[Closed] The new wounded condition and monsters dead-set on eliminating a dying PC

[Serum]

swordchucks wrote:

The current state of the rules aside, I am very hard pressed to think of a TTRPG where someone that gets knocked to the equivalent of 0 HP and isn't a round (or maybe two) from death if the enemy decides to finish them off. D&D has pretty much always been that way. PF1 was that way. Even a lot of the narrative-focused games I've played have been that way.

One would expect a character who focuses on trying to kill a downed opponent would be putting itself in a situation where it is going to be killed itself. This is apparently not the case, and the book is instead just suggesting that the GM tone down the lethality of their NPCs from their full potential.

Explicit rules on determining whether something is alive or dead would help.

It seems PF2 makes it incredibly easy for a PC to get back into the fight after being knocked into dying and the dying state is a safety buffer between alive and dead that can't be bypassed. This creates a valid tactic in letting someone gain the dying state, then heal him to get that buffer up again. This means that the only way for NPCs to actually win is to 1) knock everyone to dying in one round so PCs can't react, 2) outlast the PCs' healing resources, or 3) keep attacking downed PCs for a round so that they fall from dying to dead.

Once the NPCs discover that the PCs can, indeed, get back up after calling unconscious, they are presented with the options of repeatedly attacking the same PC as she gets up over and over, or spending 3 more actions to make sure she stays dead, less if NPCs are allowed to realize that they can critically hit.

[Snickersnax]

Dire Ursus wrote:

Well now you're mixing game mechanics with setting. Do Monsters know the difference between a "critical hit" and a normal hit? Do monsters know specific conditions and their effects? Do monsters know the exact mechanics of dying? I would say probably not. Especially the dying part since only PCs and specific boss creatures ever actually use the dying rules. Otherwise all normal creatures just die at 0 hp.

Short version minus game mechanics:

I hit them once they knocked down. I hit them two more times they dead.

Midnightoker wrote:

I really can't tell if you're being intentionally obtuse or not, but might I ask what the point of Deathwatch the spell is if "everyone with an INT of 10 can tell?"

The fact that you are using out of immersion terms to describe how a creature immersed in the game "knows" a creature is dead or dying is basically meta-gaming in explanatory form.

A Manticore (one of the listed creatures he said he used this tactic with) quite literally has an INT of 7, so already your paper thin circular logic doesn't hold up.

Probably understandable by ogres.

[PossibleCabbage]

I feel like the overwhelming majority of antagonists the PCs fight have never been in a combat where a downed person just gets back up and resumes fighting (and given how these things tend to go, will never be in another one.)

So I don't think antagonists should really have thoughts about this besides "that is strange". NPCs in general should not be aware of game mechanics and how to exploit them, because their world is normal to them and there's no reason for the GM to hang a lampshade on any loopholes or inconsistencies or general weirdness.

[ShadeRaven]

Serum wrote:

ShadeRaven wrote:

Not to mention that I just don't get this us (GMs) vs them (PCs) attitude that someone mentioned earlier. Tacking dead PC sheets to the wall? Bragging about TPKs? I wonder if they have mounted lollipops taking from babies and stuffed fish they shot in a barrel, too?

GM: Oh man, how awesome am I?!? I just totally wrecked my 4-year-old niece in an arm-wrestling contest! You should have seen her tears as she ran off sobbing! I doubt she'll be able to use that arm for weeks!

You really think that is what is going on here? A GM that is happy about killing PCs? The topic alone suggests otherwise.

Yes, earlier someone mentioned that there are GMs who literally brag about TPKs and pin up character sheets of the fallen.

Because it's literally easier to kill PCs than it is to weave a good tale of heroism and triumph against seemingly overwhelming odds, I find it quite odd that any GM would want to brag about doing what comes without much effort.

[Snickersnax]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like the overwhelming majority of antagonists the PCs fight have never been in a combat where a downed person just gets back up and resumes fighting (and given how these things tend to go, will never be in another one.)

So I don't think antagonists should really have thoughts about this besides "that is strange". NPCs in general should not be aware of game mechanics and how to exploit them, because their world is normal to them and there's no reason for the GM to hang a lampshade on any loopholes or inconsistencies or general weirdness.

I hate having different rules for PCs and Monsters.

Fortunately the rules are somewhat flexible here

Playtest Rulebook (p294) wrote:

When most creatures reach 0 Hit Points, they die, unless the attack was nonlethal,...

Villains, powerful monsters, enemies with healers or regeneration, and any other NPCs at the GM’s discretion are knocked out like a PC as well

Since its my discretion everybody follows the same rule and I ignore the first sentence.

That way when the party healer 3-action channels almost everybody is getting up :)

And death and dying rules aren't double weird for PCs. PCs already have hero points, that's weird enough.

