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Look at the HP of CR 12s and remember, by the rules, that is supposed to be faced by 4 PCs of level 12.
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No, they don't. A CR 12 is a speedbump for a full level 12 party with normal WBL. If you want to challenge parties, you need higher CR's, which is what the APL table actually also does say right in the CRB.
I'm not even saying that you are necessarily wrong about your main point that offense is ridiculously strong in PF1E. But I strongly feel that Paizo went with the wrong solution to that problem. The combination of "forced optimization to be viable" and "super tight math" makes the new game feel much more like a MMO skinner box than PF1E to me.
My solution would have been to remove some of the bonus types (but not to the extent Paizo did), up monster durability especially at higher levels and nerf "save or die" spells to be all "save or damage", as well as make "save or suck" spells less crippling so that monsters can still act to be better threats and actually get their attack routines and special abilities out at least one time before they croak. And to Paizo's credit, much of that is in PF2E, only that they overdid it dramatically and overnerfed spells, removed all bonus types but one and made fights too long by their 50% success chance math.
Honestly, the main problem I've been running into in my PF1E games is more along the lines that Paizo seriously lowballs most encounters in adventure paths. Which forces me to stop being lazy and just add advances templates with Combat Manager. But that is more a problem which is on the AP management site, where they write the AP's for beginner groups and expect GM's of experienced groups to rewrite everything to make them challenging.
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And also that CLW wands aren't just a PFS issue. I've never touched PFS, yet tons of CLW wand usage happens in my games because it's so good that it puts dedicated healers to shame.
And in doing so allows dedicated healers to focus on healing in combat, with other spells for when they want them, rather than having to use all their spell slots on healing. As I remember AD&D the lack of anything resembling CLW wands meant that clerics did need to dedicate most of their spells to healing most of the time. Similarly with D&D 3.x/PF if the GM hated magic marts and magic item crafting.
The exact form may be a problem but something with the same effect (like PF2 treat wounds, unless the healer rolls poorly, then it fails its role) is good for the game.
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Is good to finally see a bit of acknowledgement about the regrettable state of magic in the Playtest, having said that, I don't think a fewer more dices to blasting is a good direction, the more I've thought about it the more convinced I am that Auto-Scaling needs to be back, it will go and adjust more along the design lines of +lvl to everything.
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Just giving my GMing experience of the terrible offensive power creep in 1e. You literally can't make encounters that last more than 3 rounds or the monster will destroy the PCs. I will often give bosses double HP as well as the advanced template and they still will fall in a single round to the PCs if they roll well and can get to flanking positions.
2e combat is such a breath of fresh air. Just yesterday we had a fight with a Dragon and a fire giant that teetered on the edge of TPK and victory that lasted a tense 6 rounds. This is the perfect length of a sub-boss really challenging encounter for me and I didn't even have to change anything about the encounter.
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2e combat is such a breath of fresh air. Just yesterday we had a fight with a Dragon and a fire giant that teetered on the edge of TPK and victory that lasted a tense 6 rounds. This is the perfect length of a sub-boss really challenging encounter for me and I didn't even have to change anything about the encounter.
I got crit for half my HP last night, as a 16 CON level 9 Fighter, in the very first action of combat, by something with a stealth so high that it was literally impossible for anyone in the party to notice it.
Without a dedicated healer on hand, that amount of burst damage in one action is not conducive to lengthy combats. Especially since monster crits aren't exactly all that rare now.
Our experiences are clearly not identical, but I'm not seeing the rocket tag problem solved at all. It's just that now only the NPCs have the rocket launchers.
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Tridus since I saw your last other thread and know what you fought. That fight that you got crit that hard was a cr12 vs player level 9.
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Tridus since I saw your last other thread and know what you fought. That fight that you got crit that hard was a cr12 vs player level 9.
I mean, it was put into a level 9 adventure and we had no particular way of knowing it was CR12 until it was too late. So yes, it was obviously difficult, but if the system really doesn't like encounters with that wide a difficulty spread, the content designers are going to have to be pretty careful in using them.
