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It seems to me that monsters in general are calibrated to be hit-able by an optimized fighter about 65%-55% of the time and hit-able to other optimized classes about 50%-35% of the time. Have other people noticed this? Has anyone done the spreadsheet work yet?
To me, this is a pretty sorry state of affairs. Missing on your first and best attack feels bad. Moreover, having all attacks having a high fail rate makes the game less tactically interesting as that level of uncertainty limits the amount you can plan ahead. It also makes the game really swingy in general.
I would much prefer it if all attacks were generally more accurate and monsters and players just had more health.
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Yes, I agree with your numbers. Saves are similarly dire for spellcasters. They want battles to go on for a while, because it takes a while to consistently land blows and meaningful spell effects.
This reddit post has some related charts.
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Yes, I agree with your numbers. Saves are similarly dire for spellcasters. They want battles to go on for a while, because it takes a while to consistently land blows and meaningful spell effects.
This reddit post has some related charts.
That chart for martial efficacy is just plain sad. You're literally getting worse as you level up if that is accurate.
I've done the spreadsheet work for martial class accuracy as well. Almost all classes have about a 55% accuracy rate against enemies of the same level as themselves when their build is optimized, and they similarly have AC when optimized such that enemies of the same level have about a 55% chance to hit them.
This is actually an inevitable requirement of the new system. Why? It's because of the new critical thresholds. +10 being a crit success and -10 being a crit failure means that as a base line, both enemies and players should be around 50% chance to succeed or fail in order to avoid an excessive number of either crit failures or crit successes on either side.
Its not out of the question that they could have balanced around the primary attack critting 30-40% of the time against a same level enemy, but the consequences of this kind of balance would be quite significant (enemies with much larger HP pools, perhaps?)
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I would in fact rather they balance around first attack actually having a decent chance to crit. But except for rare HP sponges like ogres, dragons and suchlike, that balance should be more inclined to accepting enemies are more fragile and hitting a sweet spot of sustainably running more monsters per encounter without bogging down play. More enemies that are more fragile give plenty of builds more fun options.
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Yes, I agree with your numbers. Saves are similarly dire for spellcasters. They want battles to go on for a while, because it takes a while to consistently land blows and meaningful spell effects.
This reddit post has some related charts.
Thanks for the link. I somewhat agree with Shadrayl's sentiments if those numbers are indeed well derived. I will note however that for fighters at least, things like assured strike might mean that fighters don't ultimately feel worse off at higher levels than when they had higher base accuracy.
I really would like to hear from the designers as to why they calibrated the game's math as they did.
Would higher HP pools (as opposed to lower accuracy) just make the math too hard?
Is the high failure rate meant to force you to play more tactically and get bonuses/flanking whenever possible?
Do they worry about scenarios where players stack mechanics in unexpected ways and just made everyone inaccurate as an adjustment against eventual mechanical interactions?
Do they want the fights to be swingy and thus more "dramatic"?
About your spell save discussion:
On some level, I am okay with spells targeting low saves to have an enemy save rate of around 40%/45% if most spells are designed around effects on a miss. A lot of control spells have no effects on a miss, though. Really, the value of that sure-fire-damage under a low-accuracy-attack-regime is enough to justify spending spells on blasting (especially when control spells seem disproportionately likely to have 0 effect on a successful save). If all the designers wanted to do was make sure-fire options more attractive though, they could have just increased the amount of damage those options do on a miss, of course.
Fortunately the GM can adjust these stats incredibly easily to suit the desired play style of their game.
I actually think missing is a good thing. But that is certainly personal preference.
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I would in fact rather they balance around first attack actually having a decent chance to crit. But except for rare HP sponges like ogres, dragons and suchlike, that balance should be more inclined to accepting enemies are more fragile and hitting a sweet spot of sustain-ably running more monsters per encounter without bogging down play. More enemies that are more fragile give plenty of builds more fun options.
