fyrekrest's page

Hello PF collective!

I'm hoping to draw on the wisdom of the community with regards to encounter building. First, I'll preface it by saying that I love how easy it is to build encounters with the PF2e system. So simple, so easy, and usually pretty accurate. At least for straight forward combats!

When building important encounters, I love to bring in some kind of twist like terrain or changing phases, to keep things interesting. I'm currently building a couple encounters that have similar concepts wherein new enemies join on additional rounds. But how do I calculate this into the encounter builder formula?

Let's use a 5th level party with 4 players as the base with two different types of scenarios:

A CR 5 enemy (40 xp, trivial threat) dies and immediately comes back as a CR 7 enemy (80 xp, moderate threat). Would this encounter as a whole be 120 exp and Severe? A little weaker, since they don't fight both enemies at the same time? Or two separate encounters?

A CR 7 necromancer (80 xp) with 4 CR1 lackeys (10 xp each) = 120 xp total, Severe Threat. The lackeys are intended to die almost immediately so the boss can use animate dead spell to bring them back, casting it as a 4th level spell (to get a CR3 Wight), then 3rd level spell (to get a CR2 Ghast), then 2nd level spell (to get a CR1 ghoul). How do I even calculate this? Since the necromancer is using spells readily available to him, do I even add the additional creatures count as additional XP to the encounter? If so, would the same concept apply if any spell caster summons some kind of ally (the additional ally = additional xp to the encounter budget)?

Not sure if I've missed this in the rules, but I've been looking and can't find anything, so I appreciate the help!

Hello,

I'm currently running a homebrewed adaptation of Curse of the Crimson Throne and I'm in need of an upcoming side quest. I'm hoping the community might have some suggestions for a portion of an existing AP (1e or 2e) or even other published material that I can use. Hoping for something along the lines of going into a druid grove / magical valley / etc, to solicit the help of the local druids/fey/elves/etc, but something dark and twisted has poisoned the area and needs to be resolved.

I'm totally open to reflavoring things, rewriting things, etc, and just looking for even a minimum framework for inspiration. I'm currently considering reflavoring the Shoanti portion of the Curse of the Crimson Throne, but I'm wondering what else might be out there.

I'd love to hear your suggestions!

In another thread, Saedar suggested providing specific things from 1e adventure paths that I enjoyed, vs what I was experiencing with 2e APs. As the other thread went way off the rails, I'm starting a fresh one! :)

And beware, there will most certainly be spoilers!

My own experience (and yes, YMMV): I purchased the 2e system to run the 2e APs and I've run some of Age of Ashes. We are wrapping up Book 2 "Cult of Cinders" and concluding the AP at that point. This is, in part, because my group has voiced their feelings that the AP is very erratic and the story is hard to follow.

Numerous things contributed to this:
- morally unexpected characters ("Wait, he's a Hellknight, but he's good?" "Goblins are good now?" and they are just about to encounter a good red dragon)
- a large dungeon with every room packed full of different monsters (just on the first floor of Hellknight Hill: imps, bugbear, rats, spikey turtle monsters, wargs, goblin dogs, spider swarms, grauladon, giant bats, skeleton guards.. that's 10, if you were counting!)
- The idea of hopping from locations was cool, but didn't turn out that way. All the effort to make Breachill feel alive, to get them excited to now have the deed to Hellknight Hill (just to whisk them away to some far off jungle), to make Akrivel feel alive, but they never need to revisit. This led to, "Wait, where are we now and why are we here?"
- lots of bizarre and wacky creatures where every room seemed to be "Wait, what is this thing??". Normally, I'm all for exciting and unique creatures, but there were TOO MANY of them. We were all learning a new system that is, undeniably, pretty crunchy and combat takes a while (especially for new players) and I felt like we spent way too much time trying to help the players understand what they were fighting. It made every encounter feel too cumbersome. (Don't get me wrong, I LOVED some of them! Like their first encounter with the ooze? The archeologist's twin? Yes please!)
- Lots of really neat ideas, but so many of them just created noise rather than amazing moments.
- as the DM, I'm sure there were plenty of things I could have done differently, but it really felt like it slowed things down unnecessarily. It was too much for new folks to absorb, myself included.

So, we all agreed that with COVID restrictions lifting in my area, we'd return to playing live, and use it as an opportunity to start fresh with a new adventure. I own all the 2e APs and although I haven't read them fully from beginning to end, I have skimmed all of them and am at least familiar with them. I was surprised going through them, and in an dissatisfied way.