But this doesn't really come up often enough to be an issue ( So far for our group once in 6 adventures)

[PossibleCabbage]

No, what I am saying is if you have a band of ogres who have been marauding the countryside, how many groups of people have they fought that a) were actually interested in fighting and b) had magical healing at their disposal?

Particularly at low levels, monsters should generally have no idea how magical healing works in this situation, unless they specifically have reason to have encountered it before. Monsters haven't read the rulebook to know what a heal spell does to an unconscious person.

[DM Livgin]

Here to discuss vicious enemies.

I run ghouls and ghasts as 'vicious', have for quite a while. It has served me well as a way to intensify those combats; when the players go "Oh no, these are ghasts! We need to play smart, these are the creatures that killed Amiri." I thought it was appropriate as these creatures are driven by a mad hunger for flesh. In Somberfell Hall it really raised the stakes when a few ghasts took a swing at a dying character (and missed most their attacks due to how AC works). Of course since I'm trying to curate a game experience, I've used this viciousness to softball an encounter when things were going poorly: ghouls finishing off a dying animal companion instead of attaching the characters.

The only other example that came to mind if a vicious enemy was a trap that specifically targeted 'the nearest living creature'. But this is a sliding bar that can be moved to match the theme of your campaign.

In the playtest many of the monster abilities do not compliment this viciousness. For example, the brain collector can not collect a brain until a creature has been dead for a minute.

An encounter is coming up in the playtest were the enemies have healing. We will see how the dying rules work when applied to the enemy.

[Dire Ursus]

Snickersnax wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like the overwhelming majority of antagonists the PCs fight have never been in a combat where a downed person just gets back up and resumes fighting (and given how these things tend to go, will never be in another one.)

So I don't think antagonists should really have thoughts about this besides "that is strange". NPCs in general should not be aware of game mechanics and how to exploit them, because their world is normal to them and there's no reason for the GM to hang a lampshade on any loopholes or inconsistencies or general weirdness.

I hate having different rules for PCs and Monsters.

Fortunately the rules are somewhat flexible here

Playtest Rulebook (p294) wrote:

When most creatures reach 0 Hit Points, they die, unless the attack was nonlethal,...

Villains, powerful monsters, enemies with healers or regeneration, and any other NPCs at the GM’s discretion are knocked out like a PC as well

Since its my discretion everybody follows the same rule and I ignore the first sentence.

That way when the party healer 3-action channels almost everybody is getting up :)

And death and dying rules aren't double weird for PCs. PCs already have hero points, that's weird enough.

But this doesn't really come up often enough to be an issue ( So far for our group once in 6 adventures)

So you really roll death saving throws and keep track of dying conditions on your minions? Come on man. That just slows the game down and is ridiculous to try and implement while also trying to actually run a combat as a GM.

[Snickersnax]

Dire Ursus wrote:

So you really roll death saving throws and keep track of dying conditions on your minions? Come on man. That just slows the game down and is ridiculous to try and implement while also trying to actually run a combat as a GM.

The way I manage it is: I just keep track of rounds and IF it becomes an issue (which it often doesn't). I just RetCon the rolls. This doesn't actually change anything.

[Colette Brunel]

This argument is getting a little too long-winded for me to personally respond to each line of criticism, so let me try to summarize my stance here, and hope that it is sufficient:

1. I run tabletop RPG combat in a wargame-y fashion. The moment initiative is rolled, my thought processes shift to the following: "I am now playing a win-at-all-costs wargame. My goal is to make the PCs lose and TPK. I do not want them to lose and TPK, but I have to do my best and try, because otherwise, I will not be pushing the players and their PCs to the absolute limit, and they will never discover how they can handle pressure. I will play enemies under the best tactics possible. I will not fudge any dice, statistics, or rules. I will use whatever is at my disposal as permitted by the rules, though whenever there is an ambiguity in the rules (e.g. something that says that enemies only 'typically' do something), I will rule in favor of the enemies for difficulty's sake, unless it would be a great annoyance for me."

2. There are no mechanics concerning how monsters identify dying/dead conditions, so I rule in favor of monsters: they can generally tell if someone is still alive.

3. It is mostly up to the GM to determine whether an enemy is among "the most vicious of enemies," so I make the enemies of difficult encounters "the most vicious of enemies." Who knows; maybe those are the kind of enemies PCs really are liable to go up against in these adventures.

4. It would be a great annoyance for me to track dying for enemies, hence why I do not declare enemies at 0 hit points to use the dying rules.

5. I do not allow creatures to walk through walls and attack through walls, because if I did, then there would be complete and utter chaos in the playtest adventures.

6. Throughout the 11 sessions I had ran so far, under no updates, update 1.0, update 1.1, and update 1.2, players generally spent 1 Hero Point the moment they went unconscious. I had my GMPCs follow suit. Sometimes, I have had enemies go for the kill. At other times, when it would be more tactically advantageous, I have enemies attack other characters.