Same here. I'd like to see something like 15% crit rate against even enemies, so that we're not constantly struggling to hit boss monsters. I and many I know will run into strings where we can't roll above a 10 to save our lives- it will make for a really frustrating game if that means you get to spend the whole night achieving absolutely nothing. In PF1, it wasn't uncommon to reach the point where your 1st attack still hits on a 2. That's a godsend for people like me.
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That chart for martial efficacy is just plain sad. You're literally getting worse as you level up if that is accurate.Yes, I agree with your numbers. Saves are similarly dire for spellcasters. They want battles to go on for a while, because it takes a while to consistently land blows and meaningful spell effects.
This reddit post has some related charts.
It doesn't include proficiency boosts (for those classes that get them), the ease of imposing flat footed after a while, and conditional bonuses from stuff like a Bard's Inspire Courage/Heroics. So Fighters are going to do better. Casters (especially Wizards and Sorcerers), however, are going to do worse because they won't have a maxed out attack stat.
Of interest to people worrying about accuracy: The accuracy of the first attack a character makes each round against an equal level enemy is roughly 50-60% depending on class. This assumes you start with an 18 in your attacking stat (or 16 in dex if you're a spellcaster targeting TAC), bump up that stat at every opportunity, and obtain updated item bonuses at 4th level and every 4 levels afterward.
What it doesn't consider is the increasing ubiquity of buffs and debuffs as characters rise in level. A mid level fighter for example hands out flat-footed like candy, usually making enemies flat footed even on a miss. Furthermore, by max level the heroism buff is granting a +3 conditional to attack rolls for every party member.
I think a well oiled Lvl10+ party will be critting quite frequently on primary attacks, especially at even higher levels, up to 30-35% chance depending on the buffs/debuffs involved.
Although enemy saves start eclipsing caster DCs, a caster built for delivering ranged attack rolls (starting w/ 16 DEX and maxing it, spell dueling wand to get item bonuses, casting true strike with your 3rd action each round) benefits from all the aforementioned buffs and debuffs and therefore ends up with exceptional accuracy vs. TAC. They can reach what is effectively 95% hit rate, 65% crit rate by leveraging true strike.
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I've done the spreadsheet work for martial class accuracy as well. Almost all classes have about a 55% accuracy rate against enemies of the same level as themselves when their build is optimized, and they similarly have AC when optimized such that enemies of the same level have about a 55% chance to hit them.
This is actually an inevitable requirement of the new system. Why? It's because of the new critical thresholds. +10 being a crit success and -10 being a crit failure means that as a base line, both enemies and players should be around 50% chance to succeed or fail in order to avoid an excessive number of either crit failures or crit successes on either side.
Its not out of the question that they could have balanced around the primary attack critting 30-40% of the time against a same level enemy, but the consequences of this kind of balance would be quite significant (enemies with much larger HP pools, perhaps?)
I disagree with your assessment that low accuracy must necessarily be the regime. When I was learning about the new crit system, I was thinking that an optimized fighter's first iterative attack would hit about 75% of the time (w/ 25% crit rates) and while monsters see an increase to their HP (as fuzzypaws alluded to).
I think you might be right for saves though: I think good saves should succeed around 60/65% of the time while bad saves should succeed around 35/40% of the time.
Of interest to people worrying about accuracy: The accuracy of the first attack a character makes each round against an equal level enemy is roughly 50-60% depending on class. This assumes you start with an 18 in your attacking stat (or 16 in dex if you're a spellcaster targeting TAC), bump up that stat at every opportunity, and obtain updated item bonuses at 4th level and every 4 levels afterward.
What it doesn't consider is the increasing ubiquity of buffs and debuffs as characters rise in level. A mid level fighter for example hands out flat-footed like candy, usually making enemies flat footed even on a miss. Furthermore, by max level the heroism buff is granting a +3 conditional to attack rolls for every party member.
I think a well oiled Lvl10+ party will be critting quite frequently on primary attacks, especially at even higher levels, up to 30-35% chance depending on the buffs/debuffs involved.
