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Hi all,
My players are wiping out every encounter with ease. The monk of the party gets his flurry of blows off at +9 or +10 with inspiration and crits at least once or sometimes twice against the miniscule AC 14 mook, or AC 15 lieutenant style opponent. Is it really full attack bonus for both attacks?! So he's doing 20+ damage routinely vs 8hp or 22 hp. Are we figuring something wrong?
We also have a Summoner merged with Eidolon (big damage), an Evoker (Electric Arc can kill two 8 hp guys) and a Thaumaturge who can search for weaknesses.
At first level a few characters were given the dying condition due to the lieutenants actually getting a special attack off, but man, they are cake walking so far.
Anyone else having this trouble? Or have any ideas? I've already buffed hp, but the low ACs on enemies is brutal and leads to a lot of one shots.
Thanks in advance hive mind!
EJ
Sounds right. Most fights are fast and furious. The PCs usually win. At low level PCs can wipe out a lot of stuff.
Main thing to be careful of is when your PCs get used to the easy parts, then run into a buzz saw boss. It can be a real shock and they aren't quite sure how to deal with it.
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The monk of the party gets his flurry of blows off at +9 or +10 with inspiration and crits at least once or sometimes twice against the miniscule AC 14 mook, or AC 15 lieutenant style opponent. Is it really full attack bonus for both attacks?! So he's doing 20+ damage routinely vs 8hp or 22 hp. Are we figuring something wrong?
One thing I can see you're doing wrong is that there is nothing which says both Flurry attacks use the same attack bonus. The action says that you can attack twice, not that it changes the multi-attack penalty (for comparison there's a couple abilities on monsters and in feats, notably Double Slice, which explicitly say not to change your attack penalty until after the attacks are both made). The attack bonus for a flurry should probably be +9/+5 if you're using agile fists, or +9/+4 for a non-agile monk strike, which they're probably using with those damage output numbers?
It sounds like you must be at least level 3 judging from that Monk's attack bonus. The kind of enemy that has 15 AC is probably a non-warrior at least 2 levels below you (or maybe a squishy mage 1 level below you). For comparison, one creature who is the same level as you is a trivial encounter, so if you're not fighting at least 4 of these 'lieutenant' creatures in one fight, they're probably meant as a speed bump to you.
One other factor that may be contributing to the perception of easy encounters: During the hex exploration portions of the adventures, many/most of the situations will only have the PCs face a single combat encounter per day. This allows the PCs to "nova" and use their most powerful limited resource choices as quickly as possible.
There are some multiple encounter areas (mini-dungeons) that will require more planning and resource conservation. Also, the encounters will get tougher as the PCs explore farther away from the "civilized" areas.
Which encounters?
Black Tears
What level are the PCs?
1st
What level are the NPCs?
also 1st
Also happened defending Oleg's after which they are now level 2. I let them take one NPC at PC -1 level. So Linzi is still level 1.
The encounters there are based on level 1 characters (and four of them). If the monk has a +9 to hit then they'd have to be 3rd level (I think)...+4 for Attribute, +2 Trained in Unarmed, +3 level though they could be second with +1 handwraps.
Yes (handwraps), plus Linzi inspire courage at level 1 was +9 IIRC.
So the Black Tear folks are either 3 or 4 levels below the party (Creature -1) and even the boss is at most Level +1, instead of Level +2 (Creature 3).
Black Tears were -1 i think
If you haven't adjusted the encounters then yes, the party is going to cakewalk these encounters.
If the monk is critting every combat that's because crits happen on AC+10 and if the creatures are significantly below the PC's level, crits happen more frequently.
And finally. The MAP is applied normally to each attack in the Flurry. The benefit of Flurry is 2 attacks for one action, not a MAP reduction.
I let him know to stop totally cheating on the Flurry MAP! hahahaha.
I thought I'd check in and give an update.
Well, the monk died. Fell to the Whiptail Centipede. I guess that solves the problem. Also, crouching down (Clumsy 1) is really tough on melee combatants.
Achievement unlocked: After 46 years of playing different forms of fantasy RPGs, this was my first kill as GM.
I think it will lend a real gravity to the campaign.
Thanks everyone for the help!
EJ
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One other factor that may be contributing to the perception of easy encounters: During the hex exploration portions of the adventures, many/most of the situations will only have the PCs face a single combat encounter per day. This allows the PCs to "nova" and use their most powerful limited resource choices as quickly as possible.
There are some multiple encounter areas (mini-dungeons) that will require more planning and resource conservation. Also, the encounters will get tougher as the PCs explore farther away from the "civilized" areas.
