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Huh that makes a lot of sense. That said, I don't get the feeling the GM is adversarial. I think it's more likely he just isn't reading the full text of the encounters and thus we've just ended up unable to retreat from some things. Unsure where the shutting door thing would've came from tho. As for the golem critting, we use a VTT for play and he rolls openly on it, so he was in fact just rolling very high. I really appreciate y'all weighing in on this and I think I'll show him this thread so he realizes where some of the frustration of the party has come from. Thanks again!
Hi everyone. I've been playing through Abomination Vaults with a new group and we're having some serious issues with the difficulty of some encounters. So far we've TPK'd twice: - Once to some Blood Haunt at level 1 on the first floor that is at the bottom of the lighthouse stairs. It went first and immediately crit half our party dropping them to dying. Also the doors shut themselves when the encounter started, so the rest of us were unable to drag our teammates to safety, resulting in us all dying. - The 2nd TPK was to the wood golem on floor 3. It used its splinter volley to hit all 4 of us at once and was critting us about 50% of the time. We tried to run away thinking that maybe it only guarded the room, but it followed us out into the hall and killed us all. Is this normal for this AP? Is it just crazy hard or are we missing something that should be making these fights easier?
I highly, highly, highly doubt Paizo intended to make all spells from other books not available. I think you're reading into the intention of the wording wrong.
This is incorrect. If that were the case then we would not need the wording to say that it stacked to begin with as 2d6 SA and 1d6+1d6 are the same. If it was intended only to make a difference for prerequisites then it would say as much. As is, there is literally no mention of prerequisites in that FAQ.
Close but not quite. 2 untyped ability bonuses from the same ability score (in this case Cha) are considered to be the same source which is why they don't stack.
Dunno why some people are acting like this is an OP feat. You're only doing 1d4+1 damage (per 5 levels) every shot compared to the gunslinger who is getting dex to damage and can TWF with just a 2 level dip in juggler bard. You could make an argument about combining it with Gunslinger, but that wouldn't even come online til character level 10. Hardly OP by then.
Regarding Monk: Ki Rush is a great change, but strength based monks still have some serious AC issues. They have to pump up dex to raise AC since they can't wear armor and that still leaves them with much lower AC than any other class. And on top of that they need CON since they're a melee class. Which leave very little for WIS; meaning they will not be able to use defensive abilities like Ki Rush very often. So str based monks still seem like they're just going to get crit out and die.
This is definitely a big step in the right direction. However, some things like most half orcs suddenly not having darkvision by default and randomly gaining it when they take a feat at any level are still just bizzare and need to be changed. Honestly the latter is much more of an issue than the former. I could accept most half orcs being 2nd generation or so and not having dark vision now. But randomly gaining darkvision from your race on level up just doesn't make sense.
Yes, the Padishah of Kelesh, well-known for producing... fair-skinned blondes? It's highly possible there's a background reason for that. Failing that, all sorts of people live all over Golarion. Why does he have to be a typical member of the populace? Most places in Golarion aren't known for having a large half-orc population, but that's never stopped me from playing one.
It seems a common theme in these playtest feedback threads is that parties without a cleric constantly teeter on the brink of death/die and and don't have fun, while parties with a cleric don't have much of an issue all survive while having a good time Right now it seems the encounter math makes clerics necessary to succeed without deaths the majority of the time.
It's actually completely up in the air exactly how much damage is needed to dent objects as the rule con be interpreted 2 different ways an needs to be clarified. I made a thread about this exact issue
Nope, you Need 20 Damage to cause a dent. As you ignore the first 10 Points of damage, the door only takes damage after that. That means in order to cause 10 damage to the door (and cause a dent), you Need to cause 20 damage initially. This is actually unclear at the moment as the rule can be read 2 different ways. I made a thread about it here.
Putting aside the discussion of the DCs, I believe you may have just found a contradiction in the rules. Page 354 on the CRB says that you should double the hardness of doors and other reinforced objects (Assumedly walls and such), but page 7 of the bestiary has an entire section on demolishing objects and even table with their hardness and how many dents they can take, yet and makes absolutely no mention of ever doubling hardness. I'm curious which one is meant to go by. Especially since the doubling hardness rule for doors means they'd basically be impossibly to tear down until high levels.
An item can be destroyed if it takes damage enough times. An item reduces any damage dealt to it by its Hardness. The Hardness of various materials is explained in the Materials section on page 354. If an item takes damage equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes a Dent. If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents. For instance, a wooden shield (Hardness 3) that takes 10 damage would take 2 Dents. A typical item can take only 1 Dent without becoming broken. A second Dent causes it to become broken, though it can still be repaired. An item that would take a Dent or become broken while already broken is destroyed beyond salvage. Some magical or especially sturdy items can take more than 1 Dent before becoming broken, as noted in their descriptions. So there appear to be 2 equally common interpretations of the rules for items taking damage and the text is vague enough that either could be correct. Position 1: An item takes a dent if the total damage before subtracting hardness matches or goes past it's hardness. Example: A fighter hits a wooden door for 11 points of damage. It is reduced by the hardness (10) to 1 point of damage, denting the door. Position 2: An item takes a dent if the total damage after subtracting hardness is equal to or greater than the objects hardness. Example: A fighter hits a wooden door for 11 points of damage. It is reduced by the hardness (10) to 1 point of damage, which does not dent the door because the damage actually given is not "equal to or exceeding the item's hardness" of 10. This has come up in multiple threads and is especially important for how shields work. The sooner this gets a clarification the better.