If the link in the first reply is to be believed, It seems as though enemy ACs inflate at higher levels to adjust for the increasing ubiquity of buffs.
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Furthermore, by max level the heroism buff is granting a +3 conditional to attack rolls for every party member.
One party member per 8th level spell slot. There is no multi target version.
Although enemy saves start eclipsing caster DCs, a caster built for delivering ranged attack rolls (starting w/ 16 DEX and maxing it, spell dueling wand to get item bonuses, casting true strike with your 3rd action each round) benefits from all the aforementioned buffs and debuffs and therefore ends up with exceptional accuracy vs. TAC. They can reach what is effectively 95% hit rate, 65% crit rate by leveraging true strike.
Let's take a maxed out 20th level (easy to calculate, and the designers consistently keep the same progression up and down the level curve) Wizard.
+20 level
+5 Dex (generous by 1 point)
+3 Proficiency
+4 item
+3 conditional (Heroism or max Inspire Heroics from an ally, generous)
+2 flat footed
+37 total
Level 20 TAC ranges from 40-42, so a to hit of 80-90%, 30-40% crit, with true strike you have 96-99% chance to hit, 51-64% to hit.
But if your Dex is only 18 and you don't have a Heroism or Bard buff (you can't do this yourself) you're looking at +33 bonus, 60-70% to hit, 10-20% to crit, true strike takes you to 84-91% to hit, 19-36% chance to crit.
If you take away flat footed, which also will generally require some allied assistance, you're down to a +31 bonus, 50-60% to hit, 5-10% crit, true strike gives you a 75-84% to hit, 7.75-19% chance to crit.
So with some help and intense resource expenditures (attribute and gold/magic item level) you can have a very good chance, but as soon as that falls off your chances of crits plunge. And given that the best ranged touch spells require Fortitude saves, which these enemies are very good at, you really want and need those crits.
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To me, this is a pretty sorry state of affairs. Missing on your first and best attack feels bad. Moreover, having all attacks having a high fail rate makes the game less tactically interesting as that level of uncertainty limits the amount you can plan ahead. It also makes the game really swingy in general.
65% is pretty high. And you get more than one attack. If you've playtested, you know that you do a fair bit of damage.
My combats have all lasted only 1-3 rounds tops, just like PF1. How fast do you want combat to be?
If you increased accuracy beyond 65%, the game would definitely feel like rocket tag. Whoever goes first would win. With monster accuracy being so high, it's already feels a little bit like that.
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The advantage of being able to hit only 40-60% of the time is that it means that defensive and offensive tactics become viable.
If you hit 95% of the time on your first strike, then actions like raise shield drop this to 85%. That only mitigates 11% of the damage for the first. Totally not worth it.
But if you have a only 50% chance to hit, then it will drop that to 40%.
It now mitigates 25%. This is much more worth it.
Similarly, you really want to be getting into position to flank to boost it up again. Or getting that bless or bard song.
A lot of these options are useless if you have a 95% chance to hit with your first attack. It also means that crits become very common. I think crits are more exciting if they only happen 5-15% of the time.
Randomness also makes the game more exciting. With unexpected rolls, a straightforward encounter can turn into edge of your seat action.
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If you increased accuracy beyond 65%, the game would definitely feel like rocket tag. Whoever goes first would win. With monster accuracy being so high, it's already feels a little bit like that.
From my experience, right now it feels like it more than a little bit at least when the monsters get to go. Not so much for the PC's turn.
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I've done a couple math threads and participated in a few more and I can attest that the figures in the OP are more or less correct.
The game is designed around 'full martial' characters having around 15-20% crit chance for their entire career. When you do the math on what this means for attacks after your primary, then you find out real quick that you cannot crit with any attacks that do not take a MAP, by the design of the game.
