PF1e seemed to operate on a "level up once every 3 sessions" principle, as enshrined in PFS which had you level up after three 4 hour PFS scenarios.
Starfinder uses the fast XP progression which would make it look like it levels you up every 2 sessions?
D&D 5e operates on a once every session for levels 1-4 and then once every 2 sessions thereafter as enshrined in adventurers league (if you use XP level up system I believe it speeds up again at very high level).
Do we know how often you'll level up in PF2e? Is it going to be similar to PF1e medium XP chart or Starfinder/D&D 5e?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Society play seems to continue the 3 sessions then level up pattern.
Home games will vary of course...
My current PF1 group levels up once every... I dunno... 3-5 months.. maybe? That’s with weekly sessions.
I’d like to think that is on he slow end, but I bring it up to illustrate the variety.
In PF2 I’ll be GMing a different group that will only meet every 6 weeks or so, and I plan on leveling them after every session or two so that they feel like they are getting to level.
I don't think we know but I can't see the once every 3 adventures for PFS changing as I assume that is well received?
Once per session for 5E is quick. I did not know that.
I guess this is assuming an "average number of encounters" per session - whatever that may be
Once per session for 5E is quick. I did not know that.
This is only for low levels (apprentice levels). It grows to 2 sessions from level 4 onwards.
I guess this is assuming an "average number of encounters" per session - whatever that may be
I'm using organised play (which eschews standard XP) to help provide a baseline. You can indeed play a low XP game where you only level up once every 8 to 13 4-hour sessions. But I don't think anyone would say that is a standard assumption within PF1e.
I level up quest based/session based
players get a bit of xp every session so they feel the level coming closer - and quests get also an xp reward
If the players take longer with their quest they take longer to level up
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I level up quest based/session based
players get a bit of xp every session so they feel the level coming closer - and quests get also an xp rewardIf the players take longer with their quest they take longer to level up
I'm not asking what houserules people use for levelling up and instead I'm asking what does the standard assumption appear to be re-leveling in the new edition.
Once per session for 5E is quick. I did not know that.This is only for low levels (apprentice levels). It grows to 2 sessions from level 4 onwards.
I guess this is assuming an "average number of encounters" per session - whatever that may beI'm using organised play (which eschews standard XP) to help provide a baseline. You can indeed play a low XP game where you only level up once every 8 to 13 4-hour sessions. But I don't think anyone would say that is a standard assumption within PF1e.
To give more context to non AL players, this once per session for first tier games is new as of a year ago. AL used to track XP. That said, going from level 1 to level 2 always took one session, since the 5E experience to level curve is not flat. The idea is that your character is something of an apprentice until they hit 3rd level and come into their subclass, in most cases. But leveling to 4th and to 5th (unless you spent downtime and Caught Up to the next tier) often took longer. And for higher levels it seemed to hover between 2 and 3 sessions per level depending on the table composition.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think I remember a twitch stream (with James Jacobs, maybe?) where they explained that part of the selling point of the 1000xp per level setup was that it put the pace of levelling more firmly within DM control. As such, I think the answer is that it will be subject to more table variance in home games than PF1. I don’t think the organised play assumption would have changed enormously or it would be widely known (pretty sure they did a blog about PFS a while back - I cant imagine they wouldn’t have mentioned it if something so central was to change.
That discussion about xp was very, very early in the playtest process though - who knows if it continued. As I recall it, the idea was to hardcode story awards into PF2 (whereas they were more tacked on to PF1 when it became clear there was difficulty in reaching higher levels during an AP).
I haven’t heard anything specific to actual APs though beyond two facts - they’re all going to go to level twenty (implying it will be slightly quicker than PF1 in a level/pagecount-of-the-Adventure metric) and statblocks are shorter than in PF1 (meaning there can be more encounters per page).
Putting those two together, I’d guess it’ll be similar (even in PF1 the pace of levelling within the same AP was pretty heavily dependant on the group - I suspect that’ll be even more a determining factor, under the new regime, since it’s so easy to drop encounters and keep the pace of advancement unchanged from a story perspective).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm not asking what houserules people use for levelling up and instead I'm asking what does the standard assumption appear to be re-leveling in the new edition.I level up quest based/session based
players get a bit of xp every session so they feel the level coming closer - and quests get also an xp rewardIf the players take longer with their quest they take longer to level up
PFS is putting the baseline at about 12 hours of play per level, assuming that most scenarios are 4 hours long. I am saying it this way because they are integrating 1 hour quests into the standard XP system. 4 xp for a standard scenario, 1 xp for a quest, 12 xp to level.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks Steve and Bard :) Exactly the information I was looking for.
