Tim Schneider 908's page

I for one support this & the desire to give GM's more freedom.

I think "No increasing difficulty" is a great way to balance the desire for GM's to have some flexibility with the need to make players feel safe playing a loved character with a GM they don't know at a convention - safe that they won't decide it's more fun if every encounter is Extreme.

Not making it more difficult has always been my yardstick for bending the existing rules in favor of everyone having fun - but the explicit permission will mean I can do it guilt-free (And do it a bit earlier, as I sometimes feel I'm just waiting for a problem to become un-fun enough to justify breaking the rule).

Just throwing my support in on this. For all the reasons others have said above. To me quests/bounties are all about new players & beginner sessions & the non-replayable ones just don't get scheduled - in large part because sometimes beginner tables fill out with experienced players who are helping make sure you can run a game & want to get some XP on their new chars... This means only the replayables get scheduled, and some of the others are really good & it's a shame to see them wasted :)

Add another for the "Free, just provide credit card details". Left me feeling like I was tricked into signing up & providing my details before being told the free tier needed a credit card - and couldn't find any way to delete my account afterwards.

Went from intrigued possible future subscriber to annoyed and unlikely to return in 5 minutes flat.

Hi,

I've noticed on the last 2 shipments on my subscription that the shipping costs have tripled to the point where the shipping costs as much as the product itself.

Based on these new tripled charges I would like to cancel my subscription.

I would also like to cancel pending order "36630996" which is part of this subscription.

Thanks,
Tim Schneider

As someone who ordered this to convert my in-flight Kingmaker game to 2E when it came out & will now probably get it after the campaign ends... this does definitely sting. Not sure if I'll ever run it now. Maybe some day I'll run it for a different group...

Guess a lesson learned about pre-ordering...I figured a pre-order from Paizo would be close to on time.

I definitely wouldn't push like others have to get it released before it's ready... do it right... it's just sad to hear. If there's any potential to stagger the release (Like some of the stretch books later to bring forward the main book or anything) I hope you're considering it, but I'm sure you considered every way to avoid the delay before you announced it.

Was sitting on a week's leave from planning to go to the in-person paizocon, largely because I didn't want to cancel leave while my company was asking people to consider taking it during COVID.

Now... the leave is useful again :D

I assume there'll be a banquet-equivalent stream?

Had someone get KO'd in the water in a game the other day & found the rules weren't as clear as I'd have liked... wondering if anyone else has been able to work this out better than me?

1) If you're swimming on the surface and go unconscious from damage and sink, do you get to hold your breath still for 5+con, or do you go straight to suffocating? The rules say "When you run out of air, you fall unconscious and start suffocating" - so by one reading being unconscious for another reason shouldn't start that.

In the game we decided that it seemed wrong to let an unconscious person hold their breath & skipped to suffocating.

2) If you die from the fortitude save Drowning, can a hero point save you? Obviously it'll give a reroll but can it be used to simply "avoid death"? Technically the dying condition didn't increase which is the listed time you can do it.

The player didn't have the hero point so I didn't have to make a call, but I'd have eer'd towards saying yes as I think it's in the spirit of the rule (And in general I tend to be lenient if a character's life is on the line & there's any grey area).

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42xg7?What-is-the-level-range-of-play-for-PFS2 #21

That post from Michael Sayre is the closest guidacne I can find - he's talking about an idea they're working on, which I guess support for the idea has crept into scenarios before it got officially put in the guide.

The guidance largely seems like that's intended for situations where more players have pushed up the tier rather than higher levels. Given the way it's worded I doubt it's "rules" - but I'll probably offer players the choice if they're in that position (As worst-case I'm being a bit too kind to them).

It does make sense that the regions are probably going to be a bit different.

At the moment what I'm seeing is that at conventions the boon support for PF1/SF actively pushes people away from 2E tables. Anecdotal I know but I've heard multiple GM's deciding they will GM 1E only at the convention because they wanted a race boon. I don't think I've seen it much from the player side to be honest, but GM side for sure.

Assuming you're at a Premier event (Not a safe assumption round here yet, but if it's moving to less table counts & more RVC decision that coumd improve) - GM one table of 2E and your convention specific benefit compared to a home game is 1/40th of a race boon. 1E it's a full race boon. The new flatter structure for 2E, while probably giving better rewards overall, is always going to be outshined at convention time by the other systems that were top-heavy.

