Dragons are made to deal with numbers. they really are.
I feel we are moving away from the topic of the thread when talking about dragon/anti dragon tactics and stat lines.
Takes notes
To say that numbers and narrative are separate concepts is mind-boggling. Numbers are an intrinsic part of the narrative. We have people arguing for different narratives based solely on how much of your level is added to every check (some want 0/level, some want 1/level, and others want some fraction). I personally prefer the narratives that 1/level encourage. To claim that the numbers and the narrative are separate is looking at things in too simple a view.
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Level to everything is a big boost to a character's power. To add cool abilities on top of that would be too much power.
Counterpoint: no it wouldn't.
The +level boost is only a boost relative to the foes you used to fight. Against the higher level foes you're likely to be facing, it's just keeping up. And high-level foes often have abilities to match; auras of death and so on.
A PC can gain enough attack bonuses to go toe to toe with high-level foes, and still get abilities with cool-sounding names. (I'll make up some, because it's fun: Reactive Interception, Whirlwind Charge, Shield-Shatter, Leg-Breaker.)
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Level bonus is a great way to add a sense of progression and it's not new: in PF1 skills should be greater than your level if you want to succeed frequently. Saves and attacks, too.
Going back to dragons for a sec:
PF1 DIDN'T apply level to save DCs and AC, so some peculiarities arose. Ever notice that against an Adult Red Dragon (lvl 14), its attacks pretty much auto hit unless you pull crazy shenanigans with your AC? And that it pretty much auto-succeeds its saves except against the latest and greatest 7th level spells?
Pulling the level bonus across the board is Paizo's way of keeping the progression while making defense consistent above level 12.
Feedback time: I think PF2 has made some good steps, but they way things are at, I think we're a little overbalanced into the level add side.
My wizard's touch attack at lvl 5 is +7, which is roughly coinflip compared to the TAC I can expect of ~18. Looking at the ways I can improve those odds, I can:
- Level up and get a cool +1 each level
- Level up, get expert proficiency at 12
- Level up, give my dex another boost at 10
(notice how they are all acquired the same way?)
So at 12, those adds bring me up to a total of +16! Sweet! So what's TAC at that level? ~27-28. That's still coinflip, even though I've specialized in bad touch as much as I'm allowed to.
The epicness of the battle can come from the level bonuses, but the battle should still be won on incidental bonuses due to player choices, specialization, and preparation. There are too few of those at this stage, and they give too little to make a significant difference. The difficulty of every "High DC" encounter I've played so far has come down to how often we rolled above 10.
Saves do not scale at +Level in PF1, and only certain classes' BAB scales at +1 per level, I don't know, that post rang a bit hollow for me.helps maintain the same game feelwhile I agree that PF1 was similar when it came to saves and BAB, +1/lvl to skills is so noticable different that I have to confess, that I have no idea how one could come to this conclusion.
*looks at the word 'similar'*
*hands out a dictionary*also, it wasn't me who brought that up
Pretty much, I just want higher level characters to do amazing things, not just bigger numbers, make Legendary truly worthy of the name.Isn't it just so that 20th level things are way, way better than 1st level things at pretty much everything?
I just figured it was a quick and easy way to make level inherently meaningful.
That's what you're getting, isn't it?
The way you "do amazing things" in d20 games is by rolling very high numbers (and thus hitting super high DCs).
Not required as such you can get a really great ability like not being able to roll lower than 9. Rerolls/Advanatge/Disadvantage are also fun. a 5E cleric for example only has +6 to hit vs +15 for a 3.x one but its relative to what the ACs are vs what you are facing. A high level 5E cleric gets divine intervention ability so I don't think the +9 difference really matters IMHO.
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But in 1E a level meant you had become better at some concept and brought advancement that was primarily reflective of that concept. It had flexibility which allowed customization, but the narrative which informed "you gained a level" carried a lot of weight.
At lower levels this was mostly true, but PF1 falls apart at higher levels exactly because the spread between characters who have been focusing leveling up resources into one specialized category were so much better than characters of the same level who had not been. It turns high level play into a very dangerous game of roulette as far as whether you will be well prepared for what the enemy is going to throw at you.
