The surveys really need a "My character fled from the adventure" option alongside "My character died"

[Colette Brunel]

As the subject line says, the surveys really need a "My character fled from the adventure" option alongside "My character died." I have seen plenty and plenty of TPKs over the course of running playtest adventures for 2e (thus far, exactly 20 TPKs and counting). During some of those TPKs, at one point, one player wanted to have their character run away, presumably out of some sense of roleplaying. Most of the time, this had failed, but at other times, the character successfully absconded from the adventure.

However, the surveys have no mechanism for reporting this. If the player fills out a survey that reports that the character survived, then it seems like the character successfully completed the adventure, even though their character actually fled from a TPK. That is why the surveys need a "My character fled from the adventure" option.

[AndIMustMask]

could be helpful to give them more accurate playtest data

[Ephialtes]

20 TPKs, yikes! In my dozen or so playtest session there has never been even one character killed. Your GM must hate the players. :D

[Themetricsystem]

Ephialtes wrote:

20 TPKs, yikes! In my dozen or so playtest session there has never been even one character killed. Your GM must hate the players. :D

I believe they are the GM, and this is a pot best left unstirred.

[KyleS]

Yeah, I think I'm gonna join in the lump of saying this is a GM deal. I don't think a metric stating "Hey, I wanted to run away because I got in over my head" is going to give anything different for a playtest than how many times a party was wiped out. If a character is running away, that still kinda just shows that "Hey, these creatures are still too powerful to overcome" because character death says that exact same thing lol. I understand the reasoning, but I just don't think it'll offer a metric that offers any real insight that isn't already being shown.

[Mudfoot]

It's a bit different in that in PF1 the only way you really could run away was Teleport or some variation. It might be that doing so is a bit easier in PF2, not least because the AoOs have been reduced. Or maybe you need to be an elf monk with a Fleet fetish.

[HWalsh]

Ephialtes wrote:

20 TPKs, yikes! In my dozen or so playtest session there has never been even one character killed. Your GM must hate the players. :D

Same. I have had one character death so far in 39 play tests.

[Edge93]

HWalsh wrote:

Ephialtes wrote:

20 TPKs, yikes! In my dozen or so playtest session there has never been even one character killed. Your GM must hate the players. :D

Same. I have had one character death so far in 39 play tests.

Colette IS the GM, and has stated that they have been deliberately causing TPKs as much as possible, including specifically ignoring the RAW statement that most monsters don't attempt to kill downed players while others live (even if said players have gotten back up from a KO before, which is something I originally missed in the rules text).

On my own weigh-in, I'm 2 1/2 fights into Part 5 and in my group's whole run so far there has been only one character knocked unconscious, and that was a lucky crit by Drakkus when he had his Shape Change boost active. Granted my group avoided almost EVERY fight in The Mirrored Moon and dodged half the encounters in The Lost Star (They're pretty smart when they aren't trying to make me pull my hair out over their stupid plans XD) so they haven't exactly engaged every possible threat but still... Getting through The Lost Star in 1 day with only an Alchemist's healing despite it only being 3 battles was a good show that deaths don't come too easily in the Playtest. XD

[PsychicPixel]

So while they could add something like that I don't see why they would. The only part of Doomsday Dawn where the player characters aren't necessarily connected to the Esoteric Order or the Night Heralds is in part 1, where you just make a new party and go again, or maybe part 2 where the group is a band of mercenaries, presumably picked because they will complete the job.

Part 3 are characters connected to the Order or have a vested interest in fighting the Night Heralds.

Part 4 is the PCs from part 1 a group already invested in the Order

Part 5 is a group of hardened crusaders who signed up to fight in the worldwound

Part 6 part of the Order

Part 7 from parts 1 & 4

[Paradozen]

I ran away in part 3, after 2 confirmed deaths and a third incoming among the party. Don't see how it makes a difference. We lost. Whether the loss is running away or dying it shows that the scenario was tougher than the characters involved.

