A sober campaign journal of Doomsday Dawn: Doom, gloom, and TPKs

[Colette Brunel]

PCScipio wrote:

I also think critical failures on skills should have to be confirmed. I find the frequency of them disruptive.

The Sunday group's investigation segment of Raiders of Shrieking Peak had more critical failures than successes and regular failures put together, which led to an absolute farce of an investigation wherein characters were drowning in pre-printed misinformation that was blatantly flying in the face of other information before their very eyes.

For example, we started off the session with everyone making the prescribed Lore (Pathfinder Society) checks, and three-fourths of the party critically failing while the fourth PC failed regularly. As per the adventure, this caused the party to believe that there was no Pathfinder Society safehouse in the city, contrary to what was established in the mission briefing.

There were only more and more critical failures from there. It was ridiculous. It was a good thing I was using open rolls and not secret rolls too. I have said it time and again, and I will affirm it: this game's method of handling secret rolls and erroneous information on knowledge rolls is terribly inconvenient.

[EberronHoward]

Colette Brunel wrote:

The Sunday group's investigation segment of Raiders of Shrieking Peak had more critical failures than successes and regular failures put together, which led to an absolute farce of an investigation wherein characters were drowning in pre-printed misinformation that was blatantly flying in the face of other information before their very eyes.

For example, we started off the session with everyone making the prescribed Lore (Pathfinder Society) checks, and three-fourths of the party critically failing while the fourth PC failed regularly. As per the adventure, this caused the party to believe that there was no Pathfinder Society safehouse in the city, contrary to what was established in the mission briefing.

There were only more and more critical failures from there. It was ridiculous. It was a good thing I was using open rolls and not secret rolls too. I have said it time and again, and I will affirm it: this game's method of handling secret rolls and erroneous information on knowledge rolls is terribly inconvenient.

I'm not sure how you're getting so many critical failures from those checks. If you have a Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard, or Alchemist, it should be mathematically impossible for that PC to critically fail. A 5th level Wizard should have an INT 18 (+4) and a proficiency bonus of +5; even if they're not trained in Society, they need to roll an 1 to critically fail a DC 18 Society check. The other checks should also be out of range for critical failure, provided the party lets the best PC roll first.

[Colette Brunel]

The party had an Intelligence 14 ranger, an Intelligence 10 rogue, and, since I had to create two GMPCs in the span of an hour and feasibly run them, an Intelligence 10 fighter and an Intelligence 10 paladin (because they needed their ability scores invested into everything else).

[EberronHoward]

That explains it.

[magnuskn]

The funny thing is, due to the tight mathematical skeleton, the new game requires the players to optimize more than they ever did. Got nobody with high intelligence in the party? Good luck getting regularly good results on anything intelligence skill related forever, even if they have legendary proficiency in the skill!

[Almarane]

It explains nothing. Sure, this ranger could be 18 INT (which is not mandatory in a group, I ran multiple groups with nobody optimizing INT). But that would only make 1 out of 10 critical failure be a regular failure, and 1 out of 10 failures be a success, and only for this character. I don't know how many rolls they made, but since they seemed to all do the Lore rolls, having more critical failure than other rolls combined is too high.

I would expect an intelligent PC which does not need Intelligence as their main or secondary stat have 14 at best, 16 if they miraculously manage to have enough ability boosts for their main and secondary stats. In the party Colette discribed, the only PC I see having more than 14 in Int would be the Rogue in order to be a skill monkey, but they would get 10 skill points + Int, you would only need a 14 to get every non-spellcasting related skills.

Only Wizards and Alchemists need Int (and Alchemists don't really need 18 Int, they could stay at 16 if they don't mind loosing an extra bomb/potion/mutagen). And they are not mandatory classes when you have Sorcerers to replace Wizards, and Barbarians for combat oriented Alchemists and Clerics and Bards for support oriented Alchemists.

tl;dr : 18 INT should not be the norm. It should be an exception. The new character creation was built around making more average PCs and avoiding min-maxing.

[shroudb]

Almarane wrote:

It explains nothing. Sure, this ranger could be 18 INT (which is not mandatory in a group, I ran multiple groups with nobody optimizing INT). But that would only make 1 out of 10 critical failure be a regular failure, and 1 out of 10 failures be a success, and only for this character. I don't know how many rolls they made, but since they seemed to all do the Lore rolls, having more critical failure than other rolls combined is too high.

I would expect an intelligent PC which does not need Intelligence as their main or secondary stat have 14 at best, 16 if they miraculously manage to have enough ability boosts for their main and secondary stats. In the party Colette discribed, the only PC I see having more than 14 in Int would be the Rogue in order to be a skill monkey, but they would get 10 skill points + Int, you would only need a 14 to get every non-spellcasting related skills.