Guess we can see how it plays out, and it seems like getting AcP in is proving tricky enough so I imagine Paizo's tech team may start crying if someone suggested something complex enough to get around that issue (Though I will say, the idea of considering throwing everything on the same AcP system after it's had a trial-run might be a good answer).

If AoN wanted to take on the burden & it simplified the process for Paizo, sure...

If it makes the process harder or slower in any way, which I expect it would, then I for one would prefer to see Paizo sanction faster rather than prettier.

Unless you just mean saying there's 2 sources of truth now - the official additional resources and nethys - then we have to work out who we believe when they conflict... and once you say in case of conflict go with the official one then the nethys one is roughly in the spot it already is - a great starting point but you really should check the official source & additional resources before using.

The video I was talking about is this PaizoCon panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM7pZxMiwc0 - the developers are pretty candid about what they were testing & what went right & what went wrong (Both in the playtest but more importantly they spend a fair bit of time disecting Doomsday Dawn itself).

For what it's worth I personally actually enjoyed Doomsday Dawn a lot & I didn't mean to pile onto the negative feedback. I thought you struck a great balance... but I enjoyed the test side of playtest & the look under the bonnet. As just an AP to pull off the shelf and play, the test aspect puts it below Paizo's usual standards (Which was inevitable cause as you point out "test" is part of the word playtest) - with a good GM who puts in some work I'm sure you could put the fun back in cause the story itself is a solid enough base.

There's a part of me that'd love to see that rewrite, but given it'd take time away from original content I'm far more interested to hear the next new idea. Golarion's just full of far too many other stories I'd love to hear - including whatever the next chapter is for the dominion of the black :)

Retried again now & it's worked :D Probably something went wrong & got stuck in a cache somewhere along the way.

EDIT: To throw in something useful, 10/10 for the new GM synopsis's, Another great little addition added to the list of reasons I'm loving the new 2E scenario layouts!

Not sure if it's just me, but this keeps downloading empty zip files instead of the scenario?

Have tried an incognito window & tried the "problems downloading" button to refresh the personalization & blocking caching locally, and also tried another browser.

One thing that no one has brought up is an official move to new names for a lot of things.

Kytons>Velstrac
Troglodyte>Xulgath
Dark Folk>Caligni

They did so for a combination of reasons, as I understand it. Some were for removing stuff focused on an outsider's perspective. Others have to do with IP and wanting to get out from under the D&D terminology. Not to mention that Aboleth and Kytons were expanded out into such bigger and more detailed things than D&D did.

True, although in most cases the new names are listed in such a way as to say that they are actually still commonly known by their other name. Like Xulgath and Caligni are often known by their old names to surface-dwellers, and for Velstrac they explained that Kyton is actually their word for a master so they didn't bother correcting the term on the material plane.

Obviously this was just a subtle way to do a change they wanted to do, but it's quite a nice way to implement the change in a way where it's really more of an expanded lore than a strict change.

Doesn't help me find things in the bestiary though I'll admit...

As for Goblins, once again they didn't change them retroactively, they told stories of tribes that weren't covered before. Doesn't make any of the other goblins any less pyromaniacs, it just describes that other types of goblins that weren't previously discussed do exist in substantive numbers. It's a change, but it's done by expanding the lore rather than changing it in a way that invalidates past stories.

I'd say read it for the story if you're into it but I wouldn't really recommend trying to play the playtest adventures. Or if you do, go heavily off book (Which I guess is implied if you plan to convert to 1E).

The intent of testing mechanics definitely hinders the enjoyment of the game, hence the low rating. If you were going to run it I'd probably listen to some of the developer retrospectives on the playtest cause they zero in on what they were trying to test & often the solution to making it more fun is to ease off that.

But yeah, all the changes to the setting are from logical progression of time. The only changes that contradict old books I've seen have come from spots where 2 sources gave contradictory answers & the 2E Golarion basically confirmed which was right (And honestly I didn't notice any of these, just read about a few... and they were such minor obscure things I didn't even remember them).

Seems pretty deadly for 9th level. DC 30 perception is very very doable at that level though if people are on the lookout, and if someone's detecting magic while you won't find it instantly you'll at least have everyone keeping an eye out.

You then have a climb check which is going to be fair for anyone trained but unachievable for anyone untrained. After that... the majority of characters are essentially dead.

Even if you grab the edge without taking damage after 1 round of falling, climbing out is gonna be a nightmare. If we assume 1 is a crit-fail and 2-19 is a crit success (Likely to be worse for you at DC 26, but let's be generous), you'll on average from 20 rolls climb 190 ft and fall 500 ft. And given if you grab it after a 500 ft fall you've got about 50 crit successes to get before you're out there's going to be enough rolls that the averages are going to win out and you're going to start descending deeper into the pit.

