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I’ve tried really hard to enjoy the playtest but after playing the mirrored moon chapter of Doomsday Dawn my group have decided to drop the playtest.
The final straw for our group was the Sea serpent encounter our party composition was an Animal Order Druid, Wizard and myself as a rogue.
I was a rogue with master level proficiency in stealth giving me a +15 to my roll easilly giving me a result of 31 on the roll my GM decided to roll in front of us for the night so when he rolled a 10 on dice and the serpent spotted me I was in shock, I let it go though writing it off as the creature just being good at perception, however I forgot that that same perception score that found me would be added to it’s initiatve as well.
So not only did the creature effortlessly detect us it won initiative, I had 27 AC it swam towards me our GM rolled a 4 on dice and the creature hit with it’s jaws, I had the highest AC in the party so we knew that this creature could realistically only miss on a 1, the creature also passed every spell save it had to roll against our wizard and druid, I also made 12 attacks over 3 turns with a +2 shortbow giving me an attack bonus of +15, so on anything less than a 16 on dice I couldn’t hit the serpents 31 AC, none of my twelve attacks hit since any attack after my first could only hit on a natural 20, I was killed after 3 rounds of combat when I was crit twice because the creatures absurd to hit bonus made scoring crits easy, furthermore out spellcasters died soon after since it passe all it’s saving throws and had an ac to high for either of them to hit even when targeting touch AC.
In summary I have a very hard time believing monsters have been remotely tested by paizo because in their current state creatures feel like they’re designed to be better than you, most creatures having saving scores so ludicrously high that using attack spells is a waste of time and attack bonuses so high that they crit you regardless of armour, the module expects you to play heroes but the game encourages you to never fight since you’re not worthy of breathing the same air as monsters, honestly feels like the bestiary was made by someone who just thinks that the game is seeing all the different ways you can murder your players while they wonder why they bothered to show up.
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So a few things. First your group is kinda undersized, and the sea serpent is a solo level 12 monster. It sort of makes sense that it would be a near impossible fight for you. Mark has also said that monsters at that level have all their numbers ~2 points too high...
I do find that in P2 you need at least 2 front-liners and a combat-healer to have a good chance in hard fights.
The other thing I noticed is that unlike P1, you can't rely on your AC and saves to protect you. You absolutely have to have a high con score if you want to be on the front lines.
That said, boss fights are kinda super lethal. Solo encounters used to be bad in P1 because action economy was on the PC's side. They are still bad in P2, but because the boss blows through the balance window.
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Mark has also said that monsters at that level have all their numbers ~2 points too high...
For the record, and to avoid confusion, he said this specifically about Skills and Perception, not other numbers.
And as others have noted, a Level +3 solo monster vs. a three person party is very intentionally a fight where the PCs have maybe a 50% shot of winning. Add in the environmental stuff and I'm not surprised at all that you all died.
Three 9th level characters vs. a Mature Adult Black Dragon or Frost Worm is probably suicidal in most cases in PF1 as well.
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Also, you need to factor in the playtest goals for this chapter - which as a player you may not (and probably should not) be aware of*. And remember that this is a playtest, it is not a polished final product so noting how much is too much - well, this sort of feedback is important, so make sure you fill in the surveys. Completing the remaining chapters will be similarly useful, so please keep at it.
*That said, if there is one chapter that players should be aware of the goals - this might be the one.
One thing I am doing is letting my players know what the playtest goals are after we've finished (where they aren't so obvious)- so they can see why things happen the way they do.
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This is an encounter the party need not have. Did you try to disengage? Discretion is often the better part of valor.
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I did make a thread about this (but it got buried). Because of the aggressive scaling at certain levels (magic weapons, stat boosts, proficiencies), monster power does not increase in a smooth curve. Sometimes you can handle a level +2 fight, but at other points in the level track a +2 fight might be impossible as the monsters are now accounting for a lot more stuff. I think level 6 monsters are one of the biggest offenders.
Then there's the fact that the advice for handling parties for odd sizes is rather limited and you usually can't get the right challenge due to how inconsistent the power growth is. This mostly just happens with big 1-creature boss fights.
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This is an encounter the party need not have. Did you try to disengage? Discretion is often the better part of valor.
Is there any indication to the characters that this fight is something that they can avoid while still succeeding at their quest objectives?
That is something that I have noticed in the little bit of Doomsday Dawn that we played - there are a bunch of encounters and combats that can be avoided. But knowing that before hand is practically impossible without having the players know about it from the DM notes or some such metagaming knowledge like that.
So is the game trying to train the players that they should run away from most fights in the hope that it was optional?
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That said, boss fights are kinda super lethal. Solo encounters used to be bad in P1 because action economy was on the PC's side. They are still bad in P2, but because the boss blows through the balance window.