I've seen this in other parts of DD as well, although not quite so egregious. It's not the first time I've had a party member go from full to half or worse in a single turn. It's just that last time I was playing a Cleric and could do something about it.
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This is all the same rhetoric from 10-years ago. Some people were ecstatic over the new edition's more balanced, longer lasting encounters, compared to 3rd Ed.Just giving my GMing experience of the terrible offensive power creep in 1e. You literally can't make encounters that last more than 3 rounds or the monster will destroy the PCs. I will often give bosses double HP as well as the advanced template and they still will fall in a single round to the PCs if they roll well and can get to flanking positions.
2e combat is such a breath of fresh air. Just yesterday we had a fight with a Dragon and a fire giant that teetered on the edge of TPK and victory that lasted a tense 6 rounds. This is the perfect length of a sub-boss really challenging encounter for me and I didn't even have to change anything about the encounter.
6 Rounds (in this system) sounds like a nightmare and not interesting at all.
I'm all for solving rocket tag issues with high level play, but combat is not nearly streamlined enough in PF2 for me to want 6 rounds of combat.
With choice paralysis sometimes being a thing with as few options as are available now, I can only imagine that things will get worse.
I think they need to start designing Monsters with specific "weaknesses" that you trigger in order to close a fight, it certainly fits thematically with most literature/pop culture related to DnD style settings.
They have some pretty great building blocks to pull that off with too. Progressing enemies to Condition 2 triggers vulnerable slashing 5 is an elegant application of their system.
Then it comes down to PCs rolling well on knowledge (or spending a few actions trying to figure it out), executing the trigger for the weakness, and then finishing the enemy.
Now triggering that weakness shouldn't be mandatory unless it is relatively above CR (probably diminishing returns on investment, so Goblins might have a weakness, but it's easy to kill them anyways so why bother triggering it).
It does come off a little "MMO boss" like, but there's a lot of ways to flavor this dramatically for real effect and has been representative a bunch of times:
- Sauron can't be killed without destroying the one ring
- Blinding the Cyclops makes him far easier to defeat
- Oberyn's ego got the best of him
- Joseph Curwen's painting
- You can only kill a highlander by decapitation
Special creatures and enemies require special interactions to defeat.
It does add another element to designing enemies, but it creates a lot more grounded combat in the later levels.
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@Tridus
So...umm... I wanna make sure we are on the same understanding.
Doomsday Dawn is an adventure designed to test the new system. Things are going to be put into the Playtest to serve a specific testing goal such as handling long encounters without being able to sleep in between (part 3) or "random encounters" along a route (part 2). So the designers are going to put encounters in there so they can have that feedback and testing of the rules in different circumstances.
That fight is designed to see if a party at full power (just rested, full HP) can handle a creature levels above theirs. And also to see maybe what classes were doing too well or too poorly in such an encounter.
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6 Rounds (in this system) sounds like a nightmare and not interesting at all.
Depending on group-set up and enemy abilities a six to ten round fight can easily be an entire evening of play for my guys. It surely was for the final boss of the last campaign, who lasted an entire minute.
Rocket tag is a problem, but making every fight last long also encounters its own challenges, i.e. real life time is limited and becomes ever more so as people get older and have full time jobs and families.
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No. No it doesn't.
The book says:
Easy = APL –1
Average = APL
Challenging = APL +1
Hard = APL +2
Epic = APL +3Speed bump would be easy or less, ie APL -1 or lower.
Average is average.
The fact that, in reality, to create challenge, you usually need a CR+4 encounter (4 enemies of equal CR to the APL of the party) shows that the system doesn't work as intended in PF1.
Since there is no definition of "average" anymore (there used to be one in 3.5), I maintain that by long experience APL+0 is a speedbump. Especially since those encounters in AP's normally are of the "four weak enemies" variety, which does further exacerbate the speed bump problem.