Even the overnight sleep is kinda unachievable as you fall more than 1000 miles down during 8 hours of sleep so the level-appropriate (Actually 2 levels higher) teleport spell without heightening only gets you like 1 mile. The best caster solution I can see is feather fall, fly and wall of stone, inching back up over a couple of months of putting new floors in the pit to sleep the night and start over. So a caster can really only get out if they have the right spell prepared or take a few months to do it (And in most cmapaigns if you take multiple months to rejoin the party... while you're not dead you are retired as a character). Of course if you assume this is how people approach these pits, you might not fall far before you hit the first wall of stone...

Was looking at the revelation spells and debilitating dichotomy caught my eye so I went looking... and it's not in any mystery. Is this one that accidentally skipped in from a mystery that's not in the playtest or am I missing a way to get this?

I also noticed "Borrow feat" was missing from the Battle mystery, but I imagine this should be "Heroic Feat" (Which is listed but not in any mystery)?
EDIT: Just saw Lyz's post confirming the assumption here.

I'm pretty sure it's not specifically relating to inventing but more the act of creation given the nature of rovagug.

If you tied a rock to the end of a stick, or you make a sandwich for dinner... I think you'd be fine. If you used your forge to smith a greataxe so beautiful it would make a dwarf proud I definitely think that goes against the nature of Rovagug.

Somewhere in-between you find the tipping point - interpretation & discussion between player and GM is definitely needed to properly implement anathemas sensibly...

The grandeur of the creation would to me determine the seriousness of the anathema breach. As the cleric entry says performing "enough acts that are anathema" - not just 1 relatively minor act. Making a sandwich rather than just ripping the meat and sinew from the bone with your teeth would not be rovagug's style but I doubt he's falling a cleric for that. Spending a month building a bridge across a ravine or forging an ornate weapon, yeah I'd think that's pretty weird for a rovagug worshipper & may be worth a fall... though circumstance often dictates everything in this area.

Page 462 says that if an ability uses a basic action as a subordinate action, it still has it's action. Therefore the Strike does have the attack trait.

Page 446 makes it clear the multiple attack penalty applies to all attacks on your turn, which will apply based on the rule above.

While some feats call out specifically how they interact with this (typically the ones that make multiple attacks), it doesn't make them not apply if it doesn't as that's part of the Attack trait. And by having strike as a subordinate action the penalty applies.

Cleave is in an odd category as a reaction on your own turn, but it won't change how the rules work with it. Whether it should or shouldn't apply is another question, but I think the rules are pretty clear so they'd only need to errata it if their desired interpretation was the other way around.

The distinction I drew which helped me square this in my head is that anyone can worship (non-mechanical term) Asmodeus. The important question is... who does Asmodeus grant his divine magic to? And in this case, it's only the Lawful Evil.

So plenty of people in Cheliax would say they worship Asmodeus, either believing it or just afraid to say otherwise or thinking it'll make their life easier if they're seen as a loyal worshipper... and they probably align to some of this tenants and edicts and anathemas, but just like real life they're likely not perfectly adhering & Asmodeus definitely isn't granting them any divine magic.

So what James Jacobs has said holds true for Asmodeus, but it's not necessarily how your character or individual NPC's thinks. You don't need Asmodeus's permission to worship him - unless you want divine spells or you pop down to hell you're unlikely to find out that he doesn't consider you a valid worshipper (Or at least that's how I see it :) ).

Campaign mode is a good way to play modules. A bit more GM freedom compared to standard PFS rules to deal with the way modules are written often as a more loose experience than a scenario with the author intending the GM to have more creative control.

I've always disliked the sanctioned parts setup. I've never ran that way, I've only ran non-campaign mode if the entire module was sanctioned as-is (And even then I've normally said campaign mode just to open up options to go off-book even if I never used them). If I need to crop to fit a convention slot I'll use the freedom campaign mode gives me & tailor the experience to my group.

Regarding 1 level, was a little bit of a surprise but I can see the logic... means they don't have to decide with each module how much XP to give and can get it out faster... but if someone does want to play it through with a PFS character of appropriate level it only really works if the leveling can keep up with the module, and this is a typical approach we take locally with campaign mode (We know they're not technically PFS chars during the module, but outside the rules shuffle the character's personal story tracks). It's a shame to lose that option, but if it helps reduce the load on Paizo sanctioning then it's a worthy sacrifice and we can find a way to square off our character's stories with the fact they can't just transition back to PFS cleanly after a module.