That's a trend present in Starfinder as well. Instead of increasing the solo monster's action economy, they increased its raw power. So instead of legendary actions and resistance, you get insane hit chance with overwhelming damage, so every attack the creature does it will hit and most likely kill the target or severely hurt.
This is not something I enjoy, specially on the receiving end. It would be preferable to increase the monster's capabilities regarding its actions rather than just giving it a ton of power just to withstand the PC's dmg output.
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I didn't want to run the playtest with an undersized party because I was pretty sure it would be a bloodbath if I did, which is why when only two people were still willing to play after seeing the rulebook, I had them make two characters each so we could have a full party of four.
That said, if the monster can hit on a 4, I feel like that's not really an issue of party size or composition. That monster is probably going to score two crits in a round, or a whopping three crits if it uses its agile tail attack. That means it's going to average 150 damage per round, which even a max-Con dwarf fighter couldn't survive at 9th level.
When monsters are already over-tooled to have a roughly 50% chance of hitting an equal-level PC with max AC, then using higher-level monsters as solo boss fights means that their hit chances get pushed up from "high" to "overwhelming" and the odds of critical hits become substantial. It was the same with the manticore in Pale Mountain, who was only two levels above the PCs but knocked off most of the hit points of every member of the party and exhausted all their healing resources and then some.
As it stands, PF2 has been a brutal meatgrinder of constant damage and frequent resting due to exhausted healing resources. Maybe there are GMs out there who like to run that kind of game, but I'm not one of them.
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Is there any indication to the characters that this fight is something that they can avoid while still succeeding at their quest objectives?
To me, the real problem here is not so much this super-tough creature, but WHERE the creature is, and how it is presented. This adventure is generally an overland hex crawl, and this critter is in the only real water feature on the map, meaning that the group is highly unlikely to be fighting the creature on anything approaching favourable terms. The encounter is only really triggered if the group travel across said water feature. Otherwise, apart from the rest of the scenario encouraging exploration, the group really have no reason to go into the water here and triggering this encounter.
In my own playthrough, our group's rogue was originally going to swim into the lake alone (which would have clearly resulted in a dead rogue). Instead, I gave them a boat, and told them there was a shipwreck, encouraging them all to explore. In the ensuing battle, despite multiple partially-successful Phantasmal Killers, and me being VERY lenient on allowing the Rogue to have sneak attack damage, all four group members ended up being swallowed whole. The spellcaster could escape with a Gaseous Form, but then realised he was unable to end the effect, and so was effectively out of the battle for 10 minutes. The others managed to carve their way out of the serpent's belly, on the round AFTER the fighter died (said fighter was underequipped - the only weapon he had was not wieldable inside the belly).
The group were VERY lucky to only suffer one casualty here. We've pretty much decided to retcon this encounter for the sake of the rest of the adventure.
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This is an encounter the party need not have. Did you try to disengage? Discretion is often the better part of valor.
It won Initiative and had better movement than everyone except myself who was playing the rogue, so if the rest of the party died the session would have ended anyway.
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Well, with only three characters that made the fight Extreme difficulty, ie about a 50:50 shot the party could win. With the error in monster perception, its Perception is too high by about 2-3 pts at that level and will be addressed for final release. Its Perception and Intiative should and will be lower. So, your rogue should have successfully stealthed in that case, and initiative should have been more reasonable.
It made every single save... well its Will and Ref saves are not that good, but it will make most Fort saves as you'd expect when targetting a higher level monster's best save. Those numbers are in line. Its AC and attack modifier are as well.
This sounds like a combination of a 3 person party pushing a Severe encounter to Extreme, the known monster perception/skill issues, and bad luck.
As to all your hyperbole: This is a playtest. They did get somethings wrong. Letting them know what your party of three got rolled by the Sea Serpent is good. For all you know that was the aspect, or one of them, being stressed tested in that scenario.
I’m sorry but I’ve supplies numbers you can look at the serpents stat block and confirm for yourself, as for number of players that shouldn’t matter I’ve been in a party of two and we managed to run the whole of The Emerald Spire which is meant to be one of the harder modules, as for its other saves being bad it’s worst save was it’s +16 willsave, our wizards spell dc was 23 so unless he calculated that wrong the creature passes on it’s worst save 65% of the time while passing 80% of the time on reflex with it’s +19 bonus and only ever worying about a one with it’s +22 fortitude save, I have always played primarily martials but even I felt like casters had been made pointless.
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Also, you need to factor in the playtest goals for this chapter - which as a player you may not (and probably should not) be aware of*. And remember that this is a playtest, it is not a polished final product so noting how much is too much - well, this sort of feedback is important, so make sure you fill in the surveys. Completing the remaining chapters will be similarly useful, so please keep at it.
*That said, if there is one chapter that players should be aware of the goals - this might be the one.