Only Wizards and Alchemists need Int (and Alchemists don't really need 18 Int, they could stay at 16 if they don't mind loosing an extra bomb/potion/mutagen). And they are not mandatory classes when you have Sorcerers to replace Wizards, and Barbarians for combat oriented Alchemists and Clerics and Bards for support oriented Alchemists.

tl;dr : 18 INT should not be the norm. It should be an exception. The new character creation was built around making more average PCs and avoiding min-maxing.

sadly, ALL skill checks are based around the assumption of maximized stats.

to that point, INT is not even the "best" skill stat since wisdom offers 2 knowledges and perception vs the 3 knowledges of Int, and you use perception a lot more often.

Int just gives you more "trained" skills that offer nothing different than untrained, since without maximizing both proficiency, stat AND item bonuses, you're bound to keep failing those checks as much as an untrained character will.

[Fuzzypaws]

Almarane wrote:

It explains nothing. Sure, this ranger could be 18 INT (which is not mandatory in a group, I ran multiple groups with nobody optimizing INT). But that would only make 1 out of 10 critical failure be a regular failure, and 1 out of 10 failures be a success, and only for this character. I don't know how many rolls they made, but since they seemed to all do the Lore rolls, having more critical failure than other rolls combined is too high.

I would expect an intelligent PC which does not need Intelligence as their main or secondary stat have 14 at best, 16 if they miraculously manage to have enough ability boosts for their main and secondary stats. In the party Colette discribed, the only PC I see having more than 14 in Int would be the Rogue in order to be a skill monkey, but they would get 10 skill points + Int, you would only need a 14 to get every non-spellcasting related skills.

Only Wizards and Alchemists need Int (and Alchemists don't really need 18 Int, they could stay at 16 if they don't mind loosing an extra bomb/potion/mutagen). And they are not mandatory classes when you have Sorcerers to replace Wizards, and Barbarians for combat oriented Alchemists and Clerics and Bards for support oriented Alchemists.

tl;dr : 18 INT should not be the norm. It should be an exception. The new character creation was built around making more average PCs and avoiding min-maxing.

Objectively incorrect. Monster combat abilities are pegged to the ratings / rolls of a pure optimized Fighter with maximum stats, and monster skills (especially Perception) are pegged to the ratings / rolls of a pure optimized Rogue with starting 18s in all ability scores. What little skill guidance there is in the corebook says failing something more specific, you always use the High skill DC for a skill check of the party's level, which is pegged to 50-60% success rate depending on level (due to the inconsistent jumps in DCs in the table at various levels) for someone who optimizes for that skill with a starting 18 and advances the skill proficiency at every opportunity.

As currently situated, you have to minmax just to maybe get a 60% chance of success in the few things you're specialized in, and might as well not try anything else.

[Almarane]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

Almarane wrote:

It explains nothing. Sure, this ranger could be 18 INT (which is not mandatory in a group, I ran multiple groups with nobody optimizing INT). But that would only make 1 out of 10 critical failure be a regular failure, and 1 out of 10 failures be a success, and only for this character. I don't know how many rolls they made, but since they seemed to all do the Lore rolls, having more critical failure than other rolls combined is too high.

I would expect an intelligent PC which does not need Intelligence as their main or secondary stat have 14 at best, 16 if they miraculously manage to have enough ability boosts for their main and secondary stats. In the party Colette discribed, the only PC I see having more than 14 in Int would be the Rogue in order to be a skill monkey, but they would get 10 skill points + Int, you would only need a 14 to get every non-spellcasting related skills.

Only Wizards and Alchemists need Int (and Alchemists don't really need 18 Int, they could stay at 16 if they don't mind loosing an extra bomb/potion/mutagen). And they are not mandatory classes when you have Sorcerers to replace Wizards, and Barbarians for combat oriented Alchemists and Clerics and Bards for support oriented Alchemists.

tl;dr : 18 INT should not be the norm. It should be an exception. The new character creation was built around making more average PCs and avoiding min-maxing.

Objectively incorrect. Monster combat abilities are pegged to the ratings / rolls of a pure optimized Fighter with maximum stats, and monster skills (especially Perception) are pegged to the ratings / rolls of a pure optimized Rogue with starting 18s in all ability scores. What little skill guidance there is in the corebook says failing something more specific, you always use the High skill DC for a skill check of the party's level, which is pegged to 50-60% success rate depending on level (due to the inconsistent jumps in DCs in the table at various levels) for someone who optimizes for that...