This is especially distressing when we were sold the idea that martial builds would be taking advantage of the +/-10 crit system more advantageously and that feats like Power Attack needed to be designed the way they are in order to facilitate that. The Ranger's Hunt Target ability is pretty much useless unless you're negating a crit fail, as both it and Agile Grace allow your secondary attacks to function at a -3 to hit rather than -5. Even in this margin your chance to crit will never exceed 10% (of which 5% comes from a nat 20 anyway).
It gets even worse on action taxes that remove your ability to make additional attacks in exchange for minute damage buffs on singular attacks, with abilities like Blade of Justice.
In simple terms, you have to compare the weight of each attack and when you do, you're comparing the odds of landing a crit (20%) with the odds of landing a secondary attack (40% given the crit ratio) and a betting man is going to take 40% chance to land two hits over 15% chance to land one crit almost 100% of the time. In order for these action trades to be worth the resource expenditure, you'll need around a +3 bonus on such attacks to toggle the crit ratio in such a way that you don;t feel like you're missing out because of the game's design.
But all is not lost!!!! In searching for a mathematical solution to this dilemma, I discovered that the ability scores are inherently balanced in that your secondary stats will always be somewhere between +2 and +5 for the course of the entire game. It is my belief that already having such parameters on the ability scores expands their utility as far as game design goes and classes can use this as a balancing factor when designing abilities which tax the player actions and cost them the chance to make another attack. If for instance, Rage didn't last x rounds, but rather the damage and saves from rage came online as a result of spending an action every turn, and that action was worth it by adding CON to hit/damage it would be worth it for the characters, and it would reduce the need for tracking daily resources as the abilities themselves would be balanced around the action system itself. Of course, each ability should have its own utility and flavor, but the balancing factor is already deeply ingrained in the mathematical design of the game and it would be a huge quality of life improvement for classes to be able to validate their choice in playing a martial class, because otherwise it's gonna end up being bards with fighter dedication all day every day for martial builds.
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I actually like this new system a lot. It makes tactics and party cohesion very important for taking down threats. In so many groups I've been in its been 4 people not helping each other in a battle against monsters. Now it's almost impossible for a single character to take down a monster at his level in 2 or 3 rounds with significant prep and equipment.
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Also Feint is really important, I'll expect a lot of people will want to get good with it.
Great thread, and indeed it seems Fighter is aorund those ranges. How do non-fighters keep up? I believe they'll be -1 or -2 to-hit compared to Fighter for pretty much the entire game, and these are very critical +1s because it often means the difference betwen 5% and 10% crit.
Also it seems odd that monsters have lower AC but higher Attack than the Martial PCs, I guess this is to improve lethality because they noticed this problem and what we currently see is the "fixed" version?
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Someone did all the math for us.
Man, I wish this had been out on Tuesday so I wouldn't have spent all night creating these very same spreadsheets. At least this now I don't have to figure out how I want to post everything online. Or have to go back and double check everything. Those numbers are a hair different than what I came up with though. I wonder if they omitted oozes, seeing how a single ooze per level can drop the average AC by a few points. Or maybe for those level they went with the median. Overall looks pretty good.
Someone did all the math for us.Man, I wish this had been out on Tuesday so I wouldn't have spent all night creating these very same spreadsheets. At least this now I don't have to figure out how I want to post everything online. Or have to go back and double check everything. Those numbers are a hair different than what I came up with though. I wonder if they omitted oozes, seeing how a single ooze per level can drop the average AC by a few points. Or maybe for those level they went with the median. Overall looks pretty good.
Mode seems more reliable given the homogeneity of the book's AC values.
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Mode seems more reliable given the homogeneity of the book's AC values.Someone did all the math for us.Man, I wish this had been out on Tuesday so I wouldn't have spent all night creating these very same spreadsheets. At least this now I don't have to figure out how I want to post everything online. Or have to go back and double check everything. Those numbers are a hair different than what I came up with though. I wonder if they omitted oozes, seeing how a single ooze per level can drop the average AC by a few points. Or maybe for those level they went with the median. Overall looks pretty good.