7. Update 1.3 presents new dying rules and new Hero Point rules that make going for the kill less optimal, so going forward, all of the above (except for point #5, which is still a huge issue) ultimately does not matter.

[DerNils]

Honestly, everybody in my games knows if someone is down or dying. Or why do you think clerics try to heal people that go down without ever doinga medicine check. I was not aware that was secret knowledge, either.
Arguably, my monsters normally only start trying to keep people down once they realize Healy McCleric is annoying and you can't get to him.
And I want to reiterate - playing monsters deadly is not a deadly sin but a useful and valid test of the system.
Nobody cries fowl at players playing to their full capacity. This is a Playtest where we try to find out how well the Challenge system and the Game Mechanics interact. Bringing Roleplaying as tactics buffer into it does not help game design.
That is why Paizo collects data, and therefore playing the game on hard mode is one data point amongst many.

[Themetricsystem]

[Sarcasm]
This game is unbalanced because I try to run a game that is as meta-gamey, tactical, and lethal as possible, and Rule 0 lets me drop Meteors that deal infinite Damage at will with or without a saving throw. Please fix this, my players are mad at me because I arbitrarily like to project military style tactics and intelligence into sub-10 Int creatures.

UNPLAYABLE!
[/Sarcasm]

[DM_Blake]

I'm going to chime in on Collette's side here.

(Warning: big wall of text ahead! )

I've been GMing since 1st edition was new. As a kid, I learned that GMs (we called them DMs then) can kill PCs any time they want. I think every new GM learns that at some point. Right after learning that, they learn not to abuse it. Hopefully.

But a game with no consequences is not a game. In chess, somebody is usually going to lose. This is good. It means that somebody usually wins. More importantly, it means that when you win, you get a sense of accomplishment.

I'll repeat that: A victory when there is a chance to lose gives you a sense of accomplishment. But when there is no chance to lose, there is also no chance for that sense of accomplishment.

Sure, this is a RPG. The players take on roles and journey through a story. The GM tells that story. This is the "RP" part of RPG.

But let's not forget that there is a "G" after the "RP". The "G" is for Game. Games have winners and losers. Games have challenges the players must overcome. Games have conflict and resolution. Games have a sense of accomplishment when you win - but only if there is a risk of losing.

Even if we can't agree on the above point, then maybe we can agree on the following:

In a Role-Playing environment, the players take on roles of imagined characters who live and breathe, have goals and dreams, have a life, want to keep living. Verisimilitude demands that the creatures, monsters, NPCs, etc., that these characters meet in their travels also have goals and dreams, have a life, and want to keep living.

Any GM who plays monsters and enemies as a simple stack of numbers for the PCs to defeat is probably not telling a good Role-Playing story.

Instead, I play monsters and enemies as if they are desperate to live, as if they fight to survive. I use their abilities. I evaluate their mental statistics and play them to maximize whatever intelligence and wisdom they might have. They fight to death if they have to or run away if they can, but they also always win if they can.

Monsters and enemies can and should win every fight if they are able to. That's what it means to survive. They are alive and like all living things, they will do everything in their power to stay alive. That's the ROLE the GM should give them.

That's good story telling.

That creates a chance that the players can lose.

That creates a sense of accomplishment when the players win.

Note: Having said all that, I consider the height of GMing to be the ability to create fun and interesting stories that include fun and interesting encounters, all of which are fully within the PCs' ability to defeat but any of which might have at least the perceived threat of being able to kill the PCs. Create the sense of adventure, the threat of danger, and the thrill of victory, all while telling a fun and engaging story.

All of which is to say, once the fun and interesting story is created and under way and the PCs encounter a balanced and dangerous enemy, I will play that enemy to win. Strategically and tactically to the best of my ability. I'm a chess master so maybe strategy and tactics are things at which I excel.

I'm not afraid to let the PCs die if they fail to overcome a fair and balanced challenge. I'm not afraid to let the bad guys win when they are fighting to survive.

Verisimilitude demands it.

But I WILL make sure the encounters are balanced and interesting. I WILL make sure the challenges are within the reach of the PCs. If I feel an encounter is going badly because it was poorly created such that it was unfair to begin with, I WILL fudge numbers or "overlook" optimal strategies to tip it back into the PCs' favor. After all, an unfair encounter was my fault in the first place, and it's my job to fix it.

But I won't do those things if the encounter was just fine and the players are flubbing it. Let them learn from their mistakes.

[Dire Ursus]

DerNils wrote:

Honestly, everybody in my games knows if someone is down or dying. Or why do you think clerics try to heal people that go down without ever doinga medicine check. I was not aware that was secret knowledge, either.