I'm not saying 18 INT is not the norm right now. I'm saying it shouldn't be the norm.

If you check my thread about ability uses, you see that most feats require you to have 12 or 14, and all archetypes require you to have 16 at best. So it feels like 14 should be enough to do some pretty impressive stuff, and 16 should make you someone exceptionnal enough to study things that may be completely different from what you grew up studying.

Plus, in PF1, you did not need to min-max. Having 20 at first level was just a way to make easy checks become trivial quicker, characters with a high stat could just throw some rolls without actually being trained and have a fair chance, and a character with a low ability could train themselves in a specific skill to have a fair chance at success too. While, now, the standard difficulty (which is the High difficulty) has only a 50% chance of success if you pour all your bonuses in that specific roll.

For exemple, one of my characters is a Wisdom 8 Eldritch Archer. Still, by putting points in Medicine and taking a trait that make this skill a class skill, she is now the official non-magical medic and has pretty fair chances of stabilizing someone and treating illness. It cost me a trait and skill points, but she is relevant even if Wisdom was her dump stat.
Other exemples are my 14 Int Summoner who is party's main scholar and can do good Knoledge checks, and my 14 Cha Slayer who's the party's second best Diplomate.

Paizo seemed to want to prevent min-maxing, but all they managed to do is reduce the min-maxing to 8-18 instead of 5-20, and push their players to have their main ability maxed at 18 to be somewhat relevant, while before you could make a rounded character with 14 or 16 to a stat and still make rolls based on that stat.

[EberronHoward]

Just my opinion, but putting an 18 in your class stat isn't min-maxing.

magnuskn wrote:

Got nobody with high intelligence in the party? Good luck getting regularly good results on anything intelligence skill related forever

That sounds like the result of a party doing anything they have no experts for.

[Fuzzypaws]

EberronHoward wrote:

Just my opinion, but putting an 18 in your class stat isn't min-maxing.

magnuskn wrote:

Got nobody with high intelligence in the party? Good luck getting regularly good results on anything intelligence skill related forever

That sounds like the result of a party doing anything they have no experts for.

Most parties aren't going to have a spread of 5 characters each with a starting 18 in the five skill stats of Str, Dex, Int, Wis, and Cha. Even if they do, those characters certainly won't be able to get all those skills to legendary due to the wretched signature skills mechanic, nor will they have / be able to afford skill boost items for each of those skills at each level where they become available. You certainly won't have everyone in the entire party maxed out on Stealth with starting 18 Dex for everyone and no ACP.

Yet that's exactly what the DCs and monsters assume. They assume utterly maximized characters who improve their skills to the maximum possible extent and take every advantage for those skills, even when it's not practical or even possible... just to aim somewhat north of a coin flip. At the moment you're not one of those maximized characters, your chances go way down.

[shroudb]

Fuzzypaws wrote:

EberronHoward wrote:

Just my opinion, but putting an 18 in your class stat isn't min-maxing.

magnuskn wrote:

Got nobody with high intelligence in the party? Good luck getting regularly good results on anything intelligence skill related forever

That sounds like the result of a party doing anything they have no experts for.

Most parties aren't going to have a spread of 5 characters each with a starting 18 in the five skill stats of Str, Dex, Int, Wis, and Cha. Even if they do, those characters certainly won't be able to get all those skills to legendary due to the wretched signature skills mechanic, nor will they have / be able to afford skill boost items for each of those skills at each level where they become available. You certainly won't have everyone in the entire party maxed out on Stealth with starting 18 Dex for everyone and no ACP.

Yet that's exactly what the DCs and monsters assume. They assume utterly maximized characters who improve their skills to the maximum possible extent and take every advantage for those skills, even when it's not practical or even possible... just to aim somewhat north of a coin flip. At the moment you're not one of those maximized characters, your chances go way down.

while i agree on the general principle that checks atm are way too high and need to be reigned in, that's one thing, and a full party without anyone above 10int and max trained proficiency (and that IF) trying purely Int skills isn't a good gauge for that.

i mean, even in the best of situations, that party would still fail on average, and rightly so.

you don't see a bunch of paladins and fullplate fighters walking into a trap filled dungeon and expecting to somehow disable them.

"average" difficulty imo should be somewhere around 12-13+level. Which means that a trained guy with a bith on his ability scores, or an expert without good corresponding stats, should have around 50% to pull it off. And that the specialized guy with 18 and expert prof and maybe a +1-2 item/circumstantial bonus would have like 75%+ to get it done (and 0% crit failure)

[Colette Brunel]

I am still terribly behind on writing reports for my campaign. I just finished running Arclord's Envy, and by "finished," I mean "the party TPKed to their first combat encounter."