I've got a party of 3 players that are still cake walking stuff though is the problem, and it's partly to do with the random encounters, which is starting to become tedious for me. They're at level 5 and I'm no longer running the tables for zones 1-3, and I'm about to include zone 4 because they're just taking everything out way too quickly. Hell, they're walking into zone 7 and some of those encounters are still too easy. I know that part of the issue is that my players know how to optimize their characters, but even if they weren't fully optimized, it's real easy for the grapple monk to pin something down, the thaumaturge with a cavaliers charge, and a flurry ranger to take encounters that could last 3 to 4 rounds end up taking 1 or 2. But again, they went after the Stag Lord at 4th level, and it took almost throwing the entire encampment at them just to create a challenge. Again, a party of 3 players.
I honestly do feel that there are some balancing issues here in play, it's just tough trying to figure out how to make them work so that the players can be challenged without having to swap to milestone leveling, which ends up making random encounters effectively pointless.
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I honestly do feel that there are some balancing issues here in play, it's just tough trying to figure out how to make them work so that the players can be challenged without having to swap to milestone leveling, which ends up making random encounters effectively pointless.
Tweaking encounters for any particular party composition is <always> going to be part of the GM's job. Pre-written adventures generally play to an average party and average group of players. Fine tuning them is, broadly speaking, mandatory. My party has cake walked through moderate encounters, did okay with a severe one and then got tuned up by a low encounter that happened at night when folks didn't have armor and needed to use actions to grab their weapons etc.
Dice rolls are also a huge factor. There's a big difference in an encounter when our giant instinct barbarian rolls well (especially with Magic Weapon cast on him) and when his high roll is a 7 all session.
It's well worth analyzing why the encounters aren't challenging so that you can look at where things need to be tweaked.
Oh I know that tweaking encounters is always gonna be something that happens no matter what because of party make up. What I'm getting at is having to adjust almost every single one of them in the book. Adjusting the Stag Lord encounter is one thing, having to throw half the fort just to create a challenge is a completely different thing. At the rate my players are going, half the book is going to be pointless because things that are supposed to be challenging are just gonna be uninteresting, even if I apply the elite template to everything. They had an encounter with a troll last session. The only reason that fight lasted 3 rounds was because I did apply the elite template which just increased the hit points. It didn't make the fight harder because of higher AC or attack values, it just took longer because of the HP increase.
I get where you're coming from with the high dice rolls, but when you get a grapple monk demoralizing a target and then, it's not difficult for a cavaliers charge to make some damage because there's a +5 overall modifier for that attack, and then the flurry ranger finishing off that target because of what's now essentially a lack of MAP. Higher dice rolls aren't going to mean anything if they're no longer needed.
Oh I didn't expect the troll to kill them, elite or not lol. They had fought a troll at 4th level and they killed it in 2 rounds. The elite bump I gave this one was really more to see if the higher hit points would do much of anything, but it ended up not changing anything except for extending the fight an extra round. But you mention adding more creatures rather than adding elite/weak template, and I would normally agree. But the fought 6 of the centaurs like it was nothing. And that encounter is listed as a severe encounter for 4 5th level PCs. 3 PCs made it seem trivial.
And this is where I bring in the balancing problem. The players know what they're doing extremely well. Mark did a video about creature building with Luke from DM Lair, and was explaining the thought processes about building encounters to challenge parties. Luke had described some encounters that he initially built using the builder and according to what he said, Mark was kinda shocked that his group found the majority of them to be so simple. But Luke ended up saying that his group has years of table top experience and were able to piece things together pretty quickly. So while the math may be balanced, it doesn't take player experience into account. So for a group of 4 or 5 PCs with players being inexperienced, I can see the challenge. But for players who have the experience, it's really easy for the balance to be thrown off.
Creative Director
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If you have players like that you will 100% have to tweak things. Adventures are written for the lowest common denominator. Which means for combat, if you have a skilled and min-maxed group the encounters are going to be easy. It's the nature of using a pre-written adventure.
In essence encounters being too easy for some groups is a thing. Absolutely without question. However that's part and parcel of pre-written adventures as a whole and I don't think the encounters in Pathfindre are outside the norm on that front. My group has extensive experience with other games but are new to PF2e and none of them are the optimizing type so they're finding the encounters to be just about right.
A bit of a philosophical correction here: we develop and create our adventures not for a "lowest common denominator" but for what we perceive to be the average group of four players with average skill at the game. That means that some folks will have trouble with them as written while others will breeze through encounters as written, and the difficulty of each individual encounter will vary depending on party makeup.
Furthermore, the math of Pathifnder is pretty tight and expects 4 players. Even shifting away to 3 or 5 players can alter the expected play experience, and once you get to 2 or 6 it really needs adjustments at the table end of things.