At least + level to proficiency makes those outcomes a little more predicable for GMs and game designers.
But in 1E a level meant you had become better at some concept and brought advancement that was primarily reflective of that concept. It had flexibility which allowed customization, but the narrative which informed "you gained a level" carried a lot of weight.At lower levels this was mostly true, but PF1 falls apart at higher levels exactly because the spread between characters who have been focusing leveling up resources into one specialized category were so much better than characters of the same level who had not been. It turns high level play into a very dangerous game of roulette as far as whether you will be well prepared for what the enemy is going to throw at you.
At least + level to proficiency makes those outcomes a little more predicable for GMs and game designers.
You can still design kewl abilites but something like rerolls or some effect is better than + moar number".
Or example maybe once per day a Rogue can auto pick a lock. Its not that different from one just casting knock or using a wand of knock. Kewl ability, does the same job mostly, no numbers required. 5E advantage/disadvantage is something similar.
The difference is ideally in PF2 you would get more choice as to what kewl ability you get,the math can be simplified IMHO.
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You can still design kewl abilites but something like rerolls or some effect is better than + moar number.Or example maybe once per day a Rogue can auto pick a lock. Its not that different from one just casting knock or using a wand of knock. Kewl ability, does the same job mostly, no numbers required. 5E advantage/disadvantage is something similar.
The difference is ideally in PF2 you would get more choice as to what kewl ability you get,the math can be simplified IMHO.
Well, luckily PF2 has given us a lot of stuff that is more than bigger bonus = better skill too. So we are still getting specific abilities to help us do the things we used to struggle with better.
But take away + level bonus to proficiency and the problem really becomes an issue for things that target defenses like saves and AC. (Especially with AC which will be 90% established by armor alone. A first level enemy in heavy armor, with a heavy shield is going to be very difficult to hit for a lot of characters, from level 1 to level 20. Saving throws will scale less than 10 points from level 1 to level 20.
For things like saves and AC, it is really difficult to get away from higher bonus = better ability, because "fighter always hits" is not a very good feat ability.
If attacks, skills, saves, AC, / everything is going to queue off of the same proficiency system, it probably has to figure out a way to make + level to proficiency work, or else find an entirely new way to balance player expectations for how skills work (through ha very complex method of feat gating) so that leveling up actually matters.
Personally, I think the +level to proficiency system is the cleanest and simplest way to do that.
The numbers are different and that is taking some adjustment, but higher is not objectively better or worse than lower as long as the outcomes and ranges are consistent and predictable.
As far as a lower level bonus. I don't thing PF2 needs to be trying to replicate 5e numbers. PF2 is gunning for the absolutely gonzo high fantasy that you can play from level 1 to 20 and see your characters grow exponentially more powerful as they do so.
PF2 is gunning for the absolutely gonzo high fantasy that you can play from level 1 to 20 and see your characters grow exponentially more powerful as they do so.Yes, so I would like them to crank up the gonzo while they're at it, some crazy Legendary feats/features.
Me too.
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But in 1E a level meant you had become better at some concept and brought advancement that was primarily reflective of that concept. It had flexibility which allowed customization, but the narrative which informed "you gained a level" carried a lot of weight.At lower levels this was mostly true, but PF1 falls apart at higher levels exactly because the spread between characters who have been focusing leveling up resources into one specialized category were so much better than characters of the same level who had not been. It turns high level play into a very dangerous game of roulette as far as whether you will be well prepared for what the enemy is going to throw at you.
At least + level to proficiency makes those outcomes a little more predicable for GMs and game designers.
I can agree with this.
But, I am going to play RPGs that are about storytelling. And, to me, a storytelling game must be anchored in the narrative components. I don't dispute that a lot of people expressed the concern you are stating here. But that reality doesn't change the fact that, for me, this "solution" destroys the reason for wanting a solution.