At the very least, boss monsters are viable in 2e even without an action economy improvement.

I will try to catch up and complete my six session reports when I can.

[bwee]

I have no idea why your party is consistently dying, the fights are difficult but not "always a TPK"

[magnuskn]

EberronHoward wrote:

Just my opinion, but putting an 18 in your class stat isn't min-maxing.

magnuskn wrote:

Got nobody with high intelligence in the party? Good luck getting regularly good results on anything intelligence skill related forever

That sounds like the result of a party doing anything they have no experts for.

Actually I meant even with legendary proficiency. You just don't have the necessary modifiers to hit the target DC's with regularity without maxing out your attribute.

In PF1E, if you diligently put your skillpoints into a skill even without having a high associated attribute, eventually you would reliably make the expected DC rolls. Which made sense, because you were putting valuable resources into something.

[graystone]

bwee wrote:

I have no idea why your party is consistently dying, the fights are difficult but not "always a TPK"

The thing is, then every fight is a 'near TPK' it doesn't take much to push it into a total TPK'. A low healing roll, a missed swing, a monster crit, low initiative, ect. We had combat start, monsters went first, resulting in multiple people on the ground all before a single player action. There is a razor thin margin for survival in a non-cleric party from what I've seen. Things turn south quickly and it's quite tough to turn it around without using all your resources or a cleric.

[Tridus]

shroudb wrote:

"average" difficulty imo should be somewhere around 12-13+level. Which means that a trained guy with a bith on his ability scores, or an expert without good corresponding stats, should have around 50% to pull it off. And that the specialized guy with 18 and...

If that's the case, than what was the point of the automatic +1 and letting everyone get better at everything? If the DCs are set such that someone who isn't expert level, with equipment, and optimized stat in that thing is going to fail more than half the time and have a high chance to critically fail... they are better off not attempting it at all.

This has solved nothing from the old skill system.

I thought the goal here was to allow more people to participate by at least giving them a chance to be helpful in skill checks they didn't optimize for, but what we're actually getting is something close to the opposite of that: where you get false information, make things harder for the group, and in the case of Medicine, actively kill other players by trying to help.

Better to just let the specialist do it alone and sit out entirely rather than cause harm by trying to participate.

[vestris]

Tridus wrote:

shroudb wrote:

"average" difficulty imo should be somewhere around 12-13+level. Which means that a trained guy with a bith on his ability scores, or an expert without good corresponding stats, should have around 50% to pull it off. And that the specialized guy with 18 and...

If that's the case, than what was the point of the automatic +1 and letting everyone get better at everything? If the DCs are set such that someone who isn't expert level, with equipment, and optimized stat in that thing is going to fail more than half the time and have a high chance to critically fail... they are better off not attempting it at all.

This has solved nothing from the old skill system.

I thought the goal here was to allow more people to participate by at least giving them a chance to be helpful in skill checks they didn't optimize for, but what we're actually getting is something close to the opposite of that: where you get false information, make things harder for the group, and in the case of Medicine, actively kill other players by trying to help.

Better to just let the specialist do it alone and sit out entirely rather than cause harm by trying to participate.

The high failure rate is for difficulties that are on the same or higher level than the pcs so that even "experts" have a rough time. What the level to everything does is that every character can succeed at tasks that are below their level.

E.g. swimming across a river, or jumping across a pit, or sneaking past a "normal" city guard is a difficult task for low level characters. But every highlevel fighter/wizard/cleric is now able to achieve it.

[shroudb]

Tridus wrote:

shroudb wrote:

"average" difficulty imo should be somewhere around 12-13+level. Which means that a trained guy with a bith on his ability scores, or an expert without good corresponding stats, should have around 50% to pull it off. And that the specialized guy with 18 and...

If that's the case, than what was the point of the automatic +1 and letting everyone get better at everything? If the DCs are set such that someone who isn't expert level, with equipment, and optimized stat in that thing is going to fail more than half the time and have a high chance to critically fail... they are better off not attempting it at all.

This has solved nothing from the old skill system.

I thought the goal here was to allow more people to participate by at least giving them a chance to be helpful in skill checks they didn't optimize for, but what we're actually getting is something close to the opposite of that: where you get false information, make things harder for the group, and in the case of Medicine, actively kill other players by trying to help.

Better to just let the specialist do it alone and sit out entirely rather than cause harm by trying to participate.

the +level is irrelevant to that point.

the +level is for tasks lower level than yours to shine.

like a level 1 fighter that struggles vs goblins, but at higher levels he can just waltzh amongst them.
similary, a level 1 mountaineer will have trouble scaling a wall that at level 20 he would just walk over effortlessly.

the +level is there to help with the Heroic feeling of smashing every task that's easier than your "level appropriate task" and to signify that growth.