Arguably, my monsters normally only start trying to keep people down once they realize Healy McCleric is annoying and you can't get to him.
And I want to reiterate - playing monsters deadly is not a deadly sin but a useful and valid test of the system.
Nobody cries fowl at players playing to their full capacity. This is a Playtest where we try to find out how well the Challenge system and the Game Mechanics interact. Bringing Roleplaying as tactics buffer into it does not help game design.
That is why Paizo collects data, and therefore playing the game on hard mode is one data point amongst many.

The way she is playing it is not RAW though. The rules state that typically creatures do not keep attacking downed PCs. In fact I've never been in or run a game where the enemies will keep attacking downed PCs in the middle of combat. 1e or 2e. It's just a nice way to make your players feel like they are being unfairly targeted and it's just not fun overall.

If I was attacked while dying in a long term campaign when there are other alive targets I would absolutely fight it and say the GM is being unfair. If they refuse then I'd probably not want to make a new character and play in that campaign again. And this is coming from someone who likes to challenge PCs and never fudge dice. I'd much rather the party all fall and TPK fairly then a creature sacrifice itself just to kill a downed PC. That's bad GMing unless your players all want it to be that way (which I highly doubt they do).

It's not playing on hard mode. It's cheating.

[Colette Brunel]

The problematic sentence is the "only the most vicious..." sentence, which gives a GM permission to declare that, "Yes, this is indeed an especially vicious enemy" and go to town on dying creatures.

Again, I do not think it matters too much in update 1.3, seeing how spending a Hero Point eliminates both the dying condition and the wounded condition.

[Midnightoker]

Colette Brunel wrote:

2. There are no mechanics concerning how monsters identify dying/dead conditions, so I rule in favor of monsters: they can generally tell if someone is still alive.

Practically the definition of "have your cake and eat it to"

They know with 100% knowledge that a PC is still alive, but also know when they are absolutely dead (so they don't spend any pesky actions attacking a dead PC).

You're not ruling in favor of the monsters, you're ruling against realism. A 7 INT animal does not have the capacity to understand the logistical difference between a creature bleeding out and a creature 100% dead.

As for "no mechanics concerning how monsters identify dying/dead conditions", how about the good old fashion Perception check? or is it to ridiculous to assume that something like that needs to be perceived.

I don't know why I'm even bothering at this point. All you're doing is making excuses for why you're allowed to go against RAW. I'm about 100% certain that maybe you're deliberately trolling at this point.

Do you even believe you are meta gaming? You are giving perfect knowledge to your creatures (as if they were God). That is the definition of meta gaming?

If the PC's were to meta game, would you have a problem with that? If they read through the entire AP and started walking up to every secret and say "well I read it, my PC just knows. There's no inherent rules saying that my PC has to identify this secret door..."

Or would you say that's blatantly cheating?

[Deadmanwalking]

Colette Brunel wrote:

I am very much on the autistic spectrum.

So am I, while we're talking about it.

Arakhor wrote:

So am I. I don't see how that's relevant.

It's not, but Gorbacz asked them whether they were, so they answered.

.
.
.
On the actual subject, I have philosophical disagreements with Colette's playstyle and don't think I or my group would find it especially fun. But at the same time, it's not badwrongfun, and sounds like a perfectly legitimate way for some people to enjoy an RPG.

With that in mind, some rules making it a little harder for NPCs to casually murder unconscious PCs might be in order. They don't hurt more forgiving GMs, so why not include them?

Personally, I think the solution is to institute an official rule that it takes an action and a Medicine check (though probably not an especially hard one...not Perception because this should be easy to get wrong for amateurs) to tell if someone knocked unconscious is alive or dead. PCs can continue to assume their comrades are alive and burn spells accordingly (and may even do a bit of harmless metagaming in this regard), but it makes it possible to do things like leave an enemy for dead on a critical failure without the GM handwaving it (and thus opens up and enables some narrative options), and makes trying to coup de grace downed foes much more action intensive to the point of being actively bad tactics.

[Colette Brunel]

I do not see how it is considered the height of metagaming to let monsters know when PCs are dead, or merely dying.

In my games, players and their PCs get entitled to know that monsters are dead. So do monsters. I try to push for transparency.

[Colette Brunel]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

With that in mind, some rules making it a little harder for NPCs to casually murder unconscious PCs might be in order. They don't hurt more forgiving GMs, so why not include them?

As I have been saying for a while, I think that update 1.3 goes a long way towards discouraging monsters from going for the kill, because of the way Hero Points wipe away both dying and wounded. That could very well be enough for now.

[PossibleCabbage]

Colette Brunel wrote:

The problematic sentence is the "only the most vicious..." sentence, which gives a GM permission to declare that, "Yes, this is indeed an especially vicious enemy" and go to town on dying creatures.