I'm curious how many players out there have ever had their DM (or group) disallow on action they took because it wasn't in-character for their character or race?

Or not a allow a PC to move to flank because their INT was 6?

Haven't gone as far as disallow, but I have frequently seen players not take actions that may be more optimal because of character and as a GM I will remind a character if they're making a choice based on info not available to their character.

It's a role-playing game not just a tactical combat simulator & as a GM I work to try and create an environment where the role play continues even once a map is down without having to forcibly say "you can't do X".

That said I have played games like you describe, and they're fun in their own right so long as everyone's on the same page. Generally the GM sets the tone & I've found most players follow suit... but it's definitely true that first party adventures consider the actual creatures and their tactical inclinations when balancing the styles of combats for variety & a GM not following this may need to do more work to ensure varied combats if that matters to their group.

I agree with the presented logic that typically this tactic is not actually optimal at all & rarely in character for the enemy (which as mentioned, each to their own on how they play, but that's what they design around).

If the party has no ranged capability, no battlefield control options, no abilities that improve in a limited action environment (like flurry of blows), is versus an enemy who has those abilities, has no AoO's and is slower base movement than the enemy... then yes the tactic will wreck them.

And somewhere along that continuum is the point where it becomes an optimal tactic, but if it gets used every fight either it's not actually optimal most the time or your party is seriously limited in options to counter such a threat and if it's a problem for you then perhaps some party changes can counter the tactic.

Hello? You're automatically billing me a price I didn't agree to and not responding. Raised a week ago now...

Yep - but guide also says only remove if they don't get the associated treasure bundle (quoted at top - only text I could find in guide about it), not just for not getting the item. So you got the treasure bundle associated to the shields even if you didn't get the shield...

I suspect you're still right. This language is probably trying to say don't punish creative solutions more so than get high tier options, but given they changed gold to not care about tier and they added the level restriction to buy off chronicles it may be intentional that loot by tier isn't restricted?

Interesting interpretation to say its only associated to the bundle in high tier - that I could see as a reasonable way to interpret to get the logical outcome. I think it could probably use clearer language if that's the intent, as I think the only way you get there is already knowing what you think should happen... but I guess that's way down the list. Guess I'll just keep doing it that way and hope not to discover later that it's a 1E-ism.

I am experienced with how it works in 1E, and I'm 100% sure it's what most would assume in 2E, but in 1E the guide actually said to do it & in 2E it doesn't appear to (unless I missed it?).

It's probably still be right even if the guide doesn't say it, and it's what I'm doing currently, but it can be easy to assume an old rule still exists when it was intentionally left out since the rules can't explicitly list all the things that aren't true.

PS: Separate scenario very much has problems if it was a literal statement of rules. I'm quite sure that's not a valid guiding principle for interpreting the guide (e.g replays, multiple chronicles)

So... I started wondering how loot per tier on the chronicle sheet works in 2E and I found myself reaching a strange conclusion... there doesn't seem to be anything?

I had assumed you'd cross off the tier you didn't play, but the advice in the guide seems to only say:

GM Instructions: Cross off any items that the players did not earn during the scenario. Unless the GM Resources section says otherwise, players only lose access to an item if they did not earn the treasure bundle that corresponds to that item.

Which suggests if they get the treasure bundle you leave it... possibly irrespective of tier. Which given the new logic around tiers & just doing gold by level may be intentional. The new restriction that you can only buy them at level+2 reduces the impact as they can't buy it anyway...

So... should you cross out the tier that wasn't played on a chronicle in 2E? Is there something in the guide to say this, or was it omitted by mistake, or is this just me coming in with a 1E mindset and thinking it should be a rule?

The scenario's chronicle sheet explicitly overrules that restriction to allow you to apply it immediately.

Special: This adventure was designed for use with pregenerated characters. You can assign this Chronicle sheet to any character of levels 1–5 who does not already have a copy of this Chronicle sheet.

That tells you that you can assign it to 1-5, so you apply it immediately and get gold as per the level it's assigned at (e.g. If your char is level 1, get level 1 gold. If your char is level 2, get level 2 gold).

As far as the items go I think the restriction would be, from the guide:

Any equipment listed on your character’s Chronicle sheets with an item level equal to or less than your character’s level + 2. Some items found on Chronicle sheets are available for purchase only a limited number of times.