I don't think it's mode, as mode would make level 0 fort save either 4 or 0, and reflex 4. Actually, checking back, they even mention their sample size is 110 monsters, where there should be over 200 in the bestiary, so it's probably just a little off due to sample size.
To me, this is a pretty sorry state of affairs. Missing on your first and best attack feels bad. Moreover, having all attacks having a high fail rate makes the game less tactically interesting as that level of uncertainty limits the amount you can plan ahead. It also makes the game really swingy in general.65% is pretty high. And you get more than one attack. If you've playtested, you know that you do a fair bit of damage.
My combats have all lasted only 1-3 rounds tops, just like PF1. How fast do you want combat to be?
If you increased accuracy beyond 65%, the game would definitely feel like rocket tag. Whoever goes first would win. With monster accuracy being so high, it's already feels a little bit like that.
I want fights to last the same number of rounds, my dude. If accuracy goes up then HP should go up as well. I have been pretty clear about this.
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With buffs, flanking and other situation modifiers, hit rate (and crit rate, predictably) is typically higher. The charts do not really reflect what happens in playtesting.
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hitting stuff is fun,
missing is not so fun,
I would rather have 60% hit rate and 30HP monster than 40%hit rate and 20HP monster.
The fight on average will last the same number of attacks/rounds but you will have a feeling that you did more every round
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I think that the problemisn't the chance of hitting or getting a critical, but that you are looking that table with the eyes of a 3 ed. D&D/Pathfinder 1 player.
With that I mean that you epect figths with 1-2 same CR or higher CR monster, not with weaker and more numerosu monsters.
In that situation your hit/crit chance is relatively low.
But in earlier versions of the game fights with large number of weaker enemies where relatvely common and in that kind of encounter you have a clear advantage and good chances of getting critical hits and critical spell failure saves.
I think that Paizo is going for a paradigm change, aiming to making encounters with largerr numbers of weaker enemies more common.
Personally I would like that kind of change.
hitting stuff is fun,
missing is not so fun,I would rather have 60% hit rate and 30HP monster than 40%hit rate and 20HP monster.
The fight on average will last the same number of attacks/rounds but you will have a feeling that you did more every round
60% hit rate = 70% of average damage on one attack, 110% with 2 attacks, 125% with 3.
40% hit rate = 45% of average damage with one attack, 65% with 2, 75% with 3.I think you'd have to increase hp by a little more than the ratio to hit increases by, to account for the extra attacks.
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I don't want to discourage people doing math, but wow this just seems like one of those things you need to playtest and see how it feels...
I like that the 1st attack has a decent chance to hit, and the subsequent attacks don't. It makes choices of tactics such as feint and buffs and agile weapons more valuable.
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Back when I was very much into MMOs, more than a decade ago (ouch!), I read a very interesting article on how thorougly the major MMO companies researched what in-game-probabilities gave the optimal player retention.
That they optimize their loot drop rates to be as addictive as possible was well known, but what struck me then and stuck in my memory was the assymmetry of to-hit success rates for player and monster powers in their findings, as the naive assumption would be that 50-50 was the most exciting.
As I recall it, their optimal success rates for maximum player satisfaction were something like this:
Player character attacks on monsters: 75% success.
Monster attacks on player characters: 30% success.I've often wished that I could find that article again. :)
MMO and tabletops are different beasts, but probably it is true that even in TT a player that misses 50% of the time feel he is unlucky or doing something wrong.
But, as I said above, the 50-50 chance is when you fight monster with a monster level on par with yours. When you fight monsters with a lower monster level than your character level the hit chance increases rapidly.The effect, I think, is that you will feel as the Hero of the tale, mowing down mobs by the dozen and boss fights will feel like boss fight, not as rocket-tag.
YMMV
It also seems like this could be handled naturally by the fact that in pure numbers, most monster you fight will be below your level, since you can fight more monster that are lower than your level at once than you can higher than your level.