When I talk about 12+level DCs, I mean vs level appropriate challenges, not higher or lower levels.

[Byron Zibeck]

bwee wrote:

I have no idea why your party is consistently dying, the fights are difficult but not "always a TPK"

Couple thoughts for the OP

(1) Are you giving out Hero Points? They can be essential.

(3) Are you remembering the multiple attack penalty on your monsters? If not, this would result in them hitting more often, and make them more deadly.

[Colette Brunel]

Byron Zibeck wrote:

(1) Are you giving out Hero Points? They can be essential.

I give out one Hero Point at the start of each session, for a total of two Hero Points for all PCs.

Byron Zibeck wrote:

(3) Are you remembering the multiple attack penalty on your monsters?

Yes.

[Seannoss]

I also have no idea why your PCs are always dying. I've ran my group through the first 1.5 adventures and they have never been close to a TPK.*

All the critical hits people write about, how? The attack bonuses for Pale Mountain are +9 and +7; +9; +9 or 7 and +10 or 9; and +12. My PCs that took the most attacks had ACs of 20, 22 (w/shield), and 20 (or 22 once/round). So pretty much all of those attacks need a 20, or down to 18 with flat footed or who knows. That range of crits isn't out of control.

Or in Lost Star ACs were 15-17. With the impressive (and it is odd) +6 by most monsters that still leaves crits at the 19-20 range.

*note: they did not fight Drakus as it was late and one crazy PC thought he could take him on by himself. He couldn't.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Seannoss wrote:

I also have no idea why your PCs are always dying. I've ran my group through the first 1.5 adventures and they have never been close to a TPK.*

All the critical hits people write about, how? The attack bonuses for Pale Mountain are +9 and +7; +9; +9 or 7 and +10 or 9; and +12. My PCs that took the most attacks had ACs of 20, 22 (w/shield), and 20 (or 22 once/round). So pretty much all of those attacks need a 20, or down to 18 with flat footed or who knows. That range of crits isn't out of control.

Or in Lost Star ACs were 15-17. With the impressive (and it is odd) +6 by most monsters that still leaves crits at the 19-20 range.

*note: they did not fight Drakus as it was late and one crazy PC thought he could take him on by himself. He couldn't.

So I can't speak for the OP but they've mentioned a couple times that the players had less than optimal Dex scores for their armor and/or weren't willing to go with a heavier armor for some reason (ACP, speed).

Also if you're going to list them for Pale Mountain, list them for Lost Star. +7, +6 (and easy flat-footed), +6 (and so very very many), +7 (again, easy flat-footed), +6 (again, whole bunch of them), and +10 (up to +12). +7 against 15 AC is an 18-20 crit range. Set up flanking or use Stealth and those +6s are more like +8s, now a possible 17-20 crit range. That's a 20% crit chance. Drops to 19-20 for the better ACs but mostly we're looking at every enemy packing a scimitar. Especially since they seem designed to get flat-footed on the players so easily.

Similarly for Pale Mountain, the OP mentions a Monk (so slightly lower AC even if you focus on it). The problematic encounters are +12/+15, +13, +13, and +13. Crit against AC 20 on an 18 for the worst one. Most crit on a 17, the best one crits on a 15. Some form of debuff (and a couple are designed to do that) and the weaker (hah) ones can also crit on a 15. So keen scimitars all around. No confirm either.

It also doesn't help that most monsters don't have anything else to do. The first one for Pale Mountain has four attacks in its stat block and nothing else. One of the +13s literally only has that attack and nothing else. The other has a lovely flavor ability and a reaction... neither of which are going to change its behavior from Stride/Strike/Strike. The last one at least has options. All the rest just spam attacks.

[Tridus]

Seannoss wrote:

I also have no idea why your PCs are always dying. I've ran my group through the first 1.5 adventures and they have never been close to a TPK.*

All the critical hits people write about, how? The attack bonuses for Pale Mountain are +9 and +7; +9; +9 or 7 and +10 or 9; and +12. My PCs that took the most attacks had ACs of 20, 22 (w/shield), and 20 (or 22 once/round). So pretty much all of those attacks need a 20, or down to 18 with flat footed or who knows. That range of crits isn't out of control.

I had AC 18 in Pale Mountain, as I was a Gnome Cleric (with that STR hit that I didn't do anything about) and really didn't want to have a move speed of 10 because dear god no. That limited my gear options to fit within the bulk limits and I was using so many actions to cast Heal that constantly burning one to raise a shield that would explode if it got hit wasn't really worth it.