[Edge93]

Paradozen wrote:

I ran away in part 3, after 2 confirmed deaths and a third incoming among the party. Don't see how it makes a difference. We lost. Whether the loss is running away or dying it shows that the scenario was tougher than the characters involved.

Yowch, sounds like a rough time. What got you guys so good?

[Paradozen]

Edge93 wrote:

Paradozen wrote:

I ran away in part 3, after 2 confirmed deaths and a third incoming among the party. Don't see how it makes a difference. We lost. Whether the loss is running away or dying it shows that the scenario was tougher than the characters involved.

Yowch, sounds like a rough time. What got you guys so good?

Bad luck, enfeebled values through the roof, some more bad luck, and a sprinkling of disjointed party formation. Also we weren't aware until after the game that conditional penalties on checks cap out at -4. That was probably the biggest problem. We came pretty close to killing the last boss before the cleric died.

[Edge93]

Paradozen wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

Paradozen wrote:

I ran away in part 3, after 2 confirmed deaths and a third incoming among the party. Don't see how it makes a difference. We lost. Whether the loss is running away or dying it shows that the scenario was tougher than the characters involved.

Yowch, sounds like a rough time. What got you guys so good?

Bad luck, enfeebled values through the roof, some more bad luck, and a sprinkling of disjointed party formation. Also we weren't aware until after the game that conditional penalties on checks cap out at -4. That was probably the biggest problem. We came pretty close to killing the last boss before the cleric died.

Harsh. My party took quite a bit of Enfeeblement from the Shadows but we had a couple uses of Restoration to shed most of it (Our Wizard was left Enfeebled 1, having hit 3 and lost his shadow in the fight, the others were fine). What got your penalties to potentially above -4 though? Was it just that many Shadow strikes? That's the only thing I recall from that chapter that could get your conditional penalty above -2 since nothing else can stack the degree of a single condition and separate conditional penalties don't stack (Thank God). Though I honestly though the Shadows stopped Enfeebling at 3 when they take your shadow. Might have to look that over again for future use.

[Colette Brunel]

Edge93 wrote:

Colette IS the GM, and has stated that they have been deliberately causing TPKs as much as possible, including specifically ignoring the RAW statement that most monsters don't attempt to kill downed players while others live (even if said players have gotten back up from a KO before, which is something I originally missed in the rules text).

Only the most vicious monsters are said to attack unconscious PCs. I do not know about you, but there are some seriously vicious monsters in these adventures, and I have been quite liberal with that.

That said, as I have mentioned over the course of this topic, ever since update 1.3, I have not been having enemies attack unconscious PCs all that often. It simply is not that efficient given the way Hero Points work. I still have enemies attack unconscious PCs when it is their last, best option left, but that comes up less often than not given the Hero Point rules.

My point is that some players might want to have their characters run away from a given adventure, and reporting that their character survived paints a misleading picture for the adventure.

[Vidmaster7]

No reason to. Its a play-test. characters shouldn't flee they should fight to the death. otherwise you mislead the results. Who knows had that player stayed they might have won the fight but if they run then you have no way of knowing.

[Edge93]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

Colette IS the GM, and has stated that they have been deliberately causing TPKs as much as possible, including specifically ignoring the RAW statement that most monsters don't attempt to kill downed players while others live (even if said players have gotten back up from a KO before, which is something I originally missed in the rules text).

Only the most vicious monsters are said to attack unconscious PCs. I do not know about you, but there are some seriously vicious monsters in these adventures, and I have been quite liberal with that.

That said, as I have mentioned over the course of this topic, ever since update 1.3, I have not been having enemies attack unconscious PCs all that often. It simply is not that efficient given the way Hero Points work. I still have enemies attack unconscious PCs when it is their last, best option left, but that comes up less often than not given the Hero Point rules.

My point is that some players might want to have their characters run away from a given adventure, and reporting that their character survived paints a misleading picture for the adventure.