And now the order has been automatically charged to my account the undiscounted price + tax & currency conversion fees on the inflated price.

This isn't the price I agreed to...

I've never required the kit to be used & the 2 hands for it when I've ran it (both in org play & outside). I don't think I've ever ran into a battle medic without having the kit cause they all want to heal outside combat, so I'm not worried by that, but the suggestion you need 2 hands free to use the kit doesn't seem right to me - neither from a what it says, what it suggests, or what is the most fun outcome perspective. It essentially prohibits anyone using weapons from doing it as the action economy to sheathe all your weapons to do it and redraw them is prohibitive.

My head-canon of battle medic is less bandaging someone, which to me makes no sense in that time, and more quickly jabbing them with a painkiller, a shot of adrenaline, a quick pre-made salve of dried plants over a cut, or in the case of my goblin in Age of Ashes applying a liberal coat of his specially prepared medicinal pickle juice to the wound. Manipulate trait works fine for my mental image.

If someone tried to say they did it through wiggly fingers rather than actually doing anything & tried to argue RAW at me I'd point out how it allows the GM to adjust DC by circumstances & that not touching the person you're healing is a very difficult circumstance to successfully heal them.

Nevermind the 15% part - it's just display on the catalog & that seems to sort itself out once they're in the cart.

The issue with my subscription order #8184593 not getting the 30% Legacy Paizo Advantage discount is still real though (Charging the full 24.99 rather than 17.49 previous subscription orders).

It'd be really good to get that sorted before it's automatically charged.

Latest subscription order has shown up at full price.

It still has the text:
"Legacy Paizo Advantage - Adventure Path Pathfinder Adventure Path subscribers who were subscribed at the end of the First Edition Adventure Path line get 30% off Second Edition Adventure Path products."

Last month's order had the discount, this month it's gone? I've also noticed the 15% discount on the store is gone too...

Is this a bug or a change? I thought the previous blog said that 15% was going to stick around if you were in before the cutover date?

Just looking to understand as if all the discounts are intentionally gone somehow I'd like to cancel my subscription.

The idea is that a goblin with +8 stealth has a 55% chance of succeeding against your +8 perception (a roll of 10 or higher) rather than a 50% chance (a roll of 11 or higher) which the OP feels is the more natural ideal.

I think it's more that in this scenario you have a 55% chance of succeeding to spot them, but they have a 55% chance of hiding from you if they're the one making the check. In essence the "Active Party" gets a very minor boost because the half-way point on a d20 is 11+ not 10+.

I think the minor mathematical quirk is one which is worth it for the simplicity of on-the-fly calculations (Adding 11 constantly instead of 10 is an increase in complexity). Always a subjective question whether a complexity is pulling it's weight. Obviously some think it's worth it here.

I don't think it ever ends up game-breaking or even visible to someone who's not analyzing the math - and the rules are always pretty clear on who rolls so it's not arbitrary who gets the rounding in their favor. I'm happy with the decision Paizo made, but I don't think it'd break the game at all if you house-ruled DC's were all 11+. Or even just say "Equal to DC is a failure" (same outcome, less math, more sacred cows).

I'm a big fan of the explicit scaling. Far less confusing than referring to it as 5 and 6 player adjustments but not having it based on the number of players. Also eliminates confusion as to whether a 5-player adjusted 4-player table should get non-encounter 5 player adjusts. I also assume this overrules any "level bumping" the scenario like the Org Play guide suggests.

Having the sidebars down in the encounters appendix area is a great idea to de-clutter the main adventure section.

Other than 1 adjustment that went walkabout in the quest (pg 13 stole pg 14's adjustment) they seem great. I also much prefer the scale up than the scale down - especially cause it cases like this it means it's too easy rather than the party dies if the GM doesn't find it on the other page.

It is something we are aware of, and are looking into solutions. In the mean time, as a (unpleasant) work around, the problem seems to resolve if you enlarge the page by 10%.

Seems like the font doesn't like 22px font size while bold - odd quirk, even 1px bigger works. If you have control of the CSS you can just swap the h3 font size to 1.4375rem (23px) rather than 1.375rem (22px) and it works - but I guess if you can't change the font you probably can't change that either yet.

