In another thread we had a couple of people say that combat takes longer the higher level you get. So for those who have actually played at level 12 and higher, did you find combat took longer than it did at level 1 to 5? What would you attribute that to? What level have you played up to?
Are you asking just about the playtest, as in compare how long a combat round took at level 5 vs 12? or are you asking for people to compare level 12 of the playtest vs PF1 level 12 as well? I am having a hard time imagining any RPG where high level play doesn't slow down a fair amount just because of the increase in character options per turn and because monsters will also have more abilities to be selected from.
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I'm asking playtest level 5 vs playtest level 12+.
In PF1e high level play actually speeds up dramatically unless your GM ramps up the encounters you face (at level 2 a CR+2 is a hard fight. At level 15 CR+4 is needed to generate a hard fight).
If you disagree with that or are concerned about unfamiliarity with the rules feel free to think of it in terms of rounds instead of in terms of time.
I didn't notice an increase myself. If I had to guess the people experiencing differently is because of the nature of the Level 12 adventure. It's a bit of a slog if you make it far. But for good reason.
I'm finding level 17 faster than level 12, myself. Level 12 was a slog, so in preparation for that my group familiarized ourselves with our level 17 characters ahead of time. It worked well. The mechanics don't seem to be too complicated for high level play...
I'm asking playtest level 5 vs playtest level 12+.
In PF1e high level play actually speeds up dramatically unless your GM ramps up the encounters you face (at level 2 a CR+2 is a hard fight. At level 15 CR+4 is needed to generate a hard fight).
If you disagree with that or are concerned about unfamiliarity with the rules feel free to think of it in terms of rounds instead of in terms of time.
So are you trying to determine how many rounds a combat takes or how many hours?
I'm curious how many rounds.
How many hours is going to be group dependent. We have reports in PF1e where 1 round = 1 hour. Some groups were able to speed through D&D 4e combats regardless of how many rounds they took because combat had become so rote by high level that they knew what they were going to do each round before initiative was even rolled. I would argue that these are player issues and not aspects intrinsic in the rules themselves.
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In my main group I found that combat was fastest at level 1 (fights sometimes ended in 1/2 rounds). Slowest at 4 (I feel that the system really assumed that the players all had a +1 weapon, but the scenario only gave them 1). And has been relatively constant for the remaining scenarios. (So long as I count the level 12 scenario as effectively 9 encounters). In terms of rounds it would normally take 5-9 rounds for combat to resolve, and in terms of time that would normally mean 30-60 minutes.
I have to agree that combat rounds don’t noticeably take longer at higher levels (we just finished DD6 so level 14) and that as a general rule the combat rounds have gone significantly faster at all levels when compared to PF1.
I have to agree that combat rounds don’t noticeably take longer at higher levels (we just finished DD6 so level 14) and that as a general rule the combat rounds have gone significantly faster at all levels when compared to PF1.
Do you have to slog through more combat rounds at higher level then you do at lower level?
It’s really dependent on the encounter. Say in DD5 the terror demon fight took awhile but the demilich and mutilation demon went pretty quick, 3 rounds for the last 2 and we surprisingly beat the mutilation demon. The terror demons took about 6 rounds but then I guess that does equal to about 3 each too. Most of the other boss fights in the other scenarios took about the same time as well. On second thought DD4’s final encounter did take longer but it was what 4 or 5 enemies instead of 1 big one. So ya more enemies makes a longer fight but that’s to be expected.
So ya more enemies makes a longer fight but that’s to be expected.
Is that across all levels though? If you have a low level fight with 4 or 5 enemies does that take just as long as a high level 4-5 enemy fight?
It's rarely good design to have 1 enemy as a boss fight so the fact that boss fights "take longer" with the more enemies they have, that's a sign that "good boss fights" could take way longer than their counterparts would in PF1e.
Most of my combats have been fairly consistent over all levels of the playtest. Except when players continually roll badly of course. I've had them last as few as 3 rounds with the maximum being around 9.
Point to note here, 1 enemy bosses actually work in PF2, unlike in PF1.So ya more enemies makes a longer fight but that’s to be expected.Is that across all levels though? If you have a low level fight with 4 or 5 enemies does that take just as long as a high level 4-5 enemy fight?