I'm swinging a stick at an orc and the biggest numerical factor in the equation has nothing to do with whether I'm good at swinging sticks. I could tell you "there are five characters in the party, we are all level 10" and you have a pretty good idea of every character's chance to hit the orc with the stick. To me the wrongness of this is plain on its face.
If you can accept that trade-off as an improvement over the problems you have now, then that is indeed good news for you.
For me it is dead in the water.
And I will continue to predict that the value of your solution will stop being a big deal to a lot of players quickly, while the fact that "I'm 10th level" tells you 50% of the math will show through more and more and fans will get bored.
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Incorrect. Pg 178. Natural 20 or succeeding by 10.I believe in PF2 a natural 20 is merely a hit, it is only a critical if you would have still hit with just your modifiers (the ghoul can never crit a 20th-level character in PF2, they can only hit them on a natural 20). The DC+10 is where most crits happen.PF2 : The ghouls roll20. Crit automatically.
It's 5% chance to took a critical hit by every Attac.
See page 292
If your enemy is far more powerful than you or a task
beyond your abilities, you might roll a natural 20 and
still get a result lower than the DC. In this case, you
succeed instead of critically succeed or fail.
This was confirmed in a post by one of the developers a while ago.
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Despite what Jason Bulhman says, only a 1/3rd of classes added their level to attacks, nobody did that to saves or AC, and while in practice it was optimal to add your level to skills... that doesn't mean everyone always did so.
Really, in Pathfinder 2, accuracy really increased by closer to 2/3rds of your level, with 1/2 BAB classes falling behind a little in accuracy while full BAB classes ended up hitting slightly more often.
* * *
This would be the kind of thing that would be a GREAT general survey question.
Does adding your level to attacks/ AC/ skills see:
* too fast
* too slow
* about right
Y'know the kind of general question that it's good to get numerical feedback on rather than just a bunch of random voices shouting on a message board.
Which makes it so weird they're focusing as much on the adventure and only getting feedback from people who have played/ run that. Hopefully they open up feedback later...
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Despite what Jason Bulhman says, only a 1/3rd of classes added their level to attacks
You are 100% right and I'm not disagreeing with you. But I think this need to go a step further.
It is misleading to look at proficiency as adding to "attacks", because the exact same abstract and arbitrary value is added to your defense.
A fighter tries to swing a stick at his wizard buddy. As they both gain levels the fighter fails to ever actually get any better at swinging a stick at his wizard buddy. Somewhere along the way he will get a +1 for moving up a Tier, and his STR will increase. But overall he fails at getting better.
I was perplexed early on when Jason made comments about fighters getting objectively worse at avoiding fireballs. Now I see why and I wish I had grasped the badness of this statement then.
To be clear, fighter GET BETTER at reflex saves in 1E. The numbers go up.
Jason's point was that when facing a foe of appropriate level, the odds of him making the save go down. THIS is true.
But if Joe the wizard is 6th level and throws fireballs at the same wall every day but never gains any levels, then Frank the fighter can go practice avoiding it and get better as he levels. Walt to wizard gains levels as he adventures with Frank. Walt gets better at magic faster than Frank gets better at avoiding. This makes sense because Walt is actively working on magic, Frank is actively working on kicking butt, not nimbly dodging fireball (thats Mack the Monk).
If Frank were to improve against Walt then that would not really mean Frank is better, it would just mean that Walt has failed to improve as a wizard.
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Level to everything is a big boost to a character's power. To add cool abilities on top of that would be too much power.Counterpoint: no it wouldn't.
The +level boost is only a boost relative to the foes you used to fight. Against the higher level foes you're likely to be facing, it's just keeping up. And high-level foes often have abilities to match; auras of death and so on.
A PC can gain enough attack bonuses to go toe to toe with high-level foes, and still get abilities with cool-sounding names. (I'll make up some, because it's fun: Reactive Interception, Whirlwind Charge, Shield-Shatter, Leg-Breaker.)
I believe that adventurers should encounter some of their old foes at higher levels. The CR system in Pathfinder 1st Edition gave us a way to do this: two creatures at CR X each count as CR X+2, three count as CR X+3, four count as CR X+4, five count as CR X+4.5, six count as CR X+5, seven count as CR X+5.5, eight count as CR X+6, and so on following the curve new CR = old CR + 2*log_2(number). I have not yet read up on the system used in the playtest.