We didn't have anyone in our group with an AC of 20 or better that I'm aware of. Crits were a thing. That said, the only thing that actually crit me was the trap. That one shotted me despite decent CON.

With how things work now, crits become distressingly frequent if you don't max out your AC.

[Colette Brunel]

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

So I can't speak for the OP but they've mentioned a couple times that the players had less than optimal Dex scores for their armor and/or weren't willing to go with a heavier armor for some reason (ACP, speed).

The vast majority of characters in parties have maxed out their AC, and by The Rose Street Revenge and onwards, all characters have maxed out their AC without exception.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

So I can't speak for the OP but they've mentioned a couple times that the players had less than optimal Dex scores for their armor and/or weren't willing to go with a heavier armor for some reason (ACP, speed).

The vast majority of characters in parties have maxed out their AC, and by The Rose Street Revenge and onwards, all characters have maxed out their AC without exception.

Ah, missed a qualifier on my post. Sorry. You've mentioned a couple times that a player had less than optimal Dex scores for their armor. Specifically: "I think they made some poor defensive choices; they should have gone with Dexterity 16 and Constitution 12 instead of balancing the two scores, and they should have used a breastplate." and "I think that this character should have used hide armor rather than studded leather though.". Well, and any Monk period (always slightly behind a maximized armor user).

And yes, these are from the early runs. I would assume that after the multiple TPKs the party put a much heavier focus on defense. I would be interested in raw numbers if you have them but only out of curiosity. The ACs for my party for Pale Mountain ranged from 19-21 but they avoided three of the worst offenders (with some insanely lucky rolls on the relevant parts).

[EberronHoward]

Checking my group's PCs: Sorcerer has 19, Druid has 20 (22 with shield), Ranger has 21, and Barbarian has 22. Party definitely used their General Feat to upgrade their armour, and was willing to lose out on skill checks and speed to boost it. Physical abilities got priority unless they needed INT/WIS/CHA to cast spells.

[Colette Brunel]

Between my surgery recovery, my other business, and my general poor health, I really cannot say if I can write up my playtest reports in an apt time frame. However, I would just like to report that I have ran my Sunday group through Arclord's Envy. I had to run two GMPCs, one because of a low player pool, and the other because one player had flaked on me without a word.

They TPKed to the first encounter, the selfsame combat that the previous group had TPKed to. Unsurprisingly, higher-level melee beatstick enemies are terrifyingly powerful.

Yes, that means that ten out of ten of my playthroughs so far have ended in TPKs, and the two In Pale Mountain's Shadow playthroughs involved two TPKs in each session.

[vestris]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Between my surgery recovery, my other business, and my general poor health, I really cannot say if I can write up my playtest reports in an apt time frame. However, I would just like to report that I have ran my Sunday group through Arclord's Envy. I had to run two GMPCs, one because of a low player pool, and the other because one player had flaked on me without a word.

They TPKed to the first encounter, the selfsame combat that the previous group had TPKed to. Unsurprisingly, higher-level melee beatstick enemies are terrifyingly powerful.

Yes, that means that ten out of ten of my playthroughs so far have ended in TPKs, and the two In Pale Mountain's Shadow playthroughs involved two TPKs in each session.

Can you give data on the player characters?

I just ran the encounter with 4 pregens, and except for some inconsistencies in the scenario description it worked fine just as a +2 encounter should be in difficulty.

[Cassandra of Iblydos]

They must be really bad at this game

[Seannoss]

I'm sorry. But by this point I assume its either you or or players, or a combination of both. It seems so highly improbable to have that many TPKs.

And yes, I have run sessions of PF2.

Rest up and recover.

[Dreamtime2k9]

As Colete is still recovering, i actually made a player feedback post myself, in the hopes our experience wasn't for nothing and others may benefit from our experience.

Its not as well written and layered the way Colete had throughout this thread, but its the best i could muster after the session.

Playerwise, i've only been present in this particular adventure but hey, if you want to question capabilities... check it out for yourself and make your own observations regarding.

Contains massive SPOILERS!!!

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs429e0?Arclords-Envy-player-review-Spoilers

[Jason S]

We know that monsters skills are broken and are FAR too high. Paizo, why don't you just fix it or give us a quick fix in the meantime?

This means that using Intimidate (to make PCs flee) will lead to TPKs. You should stop using it, or if you do, decrease it by 2 or more for higher levels. At least then it will be a better playtest, we already know monsters skills are broken.

I'm a player in Arclord in 2 weeks, we'll see how we fare.