It's rarely good design to have 1 enemy as a boss fight so the fact that boss fights "take longer" with the more enemies they have, that's a sign that "good boss fights" could take way longer than their counterparts would in PF1e.
that something I’ve definitely noticed in the play test. I or 2 high level enemies are far more dangerous than a larger number of enemies that are around your level. It’s come up a lot in DD.
My surprise fastest one was basically over by round 2 - the final fight of Mirrored Moon. Turns out the cultists don't survive very well against two 5th-level fireballs. By the end of round 2, both cultists were down, Hidimbi was dead thanks to the other attacks dropped on her, and the brain collector was pretty weak. The other two rounds were cleanup that was not particularly threatening.
Point to note here, 1 enemy bosses actually work in PF2, unlike in PF1.So ya more enemies makes a longer fight but that’s to be expected.Is that across all levels though? If you have a low level fight with 4 or 5 enemies does that take just as long as a high level 4-5 enemy fight?
It's rarely good design to have 1 enemy as a boss fight so the fact that boss fights "take longer" with the more enemies they have, that's a sign that "good boss fights" could take way longer than their counterparts would in PF1e.
Interesting. That's something that D&D 4e failed to do simply due to the action economy.
I have noticed that the single boss +2 to +4 level works very well against PCs in the playtest from level 1 to level 9 (and I am guessing higher) because of the math on it hitting so much more often and harder than the PCs, and they actually struggle to land hits and do consistent damage. In PF1, the PCs were usually able to overcome those deficiencies with Buff spells, consumable items and other little tricks, where that is much more difficult to do in the Playtest.
I think the slower scaling of level bonus in 4e meant that more actions overrode the +2 bonus for a 4 level difference.
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I have noticed that the single boss +2 to +4 level works very well against PCs in the playtest from level 1 to level 9 (and I am guessing higher) because of the math on it hitting so much more often and harder than the PCs, and they actually struggle to land hits and do consistent damage. In PF1, the PCs were usually able to overcome those deficiencies with Buff spells, consumable items and other little tricks, where that is much more difficult to do in the Playtest.
I think the slower scaling of level bonus in 4e meant that more actions overrode the +2 bonus for a 4 level difference.
That plus AC didn't really scale as fast as your to hit. So pretty much every PC was going to hit no matter what. So they could just go for as much damage as possible with power attack/full-attack and just do absurd damage (1 shotting creatures of equivalent CR easily). So when you have 4 of those all going at the same time, yeah how the hell is a single creature supposed to survive.
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Interesting. That's something that D&D 4e failed to do simply due to the action economy.Point to note here, 1 enemy bosses actually work in PF2, unlike in PF1.So ya more enemies makes a longer fight but that’s to be expected.Is that across all levels though? If you have a low level fight with 4 or 5 enemies does that take just as long as a high level 4-5 enemy fight?
It's rarely good design to have 1 enemy as a boss fight so the fact that boss fights "take longer" with the more enemies they have, that's a sign that "good boss fights" could take way longer than their counterparts would in PF1e.
Yeah, the math of how important level is makes higher level enemies (at +3 or +4 levels especially) so horrifying that even action economy advantages don't entirely overwhelm them. I'm actually quite a fan of this particular change.
They also tend to go quick, though, due to action economy stuff on the PCs side (even with terrible odds, enough attacks will start whittling away at the enemy) and the likelihood of critting and the like on the monster's (at +3 or +4 levels they tend to average at least one crit a round, often doing half a PCs HP in damage or more over the course of said round...or provoke critically failed saves and the like). So boss fights tend to be brutal but relatively quick. There are occasional exceptions for highly defensive monsters (Mirror Image is still a fight extender...though less of one, especially on high level monsters since crit fishing works so well on it), but it still tends to not take too many rounds. I think the current chart undervalues how difficult a fight vs. a single high level foe is as compared to fights vs. lots of low level ones, but that's adjustable readily enough.
Fights with minions of much lower levels is also tend to go quick (at least in number of rounds...they can involve a lot of rolls if the enemies get a chance to go at all...something not always true due to initiative being level dependent), as PCs crit on them frequently and their HP can't stand up to PC damage.
Fights with relatively equal numbers of close to on-level adversaries tend to take the longest, since those are the ones involving the fewest crits on either side.
On the main topic: Yeah, I haven't noticed fights getting longer as levels rise, they've stayed within about the same variance (based on luck, how defensive the creature is, and similar things). Of course, I'm Raylyeh's GM, so it'd be surprising if I had when he didn't.