If we don't allow encounters with previous kinds of foes, because defeating them would be too easy, we would end up with the following disbelief-breaking situation.
ROGUE: I sneak back toward the guard post, climb up the same tree as yesterday, and check whether the sentries are in place.
GM: You see two foxfolk fighters.
ROGUE: Fighters? Are they different than the foxfolk thugs we fought yesterday?
GM: Make a Society check to identify them.
ROGUE: Natural 20.
GM: Yes. You can clearly see that the foxfolk fighters carry flails and wooden shields and wear scale mail. The thugs you fought yesterday used bastard swords and leather armor. Not only is their gear better, but you heard in the taverns that such foxfolk are considered elite, essentially a level above the thugs.
ROGUE: I sneak back to the party and report this.
PALADIN: Apparently, they increased their guard after we defeated their raiding party. We had worked so hard to make sure they never caught word, but we messed up somehow. They must be on high alert.
GM: No, the sentries did not seem on high alert.
PALADIN: But yesterday the rogue spotted two foxfolk thugs on guard duty. Now they are elite foxfolk fighters. What changed?
GM: You leveled up overnight.
PALADIN: So?
GM: Foxfolk thugs are now too easy for you. So I replaced them with foxfolk fighters to keep you challenged.
WIZARD: Wait, the entire fortress of foxfolk changed because we leveled up?
GM: Yep. But you don't know this in character. This is all out of character. It is just a little messed up because you scouted the fortress yesterday before leveling, so I had to break continuity.
WIZARD: We level up and our fights don't get any easier? Stopping the raid yesterday was tough. I was knocked out and bleeding to death. I would have stayed away from the fortress except we got stronger when we leveled.
GM: You did get stronger. But so did your enemies.
PALADIN: It does not seem fair that the foxfolk get a free ride on our leveling.
CLERIC: I gained another +1 to attack, +1 to AC, +1 to saves, +1 to skills, 8 more hit points, two new spells, and the awesome Reactive Interception feat. Reggie the Wise is twice as powerful as before. The GM is right. A regular foxfolk thug would be a pushover now.
GM: I almost had to scrap the entire fortress because you leveled. Lucky for me, the foxfolk fighters are exactly one level higher than the foxfolk thugs. I had to level up the named characters late at night on workdays.
PALADIN: We could have delayed leveling to keep the adventure going.
GM: That raid was tough. You deserved the reward.
WIZARD: It doesn't feel like a reward if it doesn't make our battles any easier.
My Iron Gods campaign had a weird situation with robots. The party would run into several of the same model of robot, and then never encounter that model again because it was too low level. Supposedly the robots were scattered randomly around Numeria, but due to level-appropriate challenges, they were highly sorted by module. The writers tried to justify some of the stronger robots as the elite mechanical warriors sent out by the Technic League or Silver Mount, but that did not explain the stronger random encounters. I added extra low-level robots into scenes as workers or sentries just to keep up versimitude.
Well, if it's a "problem", should it not be fixed/solved?
Emphasis on *could*.
As a GM I don't typically scale up pre-planned encounters on the fly after handing out a level in the middle of a session.
A ogre is a very serious, if not deadly challenge at 1st level, a common foe at 3rd/4th, and a chump minion at 7th. This is very useful to us from a narrative sense as it gives characters a better understanding of their journey in the world and as a marker of their accomplishments.Which is odd as The Hook Mountain Massacre starts at level 7 and ends at level 10. So you're starting the ogre adventure when ogres are chump minions.
Having half-level to proficiency seems like ogres would still be a deadly challenge at 1st level, a common foe at 3rd/4th, and still a chump minion... just at level 10 or 11 instead.
Instead of monsters becoming obsolete after when they're 4 levels lower than you, it might be 6 or 8.