I feel like a threshold of "well, the GM can" is useless, because the GM can ignore, change, omit, amend, or abrogate literally any part of the rulebook they want. A threshold of "well, should the GM... will it enhance the game?" is much better since it cuts off a variety of potential abuses (including all of the myriad rule 0 abuses.)

[Dante Doom]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

With that in mind, some rules making it a little harder for NPCs to casually murder unconscious PCs might be in order. They don't hurt more forgiving GMs, so why not include them?

As I have been saying for a while, I think that update 1.3 goes a long way towards discouraging monsters from going for the kill, because of the way Hero Points wipe away both dying and wounded. That could very well be enough for now.

You know that the monsters don't even know what is a Hero Point, right? And this is metagame? Why change monster tactics because an update in rules engine?

[Colette Brunel]

Changes to the rules engine mean that different tactics become optimal. Changes to the Hero Point rules mean that an enemy battering down a dying PC could very well find themselves doing little.

[thorin001]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

I'd like to note that while monsters that focus on killing downed PCs will definitely increase individual player kills, they will in many circumstances reduce total party kills.

Oh, no, I disagree. In my experience, I have found that trying to take out multiple PCs is very tough when there are multiple healers in the party and Hero Points exist. I have found it more effective to simply take out characters one at a time.

During my second playthrough The Rose Street Revenge, when one PC died to a trap outside of combat, I allowed that PC to be replaced. However, in future games, I decided to revoke that generosity. This is why, when the second encounter of Affair at Sombrefell Hall caused one PC to be killed, I simply moved on with only three PCs.

That explains a bit. You are playing the entire scenario as one intelligent foe. Each encounter is inflicting permanent attritional damage in furtherance of the overmind's goal. But the members of each individual encounter should be worried about furthering their own particular goals, not that of the whole scenario.

So the problem is that each individual group is not trying to win, they are trying to set up the next group to win.

[PossibleCabbage]

One thing I think merits consideration-

It's good to have enough self-awareness to realize than anyone's particular GMing style is not universal, though a wide variety of distinct styles will work. So when giving feedback on the playtest, if you know your preference is on the extreme end of something, please just come right out and say that- it will provide a helpful filter for people processing your observations.

Like my games are as far from wargamey as I can make them- I literally do not own a grid map (I use loose positioning on a whiteboard, or theater of the mind, as appropriate) and one of the most popular house rules in my games is that character death is literally impossible without the express consent of the player (e.g. "death flag" rules, which are *not* extended to NPCs, lest the game become interminably tedious). But if I run a playtest game like that, it's not like my feedback on the dying rules is going to be useful.

[Gorbacz]

I'm not sure what's more breaking the verisimilitude - having each and every monster coup-de-grace PCs OR having all monsters in some supernatural way aware of Hero Points and under constant undispellable deathwatch. Oh, and having those monsters aware of errata. Is there anything left of the fourth wall here?

I mean, we're out of a pen and paper RPG territory, we're in Battle of France 1940 battalion level gameplay and we're arguing if it was realistic for a British Matilda II regiment to advance ahead toward Rommel's 7th Panzer, since the Brits historically weren't aware of the fact that Germans just happened upon the idea of setting 88mm AA guns to fire direct as anti-tank weapons but we players are perfectly aware of that historical fact.

[Strachan Fireblade]

At the end of the day, monster lethality in terms of killing downed PCs is up to individual DM's. Everyone has the right to run the games they want.

Having said that, Colette has mentioned in other threads the difficulty of keeping some of her/his games going. For my money, the high TPK ratio and player fun factor are certainly linked together and the end result is not a surprise to me.

[sherlock1701]

If there is no stat penalty for aging, you would never expect someone to be weak or slow in the game world because they're old.

Likewise, if you have never seen anyone die the first time they get downed, and have often seen them pop back up/get healed back up, it would be reasonable to assume that you have to keep attacking downed targets at least once or twice to make sure.

In small combats, it's typically wise to wipe out as many foes as possible (a dead enemy isn't an attacking enemy after all), rather than spreading damage around, so focus fire also makes sense.

Certainly once a character is down most single target attackers won't directly go after them, but I would expect that clever creatures/characters with AOEs should probably try to include the downed creature in the area just to be safe.

I will always run NPCs on PC rules - negative hp, dying condition, hero points if applicable. Otherwise, the universe just makes no sense.

[thorin001]

Dire Ursus wrote:

Snickersnax wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like the overwhelming majority of antagonists the PCs fight have never been in a combat where a downed person just gets back up and resumes fighting (and given how these things tend to go, will never be in another one.)

So I don't think antagonists should really have thoughts about this besides "that is strange". NPCs in general should not be aware of game mechanics and how to exploit them, because their world is normal to them and there's no reason for the GM to hang a lampshade on any loopholes or inconsistencies or general weirdness.

I hate having different rules for PCs and Monsters.