If a dungeon ends up throwing 2x as many monsters <level, then the party will get a lot of opportunities to utilize iterative attacks and make their critical hits, but boss fights are going to need some tucked away magic missiles and attacks that target bad defenses. I am ok with this. Boss fights are pretty anti-climatic when the party figures out how to knock the boss prone and then pile on 3-5 hits per character, killing them in a round or two.
There are a few good at will condition inflicting abilities out there that should make those percentages jump into acceptable range. Just make sure you have a shatter defenses fighter in the group and you're good to go. If you can manage a bard and a paladin as well, then I think you're going to do alright. I'm not sure about the other classes though.
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I don't want to discourage people doing math, but wow this just seems like one of those things you need to playtest and see how it feels...
I like that the 1st attack has a decent chance to hit, and the subsequent attacks don't. It makes choices of tactics such as feint and buffs and agile weapons more valuable.
I don't know why many people have some knee jerk reaction to blanch when RPG math is presented, almost as if they wish they hadn't been shown.
Math is not really arguable or subjective in the same manner as "how it feels" and it is very good to know the hard numbers underlying the system.
The mass of playtest results is where Paizo can get a good idea of "how it feels" overall to the player base, this is not something you or I, or any group that doesn't number in the thousands, can do. What we can do is break down the numbers, compare those numbers to our anecdotal playing experiences, and then make suggestions as to how we think the system could be improved by adjusting the math.
I don't want to discourage people doing math, but wow this just seems like one of those things you need to playtest and see how it feels...
I like that the 1st attack has a decent chance to hit, and the subsequent attacks don't. It makes choices of tactics such as feint and buffs and agile weapons more valuable.
I don't know why many people have some knee jerk reaction to blanch when RPG math is presented, almost as if they wish they hadn't been shown.
Math is not really arguable or subjective in the same manner as "how it feels" and it is very good to know the hard numbers underlying the system.
The mass of playtest results is where Paizo can get a good idea of "how it feels" overall to the player base, this is not something you or I, or any group that doesn't number in the thousands, can do. What we can do is break down the numbers, compare those numbers to our anecdotal playing experiences, and then make suggestions as to how we think the system could be improved by adjusting the math.
This is true but it can also be misleading. How often will my enemy be flat-footed? How often am I actually encountering enemies of equal level vs. Multiple enemies of a lower level? How useful is an Attack of Opportunity? How often will I as a player use a consumable item that could give me a significant advantage in one combat, but has a hefty material cost?
These are all questions where math can create some models for comparison, and provide some ideas for us, but they also depend a lot on the interaction of individual players and GMs and are difficult to predict. It is thus useful to speculate with math, but also test in the playing environments you actually encounter to see if those models hold wait or are missing factors that are difficult to see outside of actual game play. The number of wildly hyperbolic scenarios being present in analysis of game mechanics make it clear that a lot of people are trying to evaluate parts of this system in isolation from balancing factors that the developers have already considered.
Don't forget that feint might be something that creeps into everyone's games.
I don't want to discourage people doing math, but wow this just seems like one of those things you need to playtest and see how it feels...
I like that the 1st attack has a decent chance to hit, and the subsequent attacks don't. It makes choices of tactics such as feint and buffs and agile weapons more valuable.
I don't know why many people have some knee jerk reaction to blanch when RPG math is presented, almost as if they wish they hadn't been shown.
Math is not really arguable or subjective in the same manner as "how it feels" and it is very good to know the hard numbers underlying the system.
The mass of playtest results is where Paizo can get a good idea of "how it feels" overall to the player base, this is not something you or I, or any group that doesn't number in the thousands, can do. What we can do is break down the numbers, compare those numbers to our anecdotal playing experiences, and then make suggestions as to how we think the system could be improved by adjusting the math.
This is true but it can also be misleading. How often will my enemy be flat-footed? How often am I actually encountering enemies of equal level vs. Multiple enemies of a lower level? How useful is an Attack of Opportunity? How often will I as a player use a consumable item that could give me a significant advantage in one combat, but has a hefty material cost?