It may have bothered me enough that I set up a local style-sheet to make that adjustment & it works :P

They crit failed every single section of the library? Wow... that's some seriously bad luck to crit fail every single section of the library - 9 critical failures before they got clues? Given they're often only crit-failing on a 1 if they used their best skills that's some seriously bad luck. Unless they just threw all their dice at each section & had barbarians trying arcana checks - in which case they earned the failures... but otherwise you've got an amazingly unlucky party.

As far as the aid being the only option to gather information together, I'd call that a bit of a harsh restriction you're placing on them. In a crowded city people can stay relatively close together without literally only talking to the same people as each-other. If we were in a rural farming area where you'd probably only find 1 person in any given 100 ft radius I'd agree, but in this setting it seems needlessly restrictive - especially when your players are already having trouble.

Regarding retrying gather information in PF1 - it's actually explicitly allowed in the diplomacy rules. I'm sure there's probably a PF1 scenario out there that says you can't, and time very much is a limiting factor too, but in general you absolutely can if you have the time.

P2,3,4 - now have to pretend they didn't hear the conversation at all.

If P2,3,4 originally INTENDED to hit that exact square behind the barrels (just because it seemed a logical place), they now can't do it without being suspect of cheating/metagaming by the internetz.

And now we have landed on the problem with metagaming. If a person has meta-knowledge it colors their future actions. And it can be very hard, both for an observer and also for the player themselves, to know if they're acting on that information.

As a GM my response is typically to trust my players. If I think they might be acting on this information I assume it's not intentional and ask them "Are you sure? Remember your character doesn't know where he is...". Sometimes they'll say "Yeah but I think I'd have done that anyway", and on a one-off I'll take them at their word, but more often than not the response is "Oh yeah, good point. There's only really these 3 squares he could be in, so let's say I pick randomly from those? And I might just use a cantrip rather than the disintegrate I said cause my character knows he's blind firing" and I reply "Yeah, that makes sense, cool".

And that honesty from the players & trust from the GM is what makes the game work.

If your players are ones who go "Yeah but screw you I know where he is! Why would I ever waste an action when I can cheat?" then I pity you for your players & I think it's a problem best handled outside game mechanics.

For the record, my players actually reacted to this more closely to "Sweet, now we have a definitive answer of how pointing someone out works mechanically! We don't have to wonder how precisely we could describe it in 6 seconds of free action talking!".

The alternative solution would be to take P1 to the side and tell him in secret without anyone else knowing ("it is the 3rd square to the left of the barrels"), but that just seem tedious.

Sometimes that can be good. But I treat this less as hiding it from the players so they can't cheat & more to make it easier for them to work out how they'd act without the info (As "which square would I have picked if I didn't know?" can be a very hard question when you didn't decide beforehand)

I do actually sometimes only give a player enough info to make their choices, "It's over behind the barrels" is often enough info for them to act accordingly & I'll give the player the info they need (Essentially running the rest of their turn theater of mind then updating the grid).

I had a similar instinctive reaction to what you just outlined Bob (It's after the scenario, you don't currently have hero points), and combined with that rule referenced from rituals chapter I think it's pretty clear.

Would be nice to see that get into an official FAQ for PFS, as it is hard to work out the right answer, but I feel like this is enough to know it's correct.

That map seems to have a weird logic problem too where the cliff is shown as being about 50 ft horizontally in some areas but is only 25 ft high, making it more of a gentle slope than a cliff.

When I run this I'm very likely to draw a wavy line on a blank map and say "that's the cliff, that side is the bottom".

HLO has permanent adjustments that can be used for that kind of thing yeah. Unlike most areas of HLO though I find the UI to be a big step down for this piece (In most areas I prefer the new UI but wish it would run faster - part of that could be Australian latency to the US servers).

The only thing that stands between me and using HeroLab Online is that I really don't like the character sheets it generates. Given it's not 100% reliable to be online (Both from the HLO track record and also internet where I play), if it's going to be how I track my characters I have to be happy to play off it's offline sheet & currently it just has a bit too much clunk to it. I'd love an offline webpage option, and I'd love faster performance, but I can't go without an offline export I'm willing to play off & that's stopping me buying it atm (I tried, but I ended up resorting to rewriting it onto a real character sheet).

I mean it makes sense, adventurers are in a room. The wizard's spidey-sense tingles - there's magic nearby. The party searches.

I'd simply ask "How long would you search before giving up?", treating a basic perception as 10 minutes and "As long as it takes" to mean that even on a crit-fail they'll find it a few hours later. If there's no time pressure I can't see why they wouldn't turn over every stone, and luckily as GM's we can use failing forward to quickly tell the story of their boring hours of searching. Even better if you can think of things other than time. Maybe a patrol is alerted? Maybe an NPC is getting frustrated by waiting & will be harder to get on with?