** spoiler omitted **
One thing I am doing is letting my players know what the playtest goals are after we've finished (where they aren't so obvious)- so they can see why things happen the way they do.
I get what you’re saying but it’s out if my hands now both of the casters at the table have made it clear they won’t play anymore, because you’re right this is a playtest but it’s also meant to be a game, so after spending an hour leveling their characters from level one to nine only to be destroyed effortlessly they made it clear they’ve had enough, in that sense they’re still supplying data the data being that the test materials weren’t good enough to slog through, because if every week they turn up and think
“I wonder how I can feel useless today”Is how the system makes them feel then there’s a larger issue than one encounter going poorly.
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I didn't want to run the playtest with an undersized party because I was pretty sure it would be a bloodbath if I did, which is why when only two people were still willing to play after seeing the rulebook, I had them make two characters each so we could have a full party of four.
That said, if the monster can hit on a 4, I feel like that's not really an issue of party size or composition. That monster is probably going to score two crits in a round, or a whopping three crits if it uses its agile tail attack. That means it's going to average 150 damage per round, which even a max-Con dwarf fighter couldn't survive at 9th level.
When monsters are already over-tooled to have a roughly 50% chance of hitting an equal-level PC with max AC, then using higher-level monsters as solo boss fights means that their hit chances get pushed up from "high" to "overwhelming" and the odds of critical hits become substantial. It was the same with the manticore in Pale Mountain, who was only two levels above the PCs but knocked off most of the hit points of every member of the party and exhausted all their healing resources and then some.
As it stands, PF2 has been a brutal meatgrinder of constant damage and frequent resting due to exhausted healing resources. Maybe there are GMs out there who like to run that kind of game, but I'm not one of them.
Agreed we all got into pathfinder because it was a high fantasy setting where we played heroes, if we wanted to be scared of everything we would play Call of Cthulu because we already have that game, the problem we have is much like 1st edition pathfinder the playtest advertised itself as a game of heroes but you feel like background characters waiting around to be slaughtered, my GM pretty much agrees with most of your sentiments so we’re in one way glad but also a little saddened to that there are others who feel similar.
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Yeah it seems like there are many bad circumstances. With your guys lack of a healer and/or frontliner I believe you should have run away. A Monster 3 levels higher than you is going to eat you alive, and it should.
AlsobI think that's the first time the playtest puts you up against a threat that much higher than you as well. It was probably meant to test how well the players do.
It should be, in the best circumstances, very hard to defeat. I appreciate that. Brings back the lethality of monsters. I always hated how easy monsters even 3 CR higher than me where easy to kill in PF1.
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Yeah it seems like there are many bad circumstances. With your guys lack of a healer and/or frontliner I believe you should have run away. A Monster 3 levels higher than you is going to eat you alive, and it should.
AlsobI think that's the first time the playtest puts you up against a threat that much higher than you as well. It was probably meant to test how well the players do.
It should be, in the best circumstances, very hard to defeat. I appreciate that. Brings back the lethality of monsters. I always hated how easy monsters even 3 CR higher than me where easy to kill in PF1.
Like I said earlier only one of us could have escaped and if two thirds of the party die the session is still done.
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That said, if the monster can hit on a 4, I feel like that's not really an issue of party size or composition. That monster is probably going to score two crits in a round, or a whopping three crits if it uses its agile tail attack. That means it's going to average 150 damage per round, which even a max-Con dwarf fighter couldn't survive at 9th level.
This is just mathematically false. It's decently likely to crit once (since it does so on a 14+...35% of the time), but it's second attack crits on an 18 or 19 at best, and its third only on a 20. That's an average of less than a single crit a round. Indeed, I think it only crits twice less than 5% of the time (it's certainly not much ore than that).
Its DPR vs. AC 27 is 66.7 assuming three bites (it actually goes down a bit if you use the Tail). That's nasty, don't get me wrong, but let's be reasonable here.
It's also worth noting that Rogues (and others in Light armor) are specifically the lowest AC characters of this level (well, the lowest who wear armor, anyway), since at 9th level you still have only +4 Dex for a total of Dex + Armor = +6 in light armor. Everyone in Medium or Heavy Armor can have Dex + Armor = +7. That rights itself at 10th for the truly Dex focused (where they can have Dex 20 and be at +7 with everyone else), but it remains worth noting, since those numbers are one point better for the PCs on most melee characters (potentially 2 points better on something like a Paladin...4 points better if it's a Paladin with a Shield).
Or to sum up: That's actually a pretty low AC 9th level character. Not so low it's unworkable or anything, but lower than average for a melee character.