[Sara Marie]

Removed some posts and replies. If you are concerned another paizo.com poster is being disingenuous or posting in bad faith, you can email community at paizo.com.

[Palinurus]

graystone wrote:

bwee wrote:

I have no idea why your party is consistently dying, the fights are difficult but not "always a TPK"

The thing is, then every fight is a 'near TPK' it doesn't take much to push it into a total TPK'. A low healing roll, a missed swing, a monster crit, low initiative, ect. We had combat start, monsters went first, resulting in multiple people on the ground all before a single player action. There is a razor thin margin for survival in a non-cleric party from what I've seen. Things turn south quickly and it's quite tough to turn it around without using all your resources or a cleric.

I find this surprising. I've had no deaths or TPKs and run a non-cleric party for Lone Star and a non-optimised cleric for Pale Mountain. There have been tough encounters but not close to TPK.

[Telefax]

I think the reason for all these TPK:s are due to a strict adherance to RAW, with no regards given to player satisfaction whatsoever, and no fudged dice. Awesome for data collecting in a playtest, though.

I followed the pf2e generals on 4chan when they existed, so i guess all this is just due to overtuned monster math, and a very lucky gm with a fetish for anime girls.

[graystone]

Telefax wrote:

I think the reason for all these TPK:s are due to a strict adherance to RAW, with no regards given to player satisfaction whatsoever, and no fudged dice. Awesome for data collecting in a playtest, though.

I don't think anyone not following RAW or fudging dice are doing the playtest any favors. From my perspective, if we don't point out the issue with how it currently works, we aren't going to get issues fixed and we'll be forced to fudge the rules and alter dice just to have a good time with the actual game when it comes out.

[Byron Zibeck]

I still don't understand how the OP is having so many TPK. I could understand 1 or even 2 given the number of different sessions, but thanks to Hero Points, I have not even killed a single PC.

I am following RAW (to the best of my ability--we all make mistakes) and have not fudged a single dice roll.

[vestris]

Byron Zibeck wrote:

I still don't understand how the OP is having so many TPK. I could understand 1 or even 2 given the number of different sessions, but thanks to Hero Points, I have not even killed a single PC.

I am following RAW (to the best of my ability--we all make mistakes) and have not fudged a single dice roll.

I am curious about that too, 100% TPK rate is quite something. If they did not play online I would guess Colette has +3 magical dice or something.

[Colette Brunel]

I do not think I can really get back into the swing of writing full playtest reports for 2e again. My surgery recovery is slow, I terribly oversleep each day, my other games have been ramping up in terms of investment and prep time needed between sessions, I have been suffering extreme player attrition such that I ofttimes have only two players and must stressfully run two GMPCs, and my morale for 2e has been dwindling further and further. I am sorry.

Still, I would just like to bring up that I have run a session of Affair at Sombrefell Hall. Due to player attrition, the two players had a Sarenite pure caster cleric (easily the single most powerful and flexible build in the game), a generic buff and attack bard, my Sarenite weapon cleric GMPC just to try something different, and my generic guisarme paladin.

They blew through the first encounter. They lost the GMPC weapon cleric in the second encounter because the ghasts would grab the cleric and allow the vampire spawn to spam Drink Blood, whittling away. This allowed the ghasts to gang up on the weapon cleric and finish off said cleric, before the ghasts were taken out by AoE heal spells. The vampires managed to place drained 3 on the pure caster cleric.

The third encounter, with the staggered wights and poltergeist, was rough. The paladin and the pure caster cleric had to spend 2 Hero Points each to avoid flubbed Fortitude saves against enervation, and were later enervated regardless. The first two wights went down only with some trouble. By the time the second group of wights and the poltergeist appeared, the undead managed to burst down the pure caster cleric and turn said cleric into a wight. The paladin went down soon thereafter and also became a wight. By the time the elite wights were down, it was just the bard left, who tried in vain to Seek the poltergeist, and was taken down by the poltergeist and the paladin's wight, both of which remained at full hit points.

I did try to play my GMPCs intelligently.

I am entirely convinced that heal is the single strongest spell in all of 2e, at every level, for the purposes of surviving swingy combats and keeping the party's resources afloat. I have GMed 11 playthroughs of premade modules so far, and heal has always been the single most useful spell.

Some statistics:

Number of times a PC dropped to 0 hit points: 3 weapon cleric + 1 caster cleric + 1 paladin + 3 bard = 8

Single-target heal uses: 2 from weapon cleric + 5 from paladin + 10 from pure caster cleric = 17
Multitarget heal uses: 2 from paladin + 3 from caster cleric = 5

First fight: 2 rounds
Second fight: 3 rounds
Third fight: 13 rounds

Personally, I do not see what the point of this playtest adventure is. If the goal is to confirm just how powerful the heal spell is (answer: yes, it is the single most powerful spell in the entire game for the purpose of surviving swingy combats and maintaining the party's hit points over an adventuring day), then why taint the data by throwing in undead that are even more fodder for heal?