Just make sure it's logical and if the time really shouldn't matter or there's really nothing in the room to make the search difficult just let them find it. 90% of the time really there isn't any repercussion to a thorough search & there's no reason not to let that hour pass in a single roll.

You don't necessarily lose fame/prestige - as far as I recall there was no fixed time limit.

You can spend as long as you need there, you just make the later encounters harder if you take too long. Which if a series of bad rolls makes a later area harder... yeah seems fair.

I wonder if it is RAI rather than RAW. It clearly does say you are blocked from Treat Wounds for an hour. But is there somewhere else in the rules that says encounter timers reset? It seems to me the intent is adventures are assuming a 10m break between fights.

I don't recall reading timers reset in the rulebook. If the idea is supported by rules that'd be great as given most my players also play PFS I have to be very careful not to overdo the house rules as people have trouble keeping it straight if I have too many.

I certainly agree treating wounds once per fight feels necessary at moderate or above threats.

I was actually reading treat wounds to mean the hour was for that exploration phase. Going into encounter mode resets your exploration timer. The intent is to make healing to full take a lot of exploration time, but doing 10m between every encounter is likely not going to keep up with their dmg so I think it is OK. Not being able to take care of their wounds because they did 3 encounters and it has only been half an hour? Your party is going to start dying with those stacked wounds.

Interesting interpretation. I dont think I'd interpret it that way but it is a house rule I considered. I was worried it opened a messy area around trying to trigger encounter mode to allow healing (Though obviously just saying "lets be fair and I'll rule 0 stupidity" works :p )

But yeah, the other part about rapidly building death was the problem that inspired the thread.

Yeah CR is a terrible tool in extremes but a useful yardstick while you're stumbling to grasp the threat yourself. And the happy-stick of 1E basically means if you're not doing a protracted combined combat them they can normally recover as much as they could without an overnight rest.

I'm currently trying to get that grasp of threat in 2E so I can plan things that are challenging yet fair. I feel like I can toy with an encounter to get it "right" for the party, but I've yet to fully grasp the timing between encounters and I figured if someone had a better feel for it than me maybe it'd help me find it.

I know Paizo's yet to weigh in, but I'm curious what other GM's are finding seems "fair". My current feeling in minimal experience is:
- A Low needs about 10 mins to recover.
- A Medium needs about 30 mins to recover.
- A Severe needs about 2 hrs to recover.
- Failed medicine checks can easily throw an extra hour into the party's recovery time on a Medium/Severe.
- If you throw something at them before that time, it's probably about 40XP harder.
- A Severe will probably kill someone if encountered before the party has the recovery time above.
- Continual recovery likely reduces these timings at higher levels.
(Warning: This is top-of-head and probably wrong - I made this thread cause I'm not sure, not to claim expertise :P )

Part of the thing I was hitting was that people weren't treatable after 1 fight cause it was less than an hour since the last where they got treated. A house-rule I'm considering adding to reduce the time delays needed is to say that the 1 per hour limit on Treat Wounds ends if your wounded condition increases (Mechanically if you go down in a fight you probably need to treat wounds so lets save an hour, thematically there is fresh wounds to treat).

While it's interesting to read ideas on how to run random encounters, and likely great advice for newer GM's, it's more the 2E specific element around how long people think the core game assumes is a reasonable time I was looking at here (Both in terms of the first-party adventures and also in terms of the standard difficulty calculations). Tension pool seems cool to me as it gives an option of "You risked a random encounter, but I don't have fun one I want to do so I'll bump up the tension instead", but as useful as it is it's basically just kicked the question down the road to "When is it reasonable to add tension dice".

I feel like it's fairly clear they don't assume a 4 hour delay to fully treat wounds every encounter any more than 1E expected you to go back to town & sleep after each encounter. In 1E a GM has to adapt things if the party starts doing that, I don't know what the line is for "need to adapt for balance" in 2E first-party adventures & the mechanically impacting delays are far more granular at 10 minute intervals. Judging purely off the sheer difficulty they are seem to be assuming at least 10 minutes after each fight.