Now, let's examine what a 4 person PC group will do to it, on average. I actually just helped my players level for this adventure, so I'll use them:
The Rogue has Dread Striker and maxed Intimidate (+16) and will, on average, render the creature Frightened 1 when he rolls Initiative via Battle Cry (his success rate is 55%), and can spend an action to try again if that fails. He'll be using a Potion of Flying to melee the creature. The Ranger, who has Underwater Marauder, will likely also melee it, as will the Barbarian (who may well also have a mobility op-tion, I'd need to check). The Cleric will stay back with his crossbow. It'll effectively have AC 28 or 29 most rounds vs. most foes (two higher vs. the Cleric) unless it spends time moving (which reduces it's damage more than the PCs, since they have much worse odds of hitting it with their third attacks). Counting primary and secondary attacks only, and ignoring the Cleric's spells, the PCs do something like 44.275 (more on rounds it's Frightened, down to around 40 if the Cleric does something other than shoot once...more if he shoots twice, though not a lot more, and he usually won't). That'll take 5 rounds to kill the Serpent. Maybe 4 if it's actually stationary and we add in third attacks for everyone in melee, but most probably 5.
Assuming it uses all three attacks for the 66.7 noted above (a huge assumption, it'll be at -1 to hit many rounds and the Ranger has AC 28, and the maximal amount of damage it can inflict in many ways), it will do 333.5 damage in that time. Which is certainly a lot, but the PCs have 429 HP in total, and can heal 44.5 via every round via the Cleric's single target Channel Energy (a total of 69 via area Channel with Selective if all three melee folks are hurt), assuming he uses it (and he might). And then there's using buff and debuff spells and damaging spells...
Now, none of that means the Sea Serpent isn't f+@@ing terrifying for 9th level PCs. It is. But unbeatable it isn't. A group of 4 PCs has a definite edge if they blow all their resources. Which they should.
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I've also found combats in the playtest extremely frustrating, most recently a fire giant against a level 9 druid, Wildshaped into a Huge wolf.
It needs a 7 to hit my static of AC 27 with its sword, I need a 12 to hit with my jaws. My second attack was a hail mary, and my third attack was just fishing for 20s. Which means most of your attacks will miss, and your best attack in this case is an unfavourable coinflip, which means rolling a lot of dice for not much effect
So clearly I should be throwing spells at it, except it's lowest save (which unexpectedly is reflex) is +14. As far as I can tell, I had best possible spell DCs at 23, so it needs a 9 to save, on its weakest save. Its got a better than even chance of passing it's worst save.
At the moment, combats means whiffing a lot of attacks,band getting hit a lot, which feels really, really bad.
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Honestly the only real problem I have right is the Random AC, Saves, and hit bonuses. Like how does the Fire Giant have +14 Ref? It should have 10-1 for a total of 9. It's to Hit I can understand as it probably has Master Proficiency which would make it 10+7+1+2 for +20. BUT why does it have +20 to hit with its Gauntlet? It should be +19. ALSO why does it have +18 to hit with it's Rock? It should have +10 Max. 10-1+1.
I'm all for higher level Monsters being extremely lethal. But making them Mary Sues is just going to make everyone feel bad.
It makes me wonder if they wanted all of the monsters to have the same stats to see how they would do in the playtest regardless of individuality but they all ended up to strong.
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Honestly the only real problem I have right is the Random AC, Saves, and hit bonuses. Like how does the Fire Giant have +14 Ref? It should have 10-1 for a total of 9. It's to Hit I can understand as it probably has Master Proficiency which would make it 10+7+1+2 for +20. BUT why does it have +20 to hit with its Gauntlet? It should be +19. ALSO why does it have +18 to hit with it's Rock? It should have +10 Max. 10-1+1.
Monsters aren't built like PCs. They're built to line up with PC numbers, but without any inherent correspondence between, say, Dex and ranged to-hit bonus. They're also built to line up with PC stats including magic.
So the Fire Giant is built to have the same to-hit as a 10th level PC Fighter using a +2 weapon (or thereabouts). And a 10th level PC Fighter could fairly readily have a ranged attack bonus only two lower than their melee one.
Now, whether this is a good idea is a whole different debate (and off topic for this thread), but that's what's going on.
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Honestly the only real problem I have right is the Random AC, Saves, and hit bonuses. Like how does the Fire Giant have +14 Ref? It should have 10-1 for a total of 9. It's to Hit I can understand as it probably has Master Proficiency which would make it 10+7+1+2 for +20. BUT why does it have +20 to hit with its Gauntlet? It should be +19. ALSO why does it have +18 to hit with it's Rock? It should have +10 Max. 10-1+1.
I'm all for higher level Monsters being extremely lethal. But making them Mary Sues is just going to make everyone feel bad.
It makes me wonder if they wanted all of the monsters to have the same stats to see how they would do in the playtest regardless of individuality but they all ended up to strong.