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In my experience, the combat rounds in PF2 took a little bit longer at level 12+, but not that much longer. They still felt like they were moving pretty fast.
However, the combats themselves seemed to take forever. I ended up calling multiple fights in the past couple of scenarios with the bad guys still at about 1/2 HP, because they'd been going for hours and it was just getting so boring.
The bad guys have hundreds of HP, and my most optimized characters were doing about 20-40 damage per turn. After about six rounds, things just started to feel like a grind.
I've noticed fights taking a very long time at higher levels in the playtest. We haven't done parts 6 or 7 yet, but the first fight in Heroes of Undarin took 7 rounds (about 2 1/2 hours). The fight with the demilich took 12 rounds before the PCs fell (and even then, we cut things short because the fight was a foregone conclusion at that point). The fight with the ghosts went 10 rounds. The rounds also seemed to drag quite a bit--partially due to having to look more things up than in PF1, but also because the PCs were having a hard time being effective and the monsters had a lot of hp to get through.
I haven't played at the later levels. The Brain Collector was about the farthest boss I got to.
And it was fast but it was also a TPK. He had an easier time hitting crits, got a couple lucky ones and the team couldn't recover.
I don't like long fights myself, PF1 I can get maybe 1 fight done in a 3 hour session with one group. But at the same time, my own playtesting left me with the feeling it's just fishing for Crits to end fights as soon as possible from level 1 to 20.
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In my experience, the combat rounds in PF2 took a little bit longer at level 12+, but not that much longer. They still felt like they were moving pretty fast.
However, the combats themselves seemed to take forever. I ended up calling multiple fights in the past couple of scenarios with the bad guys still at about 1/2 HP, because they'd been going for hours and it was just getting so boring.
Heroes at Undarin is an interesting case, because Demons have more than half again the normal HP of a monster of their level but very high Weaknesses. If you can't trigger their Weaknesses, much like combats with creatures with DR you can't get through, combats will take quite a bit longer.
For comparison, a Leng Spider has 190 HP (and Fast Healing 15...but that's a drop in the bucket vs. most PC groups), while a Treachery Demon of the same level has 315 HP and several Weaknesses at 12.
My group in that adventure was Evocation heavy and had a Paladin, so they targeted the demon's Weaknesses pretty frequently, which sped things up a bit.
It's also a bit of a slog no matter what, but that's because it's nine combats in a row, not because individual ones are that long.
The bad guys have hundreds of HP, and my most optimized characters were doing about 20-40 damage per turn. After about six rounds, things just started to feel like a grind.
That sounds kinda low (especially since you get a Holy rune). I mean, that's a reasonable amount of damage per attack (probably close to right), but most characters can manage better as a per-turn total even sans Weakness (and quite a bit better with it).
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In my experience, the combat rounds in PF2 took a little bit longer at level 12+, but not that much longer. They still felt like they were moving pretty fast.
However, the combats themselves seemed to take forever. I ended up calling multiple fights in the past couple of scenarios with the bad guys still at about 1/2 HP, because they'd been going for hours and it was just getting so boring.
Heroes at Undarin is an interesting case, because Demons have more than half again the normal HP of a monster of their level but very high Weaknesses. If you can't trigger their Weaknesses, much like combats with creatures with DR you can't get through, combats will take quite a bit longer.
For comparison, a Leng Spider has 190 HP (and Fast Healing 15...but that's a drop in the bucket vs. most PC groups), while a Treachery Demon of the same level has 315 HP and several Weaknesses at 12.
My group in that adventure was Evocation heavy and had a Paladin, so they targeted the demon's Weaknesses pretty frequently, which sped things up a bit.
It's also a bit of a slog no matter what, but that's because it's nine combats in a row, not because individual ones are that long.
The bad guys have hundreds of HP, and my most optimized characters were doing about 20-40 damage per turn. After about six rounds, things just started to feel like a grind.That sounds kinda low (especially since you get a Holy rune). I mean, that's a reasonable amount of damage per attack (probably close to right), but most characters can manage better as a per-turn total even sans Weakness (and quite a bit better with it).
I agree with Deadmanwalking.
Demons have a big HP pool so they could test how weakness affects the game.If this was 1st edition they would have resistance x/cold iron.