Some of the reasons I chose NOT to run another 2e AP, despite having purchased nearly the entire 2e library to run them:
- the themes seem too exotic and too niche. I was hoping for a more classical fantasy trope, something that wouldn't take so much time and energy just to understand.
- I was super excited for the wizard school AP... but then it just got weird and exotic. It felt like too many good ideas were being mashed up, just creating noise.
- I LOVED some of the Extinction Curse story, but the circus was too much.
- Abomination Vault seemed cool, but I was hoping to avoid a mega dungeon. This would have been my top pick though, if I had to stick with a 2e AP.

Instead, I am going with Rise of the Runelords, and I'm also running Curse of the Crimson Throne (converted to 2e and heavily modified to fit a different setting).

There are a few things I love about these early, classical 1e APs:
- The stories are full of dramatic moments that don't just rely on exotic monsters
- because the monsters are more classical, it allows the players to focus on the story and the drama, rather than whatever oddity they are facing
- When they do face something exotic (Hello, Cabbagehead! Hello, Dero!) they stand out as memorable

Undeniably, I'm feeling frustrated that I spent so much on the new system, hoping to just pick up an AP and play so I didn't have to put the time and energy into creating my own adventures, but now I'm spending a ton of time converting 1e adventures. True, there are plenty of awesome resources already available and it's still less work than creating an entirely new adventure, but it's still more work than I had intended.

My hope is that we see a more frequent return to the classical fantasy adventures. That doesn't mean we should only be fighting goblins and ogres (but there's also nothing wrong with fighting goblins and ogres), but an exotic or wacky theme doesn't always make for an enjoyable adventure. I feel like the 2e APs would benefit from a good edit to create a more enjoyable pace and tempo. "You know what, those ARE really cool and fun ideas, but let's maybe save it for the next adventure!"

When everything is permanently dialed up to 11, it just becomes one note and exhausting.

Please note: Please don't derail this with posts that: I hate 2e (I don't), I'm just bitter I spent money on a product I'm not satisfied with (I am), 1e also has exotic adventures (I'm clearly not referring to those), that I'm a fake account just meant to troll (go away), etc. Let's stick to discussing what we like/don't like about 1e & 2e APs :)

I recently fell into... and out of... love with 2nd edition. I was super excited to be able to convince some of my friends to put a pause on D&D 5e and hop over to try 2nd edition. I sold them on stories about the amazing APs and lore from first edition.

So we started playing Age of Ashes, and we were all really disappointed. It seemed like a great idea, but did not deliver on it's execution. Poorly constructed storyline, every room packed with bizarre creatures that were more distracting than engaging, even art that didn't match what was written; we were all pretty disappointed overall, despite really enjoying some of the aspects of 2e (such as character customization and the 3 action economy).

I was even more disappointed to see online that it there was an attempt to somehow justify it because Paizo was racing to meet publishing deadlines. While I can understand that, it's Paizo's responsibility to put out high quality products... not the consumer's responsibility to just accept a lesser product because they didn't manage themselves properly. Poor project management and leadership was the problem, not deadlines.

So I purchased nearly every 2e product, including all the APs, and figured I'd find a new AP for us. Instead, I was disappointed to find a bunch of really bizarre APs that seemed more focused on doing something "unique" or "exotic" rather than "engaging" or "interesting". It felt like 2e was doing little more than trying to fill in what few gaps were left from 1e, catering almost exclusively to the 1e players and making little effort to attract new players.

When I started looking for player reviews on favorite APs, it seems like almost all of the favorites are from 1st edition, and almost all center around classic fantasy tropes. So I decided to switch to converting a couple 1e APs instead.

As I was Googling as much as I could (no need to reinvent the wheel), I came across numerous stories and articles about employees (past and present) airing the Paizo dirty laundry: poor work environment, a frenzied rush to push books out, and of course all the awful behaviours of the leaders. Suddenly, it all made sense: I was disappointed in 2e because shoddy products were being pushed out to make more money, and it was being confirmed by the employees themselves.

So, I just cancelled all my subscriptions and genuinely regret putting nearly $2,000 CDN into building a Pathfinder 2e library, only to find it's mostly all useless and uninteresting. I should have just converted some of the APs to 5e, it would have been a lot cheaper.

And, perhaps it's just nostalgia, but I'm hoping the unionization of the employees will force Paizo into putting out better products.