It's true that well-rounded PC's usually can win against higher level challenges than the system intends, but that's nothing more than a stat adjustment for the GM to do, which is really easy to do with free software like Combat Manager. It's not a bad idea to rebalance challenges a bit, but PF2E goes too far in the other direction and makes every APL+0 a possible death experience for the entire party. The new system is too swingy, which is due to the too tight math skeleton.
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6 Rounds (in this system) sounds like a nightmare and not interesting at all.Depending on group-set up and enemy abilities a six to ten round fight can easily be an entire evening of play for my guys. It surely was for the final boss of the last campaign, who lasted an entire minute.
Rocket tag is a problem, but making every fight last long also encounters its own challenges, i.e. real life time is limited and becomes ever more so as people get older and have full time jobs and families.
Yeah, this. If every encounter is 2 hours of real life time in duration (seems about right for the playtest so far), my group will get two encounters per session if we do absolutely nothing else. So in practice, we'll get maybe 1.5 encounters per session.
If more rounds of combat is a desireable goal, then faster rounds of combat is an absolute necessity. (I'm perfectly okay with short combat and getting back to the plot instead of every encounter playing out like a 2 hour wargame.)
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@Tridus
So...umm... I wanna make sure we are on the same understanding.
Doomsday Dawn is an adventure designed to test the new system. Things are going to be put into the Playtest to serve a specific testing goal such as handling long encounters without being able to sleep in between (part 3) or "random encounters" along a route (part 2). So the designers are going to put encounters in there so they can have that feedback and testing of the rules in different circumstances.
That fight is designed to see if a party at full power (just rested, full HP) can handle a creature levels above theirs. And also to see maybe what classes were doing too well or too poorly in such an encounter.
Yes, I understand that. In that sense, it did its goal. It flattened us and we learned which classes handled it better than others.
But it also shows that rocket tag hasn't really gone away, because if you encounter something that's meant to be a difficult encounter, it can very easily crit you into oblivion... except that unlike in PF1, you can't answer in kind. That's certainly a relevant observation.
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PF2e absolutely adjusts the math such the a monster of level equal to a PC is roughly a 50/50 fight with a single PC, which is a huge difference from 1e and means you need to build encounters under different expectations, yes. Personally I find that refreshing; it's easier to understand the level system and what is and isn't an appropriate encounter.
That said, it is still possible to crush encounters. My PCs in Raiders of Shrieking Peak absolutely annihilated an encounter with 3 equal-level monsters without ever getting attacked, due to smart tactics and good stealth rolls (and some unlucky saves for the monsters, admittedly).
Also I think it's a little unfair to continue to harp on how tight the math is, since Paizo has already said that they recognize it's a problem and they are working on fixing it.
6 Rounds (in this system) sounds like a nightmare and not interesting at all.Depending on group-set up and enemy abilities a six to ten round fight can easily be an entire evening of play for my guys. It surely was for the final boss of the last campaign, who lasted an entire minute.
Rocket tag is a problem, but making every fight last long also encounters its own challenges, i.e. real life time is limited and becomes ever more so as people get older and have full time jobs and families.
That's in part why I think the length of the encounter should be something the PC's have a lot more control over via determining the "win condition" for said encounter.
If the Players want to try to beat the boss the good ol' "stab it to death" way, then more power to them, after all if they're having fun then let it be. It even leaves opportunities for PC's to have moments of "I know this isn't the smart move, but this is what my stubborn fighter guy would try" (I.E. Drax from GotG against Ronan)
Then for those encounters that need expediting or PC's are just not equipped to deal with them via the "stab it to death" method, they can employ something a little more narrative based.
This also can help give casters back some of their presence, if triggering these win conditions comes from Spells, then it allows more teamwork via this "trigger weakness" concept.
Even if spells get a boost, I think having them operate as a weakening agent is a lot more constructive to their value while not removing the necessity of the big damage dealers from their roles.