Just aesthetically I prefer a mechanical system in which no number of level 1 mooks pose any threat whatsoever to a level 20 characterEven if it is theoretically possible for 20 or 30 or 100 level 1 mooks to challenge a level 20 character... when is that likely to happen?
What GM is going to voluntarily run 20-50 individual mooks? It's not going to happen. It's a theoretical problem.
Correspondingly, I don't really want for an ancient red dragon to be the sort of thing that can be taken down by even a thousand villagers with pitchforks and crossbows- this is why they ask mighty heroes to do it.Then why doesn't every ancient dragon just steamroll over every single village with impunity knowing no one there can even slow it down?
They're geniuses. Just use a minion to send word that great heroes are needed Absalom and then just crush Magnimar. By the time the heroes get word, everyone is dead.
I forgot how to post answers in line so forgive me.
There are a few things missing here. The Ogres in "Hook Mountain Massacre" are trivial encounters by them self. However, they are not by them self, they are in groups. In fact the one encounter is 12 of them which in PF 2e is still a Severe encounter.
They would challenge the 20th level character 5% of the time, and do double damage better yet if you give them deadly weapons with reach.
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Despite what Jason Bulhman says, only a 1/3rd of classes added their level to attacks, nobody did that to saves or AC, and while in practice it was optimal to add your level to skills... that doesn't mean everyone always did so.
Really, in Pathfinder 2, accuracy really increased by closer to 2/3rds of your level, with 1/2 BAB classes falling behind a little in accuracy while full BAB classes ended up hitting slightly more often.
* * *
This would be the kind of thing that would be a GREAT general survey question.
Does adding your level to attacks/ AC/ skills see:
* too fast
* too slow
* about rightY'know the kind of general question that it's good to get numerical feedback on rather than just a bunch of random voices shouting on a message board.
Which makes it so weird they're focusing as much on the adventure and only getting feedback from people who have played/ run that. Hopefully they open up feedback later...
In PF1, 1/3 of the classes add level to their attacks, and then another 3rd got class features which let them close the gap so that they basically had their level to their attacks. Bane, judgements, studied combat, various buff spells, etc.
Your good save progressed by 12 at level 20, with a +5 cloak of resistance bringing that to 17. That 3 point gap almost certainly gets closed eventually by some combination of other items or feats or what have you. A lucky horseshoe, a sacred tattoo, iron will, an ioun stone, etc.
Your bad save didn't progress as much, but that led to undesirable outcomes at later levels as mentioned up thread.
Your skill numbers could get way higher than they could in PF2, which renders them rather irrelevant if your point is that numbers bloat is bad.
AC didn't directly scale with level, which was frankly weird because it meant you didn't get better at dodging stuff. But you got +10 from the Amulet of Natural Armor and Ring of Deflection alone. If you had a scaling dodge bonus, armor training, a shield to enhance, and/or ioun stones... I'm relatively sure you can get your AC to the same peaks, is what I'm saying.
I don't think there is any bonus in PF2 that couldn't be achieved in PF1. PF2 just makes it more evened out between characters, which makes it easier for Gmail to calibrate encounters and easier for players to avoid building weak characters who fall behind the expected math curve of either the default game or their specific party.
Level to everything is a big boost to a character's power. To add cool abilities on top of that would be too much power.Counterpoint: no it wouldn't.
The +level boost is only a boost relative to the foes you used to fight. Against the higher level foes you're likely to be facing, it's just keeping up. And high-level foes often have abilities to match; auras of death and so on.
A PC can gain enough attack bonuses to go toe to toe with high-level foes, and still get abilities with cool-sounding names. (I'll make up some, because it's fun: Reactive Interception, Whirlwind Charge, Shield-Shatter, Leg-Breaker.)
I believe that adventurers should encounter some of their old foes at higher levels. The CR system in Pathfinder 1st Edition gave us a way to do this: two creatures at CR X each count as CR X+2, three count as CR X+3, four count as CR X+4, five count as CR X+4.5, six count as CR X+5, seven count as CR X+5.5, eight count as CR X+6, and so on following the curve new CR = old CR + 2*log_2(number). I have not yet read up on the system used in the playtest.
