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So, Table 4 of the Bestiary lists 2 creatures of same-level as a "High" difficulty encounters. Two Lemures is not a "High" difficulty encounter for four level 2 adventurers. Same goes for almost any Level 2 creatures (except Animated Armor, see my other post).
A "high" difficulty encounter is just an utter non-threat. It's trivial enough that I wouldn't use them against players because victory is so assured that it's just wasting player time. We set aside about three hours every week or two to game from out schedules, why should I waste 10-20 minutes of it on something we already know the outcome of?
How many high encounter have you actually run? This seems to run very much against the common playtest experience for the game's difficulty.
But yes, players are supposed to be able to consistently win high difficulty encounters. That's how you keep the game moving, and avoid TPKs. If you want a higher challenge because you have more savvy players, you will want to dial it up. But they need to find a happy medium between your players and folks that want a more casual experience. The bestiary alludes to the fact that good tactics can carry you pretty far.
A Level 2 trap (Spear Launcher) can do 2d6+6 damage. A Level 2 Elf Alchemist or Rogue with 10 Con has 18 HP.
Actually, they have 22 hp.
That trap, should it hit them, could 1-shot that character.
Only on a crit, which it admittedly can plausibly do with a +11 to hit.
Even if it doesn't kill them,
It almost certainly won't, unless their allies can't get to them to stabilize or they were already Wounded. A hit can't take you below dying 2 on its own. And even on your own, you start every session with a hero point.
it's going to cost the party resources in the form of healing or downtime.
Yeah, that's how damage works. And Treat Wounds is free and only takes 10 minutes. If you have 10 Con it will take a while to get you from 0 to full, but that's the price of dumping Con.
That trap, on it's own, is more dangerous than a "High" risk encounter.
It isn't. The trap gets one strike and it is done. The lemure gets 3 attacks a round times however many rounds it takes to kill. It can potentially one shot your fragile PCs on a crit, and can fish for 3 a round. And then it can either continue attacking the downed PC to kill them (a lemure might actually go for this like a zombie would) or harry allies to prevent them from healing their friend.
The spear launcher can also be noticed with a single perception check. This then defeats it unless there's a reason you HAVE to step on that 5 foot square, at which point you can Disable Device to defeat it without damage. It is significantly harder to sneak an entire party past 2 lemures guarding a door than one spear launcher. With the former you almost certainly have a fight on your hands.
This is the age old problem with traps: they only become a meaningful risk if they can actually kill or cripple you or are part of a larger encounter. Put that spear launcher in the lemure fight, and now we are talking...
That trap, on it's own, is more dangerous than a "High" risk encounter... but it only gives 12 XP? That seems really minimal for the cost in resources/life. I'm not saying it should give 80 XP like an encounter, it should just give more for being so risky.
Setting aside your risk evaluation, risk is only one part of what determines XP. The other factor is how much table time you spent on it. That's why page 339 defines Major Accomplishments as "the culmination of the characters' efforts across multiple sessions."
I'll note this is a change from how PF1 traps and APs seemed to work, as they tended to offer full XP compared to a creature of the same CR/Level. I've had to take this into account when running my converted AP. It's a philosophical change which you may or may not agree with but it is easy to house rule back as I have done to keep XP on track.
Captain Morgan, I have run 0 High encounters because it's just... not interesting. Two Goblin Commandos against a 1st level party isn't any kind of threat to them.
It's very likely that my players are just tactical enough and that's why I need to dial stuff up. It was like that in 1e as well, and I even acknowledged in my post that it's quite likely a difference in playstyle. My group have never played like other groups, usually just have one or two very difficult encounters per combat day.
Well, it isn't quite so one sided for many (perhaps most) parties. For my own groups, many encounters in Doomsday Dawn felt like they were genuinely going to lose people. They've had to flee from multiple encounters.
In my converted AP, encounters regularly take at least one character to at or near 0 HP. The party is almost certainly going to win, but they FEEL otherwise, which is really about the sweet spot you want as GM. Encounters that feel way deadlier than they actually are is basically as good as it gets. Getting ambushed by 2 bulettes at night had my level 8 sweating hard, for example.
The encounter building rules are also waaaaaay better for accounting for differing level of optimization than PF1 CR ever was.
That's in part for story reasons, because it's strange to me (and the rest of my group) that you tend to fight so many encounters per day from a narrative perspectve. We just don't find cleaving through the local Goblin population in fairly one-sided fights to be very "heroic".
Well, fundamentally this is a pretty big part of how D&D has always functioned. Most encounters aren't meant to kill players. And lower difficulty encounters mostly exist to drain resources from players. The local goblin population may not be very threatening as individuals, but going through them probably cost you spell slots and healing resources which makes their more powerful boss more of a threat. That resource management aspect is a big part of what makes the game strategic. It's also easier to balance around now thanks to the reduction in spell slots.
You can instead run single encounters that are much harder. That's how Part 4 of Doomsday Dawn worked-- one really challenging encounter per day you are able to nova all your resources on. It's just not the standard approach.
Captain Morgan, I have run 0 High encounters because it's just... not interesting. Two Goblin Commandos against a 1st level party isn't any kind of threat to them.
It's very likely that my players are just tactical enough and that's why I need to dial stuff up. It was like that in 1e as well, and I even acknowledged in my post that it's quite likely a difference in playstyle. My group have never played like other groups, usually just have one or two very difficult encounters per combat day.
That's in part for story reasons, because it's strange to me (and the rest of my group) that you tend to fight so many encounters per day from a narrative perspectve. We just don't find cleaving through the local Goblin population in fairly one-sided fights to be very "heroic".
I can definitely see what you mean about the traps, though. I think this is just something I'm gonna have to re-evaluate from the way it was done in 1e.
Just saying 2 goblin commandos can mess up a level 1 party. Especially if they start far away and get a few chances to fish for deadly crits with their shortbows. 2d8 + 2 + 1d10 can absolutely one shot a level 1. Believe me, you can make a very difficult encounter with 2 goblin commandos.
Necrotifice, I like the cut of your jib.
I also think it says interesting things that some people are reporting the playtest as really brutally hard, and some are reporting easy encounters.
For my part, my highly tactical PCs slaughtered nearly every encounter I threw at them, but I definitely have talked to people that were just getting massacred.
I think that's probably really good, because to me it implies that smart tactics combine well with the tight math.