Fortunately the rules are somewhat flexible here

Playtest Rulebook (p294) wrote:

When most creatures reach 0 Hit Points, they die, unless the attack was nonlethal,...

Villains, powerful monsters, enemies with healers or regeneration, and any other NPCs at the GM’s discretion are knocked out like a PC as well

Since its my discretion everybody follows the same rule and I ignore the first sentence.

That way when the party healer 3-action channels almost everybody is getting up :)

And death and dying rules aren't double weird for PCs. PCs already have hero points, that's weird enough.

But this doesn't really come up often enough to be an issue ( So far for our group once in 6 adventures)

So you really roll death saving throws and keep track of dying conditions on your minions? Come on man. That just slows the game down and is ridiculous to try and implement while also trying to actually run a combat as a GM.

Yes, especially when the bad guys also have healing. Also if they have info that the PCs might want to extract.

[Mats Öhrman]

ShadeRaven wrote:

Serum wrote:

ShadeRaven wrote:

Not to mention that I just don't get this us (GMs) vs them (PCs) attitude that someone mentioned earlier. Tacking dead PC sheets to the wall? Bragging about TPKs? I wonder if they have mounted lollipops taking from babies and stuffed fish they shot in a barrel, too?

GM: Oh man, how awesome am I?!? I just totally wrecked my 4-year-old niece in an arm-wrestling contest! You should have seen her tears as she ran off sobbing! I doubt she'll be able to use that arm for weeks!

You really think that is what is going on here? A GM that is happy about killing PCs? The topic alone suggests otherwise.

Yes, earlier someone mentioned that there are GMs who literally brag about TPKs and pin up character sheets of the fallen.

Because it's literally easier to kill PCs than it is to weave a good tale of heroism and triumph against seemingly overwhelming odds, I find it quite odd that any GM would want to brag about doing what comes without much effort.

You learn a lot by hanging around in various Facebook TTRPG groups.

[Midnightoker]

Colette Brunel wrote:

I do not see how it is considered the height of metagaming to let monsters know when PCs are dead, or merely dying.

In my games, players and their PCs get entitled to know that monsters are dead. So do monsters. I try to push for transparency.

1. Giving your PCs this ability, does absolutely nothing because core states that they die for all intents and purposes upon going to 0 hit points.

2. What is the point of the spell Deathwatch under your interpretation?

3. Why do people in real life bother checking for a pulse if everyone in existence has supernatural knowledge of who's alive and who's dead instantly?

[Themetricsystem]

My point in all this is that in almost NO situations should a creature, NPC, or even likely PC continue attacking a creature that falls over bleeding and is already dying.

Doing so is not only projecting GM knowledge into the Character, you're literally giving them a permanent free action At-Will 2nd Level Divine Spell (The Spell Status) on literally all creatures within sight versus Willing or Unwilling Targets with NO SAVE.

STATUS SPELL 2
Casting Somatic Casting, Verbal Casting
Rangetouch;Targetsone willing living creature
Duration1 day
As long as you and the target are on the same plane of existence
and both alive, you know the target’s direction from you, its
distance from you, and any conditions affecting it.
Heightened (4th)The spell’s range increases to 30 feet, and you
can target up to 10 creatures.

You are not playing against the PCs at the table, and if you ARE, I honestly hope your players find another GM, or you simply go back to playing WH40k or whatever else you're accustomed to because the Player/GM relationship in Pathfinder in general is NOT NOT NOT supposed to be and adversarial one where you're actively using GM observations to inform Creature/Monster choices.

[Colette Brunel]

I cannot find a deathwatch spell in 2e.

As far as I can tell, status simply lets you keep track of the health status of creatures from long distances.

[Midnightoker]

Colette Brunel wrote:

I cannot find a deathwatch spell in 2e.

As far as I can tell, status simply lets you keep track of the health status of creatures from long distances.

Still waiting for your response on number 3.

You're all about efficiency and realism. I want to hear why people in real life bother to check a pulse if not to confirm what your monsters seem to have perfect knowledge.

[Colette Brunel]

At no point did I ever state I was "all about efficiency and realism." If anything, I am a purely gamist sort of GM.

People in real life check for pulses because they operate under the natural laws of our mundane world, wherein it is uncertain if someone is dead or merely unconscious.

PCs and monsters should be aware of the dead/dying condition of creatures in the battlefield, because otherwise, a clunky situation is created wherein combatants (including PCs) are futzing around for information on the dead/dying condition of any given combatant despite that knowledge being obvious to the players and the GM.

[graeme mcdougall]

I think some people are being a bit harsh on Colette here.
That style of extremely deadly, coldly adversarial game certainly isn't my preferred style but it IS a legitimate style that has a right to be considered. ESPECIALLY in the context of a Playtest where we're being asked to push the game to it's limits & break it.