Thus creating the "dependent on each other" relationship they are trying to go for.
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So about the animal companion deal. Where in the surveys have we been able to say how often an animal went down or died?
Cause we playested a ranger and a druid with one for the lv4 game and they were down a total of 6 times and that's with the animal druid basically casting heal animal a lot in fights.
The lv 12 playtest one person commented that they wanted to play a druid with a pet since it was a lot higher level now, but when he saw that the AC was like 7 less than everyone else's or something and HP wasn't like 100 over everyone to compensate he changed his mind. Players get critted enough when we all have max AC, 7 less and he felt the animal was just asking to get crit all the time from their 3rd attack. Also that their saves were a little lower, not as super bad though.
But I've not seen places in the survey to share such stuff or how many times animals went down. So that's probably why they don't have much data saying they are.
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I'm not even saying that you are necessarily wrong about your main point that offense is ridiculously strong in PF1E. But I strongly feel that Paizo went with the wrong solution to that problem. The combination of "forced optimization to be viable" and "super tight math" makes the new game feel much more like a MMO skinner box than PF1E to me.
This isn't an intentional design goal, though. Or at least the forced optimization isn't. Jason's even publicly stated that the game is tuned wrong (in the direction of them assuming more optimized characters than are normal) and they're gonna fix the math (it was in last Friday's Twitch stream)...though probably not during the playtest (since changing every number by a formula would be logistically difficult and, once you know there's an issue, pure math is the easiest thing to change without outside input).
Speed bump would be easy or less, ie APL -1 or lower.
Average is average.
This sort of depends on how you define 'average'. In PF1, it's supposed to be a low risk encounter that nevertheless eats resources at such a rate that it matters (ie: you're intended to rest after four of them, or so).
I think that's probably also intended in PF2, it's just even more true that it eats resources.
I actually don't think there are huge differences between on-level encounters between the two systems...the differences come in in terms of higher level encounters which are comparatively much harder in PF2.
The fact that, in reality, to create challenge, you usually need a CR+4 encounter (4 enemies of equal CR to the APL of the party) shows that the system doesn't work as intended in PF1.
Well, CR +4 was always supposed to be the level at which you hit 'coin flip' territory (ie: 50% chance of TPK) in PF1. That said, it was easy to tune PCs so that they had a way better than 50% chance vs. CR +4, and CR +3 stuff had basically no chance at all.
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I'm really surprised that people find 6 rounds of combat ridiculous... It was an hour long fight for us. It was definitely not longer than 10 minutes a round. And like I said that was a perfect length for a sub-boss. Not every single encounter. I don't think a couple of goblin mooks should last 6 rounds obviously, and they haven't in our experience.
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I feel like I generally prefer "a monster of your level is a challenge" to "you need to fight a monster with CR greater than your level" to be challenged, if we're just calibrating arbitrary scales.
While I don't mind the idea of dialing down rocket tag a little, my experience with Heroes of Undarin so far has made me feel like it's currently gone a bit too far in the other direction. The first fight of the adventure took 9 rounds and 2 1/2 hours. It wasn't a boss fight or a sub-boss fight; it was against a bunch of lower-level enemies,
the kalavakuses,
so, the intro threat.
The second fight went quicker, thanks to
the sorcerer getting really lucky on a glabrezu rolling terribly on its Will save against banishment
but the third fight was also up there, about 1 1/2 hours. Some of this is probably due to having to keep flipping through the book to reference things, but everything just has so much hp to chew through that I'm not sure that being more familiar with the rules would help. Doing all the math takes a lot more time than in PF1 thanks to all the dice rather than static modifiers and numbers being bigger in general--which, fair enough, Paizo doesn't need to account for my probable dyscalculia, but it has been making this edition harder to play and GM for me.
We made it through three encounters and decided to call it a night, whereas we made it through all the lower-level playtest adventures in a session. That might be due to the nature of this leg of the playtest,
since it's pretty much designed to be a super-hard TPK
but I'm not sure it can be chalked up solely to that.