If we don't allow encounters with previous kinds of foes, because defeating them would be too easy, we would end up with the following disbelief-breaking situation.
ROGUE: I sneak back toward the guard post, climb up the same tree as yesterday, and check whether the sentries are in place.
GM: You see two foxfolk fighters.
ROGUE: Fighters? Are they different than the foxfolk thugs we fought yesterday?
GM: Make a Society check to identify them.
ROGUE: Natural 20.
GM: Yes. You can clearly see that the foxfolk fighters carry flails and wooden shields and wear scale mail. The thugs you fought yesterday used bastard swords and leather armor. Not only is their gear better, but you heard in the taverns that such foxfolk are considered elite, essentially a level above the thugs.
ROGUE: I sneak back to the party and report this.
PALADIN: Apparently, they increased their guard after we...
This is in the bestiary under building encounters. So monsters that are Party level - 4 are 10XP each for the encounter so to get to 40 XP (Party level -0 ) you would need 4.
A ogre is a very serious, if not deadly challenge at 1st level, a common foe at 3rd/4th, and a chump minion at 7th. This is very useful to us from a narrative sense as it gives characters a better understanding of their journey in the world and as a marker of their accomplishments.Which is odd as The Hook Mountain Massacre starts at level 7 and ends at level 10. So you're starting the ogre adventure when ogres are chump minions.
Having half-level to proficiency seems like ogres would still be a deadly challenge at 1st level, a common foe at 3rd/4th, and still a chump minion... just at level 10 or 11 instead.
Instead of monsters becoming obsolete after when they're 4 levels lower than you, it might be 6 or 8.
Just aesthetically I prefer a mechanical system in which no number of level 1 mooks pose any threat whatsoever to a level 20 characterEven if it is theoretically possible for 20 or 30 or 100 level 1 mooks to challenge a level 20 character... when is that likely to happen?
What GM is going to voluntarily run 20-50 individual mooks? It's not going to happen. It's a theoretical problem.
Correspondingly, I don't really want for an ancient red dragon to be the sort of thing that can be taken down by even a thousand villagers with pitchforks and crossbows- this is why they ask mighty heroes to do it.Then why doesn't every ancient dragon just steamroll over every single village with impunity knowing no one there can even slow it down?
They're geniuses. Just use a minion to send word that great heroes are needed Absalom and then just crush Magnimar. By the time the heroes get word, everyone is dead.
I forgot how to post answers in line so forgive me.
There are a few things missing here. The Ogres in "Hook Mountain Massacre" are trivial encounters by them self. However, they are not by them self, they are in groups. In fact the one encounter...
For real, you kill something like 50 ogres by the end of that book. If that's not a trivial single enemy, I don't know what is. By comparison, you kill like 54 goblins in Burnt Offerings.
In both cases, the challenge either comes from fighting them in groups of like 10+, or specific individual monsters being tougher and/or given class levels.
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Level bonus is a great way to add a sense of progression and it's not new: in PF1 skills should be greater than your level if you want to succeed frequently. Saves and attacks, too.
Going back to dragons for a sec:
PF1 DIDN'T apply level to save DCs and AC, so some peculiarities arose. Ever notice that against an Adult Red Dragon (lvl 14), its attacks pretty much auto hit unless you pull crazy shenanigans with your AC? And that it pretty much auto-succeeds its saves except against the latest and greatest 7th level spells?Pulling the level bonus across the board is Paizo's way of keeping the progression while making defense consistent above level 12.
Feedback time: I think PF2 has made some good steps, but they way things are at, I think we're a little overbalanced into the level add side.
My wizard's touch attack at lvl 5 is +7, which is roughly coinflip compared to the TAC I can expect of ~18. Looking at the ways I can improve those odds, I can:
- Level up and get a cool +1 each level
- Level up, get expert proficiency at 12
- Level up, give my dex another boost at 10(notice how they are all acquired the same way?)
So at 12, those adds bring me up to a total of +16! Sweet! So what's TAC at that level? ~27-28. That's still coinflip, even though I've specialized in bad touch as much as I'm allowed to.