See, that kind of ambiguity is exactly my issue. As an example, let's say a GM is designing an adventure and wants to put a mountain that the PCs have to get up. He decides that this is quite a substantial mountain and that it's crumbling, sloped, and slick so he makes it a lvl 6 DC. Now when the players get there, they toss a grappling hook up to the top with a rope attached and decide to climb up. The GM thinks this makes it 1 category easier, so he shifts the DC from 22 (High) to 19 (low). A player makes a 17 climb check and is shocked when the GM tells him he failed. He reminds him that climbing a rope is a lvl 1 task and he has the cliff to brace against, so the DC should be 12 or perhaps 14 or 15 since it is in such poor condition. Who is right in this scenario? As the rules are currently written, I'm genuinely unsure.
Basing the DC to break it down on the Thievery DC at all is problematic though. Because locks have diminishing returns and this makes it always harder to break down a door than pick the lock. There's a point at which no matter what type of lock you put on your wooden door, it's still going to be just as easy to kick down because it's wood. and it's certainly not harder than picking it.
So when my group first ran the playtest we couldn't find any rules or guidelines on the DC to break down doors in the CRB, but I just recently managed to find it on Page 7 of the Bestiary of all places. And what I found was definitely......concerning. For one, the DC to break open a locked door is equal to the unlock Thievery DC+5 which just doesn't make sense. Regardless of how fancy of a lock you put on a wooden door, it's still a wooden door. The DC absolutely should not be based on the Thievery DC at all, but the size and type of material of the door. However, this page also held something perhaps even stranger. It also provides DCs for climbing up walls of various materials, and they absolutely do not seem to match up with the CRB. On page 338 of the CRB we can see that climbing a cliff is a level 2 activity, which when we check the DC chart makes it DC 15. Now the bestiary puts climbing wood slats as a level 5 activity which is a whopping DC 21 and is harder than climbing a Masonry Wall apparently. Something is definitely wrong when climbing wood slats is significantly harder than climbing a cliffside and even slightly harder than a masonry wall. Overall, it seems that quite a few of these DCs were decided without it being considered whether they logically made sense. I think it would definitely be a step in the right direction to revisit these rules and change the Break DC for doors to not be based on Thievery, and make the climb DCs more sensical for what surface you're climbing.
Well upon checking there are more in depth actually guidelines for climbing and breaking down doors in the bestiary of all places. However, they have some serious issues. The climb examples contradict the ones in the CRB by being significantly higher. Climbing wooden slats probably shouldn't be DC 21 for example. Also confusing, the break open DC for doors is equal to the Thievery DC+5 which seems very strange. A wooden door is still a wooden door regardless of how good of a lock you put on it. Edit: Going to make this issue it's own thread for visibility.
I'm talking about things like climbing a cliff with a rope, having a wall to brace against, swimming in calm water vs stormy water, breaking a wood vs metal door down, etc. Tables 10-3 through 10-6 list the level some of these ordinary tasks should be and at what level they become trivial, but make no mention of their starting Difficulty, just some factors that can affect their difficulty. Also, the table is completely missing any guidelines on how to handle using Athletics to Break Open doors, chests, etc. It would be really nice to have example DCs or at least level/difficulty for things like "Flimsy Wooden Door", "Solid Wooden Door", "Solid Iron Door", "Adamantine Lockbox" etc.
However, Breaking Open objects is an Athletics check with default DC = unlock DC+5 for doors. Where is the rule saying this is the DC located? I haven't managed to find it anywhere and it seems absolutely nonsensical that breaking down a door is harder because the lock is harder to pick. A wooden door is still a wooden door regardless of what type of lock is on it.
Also, while I much prefer the Dying condition to P1e's dying rules -- no worrying about taking a level-one PC from alive to dead-dead in a single blow due to a high damage roll -- there really needs to be a better way to know what DC the PCs are rolling against to recover. I was jumping all over in the PDF trying to figure it out: class DC or ability DC but if it's a monster the GM may use a high-skill DC ... what? The encounter was listed as Severe 1, so I ended up using the Severe 1 option off Table 10-2, but I know it's supposed to be easier to recover vs. a minion than a big bad so one oughtn't just to use the encounter listing. Can there not be an associated DC listed in the Bestiary listing for the given monsters? Or in the statblock in the adventure?What DC to use for a recovery check is listed at the bottom of the Recovery Saving Throws paragraph.
I just left my PDF open to that page for combats.
The only thing Assurance is really useful for is Athletics for climbing once you hit expert, since a playtest blog mentioned that the DC for climbing a cliff with a rope is a static 14 or 12 if you have a wall to brace against. Part of the reason it's so poor is because it scales so slowly, but the bigger issue imo is that so many things that had set/known DCs in PF1 are now complete GM Fiat. For example, in part 1 of Doomsday Dawn there is a door described as being made of ancient wood. We didn't have anyone to pick the lock, so I decided to force it open with Athletics. The GM decided that my roll of 19 wasn't enough on this "ancient wooden door" because the DC to pick it's lock was higher. His logic being that clearly the door must be meant to be an equally hard challenge to pass regardless of the skill used or any logical sense.
The first adventure limits your gear to what's contained in ch 6 and subsequent adventures have their own guidelines for what you can start with. If players started with potions or something that could certainly change how the adventure went and what feedback was given. I'd definitely avoid deviating from what the adventure allows so as to make sure feedback is as useful as possible. |