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I'm really surprised that people find 6 rounds of combat ridiculous... It was an hour long fight for us. It was definitely not longer than 10 minutes a round. And like I said that was a perfect length for a sub-boss. Not every single encounter. I don't think a couple of goblin mooks should last 6 rounds obviously, and they haven't in our experience.
So if it was an hour long that means:
- Each round took on average 10 minutes
- Each actor in that round (if we assume a party of 4) with your dragon and giant took less than 2 minutes to act in full
Now I'm not going to ask how you managed to have 4 PC's and 2 Monsters all act in less than 2 minutes (including all rolls, saves, movements, etc.) or dispute the fact that it happened.
What I am going to say is that I have never experienced this in any table top game what so ever.
1 minute and 40 seconds per combatant to act is break neck speed.
Even in PF1 and 3.5/3.0 where I had a thorough system mastery (I was definitely the "rules lawyer" kid growing up) never did we achieve such fast speeds.
If anyone else has experienced this type of speed, and they can actually point to what exactly in the rules allowed them to achieve it, I'd be all ears.
As far as I can tell though, the consensus from others does not seem to be nearly as quick combat.
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One of the things they can do to fix the condition bloat is to group them.
One thing that Paizo should do is bold or italicize any mechanic keywords, like the names of spells, conditions, etc.
Dazzled already does this, stating that if your only precise sense is vision, then everything is Concealed.
Grabbed is a great example. It is literally the exact same as Entangled except it also makes you Immobile.
The use of bolded mechanics lets people know what mechanics are at work and what is flavor.
Grabbed: As Entangled, but you are also Immobile.
Now, instead of being "OMG a new condition" it is "shorthand for two conditions that are applied and removed as a single condition".
Another thing that can be done is combining opposite conditions and using negative numbers .
Accelerated and Hampered are literally the exact opposite thing and should be combined into a single condition.
Mobile: Your speed increases (or decreases if negative) by this value. If there are multiple sources giving this condition, add all positive and subtract all negative and apply the final sum to your speed. This cannot reduce your speed below 5' or give you movement types you do not possess.
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I'm really surprised that people find 6 rounds of combat ridiculous... It was an hour long fight for us. It was definitely not longer than 10 minutes a round. And like I said that was a perfect length for a sub-boss. Not every single encounter. I don't think a couple of goblin mooks should last 6 rounds obviously, and they haven't in our experience.So if it was an hour long that means:
- Each round took on average 10 minutes
- Each actor in that round (if we assume a party of 4) with your dragon and giant took less than 2 minutes to act in full
Now I'm not going to ask how you managed to have 4 PC's and 2 Monsters all act in less than 2 minutes (including all rolls, saves, movements, etc.) or dispute the fact that it happened.
What I am going to say is that I have never experienced this in any table top game what so ever.
1 minute and 40 seconds per combatant to act is break neck speed.
Even in PF1 and 3.5/3.0 where I had a thorough system mastery (I was definitely the "rules lawyer" kid growing up) never did we achieve such fast speeds.
If anyone else has experienced this type of speed, and they can actually point to what exactly in the rules allowed them to achieve it, I'd be all ears.
As far as I can tell though, the consensus from others does not seem to be nearly as quick combat.
Probably closer to an hour 15mins but the Fire Giant died in 2 rounds. Two of the party was down 4 rounds in. Do you all not plan your turns out in advance? It doesn't take us longer than 2 minutes to roll our dice. And I'm pretty proficient with the playtest now so I have very minimal page turning that I need to do. (I'll spend 30 minutes going over each enemies abilities before sessions.)