Which is where the GM's role comes in. We write and publish our adventures for the entire world of potential gamers, but you know your group's interests and skills and ability. Hopefully we can do the majority of the work creating the adventure so the GM doesn't have to spend ages adjusting things for their group, but the more skilled your players are, the more work you'll have to do. That said, and in theory, a group of skilled players has an equally skilled GM!
Anyway... these boards, reddit, and so on are great places to go to compare notes with other GMs like this to dial in your table's experience.
Really, just wanted to say that we don't design our adventures for a "lowest common denominator" is all.
I have a similar experienced group and I allowed dual class and ancestral paragon.
I boost the number of creatures, use the elite template, and incorporate creatures with more tactical abilities.
I boosted the required experience to level to 1500 per level to account for the increased number of creatures or using elite templates to maintain relative leveling speed.
The initial levels are always pretty weak. Things start to get more challenging once the creature mix includes enemies with more tactical capabilities like flight, invisibility, high mobility, powerful AoE attacks, and the like.
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That said, and in theory, a group of skilled players has an equally skilled GM!
I feel like I should be feeling like I'm being attacked, but this probably pretty accurate statement with my group. I'm great at upsetting theories against my favor lol.
With all seriousness though James, if I were to take that advice of changing xp requirements to level up, how much effect do you feel adding the elite template to a majority of encounters would have in attempting to offer more experienced players a challenge experience more in line with what's expected? I know that I could just increase creature count, but the issue I seem to find with that method is that it doesn't make an encounter more challenging, just more tedious because you're just spending the encounter clearing the field. Now granted that would have effect on resource management, but if they're only facing a single encounter a day from a random encounter, resource management becomes fairly negligible and unimportant.
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Creative Director
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That said, and in theory, a group of skilled players has an equally skilled GM!
I feel like I should be feeling like I'm being attacked, but this probably pretty accurate statement with my group. I'm great at upsetting theories against my favor lol.
With all seriousness though James, if I were to take that advice of changing xp requirements to level up, how much effect do you feel adding the elite template to a majority of encounters would have in attempting to offer more experienced players a challenge experience more in line with what's expected? I know that I could just increase creature count, but the issue I seem to find with that method is that it doesn't make an encounter more challenging, just more tedious because you're just spending the encounter clearing the field. Now granted that would have effect on resource management, but if they're only facing a single encounter a day from a random encounter, resource management becomes fairly negligible and unimportant.
EDIT: Adjusted a bit to answer the question a bit more clearly:
For a sandbox game, having encounters be too tough or too easy is part of the whole experience. That said, if you know the PCs are going to face a single encounter in a day and they're growing frustrated or annoyed with them because they feel tedious... just stop doing random encounters for a while and only do the placed encounters. Random encounters are mostly there to provide verisimilitude; they aren't part of the expected XP progression, really. There's enough set encounters in Kingmaker for any group to hit 20th level in plenty of time!
As a general rule, though, increasing a monster's level (including via methods like giving them the elite adjustment) will mean they critically hit your players more often and will critically fail saving throws less often. That means that their damage spikes will skew more than expected. That route will tend to result in more sudden death situations as a result.
Instead increasing the number of combatants in the encounter is a safer way to more gently increase the challenge.
And also... talk to your players. If you see them blasting through encounters and feel like they're not being challenged, remember that your players don't know the stats or setup or what's coming next. They might not feel like they're having an easy time of it, and even if they do, they might be having a lot of fun anyway.
You can also adjust encounters on the fly too to provide additional challenges; sometimes I'll have neighboring encounter areas "overhear" a fight and come to join a battle, either while it's in progress or right as it ends, if it feels like the PCs are doing too good and could use a larger challenge.
You can also adjust the environment as well by adding in difficult terrain, bringing in weather that affects sightlines or grants cover, or introducing other strange complications to a fight to make things more difficult.
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Creative Director
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One other thing to consider: not every wandering monster needs to be a fight. You can make some of them roleplaying encounters, or simply gloss them over if you know that the fight that would ensue would be a non-event for the PCs and wouldn't seriously threaten them.
Once the PCs have had some pushover fights, having wandering monsters run away from them or try to bargain with them or even offer advice or the like is a great way to make your players feel like their characters' fame and reputation in the region is growing.
For example: the next time you roll up an encounter with some bandits you know the PCs will finish with ease, instead of having the bandits attack, have them try to pretend they're just travelers and try to talk their way out of a fight, and if the PCs see through it, have the bandits give them directions to a TREASURE or something that either leads the PCs to a nearby dangerous encounter or a nearby resource encounter.
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I feel like this is the perfect place for Proficiency without Level.
Lower-level areas stay challenging a little longer, and wandering into a higher-level area isn't immediately fatal.
Yeah, we have been talking about it, just trying to figure something out, but I'll bring those ideas up and get an idea for them. Very much appreciate the advice and insight though James, that honestly helps explain a lot of little things.