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So recently in our playtest group I tried seeing what it would be like to throw an 'extreme' challenge at them. In this particular case my group is a party of 6th level adventurers with appropriate gear level and three NPCs with them.
They go into this fight after two minor encounters which consumed two heal spells from the cleric and one second level spell from the wizard, as well as a trap that did a bit of damage, so for the most part we're in tip-top shape, and aware that an extreme threat is infront of us.
The creature in question was a Kalavakus Demon (Horned Demon)- I should start by saying it was absolutely masterfully redone from the previous version, the flavor and style of this fight was so much fun.
The problem came from the creature (and others of the level) +to hit versus the PCs armor.
Yes this creature is 4 levels higher and thus 'Extreme' but nearly every time I picked up the dice it was a crit, if it wasn't a crit it was a hit. The creatures AOOs also would often result in a crit - +20 to hit against 22 ac on several of my party members.
While it was still a mostly enjoyable encounter that they barely made it out of, having every attack round not be a question of 'hit or miss' and being of 'hit or crit' was a bit jarring. It was also basically impossible for the monster to fail most save or suck spells to help mitigate this problem.
Have others experienced this in their playtesting? High level creatures seem like they're game enders if not managed properly.
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caratas wrote: Have others experienced this in their playtesting? High level creatures seem like they're game enders if not managed properly. Oh yeah. the combination of +10 auto crits, +1/level to everything, and the tight math means that a swing of a few levels is a huge change in power. If you start more or less on par (50/50 hit/miss) and add 5 effective levels, you're suddenly at 50% hit, 25% miss and 25% crit. If the monster was already overtuned (and a lot of them are), it escalates even higher.
On the flipside, that same +5 drops the PCs down to 25% hit, and anything with a save to 25% fail... so their effectiveness drops off a cliff. And if you weren't fully optimized as a PC you pile that on as well, making it even worse.
The range of non-punishing and non-trivial encounter levels is a lot narrower than it used to be.
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Well it should be an extreme threat, and a solo-boss like that is often end of the adventure type of fight, so the danger should be very real. That said ac 22 sounds pretty low if that's the average, anyone in heavy armor should be ac 24 and then be able to increase the difference even more with shields, debuts etc. There is plenty of debuffs that would be worth casting vs a singular strong foe and hoping it wouldn't crit success. But overall I don't mind that every single blow is likely going to hurt when you are dealing with so a foe, the action economy would be even more unfair if they had a fair chance of failing.
Being an extreme solo-boss the party have probably been getting closer and closer to the fight for a while so they might have known their enemy before the fight, allowing them to get som cold iron and a few acid alchemist items (that persistent damage quickly stacks up thanks to the weakness), so they have the chance to greatly increase their chance of success if prepared. Which is an aspect I enjoy very much.
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Welcome to Paizo solving a long running issue with 3.5: that lone boss monsters were completely unthreatening unless they were also buffed to the gills and possessed some kind of tremendous environmental advantage.
Now, a APL+3 or APL+4 boss is a serious threat. Seems good.
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Personally I really enjoy the flipside of it rapidly becoming absurdly easy for PCs to melt lower level mobs.
For the boss, on the defensive side at least I think I appreciate the built in saves buff. Probably mostly because I'm coming from 5e, where legendary resistance became a necessity for keeping bosses in the game, and I prefer proportionately low odds of failure to straight-up wasting the first 3 spells to be cast on said boss.
The only strange thing that happens with the boss is that player 'choice' around their ac evaporates pretty quickly. Or atleast that is how it felt? Since no matter what they do I am going to clober them on a 4-5 even against raise shield / dodge / etc.
Though I do see the rationalie that hitting the players often is definitely good, its the critting them so often that feels odd to me.
I'd much rather hit them on a 2, and crit them on a 18 19 20 area like PF1 was.
caratas said wrote: The only strange thing that happens with the boss is that player 'choice' around their ac evaporates pretty quickly. Or atleast that is how it felt? Since no matter what they do I am going to clober them on a 4-5 even against raise shield / dodge / etc.
Though I do see the rationalie that hitting the players often is definitely good, its the critting them so often that feels odd to me.
I'd much rather hit them on a 2, and crit them on a 18 19 20 area like PF1 was.
Well anything they can add to their AC or take from the demons attack is actually a big impact, because not only does each point the reduce the chance of getting hit by 5% but also the chance that the hit is a critical hit by 5%. And this happens for every attack (maybe not the 3rd). So it gives the players more agency over how hard they are hit. With raise shield and a -1 to the demons attack from bane or something would from a guy with heavy armor would reduce the demons to hit to: +19 vs ac 26. So suddenly that character only has a 20% of being hit by a crit on the first attack and only 5% on any following attacks. Or with the players on 22 the extra from a shield and debuff of a bane would still reduce the percentage of a crit by 15% points on the first and second attack. (As well as making it fail to hit once in a while as well).
Edit: And if it didn't crit more often I think the danger of it's attack would be quite diminished, so either every attack would need to do more damage or the encounter might quickly fall to the area of a non-threat because it was on it's own against 4 players.
caratas wrote: The only strange thing that happens with the boss is that player 'choice' around their ac evaporates pretty quickly. Or atleast that is how it felt? Since no matter what they do I am going to clober them on a 4-5 even against raise shield / dodge / etc.