So when it's the most tactically effective option you decide that most monsters fall into the MINORITY of "Attacks downed players" and that the monsters somehow know this is their best tactical decision and act on it regardless of other factors, yet when a mechanical change occurs in the rules that changes nothing about the rules on whether or not monsters go after downed foes all of a sudden you decide that not so many of the monsters fall into the "most vicious" minority?

None of that sounds like an interest in adhering to either RAW or RAI (Since neither of those changed in update 1.3 but apparently your interpretation of them changed due to this separate mechanical change) but instead just trying as hard as possible to take your players out (without explicitly stating that they just die or throwing an entirely impossible challenge at them) including twisting the written rules and guidelines as much as you can and rationalizing it by basically saying that words like "most" don't really mean most when it suits that goal but suddenly stopping when it's less useful in party-killing.

Your conduct here really is a piece of work.

[Colette Brunel]

Vidmaster7 wrote:

No reason to. Its a play-test. characters shouldn't flee they should fight to the death. otherwise you mislead the results. Who knows had that player stayed they might have won the fight but if they run then you have no way of knowing.

Some players might understand this. From my experience, some players do not; they try to have their characters flee from the adventure.

[Vidmaster7]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Vidmaster7 wrote:

No reason to. Its a play-test. characters shouldn't flee they should fight to the death. otherwise you mislead the results. Who knows had that player stayed they might have won the fight but if they run then you have no way of knowing.

Some players might understand this. From my experience, some players do not; they try to have their characters flee from the adventure.

It would probably be best not to use that data at all. or maybe put a place for a write in just to let them know that hey this person ran away.

For real though people don't do this. Your most likely not keeping the character anyways.

Really outliers are such a pain to deal with in research in general.

[Colette Brunel]

Edge93 wrote:

So when it's the most tactically effective option you decide that most monsters fall into the MINORITY of "Attacks downed players" and that the monsters somehow know this is their best tactical decision and act on it regardless of other factors, yet when a mechanical change occurs in the rules that changes nothing about the rules on whether or not monsters go after downed foes all of a sudden you decide that not so many of the monsters fall into the "most vicious" minority?

None of that sounds like an interest in adhering to either RAW or RAI (Since neither of those changed in update 1.3 but apparently your interpretation of them changed due to this separate mechanical change) but instead just trying as hard as possible to take your players out (without explicitly stating that they just die or throwing an entirely impossible challenge at them) including twisting the written rules and guidelines as much as you can and rationalizing it by basically saying that words like "most" don't really mean most when it suits that goal but suddenly stopping when it's less useful in party-killing.

Your conduct here really is a piece of work.

"Adversaries typically stop attacking someone who’s knocked out. Even if a creature knows a fallen character might come back into the fight, only the most vicious creatures focus on helpless foes rather than the more immediate threats around them."

As far as I can tell here, it is up to the GM to determine whether or not a monster counts as a "most vicious creature." If it is up to the GM to determine that, and I am the GM, then I can declare enemies as "most vicious" whenever I please. Ever since update 1.3, it is something I have had to declare only occasionally, because attacking unconscious PCs is less efficient given Hero Points.

Framing a good narrative outside of combat is one thing. However, 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, though if the enemies have a prescribed tactics section, I will follow that section to the best of my ability, though I will also interpret that section in the most devious manner possible. I will not fudge any dice, statistics, or rules, nor will I arbitrarily add in enemy reinforcements. 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."

