Automatically confirmed critical hits, expanded critical ranges, and crit-fishable multiple attacks for all creatures add up to combat being too luck-based and Russian-Roulette-like


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Thus far, I have run two iterations of The Lost Star, two iterations of In Pale Mountain's Shadow, and two iterations of The Rose Street Revenge. I have observed that combat is simply way, way too luck-based and Russian-roulette-like. Combat hardly ever feels like two sides trying to tactically position themselves and gain an advantage over each other. Instead, it feels more like two sides rolling the dice and trying to hit the metaphorical jackpot.

I think that this is a result of three factors: automatically confirmed critical hits, expanded critical ranges, and crit-fishable multiple attacks for all creatures by default. Pathfinder 2e has all of these, in contrast to, for example, Starfinder, which has the automatically confirmed critical hits, but no easy expanded critical ranges and significantly less convenient multiple attacks.

The result is that combats are a chaotic mess of combatants flailing around like crazy and trying to strike gold with a critical hit, which does not feel very tactical. It places too much emphasis on lucking out with a critical hit.

It certainly does not help that a PC being dropped to 0 Hit Points by a critical hit is especially punishing under the new dying rules, which deny even more actions to those PCs put down by a critical hit. In all of my sessions, more than half of the times a PC has been dropped to 0 Hit Points has been caused by a critical hit, which is very worrying.

This is further exacerbated by the tendency of low-level mook monsters to carry weapons that are exceptionally lethal on a critical hit. A 0th-level goblin warrior's shortbow deals a measly 1d6 (average 3.5) damage on a regular hit, but 2d6+1d10 (average 12.5) damage on a critical hit, and the goblin can crit-fish with that up to thrice per round. A 0th-level kobold warrior's light pick deals 1d4-1+1d4 (average 4) damage on a regular hit with Sneak Attack, but that skyrockets to 3d8-2+2d4 (average 16.5) damage on a critical hit with Sneak Attack. I have personally seen a 0th-level kobold warrior get lucky with attack and damage rolls and bring down a barbarian at 25 hit points and 2 temporary hit points with a regular hit and a critical hit in a single turn.

To be clear, any RPG with randomization will have luck-based combat, but good RPG design can fine-tune just how much of an impact luck has. Pathfinder 2e's design makes luck feel all-important, due to the prevalence of automatically confirmed critical hits, expanded critical ranges, and crit-fishable multiple attacks for all creatures.

Thus far, all six of my playthroughs have ended in TPKs for all six parties involved, mostly due to how luck-based the combat is.


I agree that luck plays a big role in PF2. The 3rd Attack oftentimes is a Hail Mary for a crit or bust, and crits being a minimum 5% is a bit much.

If you hit on a 10, each +1 bonus to your attack roll correlates to a 5% increase in your crit rate. Crits become too common and play a significant part in DPR calculations.

To avoid this problem of crit saturation, an easy way is to switch to rolling 2d10s for checks. The average is slightly higher (11 vs 10.5) but the chance of extremes is lower and the distribution is smaller.

Using 2d10s, a nat 20 occurs only 1% of the time. A nat 19 occurs 2% of the time, nat 18 occurs 3% of the time, and so on. Thus, when your crit rate goes up, it becomes 1%/3%/6%/10%/15% instead of 5/10/15/20/25%.


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I have to agree. Having played The Lost Star a few times (I have a write up on the relevant forum), me and my players have all noticed the extreme lethality the palyers are subjected to. Not in a fun way, as other systems may have, but in an extremely frustrating way. Death and Dying rules continue to be too punitive (although, to be fair, in a better state than before). Mobs crit way too often, at least partly because of their inflated statuses (+6 to hit at the very minimum), and their average damage is too high for PCs. This leads to the dreaded 5-minute adventuring day, as our group could handle 2-3 encounters a day before exhausting their resources.

Me and my players, analysing this, think that the core problem may be the 4-degress of success and +10/-10 crit paradigm. Further playtesting may or may not confirm our suspicions, but our preliminary conclusion is that with increased threat ranges intrinsicaly tied to attack bonuses/AC, the system as it's written right now, have a very small window where the math may actually work (i.e: equal or just +1/-1 level above or below the party level). Up the challlenge a little more, the PCs suffer a PTK. lower the Challenge, it's a cakewalk. And that's even considering the monsters are undertuned in the final version.


One thing you may have missed: the third attack might not crit even on a 20. A 20 is always a hit, but only a crit if the numerical result would still be a hit. In example format: if a third attack against AC 18 at -3 total[+7-10 for second multiple attack penalty] rolls a 20, it's only a regular hit, not a crit.


Scythia wrote:
One thing you may have missed: the third attack might not crit even on a 20. A 20 is always a hit, but only a crit if the numerical result would still be a hit. In example format: if a third attack against AC 18 at -3 total[+7-10 for second multiple attack penalty] rolls a 20, it's only a regular hit, not a crit.

Here, we have the game unable to decide on a core mechanic again, because page 178 says, "When you make an attack and roll a natural 20 (the number on the die is 20), or if the result of your attack exceeds the target’s AC by 10, this is called a critical success (also known as a critical hit)."


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From what I see, after reading other peoples game play and running sessions of my own, the game actually encourages tactics more heavily than before because of the possible lethality. In P1E you could very easily just waltz into most situations and as long as you had a heavy hitter, a healer and a caster you were good. Tactic's weren't even needed. Flanking wasn't needed. Party cohesion wasn't needed. Did it help? Certainly. But it wasn't required. It could easily be 4 people fighting in a room at the same time and not 4 people who had to work together to succeed.

In this edition being smart, fighting smart, and being tactical is SUPER important, ESPECIALLY at low levels, cause one bad roll could be the spiral of your downfall.

For instance a lot of playtests, where people talked about TPKs, the players just sat there and took their licks. Why? If the main Goblin room had two of the players get crit why didn't they all retreat? Why didn't they hide behind cover to raise their AC? Or if the players got the drop on the Goblins why didn't they try and set a trap? So many options instead of just hang out and get attacked. Why is this? I think it's because in the old editon that wasn't needed. You were able to just walk up to the threat and take it out. For this one they streamlined character creation and optimization but combat is much more tactical.

Like for my players we took two sessions to get through Lost Star. In the first one they played it like the old edition. Just walking into rooms and they almost died twice, luckily none were dropped. The second time they played they were much more tactical about it. Checking rooms, casting different types of spells and going for flanking and cover. Why the difference? Probably because we talked about it and observed how best to play this edition. Even when they got to Drakus he crit one player and did like 18 damage almost dropping him. He didn't even get to go again. By the time it got to the top of initiative order he was dead. The Barbarian and Cleric were Flanking and the Alchemist dropped two Alchemist Fire on him, one hitting and one missing but still doing that 1 splash damage on a miss.

I don't pretend to have all the answers but it just seems that this edition needs to be played different from P1E. Until people understand that they're probably going to have a bad time.

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