This is a major problem when GIANTS are as good as dodging fireballs as rogues
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That said, if the monster can hit on a 4, I feel like that's not really an issue of party size or composition. That monster is probably going to score two crits in a round, or a whopping three crits if it uses its agile tail attack. That means it's going to average 150 damage per round, which even a max-Con dwarf fighter couldn't survive at 9th level.This is just mathematically false. It's decently likely to crit once (since it does so on a 14+...35% of the time), but it's second attack crits on an 18 or 19 at best, and its third only on a 20. That's an average of less than a single crit a round. Indeed, I think it only crits twice less than 5% of the time (it's certainly not much ore than that).
Its DPR vs. AC 27 is 66.7 assuming three bites (it actually goes down a bit if you use the Tail). That's nasty, don't get me wrong, but let's be reasonable here.
It's also worth noting that Rogues (and others in Light armor) are specifically the lowest AC characters of this level (well, the lowest who wear armor, anyway), since at 9th level you still have only +4 Dex for a total of Dex + Armor = +6 in light armor. Everyone in Medium or Heavy Armor can have Dex + Armor = +7. That rights itself at 10th for the truly Dex focused (where they can have Dex 20 and be at +7 with everyone else), but it remains worth noting, since those numbers are one point better for the PCs on most melee characters (potentially 2 points better on something like a Paladin...4 points better if it's a Paladin with a Shield).
Or to sum up: That's actually a pretty low AC 9th level character. Not so low it's unworkable or anything, but lower than average for a melee character.
Now, let's examine what a 4 person PC group will do to it, on average. I actually just helped my players level for this adventure, so I'll use them:
The Rogue has Dread Striker and maxed Intimidate (+16) and will, on average, render the creature Frightened 1 when he rolls Initiative via Battle Cry (his success...
No one is saying that winning is impossible but this is a role playing game a party shouldn’t require a particular set up to win fights if I can play 1st edition without a cleric the new addition should be the same, additionally if winning combat requires certain party compositions and feat lines then why put the other options in the book, because at that point they’re either deliberately putting in trap feats or the games balance is bad, especially when the playtest says play what you WANT, so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s bad, the question then becomes are monsters too good like the original post states or are player characters trash?
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This is an encounter the party need not have. Did you try to disengage? Discretion is often the better part of valor.It won Initiative and had better movement than everyone except myself who was playing the rogue, so if the rest of the party died the session would have ended anyway.
This was something I hoped PF2 would fix from PF1; most encounters are inescapable except by powerful magic, so if you ever run into something too powerful for you, it's game over.
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so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s badYou had neither a frontliner nor healer, you were undergrouped, and you fought a monster vastly higher level than yourselves.
*shrugs*
And?
Like I’ve already said if I can play 1st edition without a cleric and succeed than I should be able to in the new edition, if people have to play particular party builds just to succeed than why have players build characters at that point every module should just say here are the characters you must play.|
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No one is saying that winning is impossible but this is a role playing game a party shouldn’t require a particular set up to win fights if I can play 1st edition without a cleric the new addition should be the same, additionally if winning combat requires certain party compositions and feat lines then why put the other options in the book, because at that point they’re either deliberately putting in trap feats or the games balance is bad, especially when the playtest says play what you WANT, so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s bad, the question then becomes are monsters too good like the original post states or are player characters trash?
The party I used as an example was literally just the one my players wanted to play. The Ranger does TWF with a Trident and Light Hammer purely because she feels like it, and the Rogue wnet Intimidate because it was fun, the Barbarian is a Gnome using a War Flail purely for amusement value, and the Cleric is a Halfling who started with Con 10 to afford Int 14 because he wanted to be good at Society (he's a Cleric of Abadar).
They are not a 'specific set up' or 'optimal' in many senses. They do all have 18 in their prime stats, but beyond that? They're decently optimized, but not ridiculously so.
Nobody is saying you need a specific party set-up. They're saying that having only 3 PCs and making no adjustments for that is a good way to get dead in any edition of Pathfinder or D&D.
so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s badYou had neither a frontliner nor healer, you were undergrouped, and you fought a monster vastly higher level than yourselves.
*shrugs*
And?
Like I’ve already said if I can play 1st edition without a cleric and succeed than I should be able to in the new edition, if people have to play particular party builds just to succeed than why have players build characters at that point every module should just say here are the characters you must play.
Honestly, you have a Druid. That is a healer. But you do lack a primary frontline damage dealer, and far more importantly you only have 3 PCs. Taking on fights designed to stretch the resources of four PCs with only three is gonna be nasty regardless of your party composition, though some setups are better than others, I suppose.
But really, your problem is just taking on a Level + 3 monster with only 3 PCs. That's always gonna be ugly.
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This is how the fight played out with my group,
NPC giving intro: "...gnomes, also, lake with a giant sea serpent, -slipping into OOC- so if you love underwater combat..."