I have made a few specific rulings when running 2e and its ambiguous rules:
• Creatures cannot, in fact, walk through walls and attack through walls, contrary to what the rules appear to imply.
• I do not track enemy unconsciousness, because that is too much of an annoyance.
• By the end of my second playthrough of Arclord's Envy (my 10th session), I had gotten so sick and tired of the broken, nigh-unplayable rules for exploration mode that I did away with them for the most part. My remaining players and I are already intimately familiar with the many flaws of exploration mode, especially when it comes to social interactions with NPCs, so I see no reason to slow down the playtest sessions by incessantly calling for exploration mode. I did bring exploration mode back occasionally. For example, I thought to trot out exploration mode's social tactics during the first playthrough of The Mirrored Moon, when the characters were speaking to Tulaeth the dryad, and my players quite vocally grumbled about it; given that "exploration" is supposed to be a theme of The Mirrored Moon, a hexcrawl, that is damning. I also brought out exploration mode again both of my runs of The Frozen Oath, much to the players' chagrin, and I will do the same in Red Flags.
• Since I have absolutely, positively no idea how to handle Perception vs. Stealth leading into initiative rolls, I generally do away with pre-combat Hide and Seek (yes, those are what the actions are called) and just call for Perception vs. Stealth for initiative.

[Vidmaster7]

Well this is going to go poorly. (peace i'm out!)

[HWalsh]

Colette Brunel wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

So when it's the most tactically effective option you decide that most monsters fall into the MINORITY of "Attacks downed players" and that the monsters somehow know this is their best tactical decision and act on it regardless of other factors, yet when a mechanical change occurs in the rules that changes nothing about the rules on whether or not monsters go after downed foes all of a sudden you decide that not so many of the monsters fall into the "most vicious" minority?

None of that sounds like an interest in adhering to either RAW or RAI (Since neither of those changed in update 1.3 but apparently your interpretation of them changed due to this separate mechanical change) but instead just trying as hard as possible to take your players out (without explicitly stating that they just die or throwing an entirely impossible challenge at them) including twisting the written rules and guidelines as much as you can and rationalizing it by basically saying that words like "most" don't really mean most when it suits that goal but suddenly stopping when it's less useful in party-killing.

Your conduct here really is a piece of work.

"Adversaries typically stop attacking someone who’s knocked out. Even if a creature knows a fallen character might come back into the fight, only the most vicious creatures focus on helpless foes rather than the more immediate threats around them."

As far as I can tell here, it is up to the GM to determine whether or not a monster counts as a "most vicious creature." If it is up to the GM to determine that, and I am the GM, then I can declare enemies as "most vicious" whenever I please. Ever since update 1.3, it is something I have had to declare only occasionally, because attacking unconscious PCs is less efficient given Hero Points.

Framing a good narrative outside of combat is one thing. However, 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...

If it works for your group I guess...

Wouldn't work for me, I'd leave the table under those circumstances.

[Colette Brunel]

Vidmaster7 wrote:

For real though people don't do this.

I have seen various players attempt it every so often regardless, and it tends to confuse playtest data.

[Nettah]

Well they could include that option, but from a pure mechanical gameplay review I don't see how that would affect anything. If you died it's game over. If you ran away the game is still over for that particular character, so unless they want to know the ease of fleeing an encounter that data wouldn't give any new aspect, so I would just report a fleeing character as a dead character for the survey. I would not report that they survived because as you said that my indicate that they successfully completed the mission (unless you outran the night heralds in part 3, where fleeing with the information and clock is still a success).

[Edge93]

HWalsh wrote:

Colette Brunel wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

So when it's the most tactically effective option you decide that most monsters fall into the MINORITY of "Attacks downed players" and that the monsters somehow know this is their best tactical decision and act on it regardless of other factors, yet when a mechanical change occurs in the rules that changes nothing about the rules on whether or not monsters go after downed foes all of a sudden you decide that not so many of the monsters fall into the "most vicious" minority?

None of that sounds like an interest in adhering to either RAW or RAI (Since neither of those changed in update 1.3 but apparently your interpretation of them changed due to this separate mechanical change) but instead just trying as hard as possible to take your players out (without explicitly stating that they just die or throwing an entirely impossible challenge at them) including twisting the written rules and guidelines as much as you can and rationalizing it by basically saying that words like "most" don't really mean most when it suits that goal but suddenly stopping when it's less useful in party-killing.

Your conduct here really is a piece of work.