After playing I much prefer the monster have a large pool of health and weakness to some elements than DR.
I am just not sure how some fights are taking so long. Someone mentioned 1 fight in 3 hours (in PF1) and someone else mentioned 1 fight taking 2.5 hours in PF2.
If it's not because someone spends 2 hours looking up rules and trying to figure out how to adjudicate a system that's new, how can combat go that long?
If my players are taking 5 minutes a turn to act, that's too long. With even just 4 (we usually have 5), waiting 20 minutes plus DM turns (which I do fast, but let's say 4 creatures take another 5 minutes), no one wants to wait 30 minutes between their actions.
If a single round take half an hour, I can see why some PF1 players long for the days for 1 round fights.
All things equal (we know the rules, don't have to look up stuff), each round in a 4 PC vs 4 NPC combat probably averages about 5 minutes in our games. That way, a good back-and-forth battle that takes 4 or 5 rounds still finishes under 30 minutes.
Could be inexperienced GMing. If a GM doesn't properly look over a creature stat block before the players fight them it really can slow the game down. I've made that mistake myself earlier on.
I played Frozen Oath at level 10 with highly experienced players and GMs. Despite the party having significant advantages in each fight, combats took so long that we couldn't finish the scenario in the 4-hour block.
I do know that the very first combat I ran for our group for the Chapter 7 Doomsday Dawn Adventure took an hour and a half to resolve. The second combat has so far taken 35 minutes, and is ongoing, and not likely to finish quickly during the second session. High level is always expected to be long, but it's still a bit of a slog, though no different from our PF1 combats (Hell's Rebels for us saw several two-hour long combats in the last book)...
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It's also a bit of a slog no matter what, but that's because it's nine combats in a row, not because individual ones are that long.
For us, it was actually the individual combats (we didn't make it through all of them) that were long. Part of that is due to the rules being less familiar than PF1 still, but I don't know if it can all be chalked up to that. That first Heroes of Undarin encounter, for example, was pretty straightforward but still took hours. There were just a lot of demons with a lot of hp each.
I don't remember if the PCs were able to trigger their weaknesses, but I feel like it took longer than a PF1 fight with something with, say, DR 10/-. I knew their hp was higher but I didn't realize it was that much higher...that might explain it.
I'm hoping it's just a quirk of the scenario and not an indication of how the majority of high-level combats will go, so I'll be keeping a close eye on Red Flags and When the Stars Go Dark. I'm not really keen on multi-hour combats unless they're big climactic encounters with a boss or something.
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For us, it was actually the individual combats (we didn't make it through all of them) that were long. Part of that is due to the rules being less familiar than PF1 still, but I don't know if it can all be chalked up to that. That first Heroes of Undarin encounter, for example, was pretty straightforward but still took hours. There were just a lot of demons with a lot of hp each.
Yeah, they're fairly numerous.
I don't remember if the PCs were able to trigger their weaknesses, but I feel like it took longer than a PF1 fight with something with, say, DR 10/-. I knew their hp was higher but I didn't realize it was that much higher...that might explain it.
Most things in PF1 with DR 10/- have lower HP or AC or higher CR to compensate, making the combats not too much longer. What you'd need to compare it to is something with DR 10/Good or the like when nobody can get through said DR. Those tend to be long as hell.
I'm hoping it's just a quirk of the scenario and not an indication of how the majority of high-level combats will go, so I'll be keeping a close eye on Red Flags and When the Stars Go Dark. I'm not really keen on multi-hour combats unless they're big climactic encounters with a boss or something.
I tend to agree, though I'm not sure "Red Flags" will help that much due to its unusual combat setup. I'll also keep an eye on "When The Stars Go Dark" myself and see if 17th level and/or fewer area Evocations make combat go slower (my Heroes party had two offensive casters...my Stars party has a Cleric and no other casters).
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As far as DD5 and demons go, yes demons have a ton of hp but as stated attacking their weaknesses help a lot and make them much more manageable. If you don't then ya a single fight could take hours. In DD5 the characters are supposed to be experienced World Wound crusaders and the PCs should at least be told by their GMs the basics of demons (a lot of hp, weak to cold iron, weaknesses to certain elements depending on type) If the GM didn't I'd say it's on them because if the PCs are given this info they should prepare accordingly (though I know some PCs don't). Now per individual demon they should have to make a knowledge check to identify that particular demon"s elemental weakness. Admittedly most of the noncaster classes have limited elemental capabilities and the scenario gives a very limited pool of items, some of which aren't even useful but I still think with some prep fights shouldn't go too long. Honestly I think my group found the undead wave more annoying than the demons.