Players in unison: "Okay, lake is off limits. I'm sure the rest of this hex map has enough resources"
And they won the module handily. I like that some combats are not there to be fought. Gives a good sense of scale and adds some realism.
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so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s badYou had neither a frontliner nor healer, you were undergrouped, and you fought a monster vastly higher level than yourselves.
*shrugs*
And?
Like I’ve already said if I can play 1st edition without a cleric and succeed than I should be able to in the new edition, if people have to play particular party builds just to succeed than why have players build characters at that point every module should just say here are the characters you must play.
The issue is more a party of three fighting the same solo monster as a party of four. In PF1 solo monsters only had a chance against a party if the monster had mobility that allowed it to vastly undercut the party's action economy advantage.
In PF2 higher level monsters are just more powerful. May the GM should have scaled the level of monster back for your party of 3 by a level or 2. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be fairly easy as a GM to give a monster a -1 or -2 penalty to everything to adjust on the fly to make the battle a little more even.
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No one is saying that winning is impossible but this is a role playing game a party shouldn’t require a particular set up to win fights if I can play 1st edition without a cleric the new addition should be the same, additionally if winning combat requires certain party compositions and feat lines then why put the other options in the book, because at that point they’re either deliberately putting in trap feats or the games balance is bad, especially when the playtest says play what you WANT, so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s bad, the question then becomes are monsters too good like the original post states or are player characters trash?The party I used as an example was literally just the one my players wanted to play. The Ranger does TWF with a Trident and Light Hammer purely because she feels like it, and the Rogue wnet Intimidate because it was fun, the Barbarian is a Gnome using a War Flail purely for amusement value, and the Cleric is a Halfling who started with Con 10 to afford Int 14 because he wanted to be good at Society (he's a Cleric of Abadar).
They are not a 'specific set up' or 'optimal' in many senses. They do all have 18 in their prime stats, but beyond that? They're decently optimized, but not ridiculously so.
Nobody is saying you need a specific party set-up. They're saying that having only 3 PCs and making no adjustments for that is a good way to get dead in any edition of Pathfinder or D&D.
...so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s badYou had neither a frontliner nor healer, you were undergrouped, and you fought a monster vastly higher level than yourselves.
*shrugs*
And?
Like I’ve already said if I can play 1st edition without a cleric and succeed than I should be able to in the new edition, if people have to play particular party builds just to succeed than why have players build characters at that point every module
I get what you’re saying Deadman sorry if I came off as a little aggressive have just gotten very tired of people always saying
“Well you should have had a cleric”And yes we understand that things will be harder with three but it’s not just a case of challenge but enjoyment, none of us had fun we’ll still do the survey for the chapter but we’ve lost interest in going further the short version is we like the games action economy, but we personally think spell casters have been gutted, we didn’t have a main frontline aside from the Animal companion, we had a barb back in Pale mountains shadow and we didn’t like the class, we tried ranger and we didn’t like the ranger, the paladin is mediocre, so that leaves fighter and monk, I don’t think swapping one or both of our casters for those options would have given us a win, that’s the large overview basically it feels like player characters were gutted because it’s preferable to have monsters that are ‘realistic threats’ which is still the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever heard, long story short we’re done after this chapter we’re foing all the other surveys that we can and we want the game to turn out good but we’re not willing to show up every week and always feel like we’re just practice dummies for the monsters to murder while we sit there and wonder why we wasted 20-60 mins rolling up characters, all of us play pathfinder to play heroes and we’ve felt like we were signed up to a dark sun campaign and no one told us.
Anyway thanks Deadman for your responses we disagree on some stuff but you give in depth responses.
so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s badYou had neither a frontliner nor healer, you were undergrouped, and you fought a monster vastly higher level than yourselves.
*shrugs*
And?
Like I’ve already said if I can play 1st edition without a cleric and succeed than I should be able to in the new edition, if people have to play particular party builds just to succeed than why have players build characters at that point every module should just say here are the characters you must play.The issue is more a party of three fighting the same solo monster as a party of four. In PF1 solo monsters only had a chance against a party if the monster had mobility that allowed it to vastly undercut the party's action economy advantage.
In PF2 higher level monsters are just more powerful. May the GM should have scaled the level of monster back for your party of 3 by a level or 2. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be fairly easy as a GM to give a monster a -1 or -2 penalty to everything to adjust on the fly to make the battle a little more even.
Yeah I get what you’re saying and you could be right a tweak like that could work, however we’ve decided to do as many of the surveys as we can but we won’t be taking further part in the playtest till it receives a severe overhaul both for player classes and monsters, at the end of the day it’s a game and if we aren’t having fun then we just don’t see the point of continuing.
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My player just finished the same fight yesterday. Rogue experienced the exact sand thing with Perception.
Now granted my party is 7 people.