Based on the work you and I did converting, it looks like PF1 APs level at exactly the same rate when converted to PF2, and I see little reason to expect differences in PF2 APs.
Based on the work you and I did converting, it looks like PF1 APs level at exactly the same rate when converted to PF2, and I see little reason to expect differences in PF2 APs.
I can’t remember: does Rise of the Runelords use the fast track?
Based on the work you and I did converting, it looks like PF1 APs level at exactly the same rate when converted to PF2, and I see little reason to expect differences in PF2 APs.I can’t remember: does Rise of the Runelords use the fast track?
Anniversary uses Fast
What concerting is Captain Morgan referring to ?
Based on the work you and I did converting, it looks like PF1 APs level at exactly the same rate when converted to PF2, and I see little reason to expect differences in PF2 APs.I can’t remember: does Rise of the Runelords use the fast track?Anniversary uses Fast
What concerting is Captain Morgan referring to ?
Assuming we're talking about the same thing, the pair of us converted Burnt Offerings to PF2 Playtest rules. I used the anniversary edition version which would indicate that the playtest rules at least favored using the Fast track which would mean levelling more often then PF1e typically expected (about 1/3rd quicker?).
The anniversary edition did indeed use the fast track. Which lines up with 800 XP exactly, which seemed to be The number you kept getting.
Meanwhile, Ironfang Invasion uses the medium track, and 1000 XP worked at exactly the points you are supposed to level up there. So it basically works exactly the same.
The only real difference is that simple hazards were worth less XP in the playtest, but you can just use the listed XP awards out of the AP and it works fine. For example, a level 5 trap in PF1 gives the same XP as a level 5 creature. So for a 5th party, that's 40 XP straight converted. But I expect the new APs going forward to give less XP for simple hazards and give more XP elsewhere to make up for it and keep the overall rate about the same.
The anniversary edition did indeed use the fast track. Which lines up with 800 XP exactly, which seemed to be The number you kept getting.
Meanwhile, Ironfang Invasion uses the medium track, and 1000 XP worked at exactly the points you are supposed to level up there. So it basically works exactly the same.
The only real difference is that simple hazards were worth less XP in the playtest, but you can just use the listed XP awards out of the AP and it works fine. For example, a level 5 trap in PF1 gives the same XP as a level 5 creature. So for a 5th party, that's 40 XP straight converted. But I expect the new APs going forward to give less XP for simple hazards and give more XP elsewhere to make up for it and keep the overall rate about the same.
Aah, perfect. That all lines up then. Thank you :)
If we can take 40xp as the average encounter... mind you I am not sure we can, but it is a number, so there we go...
Anyways 40 xp goes into 1000xp 25 times. So assuming dead average pace, how long will it take to handle 25 fights? How often will story/accomplishment XP be awarded?
Can your group tackle 5 fights in a night? Assume story xp worth 1/4 of Combat XP....that’s 4 sessions worth before a level.
I am making LOTS of assumptions here...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's really dependent on group. I just ran a 6 hour module in 3.5 hours (could have stretched it out to 4 and in hind sight I should have). Previous time that was DM'd it was a struggle to get it done in 5 hours. Both times involved players messing about and otherwise not engaging with the module (and this was from the very start in both groups). Difference was the previous DM gave the players messing about substantial table time. I gave them almost zero table time and simply let them do what they wanted and spotlighted the players actually progressing the story.*
So it really is dependent on group and DM.
*Before anyone thinks I was overly harsh, the entire table eventually engaged in the module once combat broke out and everyone was laughing over how successful their ridiculous antics actually worked out in turning a certain TPK into a hilarious victory. So yes. Being heavy handed does work sometimes.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If we can take 40xp as the average encounter... mind you I am not sure we can, but it is a number, so there we go...
Anyways 40 xp goes into 1000xp 25 times. So assuming dead average pace, how long will it take to handle 25 fights? How often will story/accomplishment XP be awarded?
Can your group tackle 5 fights in a night? Assume story xp worth 1/4 of Combat XP....that’s 4 sessions worth before a level.
I am making LOTS of assumptions here...
According to the playtest, a fight that only worth 40 XP or less isn't worth giving XP at all. I think 80 XP an encounter is going to be the average.
According to the playtest, a fight that only worth 40 XP or less isn't worth giving XP at all. I think 80 XP an encounter is going to be the average.If we can take 40xp as the average encounter... mind you I am not sure we can, but it is a number, so there we go...