The undead on the ground went fine for us; it was the flying ones we had quite a bit of difficulty with. We had a sorcerer who could cast fly, but he couldn't get everyone, and it kept getting counter-spelled to boot. But I think part of that is a monster save issue (the casters' spells weren't very effective either), which will probably be getting fixed.
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The undead on the ground went fine for us; it was the flying ones we had quite a bit of difficulty with. We had a sorcerer who could cast fly, but he couldn't get everyone, and it kept getting counter-spelled to boot. But I think part of that is a monster save issue (the casters' spells weren't very effective either), which will probably be getting fixed.
The fact that the undead flew was a serious issue for the PCs in my game as well. They did not have a lot of castings of Fly available, nor much for ranged attacks. The demilich would've probably been the end of them if the Wizard had not timed two Disintegrate uses very carefully and gotten lucky.
The undead on the ground went fine for us; it was the flying ones we had quite a bit of difficulty with. We had a sorcerer who could cast fly, but he couldn't get everyone, and it kept getting counter-spelled to boot. But I think part of that is a monster save issue (the casters' spells weren't very effective either), which will probably be getting fixed.The fact that the undead flew was a serious issue for the PCs in my game as well. They did not have a lot of castings of Fly available, nor much for ranged attacks. The demilich would've probably been the end of them if the Wizard had not timed two Disintegrate uses very carefully and gotten lucky.
The flying undead were effectively the end of my playtest group. They did kill the demilich, but half of the players died, and the remainder were in a rough state.
I mentioned earlier that most fights in the playtest have taken 30-60 minutes. But any fight that centered on a flying creature has dragged on much longer.
The undead on the ground went fine for us; it was the flying ones we had quite a bit of difficulty with. We had a sorcerer who could cast fly, but he couldn't get everyone, and it kept getting counter-spelled to boot. But I think part of that is a monster save issue (the casters' spells weren't very effective either), which will probably be getting fixed.The fact that the undead flew was a serious issue for the PCs in my game as well. They did not have a lot of castings of Fly available, nor much for ranged attacks. The demilich would've probably been the end of them if the Wizard had not timed two Disintegrate uses very carefully and gotten lucky.
The demilich was the end for my group; after it mazed the paladin (she needed to roll a 17+ to get out, and that was with being trained in Survival) and knocked two PCs to dying, there was pretty much no coming back. They had no real way of damaging it at that point anyway since they were pretty much out of resources.
I think one issue with high level play that factors in to a lot of these stories, is that players are pushed towards having such intense specialization in the Playtest that it is very difficult to have Martials be decent switch hitters/carry the right tools to be useful when their primary specialization is not useful. High level magic items are so expensive that players starting at higher levels are very unlikely to diversify their arsenal. I think it would be less of an issue with players that play through lower levels and realize that their characters need options, but I think a lot of people will be inclined to sell equipment off to afford the shiny toy that will let them dominate those 80-95% of encounters they have built their characters to address.
With how closely balanced the math of the playtest is, it shouldn't be difficult for most characters to cary back up ranged weapons and a melee weapon that touches on common weaknesses, like a cold Iron sword, but it is hard to feel like switching weapons is worth it if your damage dice drop by 2 or more. If the developers manage to drop the the high end of weapon damage die to 3 instead of 5, I think it will be a lot more likely for people to have a back up weapon that they would be inclined to use.
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Some of it is also just the Item guidelines for creating higher level characters. Looked at just as a matter of gold, having a secondary weapon with a bonus 1 less than one's primary weapon is a drop in the bucket at most levels, and pretty solid backup.
The guidelines for Chapter 5 are particularly bad in this regard, effectively forcing you to either get two fully leveled weapons (at the expense of other stuff) or no backup weapon at all due to their incredible strictness. And Chapter 4 has the issue that you really want +3 weapons rather than the +2 one you start with, but Chapter 3 and Chapter 6 both make such backup weapons readily accessible in terms of price (though there's little need for them in Chapter 6), and Chapter 7 probably gives you the runes necessary for free (since you keep the items from Chapters 1 and 4, then get free higher level items).