Now, I don't think this kind of playstyle should be the main determining factor in the game design but it at least deserves a place in the discussions.

I think it will probably take until the 1st player-focused hardback in the real release for Characters to start to really have the versitility of PF1 characters but it's a decent goal.

And I don't see any reason to label people a 'dick GM' - their players are presumably more or less down with this style of game or they wouldn't be playing.

[bwee]

There's absolutely no reason to consider their reports in the context of this playtest if they're metagaming

[Mats Öhrman]

Gorbacz wrote:

I'm not sure what's more breaking the verisimilitude - having each and every monster coup-de-grace PCs OR having all monsters in some supernatural way aware of Hero Points and under constant undispellable deathwatch. Oh, and having those monsters aware of errata. Is there anything left of the fourth wall here?

I mean, we're out of a pen and paper RPG territory, we're in Battle of France 1940 battalion level gameplay and we're arguing if it was realistic for a British Matilda II regiment to advance ahead toward Rommel's 7th Panzer, since the Brits historically weren't aware of the fact that Germans just happened upon the idea of setting 88mm AA guns to fire direct as anti-tank weapons but we players are perfectly aware of that historical fact.

Bringing it back into RPG territory: In 4E, one of the ways the tank classes implemented the tank role was by having various abilities that made life nasty for the monsters unless they hit the tank. This was one of the things I disliked about 4E, as it made the whole thing feel very gameistic; how did the monsters know that they were “supposed” to hit the tank to avoid this nasty stuff?

Retributive Strike is clearly modelled on these 4E abilities. I mean, how does the monster know that shifting its target to the Paladin (as it is supposed to do) will end its enfeebled condition? ”If I hit this tin can I wont feel as tired any more?”

[graystone]

Vidmaster7 wrote:

Taking the game as if your an AI who has to follow the letter of the rules and do your best to try and eliminate the party while keeping in set parameters is absolutely the wrong way to run a table top RPG by my definition. Its a story telling game and dm and players are suppose to work together. That said actual game design should still be solid even with that caveat. However if the DM wants to kill some players he's going to kill some players no matter what he's running.

We're not playtesting story telling or roleplaying though but the mechanics. If monsters have the option to attack downed monsters or not based on a nebulous factor [viciousness], it's not outside the parameters to play any monsters as such.

On other topics:
Sensing dying: IMO, I think things just work easier if monsters and PC's can sense it. I'd rather not have healers [npc's and PC's] not know this and heal dead people and such. If it's thought of as metagamy, it's a matagame feature I'll take.

Clarifications: I'd like to see some things hammered out. Having actual tactics and 'viciousness' noted on the adventures would go along way. Same with telling if someone is dead/dying/faking. If it's left vague, issue come up.

PS: for our TPK's, monsters didn't attack downed people until 'dead' people stood back up. This didn't take long as the first downs where crits before the PC's could act.

[Gratz]

Colette Brunel wrote:

The problematic sentence is the "only the most vicious..." sentence, which gives a GM permission to declare that, "Yes, this is indeed an especially vicious enemy" and go to town on dying creatures.

That sounds like a cop-out. A GM has control over the narrative at all times, so a GM doesn't need permission to let PCs live or to finish them off and as other people have shown, there are passages even in the same sentence that contradict this position.

So yes, it was your choice to cause these TPKs, which is fine if you let the players know that you'll try to kill their PCs at every opportunity you'll get, but I hope there weren't many newcomers and beginners among them, so that they don't get the wrong impression of what a regular game of Pathfinder, or any RPG for that matter, looks like.

[David knott 242]

I think that one excellent guide to NPC tactics would be usual PC tactics.

So, for example, since focusing fire on a single opponent is a commonly used and approved tactic of PC parties, it is a bit of a problem that we don't have a good reason to discourage that sort of tactic on the part of enemies of the PCs.

But since PCs don't usually coup de grace their fallen foes (unless the foes are trolls or other regenerating creatures), there is no good reason for NPCs to be doing that unless they have superior knowledge about PC capabilities.

Of course, targeting the healer after he brings an ally back from the brink of death would be in the same category as focused fire.

[Gaterie]

For all those who say it's metagame if the monsters can determine if a PC is dead: when was the last time your healbot has spend a spell slot to cast heal on your dead body?

... In my experience, in Path 1 it's even worse than that:

"Joe has fallen! But he's in the middle of the pack of monster... I can deliver a cure spell but I'm not sure I can survive...
- Don't bother. I have -5 HP, I'll survive for at least 9 rounds. Just kill them, then you can heal me. Maybe I'll stabilize before."

or

"Joe has fallen! But he's in the middle of the pack of monster... I can deliver a cure spell but I'm not sure I can survive...
- I have -13 HP! Please do something, do something, do something!"

or

"Joe has fallen! But he's in the middle of the pack of monster... I can deliver a cure spell but I'm not sure I can survive...
- Don't bother, I'm dead. -25 HP."