These are all questions where math can create some models for comparison, and provide some ideas for us, but they also depend a lot on the interaction of individual players and GMs and are difficult to predict. It is thus useful to speculate with math, but also test in the playing environments you actually encounter to see if those models hold wait or are missing factors that are difficult to see outside of actual game play. The number of wildly hyperbolic scenarios being present in analysis of game mechanics make it clear that a lot of people are trying to evaluate parts of this system in...
Sure, but the math is what gives us the ability to compare to being with, and without knowing the base math, you can't truly measure the effects the variables you listed are having.
There are assuredly uses for both qualitative and quantitative assessment, but when it comes down to brass tacks (and compliance with industry regulations, in other businesses) quantitative is preferable.
For example, if designers/players don't have the numbers worked out for the base expectations for how things should scale, then when/if players report back to developers that AOOs are too powerful (or too weak), then devs are making a guess as to how to tune them to be in line with expectations without making them too powerful. With the math in place and planned for, it can be possible to pinpoint exactly what mechanical tweaks to make.
We have had systems in the past where all tuning was done by feeling, and things swung wildly in power levels. Older D&D editions often had no rhyme or reason for how their mechanics were tuned, and it showed.
We have also had systems where things were tuned strictly by the numbers, and judging from the lack of success for 4E, ignoring the qualitative side of things is bad as well.
Ugh, I've typed too much and had too many interruptions. My point was that you need both numbers and feelings to effectively design a successful TTRPG game, and I don't understand when people have an immediate negative reaction whenever system fluff is stripped away and the underlying math is exposed.
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I want fights to last the same number of rounds, my dude. If accuracy goes up then HP should go up as well. I have been pretty clear about this.To me, this is a pretty sorry state of affairs. Missing on your first and best attack feels bad. Moreover, having all attacks having a high fail rate makes the game less tactically interesting as that level of uncertainty limits the amount you can plan ahead. It also makes the game really swingy in general.65% is pretty high. And you get more than one attack. If you've playtested, you know that you do a fair bit of damage.
My combats have all lasted only 1-3 rounds tops, just like PF1. How fast do you want combat to be?
If you increased accuracy beyond 65%, the game would definitely feel like rocket tag. Whoever goes first would win. With monster accuracy being so high, it's already feels a little bit like that.
Damage currency is definitely something that merits looking into. This is something I've been afraid of since the blog era, as damage is really swingy given the huge curves of math that damage now contends with. You could end up with crits doing less damage than regular hits now, which was really rare in PF1.
My playtest showed that HP may need work, as most if not all goblins died in one hit. This may be intentional though.
Monster design seems to be informed by developers metagame knowledge, rather than a simulationist approach. This makes the enemies much easier to run, given you no longer need to calc in HD for things like DCs, HP, feats, and such. However their numbers feel arbitrarily gamey in how high attack rolls feel compared to PCs.
A little push back might do the game some good.
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I don't think feint is going to turn up too much. Since it just applies flat footed and has a chance of failing or backfiring, its less useful than flanking. It's a pretty good opener if you're skilled with it and flanking isn't an option though. Feint not having the attack trait does make it pretty nice provided you can afford enough of a charisma and proficiency investment to keep it from being too risky. There are quite a few ways to create the flat footed condition though, so its not without competition.
But, as I said above, the 50-50 chance is when you fight monster with a monster level on par with yours. When you fight monsters with a lower monster level than your character level the hit chance increases rapidly.
The effect, I think, is that you will feel as the Hero of the tale, mowing down mobs by the dozen and boss fights will feel like boss fight, not as rocket-tag.
How low-level are 'mobs' going to be? If 50% is the baseline, and the mooks are 5 levels below the PC, there's still about a 25% chance of missing on the first attack, and it'll be worse on the second and third. Mowing them down by the dozen will take quite a while at that rate.
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How low-level are 'mobs' going to be? If 50% is the baseline, and the mooks are 5 levels below the PC, there's still about a 25% chance of missing on the first attack, and it'll be worse on the second and third. Mowing them down by the dozen will take quite a while at that rate.But, as I said above, the 50-50 chance is when you fight monster with a monster level on par with yours. When you fight monsters with a lower monster level than your character level the hit chance increases rapidly.