[PsychicPixel]

I'm curious how you are running each fight. Are you rolling each enemy individually for initiative or as a group? Also are you focusing down on one PC? The amount of crits you keep having against the PCs seems pretty high considering most of the first attacks require a 16+/17+ against mediocre armored characters.

Also the point of the Somberfell Hall is testing healing, fighting undead, and most importantly endurance since it's a siege encounter the players aren't able to full rest in-between the fights and need to conserve resources and use the terrain to their advantage if they hope to survive.

[vestris]

Colette Brunel wrote:

I do not think I can really get back into the swing of writing full playtest reports for 2e again. My surgery recovery is slow, I terribly oversleep each day, my other games have been ramping up in terms of investment and prep time needed between sessions, I have been suffering extreme player attrition such that I ofttimes have only two players and must stressfully run two GMPCs, and my morale for 2e has been dwindling further and further. I am sorry.

I am sorry to hear this and hope your recovery will improve!

I understand the player numbers dwindling I guess with 13/13 TPK's one can build a reputation.

And I still do not understand how you even do it. I have not seen a single report that has had any trouble with the early encounters, it was always the players plowing through. Like even with the cleric being grabbed how do the spawns kill him easily with 2 times drained 1 through his athletics DC?

The first three encounters had terrible issues even hitting my PC's getting slaughtered almost by the paladin alone.

Other than the Shadows and Ilvoresh there has been no danger what so ever.

[Colette Brunel]

PsychicPixel wrote:

I'm curious how you are running each fight. Are you rolling each enemy individually for initiative or as a group? Also are you focusing down on one PC? The amount of crits you keep having against the PCs seems pretty high considering most of the first attacks require a 16+/17+ against mediocre armored characters.

I use page 304's suggestion of "The GM rolls initiative for any potential adversaries in the encounter. If the potential adversaries include a number of identical creatures, she could roll once for the group as a whole and have them take their turns within the group in any order she wishes. She could even change the initiative order within the group from round to round."

I focus my fire whenever possible and simply use decent tactics. That is all there is to it. It helps when a PC is suffering -4 Fortitude from being drained 4+.

Quote:

Also the point of the Somberfell Hall is testing healing, fighting undead, and most importantly endurance since it's a siege encounter the players aren't able to full rest in-between the fights and need to conserve resources and use the terrain to their advantage if they hope to survive.

I can understand this except for the "fighting undead" part, which is something so specific that I cannot possibly see a need to test it.

vestris wrote:

13/13]

It has been 11 out of 11 TPKs, actually.

[PsychicPixel]

Ah, yeah using the suggestion of having the enemy roll as a group can definitely make combat swingier because whichever side gets to go first will have a drastic advantage over the other. I tend to run with the classic of everyone rolling individually due to this reason.

Focus fire can be an effective tactic for groups or creatures used to such thing. Goblins tend not to show such tactics and tend to focus on whatever is the biggest threat individually. Mindless undead obviously attack whatever is nearest. The vampires in part 3 are definitely smart enough to employ such tactics and would seek to eliminate the biggest threats to them. But if that's happening the players should be smart enough to do so too focusing on eliminating the vampire or the ghoul holding down their ally before they can be killed. Monsters employing better tactics than PCs can be a big problem.

Undead are actually a pretty varied part of the Pathfinder universe. Skeletons, zombies, ghouls, vampires, shadows, ghasts, liches, etc. All have different tactics, intelligence, and abilities that are necessary to explore and test in 2e but they all suffer a similar weakness that can be exploited and that's a weakness to positive energy. Putting them together in a siege moment to explore party endurance is just the most logical choice for testing.

[Quandary]

shroudb wrote:

I read the exploration part better and concluded that nothing prevents you from sneaking and searching simultaneously.

the guidelines say that the examples below are the most common tactics, but you describe what you're doing and the DM creates a tactic for you using them as a guideline:

"I'm searching for traps while staying as hidden as I can"
*GM looks the common tactics*
"Ok, neither sneaking or searching for traps is fatiguing, so doing both isn't either. But since each halves your speed, then you move at one quarter of speed"

Constructive angle, but I think the speed reduction would not be that much, since logic of 1/2 speed is because you are vaguely spending 1 action searching for every 1 action moving, also sneaking would just add 1 more action, thus it would be 1/3 speed combined.