Breath of life is an official PF1 core spell, and it's completely useless if you don't assume the cleric knows exactly when a character dies. The rules assume you metagame.

DM_Blake wrote:

I'm going to chime in on Collette's side here.

(Warning: big wall of text ahead! )

I've been GMing since 1st edition was new. As a kid, I learned that GMs (we called them DMs then) can kill PCs any time they want. I think every new GM learns that at some point. Right after learning that, they learn not to abuse it. Hopefully.

But a game with no consequences is not a game. In chess, somebody is usually going to lose. This is good. It means that somebody usually wins. More importantly, it means that when you win, you get a sense of accomplishment.

I'll repeat that: A victory when there is a chance to lose gives you a sense of accomplishment. But when there is no chance to lose, there is also no chance for that sense of accomplishment.

Sure, this is a RPG. The players take on roles and journey through a story. The GM tells that story. This is the "RP" part of RPG.

But let's not forget that there is a "G" after the "RP". The "G" is for Game. Games have winners and losers. Games have challenges the players must overcome. Games have conflict and resolution. Games have a sense of accomplishment when you win - but only if there is a risk of losing.

Even if we can't agree on the above point, then maybe we can agree on the following:

In a Role-Playing environment, the players take on roles of imagined characters who live and breathe, have goals and dreams, have a life, want to keep living. Verisimilitude demands that the creatures, monsters, NPCs, etc., that these characters meet in their travels also have goals and dreams, have a life, and want to keep living.

Any GM who plays monsters and enemies as a simple stack of numbers for the PCs to defeat is probably not telling a good Role-Playing story.

Instead, I play monsters and enemies as if they are desperate to live, as if they fight to survive. I use their abilities. I evaluate their mental statistics and play them to maximize whatever intelligence and wisdom they might have. They fight to death if they have to or run away if...

^ this

The role of the GM is to challenge the PCs to make them feel awesome; as awesome as McClane at the end of Die Hard: exhausted, wounded, with no ammo left... But alive, while Hans Gruber lies dead on the ground. The role of the system is to make sure a fight has the desired outcome - ie, the PC feel they can lose, they think they are one roll away from a TPK, but in the end they win because they are awesome (assuming you stay in the CR guidelines).

Of course the system can't have a 100% success rate at this task; but the PF1 engine has a better success rate than the PF2 engine - and the PF1 engine doesn't require a super-special-rule "play the monsters nice - consider they'd rather die than kill a PC" for that.

Shouldn't the PF2 engine be an improvement of the PF1 engine? If it doesn't work as well at its main task, it's a direct downgrade.

[Mats Öhrman]

David knott 242 wrote:

But since PCs don't usually coup de grace their fallen foes (unless the foes are trolls or other regenerating creatures), there is no good reason for NPCs to be doing that unless they have superior knowledge about PC capabilities.

I've known plenty of players who would whack a fallen monster a few extra times "just to make sure".

[ShadeRaven]

DM_Blake wrote:

(Warning: big wall of text ahead!)

There are interesting juxtapositions to RPGs, isn’t there?

There are people who absolutely see it as a competitive game with winners and losers and the dividing line is between Players and GMs. GMs win when they defeat the player characters, and characters win when they overcome the GM’s challenges. Others see it as a social game where it’s the shared experience that is the core of what makes it a game worth playing. Most probably fall somewhere in between. I know I never think of winners and losers, but I recognize that challenge does play a part in the experience and overcoming those challenges add to the collective.

There is also the infusion of Role-Playing that is much harder to define and adjudicate. Some largely ignore it treating the game as a tactical simulator, some reserve it only as a tool to overcome a social encounter, some infuse it into everything, and so forth. It’s impossible to make rules that define the imaginative infinite that comes with roleplaying, so it will always be a point of contention when it comes to RAW and RAI.

Blake does something I have no interest in, for example. Playing an entire world as equally focused and important as the “title characters.” Egad, that just sounds exhausting to me. My games are more story-telling oriented with the protagonists (PCs) as the stars and everything else existing only as necessary to serve that story. I am sure Blake would say that’s not pure Role-Playing, because I don’t RP the Ankheg or the Kobold Slinger like I do more important NPCs or Antagonists, and that I only generally concern myself about the living world beyond what the PC encounter – and to be honest, only so far is it helps evolve the story.

But I play a more cinematic, character driven game than some others might. And I am sure there are those who go even further than I do to weave a tale around the PCs.

I see the validity (as I have said before) in Colette’s style, and Blake’s too, and I am sure that Paizo hopes to offer a game that will satisfy as many consumers as possible. That’s why almost any input, as long as it’s not designed to be outright hostile or destructive to the sense of community that a good Playtest tries to nurture, is valuable and important.