Anyways 40 xp goes into 1000xp 25 times. So assuming dead average pace, how long will it take to handle 25 fights? How often will story/accomplishment XP be awarded?
Can your group tackle 5 fights in a night? Assume story xp worth 1/4 of Combat XP....that’s 4 sessions worth before a level.
I am making LOTS of assumptions here...
Interesting because I was going to say that 25 fights seemed overly high by pathfinder standards
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Standard encounters are probably going to be the low-threat kind (60 xp) or the high-threat kind (80 xp).
I'm running a Playtest campaign at the moment, and each combat gives roughly 100xp on average, so about 10 encounters per level. So it really depends on how closely packed your encounters are. I've run sessions that have awarded 400+ xp, and others that have awarded less than 100.
3 sessions peer level sounds about right overall, though.
Thanks for the number adjustments. Roughly half that number of fights then.
It’s been years since my home group has used honest to goodness XP, and I doubt we'll be getting back into that habit.. lately we have skewed WAY over into RP territory and we may fight once every 3-8 sessions, so if our progression depended on killing stuff we would never get there haha!
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, even if you use XP story based awards tend to be more satisfying. You should get XP for accomplishing a goal, not murdering a random creature.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, even if you use XP story based awards tend to be more satisfying. You should get XP for accomplishing a goal, not murdering a random creature.
I actually give XP for successfully completing encounters, not murdering creatures. Murder is one option available to PCs, but by no means the only one.
[EDIT]: Just to be absolutely clear, murder can sometimes be the completely wrong thing to do and would earn no XP. Seems obvious and completely unnecessary to say, but given the post I’m quoting I just wanted to make it absolutely clear.
I mean, even if you use XP story based awards tend to be more satisfying. You should get XP for accomplishing a goal, not murdering a random creature.
Agreed. There is always a problem with XP based on either story OR combat, in that "hey how did I suddenly get better at diplomacy after fighting sewer slimes this afternoon?" or conversely "hey how come I'm better with my sword after the princesses ball?"
That's a big part of why our group has just tossed the lot of it and we just focus on "ok how often do we want the old 'just leveled!' endorphin kick?" and level according to that. Then mostly there has at least been a good mix of combat/non-combat encounters between level ups and we can focus on where the story leads us and not think "man we need to find a dungeon so we can level up."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, the idea of needing to grind a certain number of bad guys, or throw meaningless random encounters at the party, in order to level up is what put our group off XP.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, the idea of needing to grind a certain number of bad guys, or throw meaningless random encounters at the party, in order to level up is what put our group off XP.
Do people really handle XP like this? It’s not the 80s anymore. “Killing” for XP hasn’t been a thing for years. It’s always “overcome the challenge”. I just checked my 2nd edition AD&D DMG and even there it says overcoming a foe does not mean killing it.
And if you don’t want to get XP for random encounters, don’t. Use them as punishment for when the PCs fail or do something really stupid. They’ll avoid those suckers like the plague.
Yeah, using milestone XP has made my groups barely if ever have random encounters. But you still wanna use them every now and then for pacing and punishment.
I tend to find plain milestones frustrating as a player, and tend to use xp simply as a measuring stick to figure for my players to know how close they are to the next milestone.
I'm liking the simplicity of the 1000 xp to level system.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I tend to find plain milestones frustrating as a player
Thats actually really quite common, and it’s why so many video games include experience points.
It’s also why I bother with XP. Assuming PF2 combats are similar in length to PF1 combats, I’d say about 15 planned encounters per level are about normal with them ranging from Trivial to Extreme. That lands us at 66.6666 XP per encounter. If we round down to 60 XP then that gives us 100 XP extra for story XP. Which equals 60 xp for moderate awards and 40 XP for minor awards.
Because I’m lazy and hate math I’m going to change those XP totals:
* 50 XP for planned encounters (with a balanced variety of trivial to severe).
* 25 XP for moderate awards
* 100 XP for major awards (this is successfully completing the adventure style awards). I’m over emphasising this because it’s going to be a catch all for a bunch of minor awards.
I’d expect 15 encounters like the core assumption seems to be. 3 or so moderate awards. 1 major award culminating in a few sessions worth of achievements.
I’ll probably set the level up point at 800 XP. It will put them a little bit over XP if they perfectly defeat all encounters and achieve all story rewards. But it won’t make a meaningful difference until about 7 levels of such a perfect run. And in my experience groups rarely get such perfect scores.