The effect, I think, is that you will feel as the Hero of the tale, mowing down mobs by the dozen and boss fights will feel like boss fight, not as rocket-tag.
I think the troop subtype of enemies replacing mobs could solve this issue.
Can we get a full book on monster advancement? Give us a full set of rules for creating and advancing monsters, the multiclassing rules seem especially tailored for being able to snag them and apply them to monsters for added features.
Instead of using parallel rules for monster advancement, give them their own rules and let us do it. If the math is intended in such a way that the tactics of the game remain the same but the numbers inflate, then an advancement mechanic may be better.
I'm not opposed to a whole section of the bestiary providing such rules to make DMs lives easier.
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Porbably shouldn't complain about the math too much since this edition can probably be nicknamed "Mathfinder RPG", and the developers probably already have all those spreadsheets and dozens more, which they used as the abse to design the game with. The only one they probably didn't make was one for Power Attack calcs, to be honest.
The bestiary, specially, was made pretty much based on spreadsheets with almost no attention going to the actual monster physiology and such. (Numbers-wise at least. They mostly have well-designed abilities).
So whatever numbers we're seeing, unless we're missing something, are exactly the intended ones, maybe +/- 1 as I've heard Mark seifter said the levels where you gain proficiency changed around post-bestiary.
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Porbably shouldn't complain about the math too much since this edition can probably be nicknamed "Mathfinder RPG", and the developers probably already have all those spreadsheets and dozens more, which they used as the abse to design the game with. The only one they probably didn't make was one for Power Attack calcs, to be honest.
The bestiary, specially, was made pretty much based on spreadsheets with almost no attention going to the actual monster physiology and such. (Numbers-wise at least. They mostly have well-designed abilities).
So whatever numbers we're seeing, unless we're missing something, are exactly the intended ones, maybe +/- 1 as I've heard Mark seifter said the levels where you gain proficiency changed around post-bestiary.
Whitch is the reason I find this all the more terrifying.
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Porbably shouldn't complain about the math too much since this edition can probably be nicknamed "Mathfinder RPG", and the developers probably already have all those spreadsheets and dozens more, which they used as the abse to design the game with. The only one they probably didn't make was one for Power Attack calcs, to be honest.
The bestiary, specially, was made pretty much based on spreadsheets with almost no attention going to the actual monster physiology and such. (Numbers-wise at least. They mostly have well-designed abilities).
So whatever numbers we're seeing, unless we're missing something, are exactly the intended ones, maybe +/- 1 as I've heard Mark seifter said the levels where you gain proficiency changed around post-bestiary.
We actually had this discussion with Mark, and it turns out they did do the math, but did so separately from other mechanics so the ratios of the averages were off. Now that we have the full book of the play test, a lot of our fears were confirmed.
Honestly, our DPR calcs may not be as reliable as we want considering how often we can actually expect certain results compared to the average, and the more dice you roll, the greater that range grows. Since the game was designed around the assumption of the average on damage, it created scenarios where feats and actions were compared to each other, but not balanced by the game system itself. Hence Power Attack is a decrease in efficiency, and Double Slice is an increase in efficiency, but the weight of crits was calced in at a static rate which isn't the case with having multiple d20 rolls.
The rate of critical hits is the biggest hurdle to establishing a better mathematical balance, seeing as a lot of the math already deals with huge spreads. It also has to contend with the action system.
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I do Agree that offensive Casters are very hampered in this edition, with little ways to make their spells more reliable. TAC is extremely high most of the time, around AC-1 or -2, almost making the stat pointless. And even after Save or Dies were nerfed, it's almost impossible to Crit on a spell.
Think spell success rate should balanced just like Fighter attacks are, as far as success % and then should be BETTER if you discover and target the weak save since spells are in such short supply and at least you reward the good strategy.