I'm really surprised that people find 6 rounds of combat ridiculous... It was an hour long fight for us. It was definitely not longer than 10 minutes a round. And like I said that was a perfect length for a sub-boss. Not every single encounter. I don't think a couple of goblin mooks should last 6 rounds obviously, and they haven't in our experience.So if it was an hour long that means:
- Each round took on average 10 minutes
- Each actor in that round (if we assume a party of 4) with your dragon and giant took less than 2 minutes to act in full
Now I'm not going to ask how you managed to have 4 PC's and 2 Monsters all act in less than 2 minutes (including all rolls, saves, movements, etc.) or dispute the fact that it happened.
What I am going to say is that I have never experienced this in any table top game what so ever.
1 minute and 40 seconds per combatant to act is break neck speed.
Even in PF1 and 3.5/3.0 where I had a thorough system mastery (I was definitely the "rules lawyer" kid growing up) never did we achieve such fast speeds.
If anyone else has experienced this type of speed, and they can actually point to what exactly in the rules allowed them to achieve it, I'd be all ears.
As far as I can tell though, the consensus from others does not seem to be nearly as quick combat.
I mostly play online and chalked this issue up to the roll20 environment. People going AFK randomly, having to find the button in the sheet, etc. Usually we can finish 1 PFS quest in 1 session at best. Have only known super slow D&D/PF forever x.x.
My physical table play has been mostly with newbies, so the slowness is udnerstandable there. So you're telling me it doesn't get faster?
The lv 12 playtest one person commented that they wanted to play a druid with a pet since it was a lot higher level now, but when he saw that the AC was like 7 less than everyone else's or something and HP wasn't like 100 over everyone to compensate he changed his mind. Players get critted enough when we all have max AC, 7 less and he felt the animal was just asking to get crit all the time from their 3rd attack. Also that their saves were a little lower, not as super bad though.
I ran Part 2 of the Playtest Friday night, and the druid kept sending his animal companion into melee. As a DM I hate that, because it means that I end up killing the animal companion (which I did), which makes me feel like a jerk.
I feel like a lot of players whose characters theoretically love animals don't act in a way that demonstrates a love of animals. (Sorry, veering a little off-topic now. Just a gripe I have about RPGs in general.)
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@Midnighttoker: That's only an average of 2 minutes per turn, though, and you could "buy" extra time for slower turns with a few fast turns. I can typically resolve a monster's turn in about 30 seconds if it doesn't have any special abilities to resolve and I know my players' AC.
I agree that six rounds of combat is going to typically take more than an hour, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't with a group that knew the rules well and kept moving.
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Uh...
Dude - Our average combat round is less than a minute per.
Most competent players have their action planned before it comes up.
Player: Move: 5, 10, 15, 20 (counting squares)
Player: Flurry - Attack: (number rolled)+Modifier
Gm: hit!
Player: Damage: Usually 3 or less dice + modifier. Mathing 6, 4, 6 = 16, +5 = 21
Gm: Got it
Player: Attack (number rolled + mod -4)
Gm: Miss
Player: Third attack: (number + mod -8)
Gm: MissThis is an actual player's actions. We timed it.
Took 49 seconds.
As dismissive as your attitude is, I'll attempt to respond, and in essence I will be responding to Dire Ursus and ChibiNyan and MaxAstro as well:
- The combat Dire Ursus mentioned was admittedly longer than 1 hour, as he said, and had 4 of the actors falling out of the round. This reduces time considerably
- The point of the new playtest is to encourage diversity in actions, which they have done by granting a multitude of new actions, and effectively giving us another action (where as in early editions, Full Attack was the most actions people took outside of spell and move action round). Your example is quite literally, a full attack but with a monk, so you pretty much cherry picked the most straightforward round for a character in the game (no reactions by enemy and he moved once and attacked 3 times)
- Combat did get faster for people with system mastery, but in a dynamic combat setting with terrain changes via spells, this adds a lot of changes in action choices, even round to round. If someone casts Black Tentacles, even if that was communicated to the team in advance, that still changes the scenery of the combat and thus the actions as a consequence
- The rules set is fresh and encourages diversity in actions. Now with 3 actions and 1 reaction to all players (all of which can be used every round uniquely) is more actions available than in PF1 and 3.5/3.0, the only difference is that earlier editions had more complications to executing those actions (more involved combat control spells, AoOs for everyone, etc.)