Monster played first instantly swallowed the barbarian who had no means of escaping par escape which he need a natural 20, our rogue was hitting on his first hit rarely on second, they got lucky with a lighting bolt from our mage that the monster rolled 1
Cleric was healing while two paladins were supporting rogue via retributive strikes till one of them also got gulped. At this point the monster was low and did instinctively swim deep.
Rogue asked if he can grab on it which I allowed, thankfully for him, he was the only one that had drunk a potion for water breathing.
He almost died after that but he got lucky with the monster missing with 1 and 2s he, barbarian and paladin almost died, paladin only making it cause the rogue had a spare potion. (they knew water combat would be a thing cause of dryad)
I can attest they would be dead without a cleric even though they were above 4 people.
Cleric has build up pure healing, with healing hands, healing domain, communal healing and improved. All healing.
I admit luck was on their side since had it actually rolled above 6 which is what it needed to hit the rogue he woukd have died and so the other 2 people with no way fir the rest of the party to reach it par extremely risky diving shenanigans.
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so if we can’t play the classes we WANT and succeed then it’s badYou had neither a frontliner nor healer, you were undergrouped, and you fought a monster vastly higher level than yourselves.
*shrugs*
And?
Like I’ve already said if I can play 1st edition without a cleric and succeed than I should be able to in the new edition, if people have to play particular party builds just to succeed than why have players build characters at that point every module should just say here are the characters you must play.The issue is more a party of three fighting the same solo monster as a party of four. In PF1 solo monsters only had a chance against a party if the monster had mobility that allowed it to vastly undercut the party's action economy advantage.
In PF2 higher level monsters are just more powerful. May the GM should have scaled the level of monster back for your party of 3 by a level or 2. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be fairly easy as a GM to give a monster a -1 or -2 penalty to everything to adjust on the fly to make the battle a little more even.
Yeah, you're supposed to adjust the playtest encounters for party size, so applying the Weak template would probably have made sense here.
So, instead of filling out surveys and letting the designers know your experience so they can account for all the data, your group decided to quit.
Bye, I guess.
Here, I'm trying a new recipe out. Can you taste it and give me feedback so I can perfect it?
It has too much salt. I'm never eating here again.
This is how the fight played out with my group,
NPC giving intro: "...gnomes, also, lake with a giant sea serpent, -slipping into OOC- so if you love underwater combat..."
Players in unison: "Okay, lake is off limits. I'm sure the rest of this hex map has enough resources"
And they won the module handily. I like that some combats are not there to be fought. Gives a good sense of scale and adds some realism.
This is a good point. The adventure notes that if asked about any potential danger ahead, Keleri specifically mentions a monster in the lake. If the PCs never asked about possible dangers or even worse ignored such warnings, then that is on them. If the GM didn't mention it even though the PCs asked then that is the GM's bad.
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So, instead of filling out surveys and letting the designers know your experience so they can account for all the data, your group decided to quit.
Bye, I guess.Here, I'm trying a new recipe out. Can you taste it and give me feedback so I can perfect it?
It has too much salt. I'm never eating here again.
The group as a whole voted it wasn’t one persons decision, additionally this isn’t the first time the playtest has been less than enjoyable, at the end of the day it’s a game and I already said we’d do the survey but until the game recieves a severe overhaul the group as a majority decided they’ve had enough, this isn’t a case of trying something new and not liking it but trying it weeks in a row and it doesn’t get any better, saying
“It’s a playtest”Is not an excuse I don’t understand why so many people hate any negative criticism about the playtest, the fact that we don’t want to bother with the rest of doomsday dawn also speaks for the quality of the module, it always feels like a slog, paizo has written some of the best modules around so the fact that this is so mediocre by comparison is extremely disappointing, end of the day they said this would still feel like pathfinder and as far as my group is concerned it doesn’t, the current game in its current state is bad as far as we’re concerned, you don’t have to agree or like that statement but putting words in my mouth acting like I thought the game was perfect then quit after one problem is dishonest and frankly childish.
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I don't hate negative criticism about the playtest or the game itself. I just commented on the part where you said, after playing this chapter, we quit.
I do suppose I probably should've inferred by the name of the chapter, that you'd played multiple ones up to that point.
It's nothing against you. I just have seen many posts saying stuff like "I don't like what they did to this class (or whatever). I quit."
I just want to yell at them, "Then help us make it better!" This is the time, right now, to shape the game we'll be playing for a long time to come.
Hopefully your posts and surveys help out after your exit.
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"Here, I'm trying a new recipe out. Can you taste it and give me feedback so I can perfect it?"
"It has too much salt."
"OK, well finish eating it and then fill out these forms."
"I don't want any more. It has too much salt."
"Don't you want to help make it better? You're going to be eating it for a long time to come!"
"I wouldn't count on it."
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Haha.