Yeah, the idea of needing to grind a certain number of bad guys, or throw meaningless random encounters at the party, in order to level up is what put our group off XP.Do people really handle XP like this? It’s not the 80s anymore. “Killing” for XP hasn’t been a thing for years. It’s always “overcome the challenge”. I just checked my 2nd edition AD&D DMG and even there it says overcoming a foe does not mean killing it.
And if you don’t want to get XP for random encounters, don’t. Use them as punishment for when the PCs fail or do something really stupid. They’ll avoid those suckers like the plague.
I'm in agreement with you on this. You know, with the new "fail forward" model on skill checks, perhaps percentile rolls for random encounters will be replaced with "how well did you do on your survival check." That would work better than "this task takes longer" when the party has no ticking clock.
You know, with the new "fail forward" model on skill checks, perhaps percentile rolls for random encounters will be replaced with "how well did you do on your survival check." That would work better than "this task takes longer" when the party has no ticking clock.
Whenever I see fail forward I read everything following that with heavy skepticism.
Can you please point me to where thefail forward mechanics are in the playtest?i either missed them the first time or took great effort to purge them from my memory.
And here’s a question which helps demonstrate why fail forward isn’t applicable in the example you gave: If the party has no ticking clock, why does it matter how long a task takes? And if there is no meaningful penalty for failing a skill check and the skill check can just be retried, why bother asking for the skill check in the first place? Just narrate the outcome and move onto something that actually matters.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As for why make the roll in the first place in those circumstance, one I've encountered plenty as the GM, because players often ask to roll.
Players ask to roll because they’ve been trained to think they will miss out on something if they fail to roll. You can train them out of it by rewarding them for narrating their activities and not letting them roll until they’re prompted to roll.
And lol. Of COURSE it’s the exploration chapter. I’ve reread what seems to be the relevant parts (and some of the irrelevant parts). Failure definitely seems possible. Not seeing anything about failure = more time passing but you succeed. Can you be more specific?
What page number of the playtest core rules is that from? I just did a few searches and came up empty.
As for the rolling. If a player asks to roll for something I tend to let them.Normally its an indication that I (or the adventure) hasn't actually been leverging their skill choices meaningfully enough. They are looking for ways for their character to engage. If possible I try to reward that
I’d rather give them meaningful and fun things to do then make d20 checks that are completely meaningless and impacts the game in exactly zero way at all. I catch a GM doing that and I quickly look for a new GM or see if they’re open to making the game more enjoyable by not wasting table time on useless rolls.. Although I typically let the GM decide when I roll dice.
No need to get narky Malk content.
I don’t think a rule in an adventure is really indicative of how Paizo are planning to handle skill failures in the new edition. Especially when the core rules contradict that paradigm.
As for making rolls count. Good to hear you don’t always allow rolls (it seems to contradict what you said earlier. But, whatever).
[EDIT]: Just read those guidelines in context. Trying to extrapolate a fail forward mindset for the new edition from that adventure is drawing a very long bow.
No need to get narky Malk content.
I don’t think a rule in an adventure is really indicative of how Paizo are planning to handle skill failures in the new edition. Especially when the core rules contradict that paradigm.
As for making rolls count. Good to hear you don’t always allow rolls (it seems to contradict what you said earlier. But, whatever).
[EDIT]: Just read those guidelines in context. Trying to extrapolate a fail forward mindset for the new edition from that adventure is drawing a very long bow.
Except this is exactly what they've said they are doing moving forward. Jason has talked about this during several interviews and games he's run. I believe it was mentioned in the recent Glass Cannon games from Paizo con, and probably Oblivion Oath as well.
I'm not sure if it's going to be reflected in the CRB per se, but it is definitely something they are going to use when designing adventures. So you would look at adventures (such as Doomsday Dawn, or the upcoming Fall of Plaguestone or Age of Ashes) for evidence of how it works in practice.
Side note: Malk wasn't being narky. You asked for a page number, he provided it. You really need to chill out dude, because you are increasingly coming across as aggressive when you're in the wrong.
And here’s a question which helps demonstrate why fail forward isn’t applicable in the example you gave: If the party has no ticking clock, why does it matter how long a task takes? And if there is no meaningful penalty for failing a skill check and the skill check can just be retried, why bother asking for the skill check in the first place? Just narrate the outcome and move onto something that actually matters.
... What? I was literally responding to your point that a random encounter could be used as punishment when players fail. When you don't have a ticking clock, throwing a dangerous encounter with no XP reward at a player could serve as a consequence of failing a skill check.