"Adversaries typically stop attacking someone who’s knocked out. Even if a creature knows a fallen character might come back into the fight, only the most vicious creatures focus on helpless foes rather than the more immediate threats around them."

As far as I can tell here, it is up to the GM to determine whether or not a monster counts as a "most vicious creature." If it is up to the GM to determine that, and I am the GM, then I can declare enemies as "most vicious" whenever I please. Ever since update 1.3, it is something I have had to declare only occasionally, because attacking unconscious PCs is less efficient given Hero Points.

Framing a good narrative outside of combat is one thing. However, I run tabletop RPG combat in a wargame-y fashion. The moment initiative is rolled, my thought processes shift to the

...

That's the problem, it doesn't work for their group. According to Collette's own posts they've chased group after group away from the Playtest with this bullcrap.

[Colette Brunel]

Nettah wrote:

Well they could include that option, but from a pure mechanical gameplay review I don't see how that would affect anything. If you died it's game over. If you ran away the game is still over for that particular character, so unless they want to know the ease of fleeing an encounter that data wouldn't give any new aspect, so I would just report a fleeing character as a dead character for the survey. I would not report that they survived because as you said that my indicate that they successfully completed the mission (unless you outran the night heralds in part 3, where fleeing with the information and clock is still a success).

Yes, fleeing from an adventure and dying in that adventure are effectively the same, for playtest purposes. To my assessment, however, that is not entirely clear in the player surveys. There is no option for directly stating, "My character did not die, but they were taken out of commission from the adventure regardless."

[Mary Yamato]

I'd recommend that your players answer "died" when their character fled; that seems to contaminate the data the least.

[hyphz]

The idea that monsters would not attack characters who are down even if they have been seen to be capable of getting up again and directly dangerous in that circumstance seems rather unreasonable to me.

I can understand that if someone's actually engaging you in melee, then you don't try to hit the unconscious guy. But the idea that if someone is throwing fireballs at you from across the room, you and a couple of your team shoot them with arrows and they go down, their friend brings them straight back and they throw another fireball, you shoot them with another arrow and they go down and then your friends don't attack him further because he is down and his friend the healer isn't a threat, is honestly pretty daft.

[Edge93]

hyphz wrote:

The idea that monsters would not attack characters who are down even if they have been seen to be capable of getting up again and directly dangerous in that circumstance seems rather unreasonable to me.

I can understand that if someone's actually engaging you in melee, then you don't try to hit the unconscious guy. But the idea that if someone is throwing fireballs at you from across the room, you and a couple of your team shoot them with arrows and they go down, their friend brings them straight back and they throw another fireball, you shoot them with another arrow and they go down and then your friends don't attack him further because he is down and his friend the healer isn't a threat, is honestly pretty daft.

Yeah, agreed there honestly, though in that situation I wouldn't go after the one we'd downed multiple times, I'd go after the one who keeps getting them back up if anything. But YMMV on the specifics of dealing with rising PCs.

Though that's not the issue with Collette's games, there it's downing and fully killing one PC at a time because it was the easiest way to force TPKs and then inexplicably changing this in-character behavior due to an out-of-character rules change.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Colette Brunel wrote:

(thus far, exactly 20 TPKs and counting).

I'm seriously wondering how you have 20 TPKs from running PF2 adventures. The closest we came was a semi-TPK from Part 1 of Doomsday Dawn due to a 10 round bad-roll streak. The factor that the bad guy went 10 rounds mostly unanswered is really the only reason the situation got as bad as it did. (That, and the only spellcaster not having any actual spells for that fight.) We came close to one in Part 4 as well, simply due to bad Saves rolling (one player mostly taken out of the initial fight combined with back-to-back criticals from the bad guys), but the only reason we came back was because our Ranger was pelting the bad guys with Natural 20s right back. That, combined with my ability to heal our Fighter tank and bring downed players back from Dying spared PC deaths (though the way we brought them back had broken language and made no sense for its intent, so the GM adhoc'd something). I prepared for those scenarios to happen (though it burned a lot of my resources to do so), and in doing so I spared PC deaths and by relation, a potential TPK, because I know these encounters are going to be deadly. (After all, this character witnessed 3 characters die just at the start of their career, it would make sense for them to better build around it!)