The epicness of the battle can come from the level bonuses, but the battle should still be won on incidental bonuses due to player choices, specialization, and preparation. There are too few of those at this stage, and they give too little to make a significant difference. The difficulty of every "High DC" encounter I've played so far has come down to how often we rolled above 10.
Yep, this seems to be true across the board. "Did you roll above a 10/15? Yes? You succeed." Build doesn't matter at all because everyone has about the same bonus to everything, which comes out to about a 50% chance of success. That's boring. A fighter should be hitting 75-90% of the time once they've got a couple levels under their belt.
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helps maintain the same game feelwhile I agree that PF1 was similar when it came to saves and BAB, +1/lvl to skills is so noticable different that I have to confess, that I have no idea how one could come to this conclusion. If anything, +1/lvl to skills does the exact opposite
A ogre is [...] a chump minion at 7th*looks at Hook Mountain Massacre*
This chump minions killed a third of my RotR party in a single encounternarrative reasonsNow you have my interest. what is the narrative reason for the Barbarian to gain a PhD in every field possible during a long dungeon crawl?
Hope that helps shed a bit of light on the issueTo be honest, I have more questions now than before
Two points to make here.
AN ogre is a trivial encounter to a 7th level party. 12 ogres is a Severe encounter to the same party.
The barbarian doesn't have a PhD in anything, because of the skill action gates. An 20th level untrained barbarian with a +22 in Thievery (20 for level -2 for untrained and +4 for Dex) has learned over the course of his adventures how to steal an object. However, he can't even attempt to disable a device or pick a lock. He might be able to recall knowledge how a farmer plants and harvest the fields, but unless he is trained in Lore (farming) he can't actually perform those actions.
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helps maintain the same game feelwhile I agree that PF1 was similar when it came to saves and BAB, +1/lvl to skills is so noticable different that I have to confess, that I have no idea how one could come to this conclusion. If anything, +1/lvl to skills does the exact opposite
A ogre is [...] a chump minion at 7th*looks at Hook Mountain Massacre*
This chump minions killed a third of my RotR party in a single encounternarrative reasonsNow you have my interest. what is the narrative reason for the Barbarian to gain a PhD in every field possible during a long dungeon crawl?
Hope that helps shed a bit of light on the issueTo be honest, I have more questions now than beforeTwo points to make here.
AN ogre is a trivial encounter to a 7th level party. 12 ogres is a Severe encounter to the same party.
The barbarian doesn't have a PhD in anything, because of the skill action gates. An 20th level untrained barbarian with a +22 in Thievery (20 for level -2 for untrained and +4 for Dex) has learned over the course of his adventures how to steal an object. However, he can't even attempt to disable a device or pick a lock. He might be able to recall knowledge how a farmer plants and harvest the fields, but unless he is trained in Lore (farming) he can't actually perform those actions.
4 ogres (without classes) killed 2 of the 6 players in that encounter. not 12 or 20 or 56. Four! Granted, the players didn't take the difficult terrain into account, still...
and how did the Barbarian learn to steal again? Let's say there's no rogue in the group to teach him, where did he get that knowledge? he got it purely because of the level, not because he invested anything in it or roleplayed it or watched other doing it, he just leveled up enough. You can spend a lot of energy to justify that for every skill, it still remains a very problematic mechanic the way it is now.
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The +level boost is only a boost relative to the foes you used to fight. Against the higher level foes you're likely to be facing, it's just keeping up.
If we don't allow encounters with previous kinds of foes, because defeating them would be too easy, we would end up with the following disbelief-breaking situation. ...
The exact same problem could happen in 1E
Well, if it's a "problem", should it not be fixed/solved?
Emphasis on *could*.
As a GM I don't typically scale up pre-planned encounters on the fly after handing out a level in the middle of a session.
I regularly scale up enemies on my adventure paths because my players' characters often operate a level or two above their APL due to good teamwork. But when they gain a level, I do not automatically increase the challenges. I let them have an easier victory so that they can feel their new power.