Was kind of thinking, "Okay. You don't like it. But please come back tomorrow and try the recipe again with less salt.
But you got me on that one. =P
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I don't hate negative criticism about the playtest or the game itself. I just commented on the part where you said, after playing this chapter, we quit.
I do suppose I probably should've inferred by the name of the chapter, that you'd played multiple ones up to that point.It's nothing against you. I just have seen many posts saying stuff like "I don't like what they did to this class (or whatever). I quit."
I just want to yell at them, "Then help us make it better!" This is the time, right now, to shape the game we'll be playing for a long time to come.
Hopefully your posts and surveys help out after your exit.
Except that it seems that his group has played 4 of the playtest adventures? And this very thread indicates they are providing feedback. They didn't play just 1 and disappear with no feedback, if that was the case we'd never had heard about it.
My group isn't that far along the playtest schedule, we've only just finished part 1, and there's already a lot of grumbling about the system. I fear I won't be able to get them to continue with the playtest much beyond part 3 or 4 either, but will certainly try to get through it all. That being said, it's not worth losing the group over if they hate it week after week.
Also, my concerns are that there's inherent flaws in the system, and nothing short of a complete re-design from scratch will make it a game we want to play. With the updates we're seeing, and the designer commentary to date, I'm not seeing that's a likely outcome.
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So, instead of filling out surveys and letting the designers know your experience so they can account for all the data, your group decided to quit.
...
Was kind of thinking, "Okay. You don't like it. But please come back tomorrow and try the recipe again with less salt.
But you got me on that one. =P
If only the issue was that simple:
"Your chicken is overdone and dry."
"Come try it tomorrow with less salt."
I took the surveys after part 1, as well as the ones for ancestries and classes and found them to be unhelpful, aggravating, and typical of surveys created by laypeople rather than professionals. They presuppose what the issues are, ask questions that don't allow for nuanced answers, are obsessive about details rather than the big picture, and don't get at the problems I had with the game.
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"Here, I'm trying a new recipe out. Can you taste it and give me feedback so I can perfect it?"
"It has too much salt."
"OK, well finish eating it and then fill out these forms."
"I don't want any more. It has too much salt."
"Don't you want to help make it better? You're going to be eating it for a long time to come!"
"I wouldn't count on it."
Except that's not how the playtest works at all. It's more like,
"Hey I'm trying to create a whole new menu that we're going to reveal in six months. If you agree to help you will get a free meal every week and all you have to do is fill out a survey to let us know what you think."
"Sure yeah I've always liked your food so far. I'll help you out"
"Okay here's the first menu, we've prepared one of every dish. Let us know what you think"
"I don't like 3 of the menu items. Get rid of them completely."
"Uhh okay well we can try to change them to suit your taste but they are important to the menu-"
"Just get rid of them they are too salty"
"Oh okay so add less salt? We can give that a try and you can come back next week and let us know what you think"
"Nah that's okay if you're not getting rid of them I'm not coming back"
See how that's not helpful at all and doesn't make sense? Unless you hate the whole system you're not helping anyone by leaving the playtest early. Even if you're having a bad time it's supposed to be helping them realize WHY you're having a bad time. Is it something you're doing? Is it a misunderstanding? A system flaw? Is a different playstyle needed from your group to have a better experience? All of these are valid questions. That need a lot of data to be sure of.
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... Given that, I'm not actually sure the best strategy is to move around and prevent a third attack (that makes the fight longer). I think I'd just full attack, fishing for 20. If my character dies in the process, I have a good excuse to play Smash Bros.
Moving around actually isn't optimal, IMO. The creature's damage is so high (especially on its first attack) that you really want to finish it as quickly as possible to void it getting more turns to act, taking some damage to do so if necessary.
But yes, this is a seriously nasty fight. Of course, several things can make it less so. (buffs, and debuffs without a Save ala Bane, are both great, for example). And just because someone falls doesn't mean they can't be gotten back up, at least in theory.
And I agree entirely on the skills issue. I've written at least three threads complaining about Skills in PF2, and monster Skills/Perception in particular. The combat stats are just a bit of a different thing.
This is an encounter the party need not have. Did you try to disengage? Discretion is often the better part of valor.Is there any indication to the characters that this fight is something that they can avoid while still succeeding at their quest objectives?
I believe so, as Keleri tells the party they are looking for allies before confronting the Night Heralds at the Moonmere, which she believes is located near the headwaters of one of the local rivers. Clearly, a hostile sea serpent inhabiting a lake would not be an ally for a fight near a river up in the mountains.
Keleri is willing to answer what questions she can if the PCs ask, and if they don’t ask many questions, she makes sure that they have enough of the following information to succeed at their task.
Included in the sample information is knowledge of the monster in the lake, as well as some other dangers. It could be that the GM didn't prepare the party well enough for this part of the playtest, or the party ignored such information.