I've had conversations with players who struggle with working out how long is reasonable even thinking thematically, cause they can see the mechanical obvious need for 10 minutes and start going "wait... but if I can take 10 minutes here surely 20 is safe? 10 minutes is a lot of time... maybe 2E's just balanced around spending a few hours between fights bandaging, cause we don't have our CLW stick anymore...". And to some extent I kinda felt where their pain came from in the balance - the front liners were getting hit for more than they could reasonably bandage at a 10 minute pause per fight by a decent margin, and wounded conditions added up when medicine checks failed. And back-to-back fails, which at 30%+ failure aren't that unexpected - the players started investing in assurance with medicine to auto-pass at level 3 which I think worked nicely but the 2d8 heal per hour started falling further behind the damage output too. It's obviously supplemented by magical healing but my initial assumption of 10 minutes per fight being "reasonable" seemed to be hitting a difficulty curve that was demanding more. And the players, who to their credit didn't want to meta by resting 4-5 hours per fight, were turning to me for what seemed reasonable. & I was at a loss to balance the thematic with the mechanical - hence making this thread.

Answers that talk in vague terms around thematics aren't really helpful to me personally - I'm looking at mechanics here, the part I lack is a "feel" for 2E mechanical difficulty. I've got enough GM experience across other game systems to handle making the thematics match what I need the mechanics to do. As a possible way to cut through the thematic aspect, let's try this rephrasing:
If I was setting up an adventure that had the party in an arena facing 3 Moderate threat encounters followed by 1 Severe threat boss, totally railroaded, how much downtime between encounters do you believe the system assumes when calling them Moderate and Severe? If they take on each with a 4hour break it'll be fairly easy, if they take on all of them with no rest they'd get massacred. What level of rest is implicitly there in calling the next fights "moderate" and "severe" rather than needing further difficulty scaling for the wounded party?

I think at it's core it comes down to the fact they tried a new design & feedback in the playtest was "OMG YES!"... so it stayed into the release.

I for one love the new multi-classing, it's much more beginner-friendly than the old one & still lets me build my non-standard character concepts in ways that feel both mechanically and thematically correct. It actually does a much better job in my view of making that transition gradual and less mechanically spikey than 1E multiclass dips.

Little more detail than I'd put outside spoilers Krazmuze but yeah, the first chapter I didn't find the BBEG too tough to work with in that one as:

I would not worry about them being fully healed, monsters are designed to take out all your HP (unlike 5e). They have however expended some consumables and spells, so that is where the challenge will be.

Well that's the thing, they failed the medicine checks 3 times running & the reply is just "Well let's spend another hour". If the system is designed around being fully healed, treat wounds could be DC 0 and heal your full HP. This is where I'm wondering just how much leeway the system assumes you should give - do you think it's designed around always 100%? (Based on adventures built to the suggested difficulties & using the modules/AP's as examples)

I honestly could believe it is - they are definitely feeling brutal enough, but I do also think a lack of system mastery is making it harder than it necessarily is once we all get more experience.

Thanks for the suggestions rainzax & John. I think I prefer the more loose base mechanic than the "DC X and it happens" thing. My favorite aspect was that it essentially banked the tension for when the GM actually had a meaningful way to have an encounter, and saying "It happens at X" kinda removes that.

You may be right that the idea of just giving all the time in the world while learning - but with no sign the world reacts it kinda guarantees they'll bandage up and refocus everyone to 100% before each encounter. The phrase from a player of "Well if 20 minutes didn't do anything we may as well spend another 4 hours and get to full health before we do the next room" made me flinch and feel like it was very much a meta choice as a read that the GM didn't want to run a random event here.

I felt simultaneously like I didn't want to encourage this behavior but also I didn't have a fun way for the world to react so I didn't. I use random encounters sometimes, but never the "3 bears arrive, they're cranky" ones & there was no "fun" way to do something here. If I do a random encounter I want it to contribute to the story - and essentially banking the tension for when something can add meaningfully to the story sounds like it could work well.

It seems like the general consensus lies somewhere between 30-60 minutes as a "worthy of some response" levels (And adding a dice is an interesting approach to a response :) )

I hadn't heard of that idea & did a bit of googling, seems interesting. Essentially amounts to building up a "risk of bad things" to build tension and give spending time weight, but not unleashing them until a time where the GM actually has an interesting downside available rather than just "Um... the chart says d3 bears... roll initiative".

It's a little gamey but I might give it a try as it seems like it could be positive way to handle it.

I feel like 30 minutes might be about my mark for adding a dice, I think allowing a 10 minute breather after a fight is definitely what the system is designed assuming (Not that you couldn't run that style, but you'd probably have to make the average encounter easier to make the party not need any recovery time).