Then I lure them to tougher challenges. "You have defeated the foxfolk thugs in the fortress. But on the captain's desk you find an official dispatch about elite foxfire fighters on their way to expand the military campaign to raid the halfling villages."
The issue is railroading. The players have to accept the tougher challenge as their choice, not the choice of the GM or of the challenge system.
Another issue is variety. If my character is stronger because of a +1 to attack rolls and +1 to AC and his opponent is stronger due to the same, so we both make the same rolls, then my battles have not changed. I want leveling up to lead my character to challenges that are not only tougher, but also so different that I need to learn new tactics.
I prefer variety in battles as a GM too, because letting my players rely on the same tactics every battle leads to min-max style overspecialization. Pathfinder 2nd Edition appears to avoid overspecialization by giving boosts to everything without allowing choice ... oh, wait, this is still the railroading issue.
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The barbarian doesn't have a PhD in anything, because of the skill action gates. An 20th level untrained barbarian with a +22 in Thievery (20 for level -2 for untrained and +4 for Dex) has learned over the course of his adventures how to steal an object. However, he can't even attempt to disable a device or pick a lock. He might be able to recall knowledge how a farmer plants and harvest the fields, but unless he is trained in Lore (farming) he can't actually perform those actions.
Recalling Lore isn’t gated.
The eighth level Int 8 barbarian knows *more* than the first level wizard who is an expert in Lore.Conversely, the Str 8 eighth level wizard is better at climbing, breaking objects, swimming, and grappling than the first level barbarian.
I’ve seen that in play during my 4e and Star Wars Saga days. Unless it’s a trained skill, everyone rolls. The entire table. Because why not?
And when the variance between master and amateur is around +/-5, which is well within a single dice roll, half the time the person who succeeds at the task isn’t the person who should be the best.
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I do dislike how despite the big numbers, character's aren't really increasing their odds of success, just staying on the coin-flip treadmill. I believe PCs should get really good at their specialization, ideally fast! Don't think it's about narrative at this point, but fun.
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Don't think it's about narrative at this point, but fun.
Which truly is the point, I think.
Treadmills aren't fun for most people. I am sure there are some people out there who love them, but they are few and far between.
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I believe that adventurers should encounter some of their old foes at higher levels. The CR system in Pathfinder 1st Edition gave us a way to do this: two creatures at CR X each count as CR X+2, three count as CR X+3, four count as CR X+4, five count as CR X+4.5, six count as CR X+5, seven count as CR X+5.5, eight count as CR X+6, and so on following the curve new CR = old CR + 2*log_2(number). I have not yet read up on the system used in the playtest.Level to everything is a big boost to a character's power. To add cool abilities on top of that would be too much power.Counterpoint: no it wouldn't.
The +level boost is only a boost relative to the foes you used to fight. Against the higher level foes you're likely to be facing, it's just keeping up. And high-level foes often have abilities to match; auras of death and so on.
A PC can gain enough attack bonuses to go toe to toe with high-level foes, and still get abilities with cool-sounding names. (I'll make up some, because it's fun: Reactive Interception, Whirlwind Charge, Shield-Shatter, Leg-Breaker.)
What’s the benefit?
They’ve had that encounter before. They’ve seen those enemies and their abilities. There’s no surprises. They know the outcome, which is a foregone conclusion. It’s a repeat. Why waste 10-30 minutes on that, when you can just reduce it to a narrative description.
Especially if it was a a single level prior, and possibly only 3-4 encounters ago.
Life’s too short and there’s no enough time for gaming already. Why waste time with encounters that don’t matter, and serve no story purpose?
Yeah, after four levels it’s fun to face a hard monster that is now a mook alongside tougher foes. Or a mob of once threatening foes. But that’s weeks of play.
(And, again, that works just as well without the numbers continually going up.)
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I do dislike how despite the big numbers, character's aren't really increasing their odds of success, just staying on the coin-flip treadmill. I believe PCs should get really good at their specialization, ideally fast! Don't think it's about narrative at this point, but fun.
I always preferred “Red Queen’s Race” to treadmill. From Through the Looking Glass:
Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"