Though I do see the rationalie that hitting the players often is definitely good, its the critting them so often that feels odd to me.
I'd much rather hit them on a 2, and crit them on a 18 19 20 area like PF1 was.
Yes. AC is king in the playtest because having less of it means you get crit more often on top of being hit more often, and that creates rapid damage scaling.
It makes DEX a very, very good stat. You never want to leave AC on the table. If anything, it's better than CON now.
caratas wrote: Have others experienced this in their playtesting? High level creatures seem like they're game enders if not managed properly. I consider this a selling point. I want to challenge my players in combat as it's something that they've enjoyed and excelled at.
But...
caratas wrote: While it was still a mostly enjoyable encounter that they barely made it out of, having every attack round not be a question of 'hit or miss' and being of 'hit or crit' was a bit jarring. It was also basically impossible for the monster to fail most save or suck spells to help mitigate this problem. This is a problem. Most enemies should have at least one easily exploitable saving throw (or another vulnerability like low AC). I'm okay with outsiders, like the devil, being an exception to this. But, in general, I think the current Bestiary fails on this front.
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caratas wrote: So recently in our playtest group I tried seeing what it would be like to throw an 'extreme' challenge at them. In this particular case my group is a party of 6th level adventurers with appropriate gear level and three NPCs with them.
They go into this fight after two minor encounters which consumed two heal spells from the cleric and one second level spell from the wizard, as well as a trap that did a bit of damage, so for the most part we're in tip-top shape, and aware that an extreme threat is infront of us.
The creature in question was a Kalavakus Demon (Horned Demon)- I should start by saying it was absolutely masterfully redone from the previous version, the flavor and style of this fight was so much fun.
The problem came from the creature (and others of the level) +to hit versus the PCs armor.
Yes this creature is 4 levels higher and thus 'Extreme' but nearly every time I picked up the dice it was a crit, if it wasn't a crit it was a hit. The creatures AOOs also would often result in a crit - +20 to hit against 22 ac on several of my party members.
While it was still a mostly enjoyable encounter that they barely made it out of, having every attack round not be a question of 'hit or miss' and being of 'hit or crit' was a bit jarring. It was also basically impossible for the monster to fail most save or suck spells to help mitigate this problem.
Have others experienced this in their playtesting? High level creatures seem like they're game enders if not managed properly.
Given that an "Extreme" (APL+4) fight is supposed to be theoretically equal to the party when they're fresh off for the day, essentially a fight where both theoretically have equal merit to win against the other, "Game ender if not managed properly" does sound just about the right threat for it. So I think it's in a good spot.
The difficulty in hitting them and landing failed saves on them is good to me, especially since a +4 monster is right about the level where you can worm your way back to 50+% hit/save rate if you get them flat-footed, land a minor debuff like frightened or sick 1, and get a booster like Bless or Inspire Courage. I feel like if you could buff and debuff your way to much better than that against a +4 solo boss without it crrit-failing something then I'd consider it too easy.
But I can agree that having at least one weak point where you could get a bit better mileage might be nice. And I can't say if the difficulty in affecting them combined with their improved HP is too much or not but I feel like it's pretty good. My group's trip through Heroes of Undarin may determine if that feeling remains. XD
Nice to hear you guys were able to have a good, satisfying solo encounter. I was almost never able to produce those for my parties in PF1 (But it was great the, well, 2-4 times in like 3 years that I did), but I feel like PF2 works for it at the intended APL pretty much straight out of the gate.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
It is kinda worrying though if 2e adventures follow same design logic as 1e did. I mean, 1e did love to have final bosses that were 4 levels higher than PCs <_<
I don't see it as completely bad thing, but it is true that from player perspective it can feel like extreme encounters in 2e are more luck based than tactics or skill while in 1e party could deal with much harder encounters if they were prepared enough
CorvusMask said wrote: It is kinda worrying though if 2e adventures follow same design logic as 1e did. I mean, 1e did love to have final bosses that were 4 levels higher than PCs <_<
I don't see it as completely bad thing, but it is true that from player perspective it can feel like extreme encounters in 2e are more luck based than tactics or skill while in 1e party could deal with much harder encounters if they were prepared enough
I kinda feel that it's the other way around. Due to the rocket tag nature of 1st edition then either you killed/defeated the big boss on the first turn or he could dominate you. Except when he wasn't actually a threat and then why bother (maybe for story purposes, but the final boss should be a challenge in my view). The new weakness system in 2nd edition really favors the prepared and the fact that combat generally last for more turns playing it tactically can matter more than in first edition.
I think 3 levels higher should be the standard for bosses though unless it's a super special encounter, but that depends on the optimizing and teamwork of the players, 3 levels higher might be too easy.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
In 1e, that only applied to caster BBEGs though and even then only ones with save or die spell spams. And even then, you could avoid that if you prepared for BBEG to use that tactic.
(...and yes, majority of 1e era AP BBEGs are casters, though not blaster casters. Since seriously, blaster casters aren't really hard to deal with in 1e)
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