- At high level play, more options become available. More dynamic enemies are fought. This choice breadth and moving target aspect creates longer combats generally
Now I'm not saying combat can't be faster, but if you're trying to act like it's a "no brainer, every combat takes no time at all" and your example from the rules is the simplest example of a combat round in the current playtest and still clocking in at 50 seconds, then color me unimpressed with that response.
I feel like people who have combats that are taking a real long time might just have unprepared GMs. You really need to take some time before each session to understand how each enemy works. Many creatures have unique abilities, effects, and reactions so I can definitely see how GMs will get hung up during combat if they come unprepared.
Players too need to understand how their character works and shouldn't be flipping to look at their feats and stuff, but my group is pretty good about that. Our first session rounds were definitely a bit longer but that's to be expected when we were all noobs with the system.
I feel like people who have combats that are taking a real long time might just have unprepared GMs.
I would argue the opposite is more likely to be true.
If you act for your creatures as a GM and your players do not alter the original action they were/are going to take ever then maybe your playstyle for encounter setups include minimal actual tactics.
This is especially true if the players roll knowledge checks, come to see the reactions and attacks based on the creature, etc.
Indeed, if your players can plan their entire round before it's their turn and that includes when the enemies act, that to me does not indicate "prepared" so much as "predetermined".
Likewise, if your players cast battlefield control spells or operate in some kind of disrupt to your standard tactics, and you don't deviate from the norm with a change of plans, then you're not really playing the creautres to form.
There is also the cases of unexpected combats. Which are known to happen. Planning for those is a case by case, but to say they are underprepared just because the PCs got dicey is silly.
YMMV clearly, but I think your sentiment that saying combat takes longer for others is because the other table is "doing it wrong" isn't really a fair assumption to make.
Players too need to understand how their character works and shouldn't be flipping to look at their feats and stuff, but my group is pretty good about that. Our first session rounds were definitely a bit longer but that's to be expected when we were all noobs with the system.
At no point did I indicate this as a major issue for the tables I've been at.
You even self admittedly said that you didn't accurately state the time it took (25% more time is actually a bit considerable when talking average rounds) and the specific that a lot of the actors were unable to act.
1 hour and 15 minutes for what you described sounds reasonable. A 6 round combat with level 7+ play when 6 actors are up at all stages of that 6 rounds would easily be over 2 hours for any tables that have dynamic play.
It's not a matter of understanding rules, it's about the dynamic nature of the combat and how some players wish to take tactically appropriate actions. We have had to institute rules to encourage round speeds for this reason, not because players were wildly unequipped or underprepared as GMs.
I wasn't even really talking about you specifically midnightoker. And you seemed to have read my post wrong. I'm talking about GM preparedness in context of knowing what your abilities do and how your character works. It's not a "wrong" way to play, but will definitely slow the game down significantly if the GM needs to read through and understand what actions and reactions a creature has and how they work DURING combat since in the playtest almost every creature will have unique things that they can do.
snipMy favorite part was when you took offense to his implication that your gms and players are unprepared, and then in turn implied that his tables don't have dynamic play. Assumptions all around are bad, can we stop that?
Actually in no way did I say he was doing that, I said I'd argue the opposite and then gave the factors that I believe contribute to the long combat.
I said it's unfair to say that underprepared GMs are the reason for long combats.
Overall I just wanted someone to tell me the rules in the game that make this game faster than PF1, because I just don't see it
Edit: after reading it again, I want to clarify "your/you" in the context of the first part of my comment is a GM in general, not Dire Ursus, the second portion is at him specifically. Apologies.
I don't think anyone said that the game runs faster than PF1? I would hate that because I find PF1 combat WAY too fast.