Except this is exactly what they've said they are doing moving forward. Jason has talked about this during several interviews and games he's run. I believe it was mentioned in the recent Glass Cannon games from Paizo con, and probably Oblivion Oath as well.
I’m old fashioned. I read my news and play tabletop RPGs. I don’t listen to umpteen podcasts or watch people play Pathfinder. That’s so weird to me. Like my niece watch videos of kids playing with toys. Like, seriously. What the hell is the world coming to when 5 year olds are doing crap like that?
All that is a long winded way of saying thank you for the update :)
I'm not sure if it's going to be reflected in the CRB per se, but it is definitely something they are going to use when designing adventures. So you would look at adventures (such as Doomsday Dawn, or the upcoming Fall of Plaguestone or Age of Ashes) for evidence of how it works in practice.
Fail forward is too often used as a lazy crutch. It removes player agency by not letting them fail in an adventure. If that’s how all failed skill checks are handled in Paizo Adventures then there will be no point buying them. Hopefully it isn’t.
The quoted text doesn’t really have fail forward (there is no real failure. If PCs aren’t trying to rush things they don’t even need to make a check in the first place).
Side note: Malk wasn't being narky. You asked for a page number, he provided it.
Reread his post. Providing a page number was helpful. Telling me I read something when clearly I hadn’t wasn’t helpful.
I was literally responding to your point that a random encounter could be used as punishment when players fail. When you don't have a ticking clock, throwing a dangerous encounter with no XP reward at a player could serve as a consequence of failing a skill check.
I was responding to fail forward being used to chew up time when there is no ticking clock. Apologies if you took that as being hostile.
The definition I could find is thisFail Forward seems like 'Designer Speak'.
Term gets thrown around but is it well defined.
Failing forward is the idea that you still get to unlock the door on a failed roll, but it comes at a cost.
That isn’t how skill checks are described in the rules for the playtest core rules.
If you actually want to hear why I think that’s awful feel free to start a new thread. It’s pretty off topic for this one.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The definition I could find is thisFail Forward seems like 'Designer Speak'.
Term gets thrown around but is it well defined.
Failing forward is the idea that you still get to unlock the door on a failed roll, but it comes at a cost.That isn’t how skill checks are described in the rules for the playtest core rules.
If you actually want to hear why I think that’s awful feel free to start a new thread. It’s pretty off topic for this one.
Like everything else in adventure design, it has it's place. Of course it would be really dumb if all checks were like this, there's plenty of things that would be boring such as finding a secret item/door/shortcut, stealthing, bluffing, any knowledge etc. But a lot of times an adventure can get super derailed for failing certain checks like following tracks, convincing an NPC to do a thing, opening the ONE entrance to the next area.
Pathfinder adventures are mostly railroads, they expect events to happen in a certain orders so of course you don't need "Welp, guess the adventure is over because of a bad roll"/"This has resulted in creating an epic sidequest/contrived alternative solution".
It’s pretty poor design where 1 failed check derails an entire campaign. I don’t recall any Paizo AP having such an issue (but I haven’t read them all!).
Not being able to fail means my actions no longer have any consequence. That’s what fail forward does. I’m really hoping Paizo doesn’t include such nonsense in all future APs.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
It’s pretty poor design where 1 failed check derails an entire campaign. I don’t recall any Paizo AP having such an issue (but I haven’t read them all!).
Not being able to fail means my actions no longer have any consequence. That’s what fail forward does. I’m really hoping Paizo doesn’t include such nonsense in all future APs.
"Fail Forward" is not at all the same thing as "No Consequences". Both a success and a failure on crucial checks should advance the story forward. It just might be more challenging if you failed. That philosophy is pretty essential to good adventure design in the style of Paizo's APs.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Fail Forward" is not at all the same thing as "No Consequences". Both a success and a failure on crucial checks should advance the story forward. It just might be more challenging if you failed. That philosophy is pretty essential to good adventure design in the style of Paizo's APs.It’s pretty poor design where 1 failed check derails an entire campaign. I don’t recall any Paizo AP having such an issue (but I haven’t read them all!).
Not being able to fail means my actions no longer have any consequence. That’s what fail forward does. I’m really hoping Paizo doesn’t include such nonsense in all future APs.
I’m not ignoring your post. There’s just a different thread where this is being discussed. Feel free to read my responses in that thread :) (I don’t want to spa, every thread with the virtues of failing forward).