction compared to the party's magical equipment. (Why didn't they just give us the coating, at least THAT would be a usefull action on their part.)
< Cleric crawled away from the golem with its slowed 2 condition, that was the turn.
< Golem smacked the paladin, hit + Crit + hit and paladin goes unconcious.
< Fighter misses both attacks.
< Ranger crits with his crossbow before and after reloading for a good hit.

- Round 3-
< Paladin failed the DC23 to stabilize.
< Cleric pumps a good 40 into the paladin to prevent death and to avoid being the sole healing force in a battle as hard hitting as this one.
< Golem knocks out the fighter with a crit and two hits.
< Measely damage from the crossbow ranger as the DR hurts when your lowing roll on that one hit you roll. (2d10+4 is respectable damage but when you roll ~10's on damage.. its not that great with 5 resistance)

(Note: It sounds like luck for there to be so many crits but concidering the modifier of higher level creatures in addition to the prone condition and the crit rules that just need to exceed something by 10, its really not that surprising this creature would proceed to crit multiple times each turn.)

I won't bother going further into the round per round but to break things down.

Slowed 2-3 after being healed from dying condition combined with getting pummeled again because it attacks the closest creatures, who are still prone due to reduced(or no) action economy from slowed while having their hands emptied upon going unconcious resulted in the cleric attempting to put up a fight, hoping for the golem to roll multiple terrible rolls in a row to the point recovery could be a concideration. It did not happen, the ranger could not solo kill this monster and eventually both fighter & paladin died when the cleric ran out of healing. The cleric & Ranger could get away but at which point our GM called the session. Justifyable so as we could not finish with 2 characters and already TPK'd prior and this was our second chance after all.

------------------ (TL:DR) ------------------

Closing Thoughts:
< Several things were not explained properly such as what the penalty would be for going the distract tactic over the stealth one, and so on.
< The DC's of this module were over the top, especially in the consecutive cases because unless trained+ability modifier of 18.. Odds of success is incredibly low. 50% odds for optimized characters is a terrible design.
< Utilising a lvl 20 creature for effect in addition to punishing for failure to meet the high DC's feels terrible. You know your fighting the odds, you use what little clever strategy you can use but ultimately with only 3 failures required... you will just lose PC's for sure.
< Utilising a creature at higher CR then the party will just result in crits a plenty. Once several members went down from prone, there is no chance of recovery because of the slow mechanic unless the monster was already relatively low at the time it occured.
< Damage needs to be downscaled or survivability for PC's needs to go up. Either needs to occur for the system to be remotely playable as it stands. I honestly feel tomb of horrors and others as such would be more forgiving then this particular adventure concidering the state pathfinder 2e is in presently.
< Medicine does not have an option for exploration mode, there is no recall knowledge so what action are we actually taking when utilising these medicine rolls. This was another (short) debate in the group.

EXTRA: The survey is filled out by those thay played/ran it. There was a lack to add details and the right questions where absent from the form i believe. Hence my decision to write this up.

Some thoughts from general play that aren't module related;

- Crossbows feel very underwhelming. Hunt target feels underwhelming too. Running reload is interesting but their damage potential as a martial class feels very underwhelming as a whole.
- Healing clerics feel satisfying to play, having channel energy heightening heals allows for quite some healing output especially mixed with the likes of healing hands, being able to increase the pool with healing font also felt like a nice addition. I just wish besides shield other, i got to use more of my other spells but being on the backfoot from the beginning will do that to you, i guess?

I didn't get to see enough of the cool stuff of paladin & fighter this time around to formulate an opinion. I'm certain the brutish shove chain could've been interesting if it had actually worked at any given time. Retributive strike feels relatively easely avoidable in most cases if it does come up.

-------------

Thats it for me. I hope this feedback was helpful, incase there would be any questions... i'll respond when i'm back awake if i have an answer of sorts.