Do your players purposefully build in the absolute worst way possible (like a Wizard with 10 Intelligence) just to stress-test how deadly the adventures can be? Are you running the monsters in their absolute optimal fashion without a care for if they, as creatures, would actually do those activities (such as by taking 3 actions to instagib a Dying 1 PC even though there are 3 more PCs standing around trying to fight)? I'm genuinely curious how it is you run 20 adventures (some of them being repeats with different groups) and they all end in TPKs, when we've ran 4 adventures so far (some of them being ones you've ran as well), and have only had 2 of them come even close to a TPK ("strangely", the closer ones didn't have a Cleric involved). Sure, the latest one we're running isn't completed yet, but with how well we've progressed the adventure and our pacing, I'm not too worried about a TPK coming our way unless we get a streak of bad rolling worse than what we had in Part 1.

[Edge93]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Colette Brunel wrote:

(thus far, exactly 20 TPKs and counting).

I'm seriously wondering how you have 20 TPKs from running PF2 adventures. The closest we came was a semi-TPK from Part 1 of Doomsday Dawn due to a 10 round bad-roll streak. The factor that the bad guy went 10 rounds mostly unanswered is really the only reason the situation got as bad as it did. (That, and the only spellcaster not having any actual spells for that fight.) We came close to one in Part 4 as well, simply due to bad Saves rolling (one player mostly taken out of the initial fight combined with back-to-back criticals from the bad guys), but the only reason we came back was because our Ranger was pelting the bad guys with Natural 20s right back. That, combined with my ability to heal our Fighter tank and bring downed players back from Dying spared PC deaths (though the way we brought them back had broken language and made no sense for its intent, so the GM adhoc'd something). I prepared for those scenarios to happen (though it burned a lot of my resources to do so), and in doing so I spared PC deaths and by relation, a potential TPK, because I know these encounters are going to be deadly. (After all, this character witnessed 3 characters die just at the start of their career, it would make sense for them to better build around it!)

Do your players purposefully build in the absolute worst way possible (like a Wizard with 10 Intelligence) just to stress-test how deadly the adventures can be? Are you running the monsters in their absolute optimal fashion without a care for if they, as creatures, would actually do those activities (such as by taking 3 actions to instagib a Dying 1 PC even though there are 3 more PCs standing around trying to fight)? I'm genuinely curious how it is you run 20 adventures (some of them being repeats with different groups) and they all end in TPKs, when we've ran 4 adventures so far (some of them being ones you've ran as well), and have only had 2 of them come even close to a TPK...

Colette has pretty much confirmed in posts as to running monsters in maximally optimal fashion for causing party deaths, regardless of whether it's appropriate behavior for the monster or even heedless of their blatantly stated behavioral patterns.

And with the tools afforded the GM (Seeing as the GM has virtually limitless tools) it's entirely possible to cause TPKs I believe if that's your only concern in GMing. All of these adventures are comprised of multiple battles, so if you focus all offense on one PC at a time it's very likely you will be able to cause a death or two in early fights by focusing an entire party's worth of enemies on one player instead of spreading things out in a way that would make sense, causing a snowball effect where later fights can get kills even easier because the PCs have less forces than they did for earlier fights.

It's a blatantly heartless way to GM and it makes no sense from the perspective of each group of monsters trying to defeat the PCs as a whole rather than the adventure's encounters as a whole trying to take down the party by the end (To clarify, I'm saying that with RARE exception each fight of monsters should be fighting as if they were trying to defeat the whole party, not take out a member or two to make it easier for the ones who come after these monsters die), but it works if all you care about is getting TPKs wherever possible.